Some of the most persistent critiques of historical thinking the past decades have come from the so-called post-secular turn. This is not a unified movement but a loosely articulated set of critiques in different fields against ‘secularism’ as a social arrangement or ‘the secular’ as an epistemic category. Post-secular perspectives often treat modern ‘historicism’ and ‘secular historical time’ as prime objects of critique. It is common in post-secular strands of post-colonialism, for example, to find statements that historical thinking is culturally alien to the non-western world precisely because of its secularity, which paradoxically is seen as pseudo-secular because allegedly still tied to Judaeo-Christian origins. Similarly a rising number of Christian apologetic publications attack the discipline of history for an alleged ‘secular bias’ while simultaneously calling it equally ‘confessional’ as religious histories or crypto-theological in its key concepts.

My project analyses these critiques (including the diverse motivations driving them), studies how they challenge historical thinking and reflects on how historical thinking can respond.