ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the study of practices of faith-based actors can enable the theorization of the processes of religious/secular translation. It argues that these translation processes relate the seemingly separate entities of the religious and the secular – sometimes shifting the boundaries between them and sometimes reifying them. The chapter presents J. Habermas’ concept of translation and discusses it with respect to the different knowledge systems that religious and secular actors might provide. It investigates how faith-based actors translate their knowledge within the ‘secularized’ space of the global climate change debate and negotiations and delineate the ambiguous ways in which translation processes are executed. The chapter also discusses how the translation practices take part in shifting the boundaries of the secular and the religious, and how translation processes can be understood in a post-secular environment. The separation of religious and secular spaces has been particularly relevant for a long time within the international climate change negotiations.
