Prodding the Leviathan. A Brief Response to Russell Sandberg’s Sociology of Religious Law

Abstract

In a brief response to Prof. Sandberg, I highlight some of the difficulties inherent in maintaining the standard definition of secularism as the separation of church and state in a context in which religious law is granted legal recognition by the state. Rather than encouraging the further differentiation of spheres of authority or legal pluralism, such a recognition could, in some cases, be seen to call into question the founding gesture of secularism, in which the state was granted a clear monopoly over force and, with this, over positive law.

Keywords

• thomas hobbes
• john locke
• secularism
• separation of church and state
• niklas luhmann