Who Wants to Be (Called) Religious?

Drawing on recent work in the field of law and religion, this paper focuses on the skepticism often displayed towards a term that is simultaneously enabling and limiting: that of “religion.” Regardless of our interrogation of it, this terminology is operative in the world—not only among the scholars who frame it as a second-order category, but among our interlocutors, kinship networks, and public figures. Given the baggage that often accompanies it, I argue that it is unsurprising that so many of us are hesitant to apply this label to the people, places, and practices to which we attach meaning.