Paul VanderKlay's Podcast "Religion" Does Not Mean What You Think It Means
Mar 3, 2026
Kevin Flatt, scholar of religion and secularization studies, explores why the modern label "religion" misleads. He traces how early Islam and other traditions functioned as political-legal or sacral orders. He critiques social science assumptions and proposes "sacred social order" to rethink how cultures organize meaning and authority across history.
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Teaching Early Islam Revealed Limits Of 'Religion' Label
- Flatt found teaching early Islamic and Middle Eastern history that calling Islam 'a religion' misled students because early Islam fused political, legal, and communal ordering.
- He recounts early Islamic polities lacking a church analogue and being centrally concerned with law and social order.
Religion Is A Modern Western Category
- The modern category 'religion' is historically specific to the modern West and pairs with the opposite category 'secular'.
- Kevin Flatt traces how non-Western and ancient cultures lacked an endogenous category equivalent to our modern 'religion', complicating secularization claims.
Religious Versus Secular Terms Carry Built-In Bias
- Some usages of 'religious' and 'secular' carry secularist assumptions embedded in the categories themselves.
- Flatt suggests those terms' modern meanings partly result from secularization processes, complicating neutral analysis.
