Religion, Gender and the Public Sphere: Mapping the Terrain

This is the introductory chapter to the edited collection Religion, Gender and the Public Sphere (eds. N Reilly and S Scriver, Routledge 2013).  It is divided into three parts. The first part highlights four sets of developments that shape investigation of religion, gender, and the public sphere, while also noting areas where different essays in this volume make a particular contribution. These are as follows: the dominance of the clash of civilizations thesis, the continuing emergence of politicized autocratic religious movements,the ongoing scrutiny of the secularization thesis, and new critiques of the religious-secular binary. The second part offers a brief overview of debates, mainly in political and social theory and religious studies, on religion and the public sphere. The final part provides a briefoutline of the structure of the book.