Download or read book Religion and Modernity written by Detlef Pollack and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is not a book that provides a new integrated theory of religious change in modern societies, but rather one that develops theoretical elements that contribute to the understanding of some contemporary religious developments. Most of the approaches in sociology of religion are prone to emphasize either processes of religious decline or of religious upswing. For example, secularization theory usually includes a couple of relevant factors--such as functional differentiation, economic affluence or social equality--in order to account for religious change. However, the result of such a theory's empirical analyses seems to be certain in advance, namely that the social relevance of religion is decreasing. In contrast, the religious market model devised by sociologists of religion in the US is inclined to detect everywhere processes of religious upsurge. Religion and Modernity: An International Comparison avoids a purely theoretically based perspective on religious changes. For this reason, Detlef Pollack and Gergely Rosta do not begin with theoretical propositions but with questions. The authors raise the question of how the social significance of religion in its various facets has changed in modern societies, and explain what factors and conditions have contributed to these changes.
Download or read book Religious Responses to Modernity written by Yohanan Friedmann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dawn of the modern age posed challenges to all of the world’s religions – and since then, religions have countered with challenges to modernity. In Religious Responses to Modernity, seven leading scholars from Germany and Israel explore specific instances of the face-off between religious thought and modernity, in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. As co-editor Christoph Markschies remarks in his Foreword, it may seem almost trivial to say that different religions, and the various currents within them, have reacted in very different ways to the “multiple modernities” described by S.N. Eisenstadt. However, things become more interesting when the comparative perspective leads us to discover surprising similarities. Disparate encounters are connected by their transnational or national perspectives, with the one side criticizing in the interest of rationality as a model of authorization, and the other presenting revelation as a critique of a depraved form of rationality. The thoughtful essays presented herein, by Simon Gerber, Johannes Zachhuber, Jonathan Garb, Rivka Feldhay, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Israel Gershoni and Christoph Schmidt, provide a counterweight to the popularity of some all-too-simplified models of modernization.
Download or read book Religion in Late Modernity written by Robert Cummings Neville and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion in Late Modernity runs against the grain of common suppositions of contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. Against the common supposition that basic religious terms have no real reference but are mere functions of human need, the book presents a pragmatic theory of religious symbolism in terms of which the cognitive engagement of the Ultimate is of a piece with the cognitive engagement of nature and persons. Throughout this discussion, Neville develops a late-modern conception of God that is defensible in a global theological public. Against the common supposition that religion is on the retreat in late modernity except in fundamentalist forms, the author argues that religion in our time is a stimulus to religiously oriented scholarship, a civilizing force among world societies, a foundation for obligation in politics, a source for healthy social experimentation, and the most important mover of soul. Against the common supposition that religious thinking or theology is confessional and inevitably biased in favor of the thinker's community, Neville argues for the public character of theology, the need for history and phenomenology of religion in philosophy of religion, and the possibility of objectivity through the contextualization of philosophy, contrary to the fashionable claims of neo-pragmatism. This vigorous analysis and program for religious thinking is straightforwardly pro-late-modern and anti-postmodern, a rousing gallop along the high road around modernism.
Download or read book Religions of Modernity written by Stef Aupers and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religions of Modernity challenges the social-scientific orthodoxy that, once unleashed, the modern forces of individualism, science and technology inevitably erode the sacred and evoke the profane. The book's chapters, some by established scholars, others by junior researchers, document instead in rich empirical detail how modernity relocates the sacred to the deeper layers of the self and the domain of digital technology. Rather than destroying the sacred tout court, then, the cultural logic of modernization spawns its own religious meanings, unacknowledged spiritualities and magical enchantments. The editors argue in the introductory chapter that the classical theoretical accounts of modernity by Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and others already hinted at the future emergence of these religions of modernity
Download or read book Religion and Modernity in India written by Śekhara Bandyopādhyāẏa and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quatrième de couverture: "Through a series of case studies taken from everyday experiences of people following a variety of religions, this book interrogates the supposed epistemological dualism between modernity and religion in India. Through a study of oral and textual traditions, examining the perspectives of women and other marginal social and regional groups, as well as the diaspora, it presents dynamically interacting textures of society-historically and in our contemporary times-engaging with modernity in divergent ways"
Download or read book Modernity and Religion written by William Nicholls and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 1988-02-08 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It would be possible to argue," writes William Nicholls, "that the pivotal subject of debate among theologians for the past two hundred years has been the relationship between modernity and the Christian tradition." What is modernity—a philosophical outlook or a set of ideas? What is modernization —a social process? Is modernity the same as secularity, as many theologians and sociologists in the West believe? Is the impact of modernity weakening religious traditions? Are the responses of non-Western religious traditions to modernity similar to Western ones, or are they distinctive, indigenous adaptations to the same world-wide development. These are the kinds of concerns the interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses in this volume. Contributors include Moshe Amon ("Utopias and Counter-Utopias"), Alan Davies ("The Rise o Racism in the Nineteenth Century: Symptom of Modernity"), Robert Ellwood, Jr. ("Modern Religion as Folk Religion"), Irving Hexham ("Modernity or Reaction in South Africa: The Case of Afrikaner Religion"), Shotaro Iida ("Japanese New Religions"), Shelia McDonough ("modernity in Islamic Persepctive"), William Nicholls ("Immanent Transcendence: Spirituality in a Scientific and Critical Age"), K. Dad Prithipaul ("Modernity and Religious Studies"), Tom Sinclair-Faulkner ("Caution: Moralists at Work"), Huston Smith ("Can Modernity Accommodate Transcendence?"), and John Wilson ("Modernity and Religion: A Problem of Perspective").
Download or read book Formations of the Secular written by Talal Asad and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A dark but brilliantly original work . . . one of the most important books on religion and the modern in recent years.” —H-Net Reviews Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity. “A difficult if stunningly eloquent book, a response both elusive and forthright to the many shelves of ‘books on terrorism’ which this country’s trade publishers are rushing into print.” —Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature “This wonderfully illuminating book should be read alongside the author’s Genealogies of Religion.” —Religion “One of the most interesting scholars of religious writing today.” —Christian Scholar’s Review “Asad’s brilliant study remains a defining piece of intellectual and scholarly contribution for all of those interested in exploring the religious and the secular in the modern era.” —The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
Download or read book Capitalism as Religion A Study of Paul Tillich s Interpretation of Modernity written by Francis Ching-Wah Yip and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between religion and modern culture remains a controversial issue within Christian theology. Using the concept of “cultural modernity,” Francis Ching-Wah Yip reconstructs Paul Tillich’s interpretation of modernity and shows that Tillich’s notion of theonomy served to underscore the problems of modernity and to develop a response.
Download or read book Public Religions in the Modern World written by José Casanova and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-08-29 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a sweeping reconsideration of the relation between religion and modernity, Jose Casanova surveys the roles that religions may play in the public sphere of modern societies. During the 1980s, religious traditions around the world, from Islamic fundamentalism to Catholic liberation theology, began making their way, often forcefully, out of the private sphere and into public life, causing the "deprivatization" of religion in contemporary life. No longer content merely to administer pastoral care to individual souls, religious institutions are challenging dominant political and social forces, raising questions about the claims of entities such as nations and markets to be "value neutral", and straining the traditional connections of private and public morality. Casanova looks at five cases from two religious traditions (Catholicism and Protestantism) in four countries (Spain, Poland, Brazil, and the United States). These cases challenge postwar—and indeed post-Enlightenment—assumptions about the role of modernity and secularization in religious movements throughout the world. This book expands our understanding of the increasingly significant role religion plays in the ongoing construction of the modern world.
Download or read book Meaning and Modernity written by Richard Madsen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-12-04 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This interesting volume of essays on contemporary religion and its ambivalent relationship to modernity not only serves as a testimony to the intellectual influence of Robert Bellah, it establishes a new school of comparative religious and social thought. This Bellahian school--at the intersection of sociological, theological, and contemporary philosophical thinking--has roots in Durkheim and Weber, borrows insights from Marx, Foucault, and Bourdieu, and finds its clearest voice in the writings of Bellah himself. The essays by some of Bellah's colleagues and former students that have been gathered in this volume address some of the most sagacious of these Bellahian themes: the religious dimension of contemporary civil societies, the relationship between religious and capitalist values, the cultural critique of modernity, and the moral visions that hold a promise of civic renewal."—Mark Juergensmeyer, author of Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (California, 2000). "This highly readable collection of original, thought-provoking essays by leading scholars provides fresh insights into the issues that Robert Bellah has addressed so fruitfully in his long career. Readers will learn much about such issues as how Calvinism contributed to political revolution, why democracies require an enlarged sense of political community, how the religious foundations of Japan and the United States differ, and what it means to be a Christian and an American."—Benton Johnson, coauthor of Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Protestant Baby Boomers (1994) and author of Functionalism in Modern Sociology: Understanding Talcott Parsons (1975)
Download or read book Religion Modernity Globalisation written by François Gauthier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the last four decades have seen profound and important changes in the nature and social location of religion, and that those changes are best understood when cast against the associated rise of consumerism and neoliberalism. These transformations are often misunderstood and underestimated, namely because the study of religion remains dependent on the secularisation paradigm which can no longer provide a sufficiently fruitful framework for analysis. The book challenges diagnoses of transience and fragmentation by proposing an alternative narrative and set of concepts for understanding the global religious landscape. The present situation is framed as the result of a shift from a National-Statist to a Global-Market regime of religion. Adopting a holistic perspective that breaks with the current specialisation tendencies, it charts the emergence of the State and the Market as institutions and ideas related to social order, as well as their changing rapports from classical modernity to today. Breaking with a tradition of Western-centeredness, the book offers probing enquiries into Indonesia and a synthesis of global and Western trends. This long-awaited book offers a bold new vision for the social scientific study of religion and will be of great interest to all scholars of the Sociology and Anthropology of religion, as well as Religious Studies in general.
Download or read book Christianity and Modernity in Eastern Europe written by Bruce R. Berglund and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disgraceful collusion. Heroic resistance. Suppression of faith. Perseverance of convictions. The story of Christianity in twentieth-century Eastern Europe is often told in stark scenes of tragedy and triumph. Overlooked in the retelling of these dramas is how the region's clergy and lay believers lived their faith, acted within religious and political institutions, and adapted their traditions---while struggling to make sense of a changing world. The contributors to this volume, coming from the U.S. and Western and Eastern Europe, look beyond the narratives of resistance and collaboration. They offer surprising new evidence from archives and oral history interviews, and they provide fresh interpretations of Christianity as it was lived and expressed in modern Europe: from religiosity in the industrial cities of the late nineteenth century to current debates over immigration and European identity; from theological debates in East Germany to folk healing in post-socialist Bulgaria; and, counter-intuitively, from religious fervor among the Czechs to indifference among the Poles. Addressing Christianity in diverse forms---Orthodox, Protestant, Roman and Greek Catholic---as an integral part of the region's politics, society, and culture, this collection is a major addition to studies of both Eastern Europe and religion in the twentieth century. "A volume that specialists in the history of Christianity in other regions of the world will read with great interest, and a degree of envy. As an historian of religion in Western Europe, I can say that although there is a vast literature on the religious history of the nineteenth century and a growing literature on the twentieth century, there is nothing quite like this." From the Foreword by Hugh McLeod, author of The Religious Crisis of the 1960s. "This is a path-breaking book in two different ways. It contributes to the re-evaluation of the nature of modern European religion generally, and to the nature of religion in the modern world." Jeffrey Cox, University of Iowa, author of Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India.
Download or read book Powers of Distinction written by Nancy Levene and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-12-06 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The principle of modernity -- A history of religion -- Artificial populations -- The collective -- Images of truth from Anselm to Badiou -- The radical enlightenment of Spinoza and Kant -- Modernity as ground zero -- Of gods, laws, rabbis, and ends
Download or read book Religion and Rationality written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important new volume brings together Habermas' key writing on religion and religious belief. Habermas explores the relations between Christian and Jewish thought, on the one hand, and the Western philosophical tradition on the other. In so doing, he examines a range of important figures, including Benjamin, Heidegger, Johann Baptist Metz and Gershom Scholem. In a new introduction written especially for this volume, Eduardo Mendieta places Habermas' engagement with religion in the context of his work as a whole. Mendieta also discusses Habermas' writings in relation to Jewish Messianism and the Frankfurt School, showing how the essays in Religion and Rationality, one of which is translated into English for the first time, foreground an important, yet often neglected, dimension of critical theory. The volume concludes with an original extended interview, also in English for the first time, in which Habermas develops his current views on religion in modern society. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theology, religious studies and philosophy, as well as to all those already familiar with Habermas' work.
Download or read book Religion Modernity and Postmodernity written by Paul Heelas and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this study of religion, theorise over modern culture, consider whether postmodern forms of religion exist and whether theories of religion framed in terms of modernity can be recast to suit new or emerging circumstances.
Download or read book Why America Needs Religion written by Guenter Lewy and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. What is wrong with America? It has often called itself a Christian nation, yet its social and moral problems are legion. The increasing rates of crime, juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, sexual promiscuity, and divorce are frequently linked to the declining importance of religious belief. But is there more than a presumed link between the strength of personal religiousness and moral behavior? Yes, says Guenter Lewy, and the large quantity of empirical data in existence which establishes that link ought to move people -- Christians and non-Christians alike -- to sit up and take note. In this trenchant analysis of the moral decline of modern America, Lewy describes the moral crisis caused by secular modernity and points to the role of religiousness -- especially Christian religiousness -- as a necessary bulwark against today's social ills. This work is all the more intriguing in that Lewy is an agnostic who has nonetheless concluded that a society that cuts itself off from the religious roots of its moral heritage is doomed to decline. Lewy traces the rise of secularism in Western society, focusing particularly on the cult of individualism, and describes the social consequences of the weakened role of religion. He demonstrates that the crisis of the family and the rise of the underclass in our inner cities are linked to the decline of traditional values and shows, on the basis of surveys and other empirical data, that genuine religiousness can ward off some of the corrosive effects of modernity. Lewy concludes by calling on Christians, adherents of other faiths, and true humanists to join forces in the struggle to reverse the current ethos of radical individualism that threatens the moral integrity of our society.
Download or read book Modernity and Re enchantment written by Philip Taylor and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representative of a new wave of anthropological research on religion in Vietnam, Modernity and Re-enchantment brings together in a single book the latest and best research available on this topic. Its lively and original descriptions deftly evoke the burgeoning field of religiosity in contemporary Vietnam. With case studies into a great variety of religious practices, it covers more ground than the small handful of single-authored books currently available on religion in Vietnam.
