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Religion in the 21st Century
In spite of the debate about secularization or de-secularization, the existential-bodily need for religion is basically the same as always. What have been changed are the horizons within which religions are interpreted and the relationships within which religions are integrated. This book explores how religions continue to challenge secular democracy and science, and how religions are themselves being challenged by secular values and practices. All traditions - whether religious or secular - experience a struggle over authority, and this struggle seems to intensify with globalization, as it has brought people around the world in closer contact with each other. In this book internationally leading scholars from sociology, law, political science, religious studies, theology and the religion and science debate, take stock of the current interdisciplinary research on religion and open new perspectives at the cutting edge of the debate on religion in the 21st century.
Contesting Secularism
As we enter the twenty-first century, the role of religion within civic society has become an issue of central concern across the world. The complex trends of secularism, multiculturalism and the rise of religiously motivated violence raise fundamental questions about the relationship between political institutions, civic culture and religious groups. Contesting Secularism represents a major intervention into this debate. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars from across the world it analyses how secularism functions as a political doctrine in different national contexts put under pressure by globalisation. In doing so it presents different models for the relationship between ...
Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred
Is it true that Christianity is being marginalised by the secular media, at the expense of Islam? Are the mass media Islamophobic? Is atheism on the rise in media coverage? Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred explores such questions and argues that television and newspapers remain key sources of popular information about religion. They are particularly significant at a time when religious participation in Europe is declining yet the public visibility and influence of religions seems to be increasing. Based on analysis of mainstream media, the book is set in the context of wider debates about the sociology of religion and media representation. The authors draw on research cond...
Varieties of Religious Establishment
Advocacy for religious freedom has become a global project while religion, and the management of religion, has become of increasing interest to scholars across a wider range of disciplines. Rather than adopting the common assumption that religious freedom is simply incompletely realized, the authors in this book suggest that the starting point for understanding religion in public life today should be religious establishment. In the hyper-globalized world of the politics of religious freedom today, a focus on establishments brings into view the cultural assumptions, cosmologies, anthropologies, and institutions which structure religion and religious diversity. Leading international scholars from a diverse range of disciplines explore how countries today live with religious difference and consider how considering establishments reveals the limitations of universal, multicultural, and interfaith models of religious freedom. Examining the various forms religion takes in Tunisia, Canada, Taiwan, South Africa, and the USA, amongst others, this book argues that legal protections for religious freedom can only be understood in a context of socially and culturally specific constraints.
That Is Not Who We Are!
How can liberals offer “stories of peoplehood” that can compete with illiberal populist and nationalist stories? Rogers Smith has long argued for the importance of “stories of peoplehood” in constituting political communities. By enabling a people to tell others and themselves who they are, such stories establish the people’s identity and values and guide its actions. They can promote national unity and unity of groups within and across nations. Smith argues that nationalist populists have done a better job than liberals in providing stories of peoplehood that advance their worldview: the nation as ethnically defined, threatened by enemies, and blameless for its troubles, which come from its victimization by malign elites and foreigners. Liberals need to offer their own stories expressing more inclusive values. Analyzing three liberal stories of peoplehood—those of John Dewey, Barack Obama, and Abraham Lincoln—Smith argues that all have value and all are needed, though he sees Lincoln’s, based on the Declaration of Independence, as the most promising.
Religion in Consumer Society
Presenting an overview of an emerging field in the study of contemporary religion, this book, together with a complementary volume Religion in the Neoliberal Age, explores issues of religion, neoliberalism and consumer society. Claiming that we have entered a new phase that implies more than the recasting of state-religion relations, the authors examine how religious changes are historically anchored in modernity but affected by the commoditization, mediatization, neoliberalization and globalization of society and social life. Religion in Consumer Society explores religion as both shaped by consumer culture and as shaping consumer culture. Following an introduction which critically analyses ...
Sincerity in Politics and International Relations
This edited volume examines concepts of sincerity in politics and international relations in order to discuss what we should expect of politicians, within what parameters they should work, and how their decisions and actions could be made consistent with morality. The volume features an international cast of authors who specialize in the topic of sincerity in politics and international relations. Looking at how sincerity bears on political actions, practices, and institutions at national and international level, the introduction serves to place the chapters in the context of ongoing contemporary debates on sincerity in politics and international theory. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary issue in politics and international relations, including corruption, public hypocrisy, cynicism, trust, security, policy formulation and decision-making, political apology, public reason, political dissimulation, denial and self-deception, and will argue against the background of a Kantian view of sincerity as unconditional. Offering a significant comprehensive outlook on the practical limits of sincerity in political affairs, this work will be of great interest to both students and scholars.
Divorcing Traditions
Divorcing Traditions is an ethnography of Islamic legal expertise and practices in India, a secular state in which Muslims are a significant minority and where Islamic judgments are not legally binding. Katherine Lemons argues that an analysis of divorce in accordance with Islamic strictures is critical to the understanding of Indian secularism. Lemons analyzes four marital dispute adjudication forums run by Muslim jurists or lay Muslims to show that religious law does not muddle the categories of religion and law but generates them. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted in these four institutions—NGO-run women's arbitration centers (mahila panchayats); sharia courts (dar...
Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy
Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy provides a lens through which to explore critical questions relating to contemporary religion in public life, and the institutionalisation of Islam in particular. Providing a rich description of the personnel, practice, and politics of contemporary Muslim chaplaincy, the authors consider the extent to which Muslim chaplaincy might be distinctive in Britain relative to the work of Muslim chaplains in the USA and other countries. This book will make a major contribution to international debate about the place of religion in public life and institutions. This book derives from research that has depended on exclusive access to a wide range of public institutions and personnel who largely work 'behind closed doors'. By making public the work of these chaplains and critically examining the impact of their work within and beyond their institutions, this book offers a groundbreaking study in the field of contemporary religion that will stimulate discussion for many years to come about Islam and Muslims in Western societies.
