Mosaic, Melting Pot, Pressure Cooker: The Religious, the Secular, and the Sectarian in Modern Syrian Social Thought

In a blistering account of the disciplinary sociology of religion, John Milbank argues, “the terms ‘social’ and ‘society’ have so insinuated themselves that we never question the assumption that while ‘religions’ are problematic, the ‘social’ is obvious.” Rather than taking this assumption at face value, Milbank insists, “the emergence of the concept of the social must be located within the history of ‘the secular’, its attempt to legitimate itself, and to ‘cope’ with the phenomenon of religion.”3 Both Syrians and Syrianists have “coped” with the phenomenon of religion and its others, to use Milbank’s term, through the production of discourse on society and the social.