ABSTRACT
A guiding supposition of this book is the urgent need for religious literacy. I have suggested that this urgency increases the more religion is viewed in opposition to criticality, as though religion entails an irrational and inviolable commitment. This view, I argued, involves a largely secular propositional framing of religion, requiring it to be placed in the private sphere, detached from any intervention from, or upon, public life. Such a view does not support religious literacy, but tends to generate polarized and fractured debates about the place of religion in society. In contrast to the attitude that seeks to privatize religion, I have claimed that religions are fundamentally public-facing not least because they act as social institutions binding communities together.
