The prominent place of religion and of religious references in American public discourse is one of the most salient differences between the US and Europe. From elected officials taking the oath of office on the Bible, “In God We Trust” on coins and bills, “God Bless America” at the end of every speech and candidates speaking candidly about their beliefs, religion is seemingly everywhere.

This impression is strengthened when one looks at the numbers. Indeed, according to the Pew Research Center, 50% of Americans consider religion to be very important in their life while only 21% of Germans and 13% of French people feel the same way. And 55% of Americans attend weekly services. However, if one takes a less western-centric perspective, Europe is the secular exception in a world that remains religious to a large extent.

In a number of twentieth-century critiques of Methodism (and notably in E.P. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class), John Wesley’s discourse has been represented as an instrument in the conversion of the factory proletariat to the industrial work ethic, symptomatic of an emerging ideological paradigm heavily conditioned by the demands of increasing industrialization. While the data adopted as evidence by the critics are authentic, an analysis of the discourse in context reveals that not only have the instances of Methodist discourse been selected and combined to tie in with a particular reading of reality – religion as the opiate of the people – but also that the value judgment fostered by this partial representation has been applied indiscriminately to Methodism as a whole, with blatant disregard for the positive transforming power it exerted both on individuals and on society.

Even though “religion as the opiate of the people” is one of the oft-quoted (albeit occasionally misunderstood) tenets of Marxist criticism, nowhere in the 1,800 or so pages of Michael Toolan’s Critical Discourse Analysis (2002) can one find a study denouncing a use of religious discourse seeking “to shape people's perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept the existing order of things, [...] because they are made to value it as divinely ordained and beneficial.” (S. Lukes: Power: A Radical View, 1974). Theolinguistics is, then, called upon to fulfill a new critical mandate today, as the very status of religious language, i.e. the manner in which it is to be read, received, understood and believed has become an issue in a number of debates which have over the last few years captured much public attention and polarized opinion, opening a new battlefield in the culture war. Biblical, theological, literary and linguistic scholarship have offered insightful and well-informed answers to most problems of religious language; but even so, religious discourse (mainly, but not exclusively Christian) has remained a problematic and controversial topic. One reason for this seems to be that no theory of religious language, no matter how open-ended, can accommodate the full variety of religious temperaments.

International

Turquie

"Une bible vieille de 1500 ans, découverte au début des années 2000 en Turquie lors d’une opération anti-contrebande, a été révélée au public cette semaine. Le ministre turc de la culture et du tourisme Ertugrul Günay a confirmé que le manuscrit avait été remis au musée d’ethnographie d’Ankara afin d’y être restauré" - Une bible annonçant la venue du prophète Mohammed découverte en Turquie (Le Monde des Religions. Photo : David Ball)

Tunisie

"Cette semaine, les groupes parlementaires tunisiens ont chacun livré leur vision de la teneur de la Constitution dont doit se doter le pays. Le débat organisé mardi 28 février à l'Assemblée nationale constituante sur le sujet, relayé par le journal tunisien arabophone Assabah, a vu différentes visions se confronter" - Tunisie, la place de l'Islam dans la constitution fait débat (Hajer Jeridi, Le Monde)