R. Scott Appleby’s The Ambivalence of the Sacred, Two Decades On: A Postsecular Reading for the Religious World of the 21^st Century?

R. Scott Appleby as a scholar, teacher, institution-builder, and practitioner intervened in debates among scholars, politicians, policy makers, religious people, and all people of good will, grappling with the unexpectedly violent post-Cold War world. He offered what can be called a “postsecular” recognition not only of the global religious resurgence, but how taking seriously religion and religious traditions–piety, faith, theology, and hermeneutics–in debates over peace, violence, interreligious dialogue, reconciliation, and political engagement can provide clarity of understanding amidst the complexity of this new world, and also hope and a vision for the future.