Author: Anders Berg-Sorensen Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317160231 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
As we enter the twenty-first century, the role of religion within civic society has become an issue of central concern across the world. The complex trends of secularism, multiculturalism and the rise of religiously motivated violence raise fundamental questions about the relationship between political institutions, civic culture and religious groups. Contesting Secularism represents a major intervention into this debate. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars from across the world it analyses how secularism functions as a political doctrine in different national contexts put under pressure by globalisation. In doing so it presents different models for the relationship between political institutions and religious groups, challenging the reader to be more aware of assumptions within their own cultural context, and raises alternative possibilities for the structure of democratic, multi-faith societies. Through its inter-disciplinary and comparative approach, Contesting Secularism sets a new agenda for thinking about the place of religion in the public sphere of twenty-first century societies. It is essential reading for policymakers, as well as for scholars and students in political science, law, sociology and religious studies.
Author: Anders Berg-Sorensen Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131716024X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
As we enter the twenty-first century, the role of religion within civic society has become an issue of central concern across the world. The complex trends of secularism, multiculturalism and the rise of religiously motivated violence raise fundamental questions about the relationship between political institutions, civic culture and religious groups. Contesting Secularism represents a major intervention into this debate. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars from across the world it analyses how secularism functions as a political doctrine in different national contexts put under pressure by globalisation. In doing so it presents different models for the relationship between political institutions and religious groups, challenging the reader to be more aware of assumptions within their own cultural context, and raises alternative possibilities for the structure of democratic, multi-faith societies. Through its inter-disciplinary and comparative approach, Contesting Secularism sets a new agenda for thinking about the place of religion in the public sphere of twenty-first century societies. It is essential reading for policymakers, as well as for scholars and students in political science, law, sociology and religious studies.
Author: Herbert London Publisher: Encounter Books ISBN: 1594032777 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 120
Book Description
In this timely and wide-ranging book, one of America's leading public intellectuals explores the rise of radical secular humanism as a religious experience. London shows that while secular humanism has it's saints, sinners, and even its quasi-religious rituals, it is too anemic and self-centered a philosophy of life to serve America and the West in its battle against the threat of radical Islam.
Author: Tabassum Fahim Ruby Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351726668 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 318
Book Description
In the post-9/11 environment, the figure of the Muslim woman is at the forefront of global politics. Her representation is often articulated within a rights discourse owing much to liberal-secular sensibilities—notions of freedom, equality, rational thinking, individualism, and modernization. Muslim Women’s Rights explores how these liberal-secular sensibilities inform, shape, and foreclose public discussion on questions of Islam and gender. The book draws on postcolonial, antiracist, and transnational feminist studies in order to analyze public and legal debates surrounding proposed shari‘ah tribunals in Canada. It examines the cultural and epistemological suppositions underlying common assumptions about Islamic laws; explores how these assumptions are informed by the Western progress narrative and women’s rights debates; and asks what forms of politics these enable and foreclose. The book assesses the influence of secularism on the ontology, epistemology, and ethics afforded to Islam in the West, and begins to trace possibilities by which Islamic family law might be productively addressed on its own terms. Muslim Women’s Rights is a significant contribution to the fields of both Islam and gender and the critical study of secularism.
Author: Oliver O. Nwachukwu Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 1491703709 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 608
Book Description
Lack of religious enthusiasm is a universal nemesis with long-ranging effects. In Those Challenging Cracks of Secularism, author Rev. Oliver O. Nwachukwu shows how secularism can further deepen dividing lines among people. The negatives solicited by indifference to authentic religious values and the erroneous use of force to enlist membership by religious extremists are two extremities Those Challenging Cracks of Secularism opposes in the search for ultimate truth. Aggrieved by the negative effects of competing alliances on core Christian religious teachings and values, the book discusses the recent ecclesiastical wrangling in the Episcopal Church that began with the ordination of gay priests and blessing of same-sex union. It further treats the recent clerical sex abuse scandal, allegations of cover-up, the financial burdens on the affected dioceses, as well as homosexuality in the priesthood. The mythological anabasis of the Old Testament books have often been interpreted wrongfully by fanatics to engage in senseless killings of innocent people in the name of God, something that has led to the mistaken practice of shutting religion off public places as private. No one should be denied the privilege of close relationship with God through attitude of religious indifference. Economic obsessions, technological enslavement, proliferations of arms, racial intolerance and unbridled political correctness have diluted religious values so much that people are constantly burdened with mistrust and skepticism.
Author: Ivan Strenski Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226777367 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
From the counter-reformation through the twentieth century, the notion of sacrifice has played a key role in French culture and nationalist politics. Ivan Strenski traces the history of sacrificial thought in France, starting from its origins in Roman Catholic theology. Throughout, he highlights not just the dominant discourse on sacrifice but also the many competing conceptions that contested it. Strenski suggests that the annihilating spirituality rooted in the Catholic model of Eucharistic sacrifice persuaded the judges in the Dreyfus Case to overlook or play down his possible innocence because a scapegoat was needed to expiate the sins of France and save its army from disgrace. Strenski also suggests that the French army's strategy in World War I, French fascism, and debates over public education and civic morals during the Third Republic all owe much to Catholic theology of sacrifice and Protestant reinterpretations of it. Pointing out that every major theorist of sacrifice is French, including Bataille, Durkheim, Girard, Hubert, and Mauss, Strenski argues that we cannot fully understand their work without first taking into account the deep roots of sacrificial thought in French history.
Author: Philip Nord Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691190755 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have been predicting the demise of religion in the face of secularization. Yet religion is undergoing an unprecedented resurgence in modern life—and secularization no longer appears so inevitable. Formations of Belief brings together many of today's leading historians to shed critical light on secularism's origins, its present crisis, and whether it is as antithetical to religion as it is so often made out to be. Formations of Belief offers a more nuanced understanding of the origins of secularist thought, demonstrating how Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment were not the sole vessels of a worldview based on rationalism and individual autonomy. Taking readers from late antiquity to the contemporary era, the contributors show how secularism itself can be a form of belief and yet how its crisis today has been brought on by its apparent incapacity to satisfy people's spiritual needs. They explore the rise of the humanistic study of religion in Europe, Jewish messianism, atheism and last rites in the Soviet Union, the cult of the saints in colonial Mexico, religious minorities and Islamic identity in Pakistan, the neuroscience of religion, and more. Based on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center Seminars at Princeton University, this incisive book features illuminating essays by Peter Brown, Yaacob Dweck, Peter E. Gordon, Anthony Grafton, Brad S. Gregory, Stefania Pastore, Caterina Pizzigoni, Victoria Smolkin, Max Weiss, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.
Author: Phil Zuckerman Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199988455 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 793
Book Description
As recent headlines reveal, conflicts and debates around the world increasingly involve secularism. National borders and traditional religions cannot keep people in tidy boxes as political struggles, doctrinal divergences, and demographic trends are sweeping across regions and entire continents. And secularity is increasing in society, with a growing number of people in many regions having no religious affiliation or lacking interest in religion. Simultaneously, there is a resurgence of religious participation in the politics of many countries. How might these diverse phenomena be better understood? Long-reigning theories about the pace of secularization and ideal church-state relations are under invigorated scrutiny by scholars studying secularism with new questions, better data, and fresh perspectives. The Oxford Handbook of Secularism offers a wide-ranging and in-depth examination of this global conversation, bringing together the views of an international collection of prominent experts in their respective fields. This is the essential volume for comprehending the core issues and methodological approaches to the demographics and sociology of secularity; the history and variety of political secularisms; the comparison of constitutional secularisms across many countries from America to Asia; the key problems now convulsing church-state relations; the intersections of liberalism, multiculturalism, and religion; the latest psychological research into secular lives and lifestyles; and the naturalistic and humanistic worldviews available to nonreligious people.
Author: Anders Berg-Sorensen
Author: Anders Berg-Sorensen
Author: Anders Berg-Sørensen
Author: Anders Berg-Sorensen
Author: Herbert London
Author: Tabassum Fahim Ruby
Author: Oliver O. Nwachukwu
Author: Ivan Strenski
Author: Philip Nord
Author: Phil Zuckerman