Author: C. John SommervillePublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195306953
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
Publisher Description
The Decline of the Secular University
Author: C. John SommervillePublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195306953
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
Publisher Description
The Decline of the Secular University
Author: C. John SommervillePublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195306958
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
Publisher Description
The Sacred and the Secular University
Author: Jon H. RobertsPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400823501
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 199
Book Description
American higher education was transformed between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I. During this period, U.S. colleges underwent fundamental changes--changes that helped to create the modern university we know today. Most significantly, the study of the sciences and the humanities effectively dissolved the Protestant framework of learning by introducing a new secularized curriculum. This secularization has long been recognized as a decisive turning point in the history of American education. Until now, however, there has been remarkably little attention paid to the details of how this transformation came about. Here, at last, Jon Roberts and James Turner identify the forces and explain the events that reformed the college curriculum during this era. The first section of the book examines how the study of science became detached from theological considerations. Previously, one of the primary pursuits of "natural scientists" was to achieve an understanding of the workings of the divine in earthly events. During the late nineteenth century, however, scientists reduced the scope of their inquiries to subjects that could be isolated, measured, and studied objectively. In pursuit of "scientific truth," they were drawn away from the larger "truths" that they had once sought. On a related path, social scientists began to pursue the study of human society more scientifically, attempting to generalize principles of behavior from empirically observed events. The second section describes the revolution that occurred in the humanities, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when the study of humanities was largely the study of Greek and Latin. By 1900, however, the humanities were much more broadly construed, including such previously unstudied subjects as literature, philosophy, history, and art history. The "triumph of the humanities" represented a significant change in attitudes about what constituted academic knowledge and, therefore, what should be a part of the college curriculum. The Sacred and the Secular University rewrites the history of higher education in the United States. It will interest all readers who are concerned about American universities and about how the content of a "college education" has changed over the course of the last century. "[Jon Roberts and James Turner's] thoroughly researched and carefully argued presentations invite readers to revisit stereotypical generalizations and to rethink the premises developed in the late nineteenth century that underlie the modern university. At the least, their arguments challenge crude versions of the secularization thesis as applied to higher education."--From the foreword by William G. Bowen and Harold T. Shapiro
Religious Ideas for Secular Universities
Author: C. John SommervillePublisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802864422
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
During the last century American students and scholars have found it increasingly difficult to discuss the relation of religion to the mission of self-consciously secular colleges and universities. Respected scholar C. John Sommerville here offers thought-provoking reflections on this subject in a conversational style. / Sommerville explores the crisis of the secular university, argues that religion and secular universities need each other, and examines how Christianity shows up on both sides of our culture wars. The astute reflections in Religious Ideas for Secular Universities point the way to a dialogue that would do justice both to religious insights and to truly neutral secular education.
Religion's Sudden Decline
Author: Ronald F. InglehartPublisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197547044
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
'Religion's Sudden Decline' provides evidence of a major decline in religion in most of the world, based on surveys of over 100 countries containing 90 percent of the world's population, carried out from 1981 to 2020 - the largest base of empirical evidence ever assembled to analyse mass acceptance or rejection of religion.--
A Secular Age
Author: Charles TaylorPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674986911
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 889
Book Description
The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
White Elephants on Campus
Author: Margaret GrubiakPublisher:
ISBN: 9780268207182
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Examines churches and chapels built on campuses during the twentieth century to reveal declining role of religion within the mission of the modern American university.
Decline and Revival in Higher Education
Author: Herbert I. LondonPublisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412843340
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
This is an analysis of higher education in the past half century, a period of dramatic change and democratization. But it is more than that. The author has been a participant in the struggle to stem the decline in higher education, as it moved from an emphasis on classical liberal values toward relativism and ideological extremism. This volume reflects an awareness of what has been lost, but sees hope for a revival of traditional values as technological change and awareness of failure forces institutions to examine their premise. Herbert I. London has provided here fuel for fundamental redirection in American college and university affairs. Decline and Revival in Higher Education is uncompromising in its concerns, but points the way toward a future linked to the best of the past. The work follows the personal evolution of the author, while at the same time, describes the devolution of university standards in such institutions as Columbia, Duke, the University of California at Berkeley, and New York University. While seeing optimistic trends in oases of traditional programming that can serve as a counterweight to campus orthodoxies, London argues that the dramatic transformation of the academy cannot be denied. The social sciences and humanities in particular have become isolated from mainstream requirements in the nation. London deals with concrete concerns, such as the collapse of classic book programs in the contemporary curriculum, the decline and even vigilante raids on opposition in campus publications, the collapse of moral judgment in favor of pure relativism, the transformation of many museums into a storage houses of debris, and the confusion of coarse language with democratization. These developments lead the author to write this book, for if the culture wars are over, the American people may be the losers.
Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference
Author: Linell E. CadyPublisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231162480
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
Global struggles over women’s roles, rights, and dress have taken center stage in a drama that casts the secular and the religious in tense if not violent opposition. Advocates for equality speak of the issue in terms of rights and modern progress while reactionaries ground their authority in religious and scriptural appeals. Both sides presume women’s emancipation is tied to secularization. This volume upsets these certainties by blending diverse voices and traditions, both secular and religious, in studies historicizing, questioning, and testing the implicit links between secularism and expanded freedoms for women. Rather than treat secularism as the answer to conflicts over gender and sexuality, these essays show how it structures the conditions generating them.
Is Reality Secular?
Author: Mary PoplinPublisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830871896
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
What is the nature of reality? At the root of our society's deepest political and cultural divisions are the conflicting principles of four global worldviews. While each of us holds to some version of one of these worldviews, we are often unconscious of their differences as well as their underlying assumptions. Mary Poplin argues that the ultimate test of a worldview, philosophy or ideology is whether it corresponds with reality. Since different perspectives conflict with each other, how do we make sense of the differences? And if a worldview system accurately reflects reality, what implications does that have for our thinking and living? In this wide-ranging and perceptive study, Poplin examines four major worldviews: naturalism, humanism, pantheism and Judeo-Christian theism. She explores the fundamental assumptions of each, pressing for limitations. Ultimately she puts each perspective to the test, asking, what if this worldview is true? If reality is secular, that means something for how we orient our lives. But if reality is not best explained by secular perspectives, that would mean something quite different. Consider for yourself what is the fundamental substance of reality.