acknowledge that secularism is inflected by religions (and vice versa), thus fundamentally undoing the binary opposition between (secular) universalism
and (religious) particularism. Such a move entails a shift from a singular, universal idea of the secular to the idea of multiple and varied secularisms. In making this shift, we must incorporate the fact that the recognition of cross-cultural variation is not enough because the recognition of variation alone does not in itself dislodge the idea of a single unifying discourse within which this variation occurs. Acknowledging the lack of such a singular discourse also implies that there is no single moral framework for conflict resolution and ethical judgment. Dispensing with such a framework involves a turn to the question of relations among differences, a question that cannot be resolved simpl or through a single method. (16)This is a tough call, but it's the challenging terrain in which I find myself, trying to make at least first-year-seminar sense of secularisms... My title, "Secularism at the crossroads," which was supposed to suggest an uncertain present and future, now seems insufficiently radical in its use of the singular "Secularism."
