Download or read book The Secularisation of the Confessional State written by Ian Hunter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) was a tireless campaigner against the political enforcement of religion in the early modern confessional state. In a whole series of combative disputations - against heresy and witchcraft prosecutions, and in favour of religious toleration - Thomasius battled to lay the intellectual groundwork for the separation of church and state and the juridical basis for pluralistic societies. In this text, Ian Hunter departs from the usual view of Thomasius as a natural law moral philosopher. In addition to investigating his anti-scholastic cultural politics, Hunter discusses Thomasius' work in public and church law, particularly his disputations arguing for the toleration of heretics, providing a revealing comparison with Locke's arguments on the same topic. If Locke sought to base toleration in the subjective rights protecting Christian citizens against an intolerant state, Thomasius grounded it in the state's duty to impose toleration as an obligation on intolerant citizens.

Download or read book The Secular State Under Siege written by Christian Joppke and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout human history, religion and politics have entertained the most intimate of connections as systems of authority regulating individuals and society. While the two have come apart through the process of secularization, secularism is challenged today by the return of public religion. This cogent analysis unravels the nature of the connection, disconnection, and attempted reconnection between religion and politics in the West. In a comparison of Western Europe and North America, Christianity and Islam, Joppke advances far-reaching theoretical, historical, and comparative-political arguments. With respect to theory, it is argued that only a “substantive” concept of religion, as pertaining to the existence of supra-human powers, opens up the possibility of a historical-comparative perspective on religion. At the level of history, secularization is shown to be the distinct outcome of Latin Christianity itself. And at the level of comparative politics, the Christian Right in America which has attacked the “wall of separation” between religion and state and Islam in Europe with the controversial insistence on sharia law and other “illiberal” claims from some quarters are taken to be counterpart incarnations of public religion and challenges to the secular state. This clearly argued, sweeping book will provide an invaluable framework for approaching an array of critical issues at the intersection of religion, law and politics for advanced students and researchers across the social sciences and legal studies, as well as for the interested public.

Download or read book Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth Century Germany written by Todd H. Weir and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the culture, politics, and ideas of the nineteenth-century German secularist movements of Free Religion, Freethought, Ethical Culture, and Monism. In it, Todd H. Weir argues that although secularists challenged church establishment and conservative orthodoxy, they were subjected to the forces of religious competition.

Download or read book Forgetting Faith written by Isabel Karremann and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-01-27 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the last decade, early modern studies have significantly been reshaped by raising new and different questions on the uses of religion. This ‛religious turn’ has generated new discussion of the social processes at work in early modern Europe and their cultural effects ‐ from the struggle over religious rites and doctrines to the persecution of secret adherents to forbidden practices. The issue of religious pluralisation has been mostly debated in terms of dissent and escalation. But confessional controversy did not always erupt into hostilities over how to symbolize and perform the sacred nor lead to a paralysis of social agency. The order of the day may often have been to suspend confessional allegiances rather than enforce religious conflict, suggesting a pragmatic rather than polemic handling of religious plurality. This raises the urgent question of how 'normal' transconfessional and even transreligious interaction was produced in a context of highly sharpened and always present reflexivity on religious differences. Our volume takes up this question and explores it from an interdisciplinary and interconfessional perspective. The title “Forgetting Faith?” raises the question whether it was necessary or indeed possible to sidestep religious issues in specific contexts and for specific purposes. This does not mean, however, to describe early modern culture as a process of secularization. Rather, the collection invites discussion of the specific ways available to deal with confessional conflict in an oblivional mode, precisely because faith still mattered more than many other social paradigms emerging at that time, such as nationhood, ethnic origin or class defined through property.

Download or read book The Secularization Debate written by William H. Swatos and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduced to social scientific audiences by Max Weber, the concept of secularization has had a major influence on the way in which religion has been understood in the West. But at least since the late 1980s both the predictive and the descriptive adequacy of this concept have been seriously challenged. In the face of this challenge, The Secularization Debate offers a timely summary of the critical issues that have arisen over the past decade. With its wide range of essays by prominent international scholars, The Secularization Debate is sure to become a pivotal volume for anyone interested in the hotly contested concept of secularization and its continued relevance to the study of religion.

Download or read book Secularisation in the Christian World written by Michael Snape and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of modernity to secularise has been a foundational idea of the western world. Both social science and church history understood that the Christian religion from 1750 was deeply vulnerable to industrial urbanisation and the Enlightenment. But as evidence mounts that countries of the European world experienced secularising forces in different ways at different periods, the timing and causes of de-Christianisation are now widely seen as far from straightforward. Secularisation in the Christian World brings together leading scholars in the social history of religion and the sociology of religion to explore what we know about the decline of organised Christianity in Britain, Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. The chapters tackle different strands, themes, comparisons and territories to demonstrate the diversity of approach, thinking and evidence that has emerged in the last 30 years of scholarship into the religious past and present. The volume includes both new research and essays of theoretical reflection by the most eminent academics. It highlights historians and sociologists in both agreement and dispute. With contributors from eight countries, the volume also brings together many nations for the first consolidated international consideration of recent themes in de-Christianisation. With church historians and cultural historians, and religious sociologists and sociologists of the godless society, this book provides a state-of-the-art guide to secularisation studies.

Download or read book Religious Freedom in Secular States written by Md. Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-08-29 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What constitutes the core values, tenets, cultural, historic, and ideological parameters of secularism in international contexts? In twelve chapters, this edited work examines current tensions in liberal secular states where myriad rights and freedoms compete regarding education, healthcare, end-of-life choices, clothing, sexual orientation, reproduction, and minority interests.

Download or read book Secular States and Religious Diversity written by Bruce J. Berman and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary nation-states have seen the rise of religious pluralism within their borders, brought about by global migration and the challenge of radical religious movements. "Secular States and Religious Diversity" explores the meaning of secularism and religious freedom in these new contexts. The contributors chart the impact of globalization, the varying forms of secularism in Western states, and the different kinds of relations between states and religious institutions in the historical traditions and contemporary politics of Islamic, Indic, and Chinese societies. They also examine the limitations and dilemmas of governmental responses to religious diversity, and grapple with the question of how secular states deal (and should deal) with such pluralism. This volume brings in perspectives from the non-Western world and engages with viewpoints that might increase states' capacities to accommodate religious diversity positively.

Download or read book Patterns of Secularization written by Daphne Halikiopoulou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The politicization of religion is a central feature of the modern world, pointing to the continued relevance of the secularization debate: does modernization result in the decline of the social and political significance of religion or rather in a reaffirmation of religious values? This book examines the emergence of different patterns of secularization. It identifies the circumstances under which religion may remain or cease to be politically active and legitimate in societies where secularization has been initially inhibited given a strong identification with the nation. Arguing that in such societies the Church draws its power not only from its relationship with the state but also its relationship with the nation, this book identifies two patterns of secularization: (a) co-optation, and (b) confrontation. The redefinition of the Church, state and nation nexus is likely to result in secularization if (a) the church obstructs the modernisation process (church and state), and (b) if external threat perceptions decline (church and nation). The simultaneous presence of these constraints serves to redefine the role of religion in the formation of national identity. Comparing Greece and the Republic of Ireland as two cultural defence cases with a strong variation in the political and social salience of religion, this book explains Ireland's current secularization drive in terms of the fluidity of Irish national identity and the rigidity of the Irish Catholic Church (confrontation). It contrasts this with the Greek case where the Church's resilience is linked to institutional flexibility on the one hand and a reliance on an ethnic/religious national identity on the other (co-optation). In conceptualizing the contemporary role of religion in the Republic of Ireland and Greece, this book draws a number of generalizable conclusions about the political role of religion in cultural defence cases.

Download or read book Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion written by Ahmet T. Kuru and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing policy in America, France, and Turkey, this book analyzes the impact of ideological struggles on public policies toward religion.

Download or read book Secularism Catholicism and the Future of Public Life written by Gary J. Jr Adler and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Secularism, Catholicism, and the Future of Public Life, scholars from a range of disciplines respond to an essay by leading American constitutional law and Catholic legal thought scholar Douglas W. Kmiec, examining how religion, specifically Catholicism, can contribute to democracy in a secular age.

Download or read book Secularisation written by Christopher Hartney and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secularisation: New Historical Perspectives unveils an exciting range of case studies exploring emerging research in secularisation with an international outlook. Inspired by scholarship conducted by the Religious History Association, this collected volume questions the paradigm of secularisation by exploring its historical manifestations and making projections as to the future divide between religious life and the secular world. A must-read for anyone interested in events and personalities that shaped the religious landscape of the present, this volume contains meticulous historical research. It also presents a strong focus on the Southern Hemisphere, which is often largely absent in discussions of secularity. Topics covered here include schisms between secularism and Christianity in Australia and on a global scale; Jesuit frontier missions in Ibero-America; the publically religious displays of the Salvation Army; competition between church life and emerging recreational pursuits at the turn of the century; Joseph Fletcher’s contributions ethical secularity; the privileged place of Christianity within the Queensland educational system; notions of religiously justified violence amongst the ANZAC forces; and the ongoing debate between constitutional secularity and Christian nationhood in the United States of America from its foundation up until the present day. The latter part of the volume explores the secularisation paradigm as a cultural creation in its own right – an important consideration for any scholar in this field. To this end, the authors explore the mythic status of secularisation as a social and historical concept; question the validity of historical approaches to this discourse; explore whether or not definitions of ‘religion’ are too conservative to be workable; and pose the question of whether or not secular institutions like state museums are really what they claim to be. The role of religion in public life is a fascinating question to explore, and one that must be tackled via a truly international exploration of secularisation. So too must the inquisitive scholar consider the very nature of the terms employed in research. Secularisation: New Historical Perspectives is the perfect toolkit for such investigations.

Download or read book Narratives of Secularization written by Peter Harrison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is increasingly clear that histories of secularization are not simply dispassionate descriptions of the decline of religious belief and practice in the West. Rather, such narratives often seek to celebrate secularization, promote some version of it, lament it, or otherwise oppose it in favour of a programme of desecularization or resacralization. The aim of this book is to identify some of the major genres of the history of secularization and to explore their historical contexts, normative commitments, and tendential purposes. The contributors to the volume offer different perspectives on these questions, not least because a number of them are themselves participants in the cultural-political programs described above. The primary purpose of this book, however, is the identification of such programs rather than their promotion. Overall, the collection seeks to bring analytical clarity to ongoing debates about secularization and help explain the co-existence of apparently conflicting stories about the origins of Western modernity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Intellectual History Review journal.

Download or read book Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World written by David Hempton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early twenty-first century it had become a clich that there was a "God Gap" between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential "Secularization Thesis," secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernization in the Western world since around 1800. For proponents of this thesis, the United States appears as an anomaly and they accordingly give considerable attention to explaining why it is different. For other sociologists, however, the apparently high level of religiosity in the USA provides a major argument in their attempts to refute the Thesis. Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent "God Gap." It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is "American" or "European" in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities.

Download or read book Old Religion New Spirituality Implications of Secularisation and Individualisation in Estonia written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-09-06 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Estonia is often described as one of the most secularised countries in the world in terms of de-institutionalisation and de-Christianisation. Old Religion, New Spirituality: Implications of Secularisation and Individualisation in Estonia, edited by Riho Altnurme, starts with the question: what are the historical reasons for Estonia to be so secularised? The decisive factor in the diminishment in the importance of Christianity was the overlap between social classes and ethnicities. The national identity of Estonians became disconnected to any religion. Second, what are the consequences? How are the secularity of Estonia and the picture of individualised religiosity in this country linked? This book provides fresh results from surveys, archival work and analysis by a group of Estonian researchers. Contributors include: Riho Altnurme, Lea Altnurme, Priit Rohtmets, Indrek Pekko, Toomas Schvak, Ringo Ringvee, Alar Kilp, and Marko Uibu.

Download or read book Religion in the Public Square written by Renáta Uitz and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the place of religion and religious convictions in government, politics, and in public life - taking into consideration the need to respect the free exercise of religion? Challenges to existing arrangements of church-state affairs come from many corners of domestic debates and international relations. Probably most spectacularly, it also stems from the vicinity of the religious freedom of less established (or less popular) holders of faith. The underlying difficulty of these debates is that at first sight they appear to tackle the issue of the plurality of any polity, not only in its religious composition, but also concerning the community's racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity, often with lasting political consequences. The contributions in this volume offer insight into these debates across jurisdictions. Contents include: Roads to Constitutional Secularism: The Foundations of a Political-Legal Concept * Religious Fundamentalism as a Challenge to the Constitutional State * The Islamist Shari'atization of Polity and Society: A Source of Intercivilizational Conflict? * How "Reasonable" is Accommodation? * Between Aggression and Acceptance: Law, Tolerance, and Religion in Europe * De Facto Secularism in a Diversifying Religious Environment: The Changing Relationship between State and Religion in Europe * The Strasbourg Court on Issues of Religion in the Public Schools System * Russia's "Orthodox" Foreign Policy * Guide to the Perplexed: Navigating Through the Labyrinth of Forum Internum and Forum Externum in Canon Law and Public International Law (Series: Issues in Constitutional Law [ICL] - Vol. 8) [Subject: Politics, Religious Studies, Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law, Public International Law, European Law]

Download or read book Religious Education in a Plural Secularised Society A Paradigm Shift written by Leni Franken and published by Waxmann Verlag. This book was released on 2011 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many European societies are characterised by increasing forms of secularisation and religious diversity. This results in a paradigm shift with regard to religious education. For a long time, the main aim of religious education was, clearly, to educate children in their own religious tradition. Today, the aims of religious education are much broader: contributing to pupils’ general education (Allgemeinbildung) and preparing them for participation as a citizen in the future, multicultural society. As a result, the following question arises in many countries: how can ‘teaching into religion’ be transformed into or complemented by ‘learning about’ and ‘learning from (the study of) religions’? This book brings several distinguished authors in the field of religious education together to reflect on this paradigm shift. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is rather descriptive and gives an informative and up to date overview of the different discussions about religious education in several European countries. The second part is a normative reflection on the question of how religious education should be organised in plural secularised societies. “This book is very important for the discussion about religious education. Its comparative approach combined with the interdisciplinary dialogue between the different schools in the field of religious education, make this book highly recommendable for everyone who is interested in the state of the art and the future of religious education in Europe.” Didier Pollefeyt, full professor in theology and religious education at the Catholic University of Leuven