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Paper short abstract:

The politics of secularism entail the negotiation of the fraught relationship between two principles of modern Western politics: freedom of conscience and ethical community. This paper discusses negotiations of this relationship in a Masonic lodge in Paris and a Christian fellowship in Mexico.

Paper long abstract:

The origins of the calling, as Weber tells it, are intertwined with the Protestant notion of freedom of conscience, exemplified in Luther's "Here I stand and I can do no other." Freedom of conscience has since become an axiomatic principle of Western politics. Freedom of conscience, however, sits in tension, if not outright contradiction, with another axiomatic modern political principle: functional associations of human beings require a minimum of shared understanding of ethical goods and normative bases for rules of governance, some degree of ethical community. The politics of secularism are usefully understood in terms of the negotiation of the strained relationship between these two principles of political common sense. While scholars usually analyze the politics of secularism at the scale of nation-states, where the ethical negotiations are harder to see, this paper focuses on everyday life maneuverings between freedom of conscience and ethical community as they play out at the individual and organizational level, at the level of vocation. The paper compares a liberal mode of negotiation in a Parisian Masonic lodge with an integral mode in a charismatic Christian businessmen's brotherhood in Mexico City. Freemasons draw on esoteric symbolism in attempt to conjoin freedom of conscience and ethical community in a way that defends public/private, church/world distinctions. The charismatic Christian businessmen, on the other hand, use performative proclamation in attempt to dismiss public/private, church/world distinctions and lay claim to an ethical conscience that is as indiscriminate as it is intimate.