It's one of those words people use all the time, thinking they mean the same thing, when that isn’t always the case!

As a scholar of religion who teaches about secularism, I’ve realized the best place to start is by talking about assumptions. This week, I draw on my own journey as a Black Muslim scholar of religion to walk through the kinds of assumptions I encountered throughout college, graduate school, and becoming a professor, and how those assumptions reveal what secularism is and how it functions.

The takeaway is that rather than treating secularism as simply the separation of church and state, it is best understood by paying attention to the "common sense" assumptions that organize our lives and determine whose knowledge really counts.

This conversation is just the start, but one that has deeply reshaped how I understand scholarship, Black thought, and the relationship between spirituality and intellectual life.

Chapters

00:00 — Teaser: Secularism Was Never Meant for Me

00:30 — Grounding in Traveling with the Girls

03:06 — This Week's Question: What Is Secularism?

10:37 — Assumption #1: Outsiders Are Experts, Insiders Know Less

14:55 — Assumption #2: People Want You to Tell Familiar Stories

20:36 — Assumption #3: There Is No Separation Between the Spiritual and the Intellectual