Abstract

This chapter shows how the current impasse in Enlightenment historiography is integrally related to similar impasses in debates about public religion in allied academic disciplines and in public debate. It proposes a way forward, drawing on recent scholarly developments and on the chapters to follow. It argues that both Enlightenment studies and wider discussions of public religion in liberal democracies are still dominated by an understanding of the Enlightenment as a philosophical movement of secular liberalism, despite the repeated falsification of this thesis since the 1980s. Because this understanding jars with historical reality and underpins a series of false dilemmas in debates about public religion, a viable, competing understanding of the Enlightenment that draws on recent studies of the close ties between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and Reformation should be a priority. The chapter outlines such a competing understanding and adumbrates an agenda for future work in the field.