Citizenship and secularisation(s)

In recent years religion has come to occupy an increasingly central place in both popular and scholarly debates concerning citizenship in Quebec. In order to understand and begin to contend with the challenges that religion poses for citizenship both conceptually and practically, it is necessary to engage with discourses and practices of secularisation in their historical specificity. To facilitate this, this article proceeds on two fronts. First, it distinguishes between what it refers to as three moments of secularisation in the history of Quebec, arguing that we are presently witnessing a distinct third moment of secularisation. Second, the article offers an alternative approach to questions of citizenship and religion that is not grounded in the notion of secularisation as a singular transhistorical process. Such a perspective provides an opening for rethinking the possible forms of mediation between citizenship and religion.