Is the Body Secular? Circumcision, Religious Freedom, and Bodily Integrity

Recent legal and public debates over circumcision in Germany have tended to pit religious freedom against bodily integrity. This paper examines the background assumptions about religion and the body on which this framing depends. Insofar as the body is assumed to represent a fixed point determinable...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Amesbury, Richard 1972- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: British Association for the Study of Religions [2017]
In: Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions
Year: 2016, Volume: 18, Pages: 1-10
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Religious freedom / Liberty of religious exercise / Circumcision (Man) / Body / Secularism
IxTheo Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AG Religious life; material religion
XA Law
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Summary:Recent legal and public debates over circumcision in Germany have tended to pit religious freedom against bodily integrity. This paper examines the background assumptions about religion and the body on which this framing depends. Insofar as the body is assumed to represent a fixed point determinable independently of ‘religion’, to frame the debate over circumcision in terms of a clash between rights pertaining respectively to religion and the body is, I argue, to circumscribe and contain religion within boundaries marked by the non-religious and non-negotiable. The secular body is thus not simply an additional consideration to be weighed against religious freedom but a condition of and limit to the modern conception of (free) religion itself. If the physical body is a synecdoche for the social system, the normative, uncircumcised body can be interpreted as standing in for the universalist order of secular law.
ISSN:2516-6379
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.18792/jbasr.v18i1.5