The article I came across in the library was from the Journal of Religion and was titled “On Giving Religious Intolerance Its Due: Prospects for Transforming Conflict in a Post-Secular Society”. The author, Jason A. Springs, through this essay tries to find if intolerance and conflict, coming from moral and religious identities and commitments, can be rearranged and used as resources of constructive social and political purposes. In today’s day in age when our society is becoming more and more secular, it is interesting to look at articles such as this one to find out the current significance of religion within society. Especially when it comes to politics, and political speech, are such discussions important. Throughout this piece, the author takes three different steps to investigate his topic. First, he explores the social limits to which religion is accommodated for within public and political life. He then goes on to explore the attempt of Charles Taylor to improve the discussed accommodation through mutual understandings of identity-based opponents. The third section looks at how religiously affiliated conflict and intolerance can be reframed. Within this, he proposed that perhaps the most good comes from intentional conflict, arguing that intolerance is not good, but it can somehow lead towards progress. In all of this research, the fact that America has become so incredibly diverse comes about, as can be seen through an increasing number of secular communities contrasted against a variety of religious fundamentalist groups. Within such a society, there is bound to be the fusion and creation of new horizons. In this piece, the author seems to look at the surface level information addressing the topic of his research. Through looking at reports of acts and events, he rounds his argument through the eyes and work of other researchers. I think an argument could also be made for his use of detached observation and grounded theory of hidden social patterns as they relate to society’s view of religion today.

Although this particular article was somewhat hard to understand, given the particularity of the subject matter, I thought it was really interesting. Although I have thought a lot about the decline of religion in the United States, I had never thought to look into how social and political narratives affect religious intolerance and conflict. I think, if anything, this article does a sufficient job of beginning to address such issues. However, I do think it could have gone farther in depth, looking past the literature on the topic and into more real life scenarios. This is definitely an article I can circle back to as a resource, and one whose references would be useful as well.

Springs, J. A. (2012). On Giving Religious Intolerance Its Due: Prospects for Transforming Conflict in a Post-secular Society. The Journal of Religion,92(1), 1-30. doi:10.1086/662203