Religion's Fragmented Condition and the Secular Inertia

Abstract

The words ‘religious,’ ‘spiritual,’ and ‘sacred,’ are ubiquitous and used interchangeably, both in the academy and in public discourse. How does this create discrepancies between “religious freedom” as outlined in the First Amendment, and “Indigenous sovereignty over that which is sacred?” What is the discrepancy between defining ‘religion,’ or other words such as, ‘spiritual,’ and ‘sacred,’ in the academy versus in the legal sphere, specifically in the 21st-century when Indigenous-significant ecologies are being massively destroyed under rapid military, scientific, and technological innovations? This paper examines two concepts: “Religion’s Fragmented Condition,” and “Secular Inertia.” “Religion’s fragmented condition” is defined as the way in which ‘religion’ as a Modern-European method of social organization fragmented non-Western societies through categorizing elements of its given ontologies into the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ since colonial intervention. As “religion” continues to be redefined, it perpetuates the condition of fragmentation by deploying the sacred/profane dichotomy onto non-Western societies that are not structured in such a way. This leads into the second concept, “secular inertia,” defined as the unintentional production of what cultural anthropologist Talal Asad calls the “epistemic category and ontological secular” with every redefinition of ‘religion,’ ‘spiritual,’ and ‘sacred.’ When “religion” continues to be redefined, whatever is not captured in that definition, is consumed into the ‘ontological secular,’ which then becomes under the jurisdiction of military, scientific, and technological enterprises. This typically results in the destruction of sacred Indigenous ecologies and material culture which is typically not legally-classified as ‘religious,’ in the American legal-system, thus, does not receive, “religious protection.”