ABSTRACT
This chapter critically examines "religion" as the organizing category for the anthropology of religion. Religion-secular entanglements are incredibly important for understanding the dynamics of religion in modern life. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its universal ground for consolation and justification. The chapter compares the secularisms of China, India, France, and Turkey, demonstrating how state secular projects can differ widely from one another. To gain a fuller sense for how particular secular conditions impact religious life, it zoomed in ethnographically on three post-Soviet contexts. The comparisons of China-India and France-Turkey reveal that state secularisms can take widely different forms. The chapter explores critiques of "belief", a foundational concept in the anthropological study of religion that generated its own suspicions. It concludes by sketching useful distinction between public religion and religious publicity. Ultimately, it helps to think about the wide-ranging contents and boundaries of religious life.
