Download or read book Rulers Religion and Riches written by Jared Rubin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

Download or read book Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics written by Robert Benne and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is nothing greater than indignation to stimulate a writer to write." says Robert Benne, "and my outrage has been stirred mightily by reading so many wrongheaded 'takes' on how religion and politics ought to be related." --

Download or read book Sex and Secularism written by Joan Wallach Scott and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drawing on a wealth of scholarship by second-wave feminists and historians of religion, race, and colonialism, Scott shows that the gender equality invoked today as a fundamental and enduring principle was not originally associated with the term "secularism" when it first entered the lexicon in the nineteenth century. In fact, the inequality of the sexes was fundamental to the articulation of the separation of church and state that inaugurated Western modernity. Scott points out that Western nation-states imposed a new order of women's subordination, assigning them to a feminized familial sphere meant to complement the rational masculine realms of politics and economics. It was not until the question of Islam arose in the late twentieth century that gender equality became a primary feature of the discourse of secularism"-- Publisher's description

Download or read book For God s Sake written by Antony Loewenstein and published by Macmillan Publishers Aus.. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

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 Courts Politics and Constitutional Law written by Martin Belov and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the judicialization of politics, and the politicization of courts, affect representative democracy, rule of law, and separation of powers. This volume critically assesses the phenomena of judicialization of politics and politicization of the judiciary. It explores the rising impact of courts on key constitutional principles, such as democracy and separation of powers, which is paralleled by increasing criticism of this influence from both liberal and illiberal perspectives. The book also addresses the challenges to rule of law as a principle, preconditioned on independent and powerful courts, which are triggered by both democratic backsliding and the mushrooming of populist constitutionalism and illiberal constitutional regimes. Presenting a wide range of case studies, the book will be a valuable resource for students and academics in constitutional law and political science seeking to understand the increasingly complex relationships between the judiciary, executive and legislature.

Download or read book Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective written by J. Christopher Soper and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-11 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new framework for understanding how religion and nationalism interact across diverse countries and religious traditions.

Download or read book Religion and the State written by J. M. Barbalet and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a clear statement of the theoretical issues in the debates about secularization and post-secularism,?Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology? considers a number of major case studies? from China, Europe, Singapore and South Asia? in order to understand the rise of public religions in the modern state. By distinguishing between political secularization? the separation of state and religion? and social secularization? the transformation of the everyday practice of religion? this volume offers an integrating framework within which to analyze these different societies.

Download or read book Religion and Social Problems written by Titus Hjelm and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although students and scholars of social problems have often acknowledged the role of religion, no thorough examinations of the relation between the two have emerged. This book fills this gap by providing a definitive work on the impact of religion on social problems, religion as a solution to social problems, and religion as a social problem in itself.

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 Law and Religion in the Liberal State written by Md Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between law and religion is evident throughout history. They have never been completely independent from each other. There is no doubt that religion has played an important role in providing the underlying values of modern laws, in setting the terms of the relationship between the individual and the state, and in demanding a space for the variety of intermediate institutions which stand between individuals and the state. However, the relationships between law and religion, and the state and religious institutions differ significantly from one modern state to another. There is not one liberalism but many. This work brings together reflections upon the relationship between religion and the law from the perspectives of different sub-traditions within the broader liberal project and in light of some contemporary problems in the accommodation of religious and secular authority.

Download or read book Why We Need Religion written by Stephen T. Asma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.

Download or read book The Troubled Relationship Between Religions and the State written by Andras Koltay and published by Oxford Legal Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-24 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues discussed in this book all stand at the crossroads of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In some cases, the two rights clash when somebody practising their right to freedom of speech affects others' rights to freedom of religion, as in instances of blasphemy and hate speech. In other cases, the two rights, reinforcing one another, together provide protection for the individual. Not even this joint protection, however, is always sufficient to prevent state intervention, for example, the restriction of rights in wearing religious symbols or religious advertising rules. A question of a third type is when the state, or a state body, enters the public space and becomes the 'speaker' on matters of religion, in which case the state might be subject to special restrictions. Although their ideological and constitutional foundations seem stable, the extent of freedom of religion and freedom of speech have repeatedly been the subject of public debates because of social and political changes in a dynamically transforming Europe. Identifying the precise demarcation lines between these rights by means of the law is not a task that has been accomplished completely or for all time. The increasing rate of immigration, with a resulting involuntary cohabitation of various religious cultures, as well as the continual weakening of the Christian character of the continent make it critical to find the right responses to the questions discussed in this book, both in the individual European legal systems and at the level of the European community of states and of the European system of protecting human rights. The first and second chapters of the book discuss the appearance of religions in the public sphere and in public education. Traditionally, the state is not a subject of fundamental rights, and yet it takes a position on questions relating to religion, which-no matter how we explain it-is a type of 'speech'. This raises the question of how such speech can be restricted, or 'where are the limits on the "freedom of speech" of the state'? The role of the state might be to defend or even shape the community identity of its citizens. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the restriction of opinions with religious content. Chapter 3 analyses the restrictions on wearing symbols and clothing imposed by both the state and private entities, whereas Chapter 4 discusses the regulation of publishing religious advertisements in the media. Unlike the issues related predominantly to Christianity discussed in the first two chapters, the questions of wearing symbols and clothing also involve the restrictions of opinions expressed by followers of Islam. Chapter 5 of the book is dedicated to questions relating to defamation of religions and blasphemy. The topicality and significance of these issues became obvious after the tragic events in Paris on January 2015, where many were killed in an attack against the editorial offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo. The books touches upon certain types of conduct which are rooted in religious conviction and may have legal consequences, but which, in the absence of an expressive content, do not belong to the sphere of freedom of speech. Examples of this include doctors refusing to carry out an abortion, or registrars unwilling to administer the marriage of same-sex couples. since we do not regard such types of conduct as relating to the freedom of speech, they are not discussed in this book. Andras Koltay's seminal monograph tackles these and other issues. It is a magisterial work, possibly the best exposition of the subject available today.

Download or read book The Trouble with Sauling Around written by Madeline Ruth Walker and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining autobiographical texts by Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X), Oscar Zeta Acosta (The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People), Amiri Baraka (The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones), and Richard Rodriguez (Hunger of Memory, Days of Obligation, and Brown), Walker questions the often rosy views and simplistic binary conceptions of religious conversion. Her reading of these texts takes into account the conflict and serial changes the authors experience in a society that marginalizes them, the manner in which religious conversion offers ethnic Americans “salvation” through cultural assimilation or cultural nationalism, and what conversion, anticonversion, and deconversion narratives tell us about the problematic effects of religion that often go unremarked because of a code of “special respect” and political correctness. Walker asserts that critics have been too willing to praise religion in America as salutary or beyond the ken of criticism because religious belief is seen as belonging to an untouchable arena of cultural identity. The Trouble with Sauling Around goes beyond traditional literary criticism to pay close attention to the social phenomena that underlie religious conversion narratives and considers the potentially negative effects of religious conversion, something that has been likewise neglected by scholars.

Download or read book The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1993-02-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe's "Black Death" contributed to the rise of nation states, mercantile economies, and even the Reformation. Will the AIDS epidemic have similar dramatic effects on the social and political landscape of the twenty-first century? This readable volume looks at the impact of AIDS since its emergence and suggests its effects in the next decade, when a million or more Americans will likely die of the disease. The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States addresses some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in the public debate over AIDS. This landmark book explores how AIDS has affected fundamental policies and practices in our major institutions, examining: How America's major religious organizations have dealt with sometimes conflicting values: the imperative of care for the sick versus traditional views of homosexuality and drug use. Hotly debated public health measures, such as HIV antibody testing and screening, tracing of sexual contacts, and quarantine. The potential risk of HIV infection to and from health care workers. How AIDS activists have brought about major change in the way new drugs are brought to the marketplace. The impact of AIDS on community-based organizations, from volunteers caring for individuals to the highly political ACT-UP organization. Coping with HIV infection in prisons. Two case studies shed light on HIV and the family relationship. One reports on some efforts to gain legal recognition for nonmarital relationships, and the other examines foster care programs for newborns with the HIV virus. A case study of New York City details how selected institutions interact to give what may be a picture of AIDS in the future. This clear and comprehensive presentation will be of interest to anyone concerned about AIDS and its impact on the country: health professionals, sociologists, psychologists, advocates for at-risk populations, and interested individuals.

Download or read book Human Rights and the Separation of State and Religion written by Francis-Vincent Anthony and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-08-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text highlights key aspects of the religion/church-state relationship/debate, and related hitherto marginal topics. The contributions make clear that there is no clear blueprint for an optimal relationship between religion/church and state. Individual states and countries are analysed on the granular level for example, to address mono-religious against poly-religious as well as secular societies. Among others, chapters address education, migration and politics against religion as well as the effect of LGBTQ+ communities on religion and societies. This collected volume appeals to researchers, and students working in religious studies and political science.

Download or read book Beyond Religious Freedom written by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. Beyond Religious Freedom persuasively argues that these initiatives create the very social tensions and divisions they are meant to overcome. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd looks at three critical channels of state-sponsored intervention: international religious freedom advocacy, development assistance and nation building, and international law. She shows how these initiatives make religious difference a matter of law, resulting in a divide that favors forms of religion authorized by those in power and excludes other ways of being and belonging. In exploring the dizzying power dynamics and blurred boundaries that characterize relations between "expert religion," "governed religion," and "lived religion," Hurd charts new territory in the study of religion in global politics. A forceful and timely critique of the politics of promoting religious freedom, Beyond Religious Freedom provides new insights into today's most pressing dilemmas of power, difference, and governance.