Reimagining Religion and Belief in the Public Sphere

The renewed visibility of religion and belief at the start of the twenty-first century challenges the expectations of twentieth-century secularisation theory, which predicted the gradual withdrawal of religion from the public sphere. Policymakers are therefore often ill-equipped to accommodate religion within formerly secular paradigms governing the provision of education, security and cohesion, equality and human rights legislation and social welfare. This article asks how secular publics and faith communities alike might imagine policy provision which can come to terms with new ways of thinking about religion in a society that
is simultaneously religious and secular, Christian and multifaith.