LeVine and Salvatore 65Religious Mobilization and the Public Sphere:
Reflections on Alternative Genealogies
Mark LeVine and Armando Salvatore
Introduction: The public sphere of socioreligious movements
This chapter does not offer a case study of any particular socioreligious
movement; neither does it aspire to provide a modelized framework for
a comparative enquiry. Instead it attempts to conceptualize the com-
plex and conflicted relation of religious mobilization to modern public
spheres. First, we attempt to delineate the philosophical foundations of
the variety of notions of the “public” utilized—explicitly and implicitly—
by socioeligious movements to define their ideologies and actions to r
achieve social power, by relating to the much discussed concept of “reli-
gious tradition.” Second, we critically explore the contribution of some
writings of Gramsci and Foucault in terms of their rooting in “common
sense” (Gramsci) and their potentially eruptive “political spirituality”
(Foucault) as factors of change, hegemony, and even revolution, to help us
characterize religious mobilization. Our combined reading of these two
notions should help sharpen the understanding of the potential of socio-
religious movements to develop a politics of common good through an
upgrading of commonsensical practical reasoning, in order to challenge
the hegemony of liberal norms of the public sphere.
ocioreligious movements attempt to formulate and implement dis-S
courses of the common good that aspire to legitimate specific forms of
political community. Such communities are based on methods of public