Secular Africa? Making Sense of the Interplay Between Secular Constitutions and Religious Citizens

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On July 19 and 20, 2022, the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) hosted a symposium, "Religious Practices, Transmission, and Literacies in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia." The symposium featured the presentations of seven scholars who conducted two-week research residencies in the AMED Reading Room between June 1 and July 15. The residencies and symposium are part of the Exploring Challenging Conversations project generously funded by a planning grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The purpose of the initiative was to enhance public awareness of cross-regional and intercultural religious understanding in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and their global diaspora. ; ; Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Professor of Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. ; ; Twenty-eight of Africa's fifty-four nations possess constitutions whose edicts regarding proper relations between government and religion/s may be described as "secular". While this intriguing fact is known to many scholars of Africa, it is rarely considered by journalists, policy analysts and even those who study political secularism. All of which raises an important geopolitical data point for further scrutiny: more than half of the countries in the world's most youthful, religious, and likely soon-to-be most populous continent are, in theory, wed to formally secular structures of governance. In this presentation the speaker…

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English

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