Secularism claims to produce religion while insisting on their sharp separation

Evidence

The interesting thing about this view is that although religion is regarded as alien to the secular, the latter is also seen to have generated religion. Historians of progress relate that in the premodern past secular life created superstitious and oppressive religion, and in the modern present secularism has produced enlightened and tolerant religion. Thus the insistence on a sharp separation between the religious and the secular goes with the paradoxical claim that the latter continually produces the former. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 942 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A secular majority depends on the religion it claims to resent. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 773; Secularism claims to be separate from yet productive of religion.; European secularism has absorbed Christianity into its own self-definition (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Secular modernity paradoxically claims to have produced the religion it excludes. #corroborates (0.95)
• Secularism claims to have generated tolerant modern religion #corroborates (0.95) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 942