Quijada Co-edits New Book on ‘Atheist Secularism and its Discontents’

Justine Quijada, assistant professor of religion, assistant professor of Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies. recently co-edited a book titled, Atheist Secularism and its Discontents: A Comparative Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia (Palgrave Macmillan 2015). Based on a workshop Quijada and her co-editor organized when they were at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethic Diversity, the book examines a “comparative approach to understanding religion under communism, arguing that communism was integral to the global experience of secularism. It shows that appropriating religion was central to Communist political practices.”

Quijada and her co-editor were interviewed about their work on the book for the New Books Network. Praised for offering insight into the relationship between secularism and the communist world, the editors in this interview “discuss officials in contemporary communist and post-communist states, and how, unlike Western models of state secularism, where there is separation between church and state and religious and secular spheres, communist officials continue to intervene regularly in religious affairs.”