Download or read book Development Beyond the Secular written by Catherine Loy and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2017-09-30 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intersection of religion and development has for some decades been considered contentious, with scholars of both disciplines inhibited by the constraints of either the religious or the secular paradigm they primarily inhabit. Development Beyond the Secular aims to provide a new resource for those interested in the study of religions and development (primarily postgraduate and academic), and for those development practitioners wishing to contextualize their discipline within a religious frame. Using the work of Christian Aid as its primary lens, this book examines and critiques the theological underpinnings of development work and questions how Christian values are manifest through day-to-day work in the world of poverty eradication.
Download or read book A Secular Age Beyond the West written by Mirjam Künkler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compares secularity in societies not shaped by Western Christianity, particularly in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Download or read book Religion in Development written by Séverine Deneulin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Development practice is full of examples of the importance of religion in the lives of people in developing countries. However, religion has largely remained unexplored in development studies. This timely new book aims to fill that gap. The authors expertly review how religion has been treated in the evolution of development thought, how it has been conceptualised in the social sciences, and highlights the major deficiencies of the assumption of secularism. The book argues that development theory and practice needs to rewrite its dominant script regarding its treatment of religion, a script which has so far been heavily inscribed in the secular tradition. It puts forward an understanding of religions as traditions: that religions rest on central thesis and teachings which never cease to be re-interpreted in the light of the social, political and historical context. In addition to providing a conceptual framework for analysing the role of religion in development, the book provides numerous empirical examples drawn from the Christian and Islamic religious traditions. This comprehensive new guide to this key issue is essential for students, development thinkers and practitioners who wish to understand better the role that religion plays in development processes and outcomes.
Download or read book Beyond the Secular West written by Akeel Bilgrami and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the character of secularism in countries that were not pervaded by Christianity, such as China, India, and the nations of the Middle East? To what extent is the secular an imposition of colonial rule? How does secularism comport with local religious cultures in Africa, and how does it work with local forms of power and governance in Latin America? Has modern secularism evolved organically, or is it even necessary, and has it always meant progress? A vital extension of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, in which he exhaustively chronicled the emergence of secularism in Latin Christendom, this anthology applies Taylor's findings to secularism's global migration. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Sudipta Kaviraj, Claudio Lomnitz, Alfred Stepan, Charles Taylor, and Peter van der Veer each explore the transformation of Western secularism beyond Europe, and the collection closes with Taylor's response to each essay. What began as a modern reaction to—as well as a stubborn extension of—Latin Christendom has become a complex export shaped by the world's religious and political systems. Brilliantly alternating between intellectual and methodological approaches, this volume fosters a greater engagement with the phenomenon across disciplines.
Download or read book A Secular Age written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Development Civil Society and Faith Based Organizations written by G. Clarke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-11-28 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of faith-based organizations in managing international aid, providing services, defending human rights and protecting democracy. It argues that greater engagement with faith communities and organizations is needed, and questions traditional secularism that has underpinned development policy and practice in the North.
Download or read book Beyond Secular Order written by John Milbank and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Secular Order is the first of a two-volume work that expands upon renowned theologian John Milbank’s innovative attempt to understand both theology and modern thought begun in his previously published classic text Theology and Social Theory. Continues Milbank’s innovative attempt to understand both theology and modern thought begun in Theology and Social Theory – considered a classic work in the development of systematic theology Authored by one of the world’s most influential and highly regarded contemporary theologians Draws on a sweep of ideas and thinkers to argue that modern secularism is a form of Christian heresy that developed from the Middle Ages and can only be overcome by a renewed account of Christendom Shows how this heresy can be transformed into a richer blend of religion, modernity and politics Reveals how there is a fundamental homology between modern ideas about ontology and knowledge and modern ideas about political action, expressed in both theory and practice
Download or read book Theology and Social Theory written by John Milbank and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a revised edition of John Milbank’s masterpiece, which sketches the outline of a specifically theological social theory. The Times Higher Education Supplement wrote of the first edition that it was “a tour de force of systematic theology. It would be churlish not to acknowledge its provocation and brilliance”. Featured in The Church Times “100 Best Christian Books" Brings this classic work up-to-date by reviewing the development of modern social thought. Features a substantial new introduction by Milbank, clarifying the theoretical basis for his work. Challenges the notion that sociological critiques of theology are ‘scientific’. Outlines a specifically theological social theory, and in doing so, engages with a wide range of thinkers from Plato to Deleuze. Written by one of the world’s most influential contemporary theologians and the author of numerous books.
Download or read book Living the Secular Life written by Phil Zuckerman and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sociology professor examines the demographic shift that has led more Americans than ever before to embrace a nonreligious life and highlights the inspirational stories and beliefs that empower modern-day secular culture.
Download or read book Secular Missionaries written by Larry Grubbs and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Beyond the Sacred secular Divide written by Scott D. Allen and published by YWAM Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolutionizing the lives and renewing the minds of believers and local churches from North America to Africa, the Kingdom Lifestyle Bible Studies help people grow in their relationships with the King and his kingdom. Each tested, insightful study is designed for group or individual use and equips believers to engage in a vibrant life with Christ and offer healing to a broken world.
Download or read book How Not to Be Secular written by James K. A. Smith and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on.
Download or read book Secular Translations written by Talal Asad and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Secular Translations, the anthropologist Talal Asad reflects on his lifelong engagement with secularism and its contradictions. He draws out the ambiguities in our concepts of the religious and the secular through a rich consideration of translatability and untranslatability, exploring the circuitous movements of ideas between histories and cultures. In search of meeting points between the language of Islam and the language of secular reason, Asad gives particular importance to the translations of religious ideas into nonreligious ones. He discusses the claim that liberal conceptions of equality represent earlier Christian ideas translated into secularism; explores the ways that the language and practice of religious ritual play an important but radically transformed role as they are translated into modern life; and considers the history of the idea of the self and its centrality to the project of the secular state. Secularism is not only an abstract principle that modern liberal democratic states espouse, he argues, but also a range of sensibilities. The shifting vocabularies associated with each of these sensibilities are fundamentally intertwined with different ways of life. In exploring these entanglements, Asad shows how translation opens the door for—or requires—the utter transformation of the translated. Drawing on a diverse set of thinkers ranging from al-Ghazālī to Walter Benjamin, Secular Translations points toward new possibilities for intercultural communication, seeking a language for our time beyond the language of the state.
Download or read book On Not Dying written by Abou Farman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnographic exploration of technoscientific immortality Immortality has long been considered the domain of religion. But immortality projects have gained increasing legitimacy and power in the world of science and technology. With recent rapid advances in biology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, secular immortalists hope for and work toward a future without death. On Not Dying is an anthropological, historical, and philosophical exploration of immortality as a secular and scientific category. Based on an ethnography of immortalist communities—those who believe humans can extend their personal existence indefinitely through technological means—and an examination of other institutions involved at the end of life, Abou Farman argues that secular immortalism is an important site to explore the tensions inherent in secularism: how to accept death but extend life; knowing the future is open but your future is finite; that life has meaning but the universe is meaningless. As secularism denies a soul, an afterlife, and a cosmic purpose, conflicts arise around the relationship of mind and body, individual finitude and the infinity of time and the cosmos, and the purpose of life. Immortalism today, Farman argues, is shaped by these historical and culturally situated tensions. Immortalist projects go beyond extending life, confronting dualism and cosmic alienation by imagining (and producing) informatic selves separate from the biological body but connected to a cosmic unfolding. On Not Dying interrogates the social implications of technoscientific immortalism and raises important political questions. Whose life will be extended? Will these technologies be available to all, or will they reproduce racial and geopolitical hierarchies? As human life on earth is threatened in the Anthropocene, why should life be extended, and what will that prolonged existence look like?
Download or read book Secular Surge written by David E. Campbell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-03 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American society is rapidly secularizing–a radical departure from its historically high level of religiosity–and politics is a big part of the reason. Just as, forty years ago, the Religious Right arose as a new political movement, today secularism is gaining traction as a distinct and politically energized identity. This book examines the political causes and political consequences of this secular surge, drawing on a wealth of original data. The authors show that secular identity is in part a reaction to the Religious Right. However, while the political impact of secularism is profound, there may not yet be a Secular Left to counterbalance the Religious Right. Secularism has introduced new tensions within the Democratic Party while adding oxygen to political polarization between Democrats and Republicans. Still there may be opportunities to reach common ground if politicians seek to forge coalitions that encompass both secular and religious Americans.
Download or read book An Awareness of What is Missing written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his recent writings on religion and secularization, Habermas has challenged reason to clarify its relation to religious experience and to engage religions in a constructive dialogue. Given the global challenges facing humanity, nothing is more dangerous than the refusal to communicate that we encounter today in different forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Habermas argues that in order to engage in this dialogue, two conditions must be met: religion must accept the authority of secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality; and conversely, secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith. This argument was developed in part as a reaction to the conception of the relation between faith and reason formulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg address. In 2007 Habermas conducted a debate, under the title ‘An Awareness of What Is Missing', with philosophers from the Jesuit School for Philosophy in Munich. This volume includes Habermas's essay, the contributions of his interlocutors and Habermas's reply to them. It will be indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand one of the most urgent and intractable issues of our time.
Download or read book Dispatches from the Front written by Stanley Hauerwas and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God knows it is hard to make God boring, Stanley Hauerwas writes, but American Christians, aided and abetted by theologians, have accomplished that feat. Whatever might be said about Hauerwas--and there is plenty--no one has ever accused him of being boring, and in this book he delivers another jolt to all those who think that Christian theology is a matter of indifference to our secular society. At once Christian theology and social criticism, this book aims to show that the two cannot be separated. In this spirit, Hauerwas mounts a forceful attack on current sentimentalities about the significance of democracy, the importance of the family, and compassion, which appears here as a literally fatal virtue. In this time of the decline of religious knowledge, when knowing a little about a religion tends to do more harm than good, Hauerwas offers direction to those who would make Christian discourse both useful and truthful. Animated by a deep commitment, his essays exhibit the difference that Christian theology can make in the shaping of lives and the world.