Atheist Secularism and its Discontents

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

“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)

• 1. Introduction: Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents; Tam T. T. Ngo; Justine B. Quijada PART I: GENEALOGIES 2. God and the Vietnamese Revolution: Religious Organizations in the Emergence of Today's Vietnam; Jayne Werner 3. The Socialist Interregnum and Buddhist Resurgence in Laos; Grant Evans 4. Conflict and Coexistence of Church and State Authorities in (Post)Communist Poland; Agnieszka Pasieka 5. Secularization without Secularism: The Political-Religious Configuration of Post-89 China; Ji Zhe 6. North Korea's Culture of Commemoration; Heonik Kwon 7. Was Soviet Society Secular? Undoing Equations between Communism and Religion; Sonja Luehrmann PART II: CREATIVE DESTRUCTION 8. Apologetics of Religion and Science: Conversion Projects in Contemporary China; Dan Smyer Yu 9. Perun vs Jesus Christ: Communism and the emergence of Neo-paganism in the USSR; Victor A. Shnirelman 10. Conversion to Be: The Christian Encounters of North Korean Migrants in Late Cold War Korea; Jin-heon Jung 11. The Role of Religious Art in Post-communist Russia; Clemena Antonova 12. Chinese Socialism and the Household Idiom of Religious Engagement; Adam Yuet Chau 13. Awkward Secularity between Atheism and New Religiosity in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan; Mathjis Pelkmans