A Book for Our Times

	Book review on Postsecularism by Mike King Reviewed by Oliver Robinson, 2009 published in Network Review No 100
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Postsecularism: The Hidden Challenge to Extremism is the sequel to Secularism; The Hidden Origins of Disbelief.  This second book puts forth the idea that postsecular spirituality is a potential palliative to a world in which extremist views flourish. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 orientates the reader to key principles underlying postsecularism, and to the origins of secularism as described in the first book.  Postsecularism is defined as an engagement with 'questions of the spirit' that employs the critical habits of thought of the secular mind, and therefore can be distinguished from more faith-based presecular religion.  Mysticism (the search for religious/spiritual experience), rather than scripture or faith, is put forward as the foundation for the postsecular sensibility, and King proposes Gould's concept of NOMA (non-overlapping magesteria) is a credible basis for science and religion to co-exist in a postsecular world.

Postsecular spirituality is defined as having both a singular core and a pluralistic manifestation; its singular core is the search for, and experience of, 'profound connectedness'.  The spiritual pluralities that are all seen as different but valid expressions of this spiritual connection, and are a key focus in this book, are bhakti (devotion/worship based) versus jnani (insight/wisdom based), and via positiva (towards the world) versus via negativa (away from the world).

Part 2 deals with the context of two opposing groups that currently dominate popular discourse on the religion question; the new atheists and new defenders of the faith. King sees these groups as providing a polarised and narrow debate on the issue of religion, out of which any resolution is impossible, and fuelling antagonism and extremism in the process.  This part of the book takes a very personal approach - it reviews 22 individual thinkers in turn, twelve from the new atheism camp and ten from the new defenders of faith. The contributions of each person are reviewed briefly, given between two paragraphs (Philip Pullman) and five pages (Christopher Hitchens). This is not the most engaging or succinct way of presenting ideas I have come across, and my attention waned slightly in Part 2, although I appreciated the importance of setting the contemporary scene for the presentation of postsecularism.

Part 3 picks up the pace again, and in 100 pages covers emerging postsecular signs in physics, consciousness studies, transpersonal psychology, the New Age, the arts, postmodernism and feminism.  The chapter on physics is one of the best in the book, and shows Mike King's talent for translating complex scientific ideas into accessible and lyrical prose.  The chapter on the New Age is another strong chapter - King reviews the philosophical and historical origins of the movement, differentiates the 'shallow' from the 'deep' New Age, reviews the theoretical contributions of Ken Wilber and shows how postsecularism can be found in this territory, but differentiated from it. Some of the other chapters in Part 3 feel a bit threadbare - a consequence of surfing over such huge territories in such a short space. The 10 page chapter on transpersonal psychology, for example, provides useful bitesize summaries of Maslow, Grof, Assiglioli, Wilber and Ferrer, but there is little of additional value for the reader who is already aware of this area.

Towards the end of the book, the role of NOMA in King's postsecularism becomes more explicit. He argues that the key error of new atheists, new defenders of faith and new agers is to attempt some kind of systemic integration of knowledge and spirituality, to make science, philosophy and religion bound to the same rules or the same methods of enquiry. Such a view is described as 'a monoculture of the mind' (p.236). Instead of this, King's postsecular solution is for science and religion to be accepted as separate magesteria. So what does define the scientific magesterium, which demarcates it from the spiritual magesterium? In the final chapter King makes his view explicit:

'Galileo set this out: a questioning of the behaviour of lifeless matter in terms of primary qualities, which are mass, length and time. The magisterium of science is defined by this narrow remit, put beautifully and succinctly by Descartes as the domain of 'extended stuff'. But mind, consciousness, love, beauty, and ethics - for starters - do not belong to that domain and not within the remit of science...' (p.237).

This is a definition that of course precludes a science of consciousness or a science of psychology (other than brain science or behaviourism). As a psychologist, and one who is partial to a NOMA argument, I would say that there are ways of delimiting science, based on its empirical mode of enquiry more than its subject matter, that permit a science of the mind.

Postsecularism is an important introduction to a concept that is intimately linked to the SMN's remit and vision (The SMN gets an explicit mention on page 140).  The book provides erudite and wide-ranging fuel to counter the antagonistic arguments that stupefy and subvert nuanced discussion on religion.  Occasionally, the book feels like a rather bumpy ride on a roller coaster around Dr King's encyclopaedic mind, but overall it is worth the jolts and hairpin bends. Whether or not the reader is in accord with the particular version of the NOMA argument advanced or not, there is much to recommend in the book and much to take away.  But has King has sacrificed a potential classic, in making it as contemporary and relevant to the zeitgeist as it is? Only time will tell.

Dr Oliver Robinson teaches psychology at the University of Greenwich.

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