Postsecular Plasticity: Expansive Secularism

In this contribution, I pull together some diverse articulations of a postsecular kind, construing them as constituting something more like ‘expansive secularism’. One reason for formulating this category is my sense that the portrayals of ‘strict’ secularism that kick-start many manifestos along the spectrum not only amount to rather crass caricatures, they can mislead us into thinking that post-secularism (always) equates to anti-secularism. Not infrequently, however, the headline denunciations give way to revisionist rather than abolitionist contentions - very seldom are they theological or religious in any serious sense. Whilst appreciative of elements of the thinking in this vein, the chapter proceeds to identify significant conceptual and normative tensions and contradictions.