ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the political field as an arena in which the place of religion in politics and other fields is negotiated. More specifically it centers on the Dutch social liberal party D66 as a carrier of political and state secularization. Against the background of the emergence of a religion-related political field in the 19th century, the case study sketches the party’s foundation in the 1960s and its struggle for secular politics. It further outlines its successful push for a secularization of politics, state, and law in the 1990s and the early 21st century. Contributing to this book’s broader concern with different modes of nonreligion, the chapter shows how the distinction between irreligious and differentiated modes of nonreligion has oriented positionings and relations in the political field since the mid-19th century and how the notion of a differentiated secular realm remains contested to this day.
