Announcements

The editors of Arc: Journal of the School of Religious Studies are pleased to announce a call for

papers and book reviews for our forthcoming volume (Vol. 53). McGill University and the School of Religious Studies has a field-defining place in both the study of religion and the study of secularism. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, one of the pioneers of the discipline of religious studies in North America, taught an undergraduate class in comparative religion. While an undergraduate at McGill in 1950, Charles Taylor attended these lectures and describes them as transformative. Taylor’s 2007 opus A Secular Age was, likewise, transformative and determinative for all subsequent studies into the nature of the secular and remains the touchstone in the field. It was written in Berlin in conversation with Hans Joas and José Casanova. In 2025, all three scholars returned to McGill for a retrospective seminar with graduate students on their work on secularism and religion, along with discussions of the future of these concepts.

Building off this seminar, Arc is thus interested in submissions which reflect on the multitude of ways secularism, secularity, politics, and history can be thought together. In particular interest are the following:

-What is the nature of secularism? How does context or time change this definition?

-What is the nature of religion? How does context or time change this definition?

-How are the concepts of religion and the secular related or linked?

-In what ways can the secular be political or the political secular?

-In what ways does the work of Charles Taylor remain relevant to the study of the secular? In what ways does it not? In what ways should it be superseded?

-How is the concept of the secular understood in the media and in public policy?

-How is the secular thought differently in different times and historical epochs?

-In what sense is the secular singular or multiple? Given the different historical and religious trajectories of various political and religious global contexts, how uniform and cohesive is the “narrative” of secularism? 

This list is by no means exhaustive, and we welcome submissions that broadly address the ways in which religion and secularism interact, from any area within the study of religion, including: Theology; Comparative Religions; Theory and Method; Philosophy of Religion; History of Religions; Sociology of Religion; Anthropology of Religion; Psychology of Religion; Religious

Ethics; Critical Race Theory; Religion and Literature; Religion and Art; Religion and Linguistics; Religion and Health; Textual Studies. We welcome submissions that focus on traditions from any time period or geographic area.

The submission deadline for Vol. 53 is August 15th, 2025. Submissions received after this date may be considered for subsequent volumes. Articles should fall between 5,000 and 10,000 words in length, including footnotes. Longer items may be considered, but should be discussed with the journal editors prior to submission. Book reviews should not exceed 1,500 words. For detailed submission guidelines, please consult the Guidelines for Contributors (PDF) on our website (https://www.mcgill.ca/religiousstudies/about/publication/arc). All electronic correspondence should be sent to the editors at the following email address: arc.relgstud@mcgill.ca

Arc is an interdisciplinary, refereed journal published annually by the School of Religious Studies, McGill University. The journal combines the talents of professors and graduate students in offering space for scholarly discussions on various aspects of the academic study of religion.