Download or read book The Secular Faith Controversy written by Edward Ian Bailey and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 2001 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When God disappears from a secular society, religious beliefs surface in other non-religious sectors of society, e.g. sport as religion. Edward Bailey argues that within and beneath everyday practices of non-religious pursuits lie hidden religious-ethical assumptions that mostly go unnoticed, that is, i.e. implicit rather than explicit. In this volume Bailey sets out what is meant by 'implicit religion, ' and proposes a methodology for studying implicit religion and how it can encourage greater understanding between secular and religious spheres.
Download or read book A Secular Faith written by Darryl G. Hart and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2006 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Secular Faith does precisely this. Darryl Hart, the highly regarded historian of religion, contends that appeals to Christianity for social and political well-being fundamentally misconstrue the meaning of the Christian religion. His book weaves together historical narratives of key moments in American Protestantism's influence on the nation's politics, plus commentary on recent writing about religion and public life, and expositions of Christian teaching. The tapestry that emerges is a compelling faith-based argument for keeping Christianity out of politics."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Secular Faith written by Mark A. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Pope Francis recently answered “Who am I to judge?” when asked about homosexuality, he ushered in a new era for the Catholic church. A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for a pope to express tolerance for homosexuality. Yet shifts of this kind are actually common in the history of Christian groups. Within the United States, Christian leaders have regularly revised their teachings to match the beliefs and opinions gaining support among their members and larger society. Mark A. Smith provocatively argues that religion is not nearly the unchanging conservative influence in American politics that we have come to think it is. In fact, in the long run, religion is best understood as responding to changing political and cultural values rather than shaping them. Smith makes his case by charting five contentious issues in America’s history: slavery, divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and women’s rights. For each, he shows how the political views of even the most conservative Christians evolved in the same direction as the rest of society—perhaps not as swiftly, but always on the same arc. During periods of cultural transition, Christian leaders do resist prevailing values and behaviors, but those same leaders inevitably acquiesce—often by reinterpreting the Bible—if their positions become no longer tenable. Secular ideas and influences thereby shape the ways Christians read and interpret their scriptures. So powerful are the cultural and societal norms surrounding us that Christians in America today hold more in common morally and politically with their atheist neighbors than with the Christians of earlier centuries. In fact, the strongest predictors of people’s moral beliefs are not their religious commitments or lack thereof but rather when and where they were born. A thoroughly researched and ultimately hopeful book on the prospects for political harmony, Secular Faith demonstrates how, over the long run, boundaries of secular and religious cultures converge.
Download or read book This Life written by Martin Hägglund and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the René Wellek Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning Herald This Life offers a profoundly inspiring basis for transforming our lives, demonstrating that our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism. Philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that we need to cultivate not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions: what matters is how we treat one another in this life and what we do with our time. Engaging with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund points the way to an emancipated life.
Download or read book Secular Faith written by Vincent William Lloyd and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is faith a necessary virtue in the contemporary world? May it be, or must it be, detached from religious commitment? What do genealogies of the secular tell us about faith? Does religion need secular faith? Secular Faith brings together leading and emerging scholars to reflect on the apparent paradox of "secular faith." Ranging over anthropology, religious studies, political science, history, and literature, from Muslims in China to Pentecostals in South Africa to a prison chapel in Texas, this collection of essays is as engaging and accessible as it is penetrating and rigorous. Communism was once labeled "the god that failed." Like Christianity, Communism involves faith in a superhuman endeavor, conversion, myth, discipline, and salvation--and, from the perspective of secular liberalism, both are unjustified and false. In recent years, scholars have begun to investigate whether secularism is itself based on faith in a god that failed, or is failing. Nevertheless, many still embrace such a faith, finding in the spirit of democracy an ethos of eternal renewal. Secular Faith enters and broadens this conversation, interrogating secular faith in a global context, tapping new theoretical resources, and grappling provocatively with the tragedies and opportunities of today's profane pantheon of beliefs.
Download or read book The Secular Creed written by Rebecca McLaughlin and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Freedom of Religion and the Secular State written by Russell Blackford and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the relationship between religion and the state Focusing on the intersection of religion, law, and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, Blackford considers the concept of the secular state, revising and updating enlightenment views for the present day. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State offers a comprehensive analysis, with a global focus, of the subject of religious freedom from a legal as well as historical and philosophical viewpoint. It makes an original contribution to current debates about freedom of religion, and addresses a whole range of hot-button issues that involve the relationship between religion and the state, including the teaching of evolution in schools, what to do about the burqa, and so on.
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 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 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Honest to God written by John A. T. Robinson and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On first publication in the 1960s, "Honest to God" did more than instigate a passionate debate about the nature of Christian belief in a secular revolution. It epitomised the revolutionary mood of the era and articulated the anxieties of a generation.
Download or read book Secular Faith written by Mark A. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-09-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Pope Francis recently answered “Who am I to judge?” when asked about homosexuality, he ushered in a new era for the Catholic church. A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for a pope to express tolerance for homosexuality. Yet shifts of this kind are actually common in the history of Christian groups. Within the United States, Christian leaders have regularly revised their teachings to match the beliefs and opinions gaining support among their members and larger society. Mark A. Smith provocatively argues that religion is not nearly the unchanging conservative influence in American politics that we have come to think it is. In fact, in the long run, religion is best understood as responding to changing political and cultural values rather than shaping them. Smith makes his case by charting five contentious issues in America’s history: slavery, divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and women’s rights. For each, he shows how the political views of even the most conservative Christians evolved in the same direction as the rest of society—perhaps not as swiftly, but always on the same arc. During periods of cultural transition, Christian leaders do resist prevailing values and behaviors, but those same leaders inevitably acquiesce—often by reinterpreting the Bible—if their positions become no longer tenable. Secular ideas and influences thereby shape the ways Christians read and interpret their scriptures. So powerful are the cultural and societal norms surrounding us that Christians in America today hold more in common morally and politically with their atheist neighbors than with the Christians of earlier centuries. In fact, the strongest predictors of people’s moral beliefs are not their religious commitments or lack thereof but rather when and where they were born. A thoroughly researched and ultimately hopeful book on the prospects for political harmony, Secular Faith demonstrates how, over the long run, boundaries of secular and religious cultures converge.
Download or read book Religion in Schools written by R. Murray Thomas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans may believe that religion in the schools is a controversial subject only in the United States. But around the world, the subject has gained widespread notoriety, media coverage, and attention from governing bodies, school administrations, and individuals. In France, conflict erupted when a young girl wore a headscarf to her public school; the government there got involved to reassert the rule that no outward display of religion will be tolerated. In India, a panel was appointed to remove Hindu religious beliefs from high-school textbooks. In Pakistan, the government passed a law to make the curriculum of Islamic religious schools more secular in its approach. Here in the United States, debates abound regarding the Pledge of Allegiance, the posting of the Ten Commandments, prayer in school, and other familiar arguments. But why do these controversies exist? What prompts them? Why do particular conflicts arise, and what attempts are made to deal with them? How have solutions fared? How are the controversies in one country similar to or different from those in another? In Religion in Schools, R. Murray Thomas uses case examples from twelve countries around the world, covering all regions of the world and all the major religions, to examine and answer these questions. He reveals the complexities of the conflicts, and shows what brought them about. For example, in France, the conflicts often arise out of that nation's desire to remain intensely secular. Using case examples and applying a uniform approach to analyzing each country's particular focus on religion and education, he is able to show what these conflicts have in common, how well solutions have worked, and what may lie ahead.
Download or read book Performing the Secular written by Milija Gluhovic and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a foreword from Rustom Bharucha, this book is a timely anthology which aims to unsettle our habituated modes of thinking about the place of the secular in cultural productions. The last decade alone has witnessed many religious protests against cultural productions, which have led, in some cases, to the closure of theatre and opera performances. Threats to artists led to the exile of Indian painter, MF Husain, and murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, the controversy over the depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 led to the cancellation of performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo for the season. Offering fresh and provocative readings that probe the limits and promise of secularity in relation to questions of performance, politics, and the public sphere, this book will be invaluable to scholars who seek to understand the dramatic rise of politicized theology in our new century.
Download or read book Sincerely Held written by Charles McCrary and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-04-08 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you read Supreme Court opinions on cases involving First Amendment religion issues, you're likely to encounter the ubiquitous phrase "sincerely held religious belief." The "sincerity test" of religious belief has become a cornerstone of US jurisprudence, determining what counts as legitimate grounds for First Amendment claims in the eyes of the law. In Sincerely Held, Charles McCrary provides an original account of how "sincerely held religious belief" became the primary standard for determining what legally counts as genuine religion. McCrary traces the interlocking histories of sincerity, religion, and secularism in the US, starting in the mid-nineteenth century. He then shows how, in the 1940s, as the courts expanded the concept of religious freedom, they incorporated the notion of sincerity as a key element in determining religious freedom protections. The legal sincerity test was part of a larger trend in which the category "religion" became largely individualized and correlated with "belief." This linking of religion and belief, with all its Protestant underpinnings, is a central concern of critical secularism studies. McCrary contributes to this conversation by revealing the history of how sincerity and sincerely held religious belief developed as technologies of secular governance, constraining the type of subject one has to be in order to receive protections from the state"--
Download or read book When Religious and Secular Interests Collide written by Scott A. Merriman and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the countervailing arguments in the religious exemption debate and explains why this issue continues to be so heated and controversial in modern-day America. Can religion be used to legalize discrimination? When does religion exclude a person or corporation from having to follow a federal or state law, and does our government automatically favor one faith over another when allowing such exemptions? How "religious" must an activity be to qualify as exempt? These are just a few of the difficult questions addressed in When Religious and Secular Interests Collide: Faith, Law, and the Religious Exemption Debate, one of the most modern resources for looking at religion and the law, both historically and in the present. This book enables readers to fully comprehend this important multifaceted issue that continues to be contested in our courts, legislatures, hearts, and minds. Readers will gain vital historical background about this battleground topic of academic and public interest, see how the contentious issue has changed in the past, and learn about recent developments, including the controversies surrounding religious exemption laws passed in Arkansas and Indiana in 2015. They will also glean knowledge to evaluate claims made about the First Amendment and equal rights and reach their own educated opinions on the subject. Additionally, the work includes primary source documents such as excerpts of important Supreme Court decisions accompanied by insightful analysis of how the religious exemption issue surfaced in modern American culture.
Download or read book How to Be Secular written by Jacques Berlinerblau and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that a return to a more secular America will promote religious diversity and freedom, and help eliminate the widening divide between religious conservatives and staunch atheists.
Download or read book Faith in the public realm written by Dinham, Adam and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2009-01-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on primary research, this book explores the controversies, policies and practices of 'public faith', questioning perceptions of a fixed divide between religious and secular participants in public life and challenging prevailing concepts of a monolithic 'neutral' public realm. It takes an in-depth look at the distinctiveness of faith groups' contribution, but also probes the conflicts and dilemmas that arise, assessing the role and capacity of faith groups within specific public policy contexts, including education, regeneration, housing and community cohesion. 'Faith in the public realm' will be of interest to students, academics, policy-makers and practitioners in the public and voluntary sectors, and in faith communities themselves.
