Título da página eletrónica: The Immanent Frame. Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere

1The Immanent Frame is an online forum that publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. It has been founded in October 2007 in conjunction with the Social Science Research Council’s program on Religion and the Public Sphere, with the aim of establishing a virtual platform collecting contributions (mainly by invitation) from a number of leading scholars.

2Today, the website covers a wide range of topics. The section “Essays & exchanges” features original contributions organized by topics: Religion and the public sphere, Religion and world affairs, Religion in American politics, Rethinking secularism, and The science of religion. Each topic, in turn, includes a number of subtopics. Religion and the public sphere, for example, include an interesting discussion on Religion and digital culture. The “Essays & exchanges” section is conceived as an ongoing conversation, complemented by the readers’ comments. In the “off the cuff” section, the editors pose a question to a handful of leading thinkers and scholars, and invite a quick and succinct response. Questions range from summer readings to multiculturalism in Europe, elections and religion, etc. What is not covered by the other sections (“Essays & exchanges”, and “off the cuff”) is included in the “here and there” section, featuring unstimulated or unguided reflections on current affairs and news, as well as broader reflections. The other two sections, “publications”, and “the book blog”, provide information on recent books and current researches. More specifically (and extremely inspiring), the book blog section encourages comments, reflections, and discussions around recently published books in the field of religion, secularism, and the public sphere. Particularly interesting is, for example, the wide discussion around Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, animated by many leading scholars.

3The website is particularly interesting as a specific form of academic debate, rigorous and thorough, but at the same time freer and faster than journal articles, and more focused. It is extremely inspiring not only for scholars in the field but, more broadly, for all the people interested in the role of religion in current societies, and in connection to both long-term processes and specific events. The relevance of blog posting for academics has been repeatedly pointed out, in recent years, as well as the difficulties connected to such a practice. The Immanent Frame represents thus a successful experiment in this direction, able to make academic topics accessible to a wider audience while, at the same time, maintaining a high level of discussion.