Recent critiques of the category religion discuss the category as socially constructed, but the nature of this social construction remains underdeveloped. The work of Sally Haslanger can supplement existing discussions of ‘religion’ while also offering a new perspective on the connection between social construction and social critique. Her analysis of race provides resources for developing a philosophical account of the social construction of religion and can help scholars of religion conceptualize racialized religious identities. I offer an example of this approach (...) by using Haslanger’s work on race to consider historical and contemporary intersections of race and Muslim identity. I conclude that the ongoing ideological work of ‘religion’ means that the concept remains an analytically useful term, but that scholars should aim at the gradual abolition of ‘religion’. (shrink)

This is a response to Russell McCutcheon’s book chapter titled “On Concepts and Entities: Varieties of Critical Scholarship” in which he criticizes the value-driven approached advocated in previous editorials of Critical Research on Religion. This response points out that critical religion is also value-driven and not non-normative as he claims, but that this is what makes it critical.