Atheist Secularism and its Discontents

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction: Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents

   1. Introduction: Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents

      • Tam T. T. Ngo, Justine B. Quijada

      Pages 1-26

3. Genealogies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

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   2. God and the Vietnamese Revolution: Religious Organizations in the Emergence of Today’s Vietnam

      • Jayne S. Werner

      Pages 29-53

   3. The Socialist Interregnum and Buddhist Resurgence in Laos

      • Grant Evans

      Pages 54-69

   4. Conflict and Coexistence of Church and State Authorities in (Post)Communist Poland

      • Agnieszka Pasieka

      Pages 70-91

   5. Secularization without Secularism: The Political-Religious Configuration of Post-1989 China

      • Ji Zhe

      Pages 92-111

   6. North Korea’s Culture of Commemoration

      • Heonik Kwon

      Pages 112-133

   7. Was Soviet Society Secular? Undoing Equations between Communism and Religion

      • Sonja Luehrmann

      Pages 134-151

4. Creative Destruction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 153-153

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   2. Apologetics of Religion and Science: Conversion Projects in Contemporary China

      • Dan Smyer Yu

      Pages 155-172

   3. Perun vs Jesus Christ: Communism and the Emergence of Neo-paganism in the USSR

      • Victor A. Shnirelman

      Pages 173-189

   4. Conversion to Be: The Christian Encounters of North Korean Migrants in Late Cold War Korea

      • Jin-Heon Jung

      Pages 190-209

   5. The Role of Religious Art in Post-Communist Russia

      • Clemena Antonova

      Pages 210-224

   6. Chinese Socialism and the Household Idiom of Religious Engagement

      • Adam Yuet Chau

      Pages 225-243

   7. Awkward Secularity between Atheism and New Religiosity in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

      • Mathijs Pelkmans

      Pages 244-255

5. Back Matter

   Pages 256-293

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Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents takes a comparative approach to understanding religion under communism, arguing that communism was integral to the global experience of secularism. Bringing together leading researchers whose work spans the Eurasian continent, it shows that appropriating religion was central to Communist political practices.

• Religion
• Social Sciences
• Anthropology
• Secularism
• Soviet
• Post-Soviet
• Asia
• Russia
• Poland
• Vietnam
• China
• Laos
• Kyrgystan
• Korea
• political imaginaries
• religious practice
• anthropology
• communism
• Figuration
• god
• organization
• religion
• religiosity
• socialism

“This book treats secularism as a variegated phenomenon that is ‘produced through interaction of religious practices, political reform and state-building’ … . This book is highly recommended to scholars interested in the interplay of religion, politics, and culture.” (Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Slavic Review, 2017)

“The authors of this volume discuss the relationship between religion and communism, demonstrating how deeply both were intertwined. … This volume certainly offers interesting insights on the place of religion within a communist project aiming for forcible secularisation, as well as on new post-1989 realities. … the contributions to the volume offer fresh and thought-provoking perspectives on an approach that has recently become important to scholarship on communism and religion.” (Paula Borowska, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 69 (6), 2017)

• Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany

  Tam T. T. Ngo

• Wesleyan University, USA

  Justine B. Quijada

Clemena Antonova, Sofia University, Bulgaria Adam Yuet Chau, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Grant Evans, École Française d'Extrême-Orient, Laos Ji Zhe, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, France Jin-Heon Jung, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany Heonik Kwon, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Sonja Luehrmann, Simon Fraser University, Canada Agnieszka Pasieka, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland Mathijs Pelkmans, London School of Economics, London Victor Shnirelman, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia Jayne Werner, Columbia University, United States Dan Smyer Yu, Yunnan Minzu University, China

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