Download or read book Questioning Secularism written by Hussein Ali Agrama and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, exactly, is secularism? What has the West's long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In this work, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.
Download or read book Soldiers of God in a Secular World written by Sarah Shortall and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory account of the nouvelle thologie, a clerical movement that revitalized the Catholic ChurchÕs role in twentieth-century French political life. Secularism has been a cornerstone of French political culture since 1905, when the republic formalized the separation of church and state. At times the barrier of secularism has seemed impenetrable, stifling religious actors wishing to take part in political life. Yet in other instances, secularism has actually nurtured movements of the faithful. Soldiers of God in a Secular World explores one such case, that of the nouvelle thologie, or new theology. Developed in the interwar years by Jesuits and Dominicans, the nouvelle thologie reimagined the ChurchÕs relationship to public life, encouraging political activism, engaging with secular philosophy, and inspiring doctrinal changes adopted by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Nouveaux thologiens charted a path between the old alliance of throne and altar and secularismÕs demand for the privatization of religion. Envisioning a Church in but not of the public sphere, Catholic thinkers drew on theological principles to intervene in political questions while claiming to remain at armÕs length from politics proper. Sarah Shortall argues that this Òcounter-politicsÓ was central to the mission of the nouveaux thologiens: by recoding political statements in the ostensibly apolitical language of doctrine, priests were able to enter into debates over fascism and communism, democracy and human rights, colonialism and nuclear war. This approach found its highest expression during the Second World War, when the nouveaux thologiens led the spiritual resistance against Nazism. Claiming a powerful public voice, they collectively forged a new role for the Church amid the momentous political shifts of the twentieth century.
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 Religious Politics and Secular States written by Scott W. Hibbard and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2011 Winner of the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize of the International Political Science Association This comparative analysis probes why conservative renderings of religious tradition in the United States, India, and Egypt remain so influential in the politics of these three ostensibly secular societies. The United States, Egypt, and India were quintessential models of secular modernity in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1980s and 1990s, conservative Islamists challenged the Egyptian government, India witnessed a surge in Hindu nationalism, and the Christian right in the United States rose to dominate the Republican Party and large swaths of the public discourse. Using a nuanced theoretical framework that emphasizes the interaction of religion and politics, Scott W. Hibbard argues that three interrelated issues led to this state of affairs. First, as an essential part of the construction of collective identities, religion serves as a basis for social solidarity and political mobilization. Second, in providing a moral framework, religion's traditional elements make it relevant to modern political life. Third, and most significant, in manipulating religion for political gain, political elites undermined the secular consensus of the modern state that had been in place since the end of World War II. Together, these factors sparked a new era of right-wing religious populism in the three nations. Although much has been written about the resurgence of religious politics, scholars have paid less attention to the role of state actors in promoting new visions of religion and society. Religious Politics and Secular States fills this gap by situating this trend within long-standing debates over the proper role of religion in public life.
Download or read book The Theological Origins of Modernity written by Michael Allen Gillespie and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 762 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.
Download or read book The Two Cities A History of Christian Politics written by Andrew Willard Jones and published by Emmaus Road Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prevailing narrative of human history, given to us as children and reinforced constantly through our culture, is the plot of progress. As the narrative goes, we progressed from tyranny to freedom, from superstition to science, from poverty to wealth, from darkness to enlightenment. This is modernity’s origin myth. Out of it, a consensus has emerged: part of human progress is the overcoming of religion, in particular Christianity, and that the world itself is fundamentally secular. In The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics, Andrew Willard Jones rewrites the political history of the West with a new plot, a plot in which Christianity is true, in which human history is Church history. The Two Cities moves through the rise and fall of empires; cycles of corruption and reform; the rise and fall of Christendom; the emergence of new political forms, such as the modern state, and new political ideologies, such as liberalism and socialism; through the horrible destruction of modern warfare; and on to the plight of contemporary Christians. These movements of history are all considered in light of their orientation toward or away from God. The Two Cities advances a theory of Christian politics that is both an explanation of secular politics and a proposal for Christians seeking to navigate today’s most urgent political questions.
Download or read book Political Theology of International Order written by William Bain and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is contemporary international order truly a secular arrangement? Theorists of international relations typically adhere to a narrative that portrays the modern states system as the product of a gradual process of secularization that transcended the religiosity of medieval Christendom. William Bain challenges this narrative by arguing that modern theories of international order reflect ideas that originate in medieval theology. They are, in other words, worldly applications of a theological pattern. This ground-breaking book makes two key contributions to scholarship on international order. First, it provides a thorough intellectual history of medieval and early modern traditions of thought and the way in which they shape modern thinking about international order. It explores the ideas of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Martin Luther, and other theologians to rise above the sharp differentiation of medieval and modern that underpins most international thought. Uncovering this theological inheritance invites a fundamental reassessment of canonical figures, such as Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes, and their contribution to theorizing international order. Second, this book shows how theological ideas continue to shape modern theories of international order by structuring the questions theorists ask as well as the answer they provide. It argues that the dominant vocabulary of international order, system and society, anarchy, balance of power, and constitutionalism, is mediated by the intellectual commitments of nominalist theology. It concludes by exploring the implications of thinking in terms of this theological inheritance, albeit in a world where God is only one of several possibilities that can called upon to secure the regularity of order.
Download or read book Secularisation Pentecostalism and Violence written by David Martin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book David Martin brings together a coherent summary of his many years of ground-breaking academic work on the sociology of religion. Covering key and contentious areas from the last half-century such as secularisation, religion and violence, and the global rise of Pentecostalism, it presents a critical recuperation of these themes, some of them first initiated by the author, and a review of their reception history. It then reviews that reception history in a way that discusses not only the subjects themselves, but also the academic practices that have surrounded them. As such, this collection is vital reading for all academics with an interest in David Martin’s work, as well as those involved with the sociology of religion and the study of secularisation more generally.
Download or read book The Religious Problem with Religious Freedom written by Robert J. Joustra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-17 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rival understandings of the meaning and practice of the religious and the secular lead to rival public perspectives about religion and religious freedom in North America. This book explores how debates over the American Office of Religious Freedom and its International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA, 1998) and very recent debates over the Canadian Office of Religious Freedom (2013) have pitted at least six basic, but very different meanings of the religious and the secular against each other in often undisclosed and usually unproductive ways. Properly naming this ‘religious problem’ is a critical first step to acknowledging and conciliating their practically polar political prescriptions. It must be considered how we are to think about religion in political offices, both the Canadian and the American experience, as an essentially contested term, and one which demands better than postmodern paralysis, what the author terms political theology. This is especially critical since both of these cases are not just about how to deal with religion at home, but how to engage with religion abroad, where real peril, and real practical policy must be undertaken to protect increasingly besieged religious minorities. Finally, a principled pluralist approach to the religious and the secular suggests a way to think outside the ‘religious problem’ and productively enlist and engage the forces of religion resurging around the globe. The book will be of great use to scholars and students in religion and foreign affairs, secularization, political theology, and political theory, as well as professionals and policy makers working in issues relating to religion, religious freedom, and foreign affairs.
Download or read book A Short History of Secularism written by Graeme Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-11-28 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to call Western society 'secular'? What is 'secularism'? And how should we understand the concept of 'secularism' in international relations, particularly the clash between radical Islam and the West? The Latin term from which the word 'secular' is derived - 'saeculum' - means 'generation' or 'age', and came to mean that which belongs to this life, to the here and now, in this world. It is widely used as a shorthand for the ideology which shapes contemporary society without reference to the divine.However, according to Graeme Smith, 'secularism' represents a great deal more. He offers a radical reappraisal of the notion of secularism and its history, beginning with the Greeks and proceeding to modernity and the contemporary period. The assumption that the West is becoming increasingly secular is often unquestioned. By contrast, Dr Smith discerns a different kind of society: one informed by a historical legacy which makes sense only when it is appreciated that it is religious. Secularism was born of Christianity. Daringly - and very originally - Smith argues that it is impossible to understand the idea of the secular without appreciating that, at root, it is Christian. "A Short History of Secularism" will fundamentally reshape discussions of western culture, religion and politics. It will have strong appeal to students of religion, political philosophy, and the history of ideas.
Download or read book Religion and Higher Education in Europe and North America written by Kristin Aune and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and Higher Education in Europe and North America illuminates the experiences of staff and students in higher education as they negotiate the university environment. Religious extremism has been rising across Europe, whilst recent attacks have thrown public debate around the place of religion on campus, the role of universities in recognising and managing religious fundamentalism and freedom of speech on campus into sharper focus. Despite these debates, research exploring religion on campus has been largely absent from discourse on higher education outside of America, with policy and practices designed to deal with religion on campus largely founded on supposition rather than evidence. This book speaks into that void, including results from recent studies in the field which form an empirically grounded base from a broad variety of perspectives on religion at universities. Aiming to offer a deeper perspective, more dialogue, and engagement on the experiences of students, Religion and Higher Education in Europe and North America presents us not only with an opportunity to counter growing trends of intolerance, but for people to connect with the humanity of others. Focusing on what research reveals about staff and students’ experiences, it incorporates research from different academic disciplines including sociology, education, social policy, theology and religious studies, and across different faith and belief groups. This thought-provoking and challenging volume features chapters written by researchers involved in informing policy and practice relating to religion and belief in higher education in the UK, US, Canada, France and the Netherlands . Spanning the academic-practitioner divide, students and academics interested in the sociology of religion and of higher education, as well as those responsible for the practical management of campus life, will find this text of particular importance.
Download or read book Secularism written by Andrew Copson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is secularism? -- Secularism in Western societies -- Secularism diversifies -- The case for Secularism -- The case against Secularism -- Conceptions of Secularism -- Hard questions and new conflicts -- Afterword: the future of Secularism
Download or read book On the public role of the Bible in Zimbabwe written by Masiiwa Ragies Gunda and published by University of Bamberg Press. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Volume 18 of BiAS series is dedicated to critically unpack the meaning of the call to re-write the Bible made by the first President of Zimbabwe, Canaan S. Banana in 1991. In this book, the author engages with Banana's written works and makes critical observations regarding the call to re-write the Bible. This book argues that re-writing was proposed as a means to an end by Banana. It is demonstrated that what Banana intended was eradicating injustice, violence and inequality in the Middle East which was fuelled by the 'ideology of chosenness', which was sustained by a use of the Bible. Once it became clear the end was not re-writing the Bible, this work moved on to consider alternative means to achieving the same end. The search for alternatives leads the author to consider 'the way of Europe', that is, de-biblification or a watered down biblification, which is named partial de-biblification in this work. Finally, the author proposes a 'critical biblification' as a viable alternative to re-writing or de-biblification. This book, in honor of Banana, calls for socially and contextually relevant biblical studies"--
Download or read book Towards a Postsecular International Politics written by L. Mavelli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-20 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the postsecular in International Relations and how an increasingly postsecular international politics is contributing to the emergence of new patterns of authority, legitimacy and power in the international system.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Secularism written by Phil Zuckerman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Medieval Foundations of International Relations written by William Bain and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this volume is to explore the medieval inheritance of modern international relations. Recent years have seen a flourishing of work on the history of international political thought, but the bulk of this has focused on the early modern and modern periods, leaving continuities with the medieval world largely ignored. The medieval is often used as a synonym for the barbaric and obsolete, yet this picture does not match that found in relevant work in the history of political thought. The book thus offers a chance to correct this misconception of the evolution of Western international thought, highlighting that the history of international thought should be regarded as an important dimension of thinking about the international and one that should not be consigned to history departments. Questions addressed include: what is the medieval influence on modern conception of rights, law, and community? how have medieval ideas shaped modern conceptions of self-determination, consent, and legitimacy? are there ‘medieval’ answers to ‘modern’ questions? is the modern world still working its way through the Middle Ages? to what extent is the ‘modern outlook’ genuinely secular? is there a ‘theology’ of international relations? what are the implications of continuity for predominant historical narrative of the emergence and expansion of international society? Medieval and modern are certainly different; however, this collection of essays proceeds from the conviction that the modern world was not built on a new plot with new building materials. Instead, it was constructed out of the rubble, that is, the raw materials, of the Middle Ages.This will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR, IR theory and political theory. .
Download or read book Theology and World Politics written by Vassilios Paipais and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated within the wider post-secular turn in politics and international relations, this volume focuses not on religion per se, but rather explicitly on theology. Contributions to this collection highlight the political theological foundations of international theory and world politics, recasting theology and politics as symbiotic discourses with all the risks, promises and open questions this relation may involve. The overarching claim the book makes is that all politics has theology embedded in it, both in the genealogical sense of carrying ineradicable traces of rival theological traditions, and also in the more ontological sense of being enacted by alternative configurations of the theologico-political. The book is unique in bringing together a diverse group of scholars, spanning knowledge areas as varied as IR, political theory, philosophy, theology, and history to investigate the complex interconnections between theology and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, international relations, intellectual history, and political theology.
