I was delighted to be part of the residential colloquium that constituted the second element of the project that lies behind this book (see p 16). On the final day, I (together with Professor James Beckford) was invited to make some concluding reflections. I can see from the preceding chapters that a number of the themes that I introduced at this juncture have been taken up by those who were present. Selectively these include the need to be aware that shifts in perception, just as much as reality, are crucial to our understandings of the post-secular; that religious literacy is best considered as a plural construct; and that context matters hugely in our understanding of these issues.

In this short Afterword I want to place the colloquium, and the project of which it is part, in a broader perspective. The colloquium took place in May 2015. Shortly before this I had accepted an invitation to become a coordinating lead author (CLA) for the chapter on religion in a project entitled the ‘International Panel on Social Progress’ (IPSP). Thus the two activities ran side by side. The scale was different but the parallels between them became ever more striking as the months passed.

International Panel on Social Progress

The IPSP brought together more than 200 scholars from a wide range of disciplines and from many different parts of the world to assess and synthesise the state-of-the-art knowledge that bears on social progress across a wide range of economic, political and cultural questions. The goal was to provide the target audience (individuals, movements, organisations, politicians, decision-makers and practitioners) with the best expertise that social science can offer.

The process – to a significant extent modelled on the Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – was a long one. A team of five to ten authors took responsibility for each of the 22 chapters, working under the direction of the two CLAs. Following IPCC practice, an initial draft of the chapters was posted online for several months in the latter part of 2016 in order to collect comments from the widest possible audience and to allow the authors to read and respond to each other's work.