Indigenous secularism and the secular-colonial
Many non-Indigenous people assume that secularism—the belief that religion and politics are and should be different spheres of life—is foreign to Native American experience. This partly explains why the topic of Native conversions in early New England has always been so controversial, since conversi...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2022
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| In: |
Critical research on religion
Year: 2022, Volume: 10, Issue: 1, Pages: 24-40 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Occom, Samson 1723-1792
/ USA
/ Indians
/ Secularism
/ Colonialism
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| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AD Sociology of religion; religious policy BB Indigenous religions |
| Further subjects: | B
Indigenous
B Settler Colonialism B Samson Occom B Conversion B Secularism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Many non-Indigenous people assume that secularism—the belief that religion and politics are and should be different spheres of life—is foreign to Native American experience. This partly explains why the topic of Native conversions in early New England has always been so controversial, since conversion implies the differentiation of religion from politics. Be that as it may, history shows that Indigenous peoples are well acquainted with secularism and have been debating it within their communities for centuries. This essay demonstrates proof of concept for a history of Indigenous secularism via a case study of Samson Occom, whose vision of Indigenous self-determination was informed by secularist ideas about sovereignty and conversion. It also offers a critique of scholarly romanticizations of Indigenous peoples' primordially “holistic” a-secularism. This romanticization is the product of a secular-colonial ideology which presupposes the otherness of Indigenous peoples when it comes to differentiating between religion and politics. |
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| ISSN: | 2050-3040 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Critical research on religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/20503032221075384 |