Abstract

This article is concerned with the concept of postsecular rapprochement, which refers to the coming-together of secular and religious voices over mutual ethical concerns such as welfare, care, and solidarity. Although the concept provides a useful analytical instrument for capturing context-contingent transgressions of faith boundaries, we question some of the assumptions hidden in the way it has been employed so far. More specifically, we respond to geographers’ recent call for more sensitivity to “power relations and marginal experiences within practices of rapprochement.” We do so by turning the gaze toward historically non-incorporated religious welfare practices, in particular evangelical Christian solidarities in a Flemish urban welfare regime. Based on document analysis and in-depth interviews, we unpack a trajectory of postsecular rapprochement in a local cooperative network that connects a Flemish city council, a pluralistic umbrella organization, an evangelical Faith-Based Organization (FBO), and a Church of Christ. We propose to see this configuration as a “stretched” mode of postsecular rapprochement in which crossovers take place at different levels of interaction, thereby bridging faith and other divides. Capturing this mode, we conclude, brings us one step further in exploring the full scope of the phenomenon of postsecular rapprochement.