Showing papers on "Secularization published in 1993"

Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life

Abstract: Preface Part I. Shifting Boundaries: 1. The religious and the secular in Victorian Britain 2. Cultural apostasy and the foundations of Victorian intellectual life 3. The crisis of faith and the faith that was lost 4. The secularization of the social vision of British natural theology Part II. Science and the Wider Culture: 5. Victorian scientific naturalism and Thomas Carlyle 6. Rainfall, plagues, and the Prince of Wales 7. The Victorian conflict between science and religion: a professional dimension 8. Public science in Britain: 1880-1919 Part III. Moderns and Ancients: 9. British politics and the demise of the Roman public: 1700-1939 10. Ancient materialism and modern science: Lucretius among the Victorians 11. Virgil in Victorian classical contexts 12. The triumph of idealism in Victorian classical studies Index.

Intraorganizational Power and Internal Secularization in Protestant Denominations

Abstract: Internal secularization is reconceptualized as religious authority's declining scope within religious organizations. It is analyzed as the outcome of intraorganizational conflics between elites of two parallel stuctures within denominations: religious authority and agencies. Using longitudinal data collected from 83 Protestant denominations, this article finds that, generally, religious authority has decreasing control over denominations' organizational resources. But internal secularization is neither complete nor irreversible. Drawing on organizational and social movement theory, this article connects variation in internal secularization primarily to variation in the extent to which both religious authority and agencies are centralized. Recently resurgent religious authority is discussed.

Family planning: cultural and religious perspectives

Abstract: The world population explosion has caused political leaders to look upon national and regional birth control projects as vital. Support for regulation of individual fertility has been evident in all cultures, and at all times, even in those societies in which social and religious rules have favoured the abundant production of children. As the secularization of Western society and scientific enquiry gained momentum during the modern period, knowledge of reproduction increased and was applied to control human population growth. The various methods of contraception and their development through the years from the ancient ideas to the modern era are presented. Each approach to fertility control has its advantages and disadvantages. No one method is perfect for everyone, for every clinical setting, and in every culture. Higher levels of fertility have been associated with 'traditional', religious prohibitions on some forms of birth control, 'traditional' values about the importance of children and the priority of family, and 'traditional' family and gender roles reinforced by religion. The attitude of the main religious groups to contraceptive practice is discussed.

One People?: Tradition, Modernity and Jewish Unity

Abstract: Preface Note on Transliteration and Place Names Abbreviations 1 The Crisis of Contemporary Jewish Thought Babel Inverted * Interpeting the Holocaust * The Significance of Israel * Understanding Peoplehood * Strategies of Jewish Thought * Beyond Pessimism and Optimism 2 The Birth of the Adjectival Jew Secularization and the Persistence of Religion * Accommodation or Resistance? * The Jewish Experience of Modernity * The Adjectival Jew * Judaism and Denomination * Denomination and Mutual Misunderstanding * The Secularization of Unity * Orthodoxy and Jewish Unity * A Religious Idea in a Secular Age 3 Orthodoxy, History, and Culture Conserving the Covenant * Interpeting Change * Developments and Variations * Torah as Code or Culture * Dual Sensibilities * Derekh eretz: Jewish or Secular? * Principle and Policy 4 Orthodoxy and Jewish Peoplehood English and French Models of Emancipation * Eastern Europe * East European Echoes * The Hungarian and German Experience * Consequences of Secession * Contrary Forces 5 Tradition and Diversity Aggadic Pluralism * Alternative Interpretations * The Search for Authority * Halakhic Universalism * The Search for Stringency * Moderation as a Religious Norm * Beyond Sectarianism 6 Inclusivism Halakhic Inclusivism * Inclusivism: The Rationale of Covenant * The Cognitive Impact of Social Change * Inclusivity and the Desire to be Included * Inclusivism and Post-Holocaust Theologies 7 A Collision of Consciousness Pluralism and Tradition * The Social Context of Pluralism * Halakhic Argument, Halakhic Decision * Pluralism or Inclusivism? * The Modern Self * The Traditional Jewish Self * The Autonomous Self and Judaism * Integrity and Function * Integrity and Tradition * The Paradox of Integrity 8 Schism? Rosenzweig and Fackenheim * Hirschensohn and Kook * Two Jewries? * Resolutions * A Divided Unity 9 The Future of a People The Rejection of Rejection * An Idea in Crisis * Against Convental Dualism * The Third Crisis * Pluralism, Exclusivism, Inclusivism * Inclusivist Imperatives Bibliography Index

Different Religions, Different Politics: Evaluating the Role of Competing Religious Traditions in American Politics and Law

Abstract: We are in the midst of a continuing debate about the role of religion in American politics and law. Advocates of a greater role for religion in public life—and I count myself among them—lament the privatization of religion and the secularization of public debate. Although some of the claims about privatization and secularization may be exaggerated, it seems undeniable that religion, despite its apparently robust private health, plays a relatively modest role in the public life of modern America. The public role that it does play, moreover, is under a hovering cloud of suspicion, with critics constantly suggesting that the separation of church and state is being threatened.In this essay, I advance a radical proposition: that privatization and secularization are the product, in part, of religious freedom run amuck. In particular, the concept of religious freedom has evolved to include not merely legal toleration, but also a strong commitment to religious equality. This principle of religious equality supports the protection and nurturing of religious diversity in the private realm. Ironically, however, it also suggests that the diversity among religions is irrelevant in determining the proper role for religion in the public sphere, for the equality principle implies that what is right for one is right for all. On this view, whatever the proper role for religion in politics and law, it must be no different for one religion than another. This public leveling of religion, moreover, tends to ensure that the “equal” role that religions play in American public life will be modest, if not inconsequential. Even as we continue to extol its private diversity, religion has become publicly generic and thereby largely insignificant.

Les balises étatiques de la religion au Canada

Abstract: This systematic study of relations between religion and politics in Canada examines the growing role of State processes in the activities of religious groups. This study is divided into two parts. The first part, which deals with historical aspects, shows how the growth of the Canadian State and of the provinces imposed limits on religious activity and led to the consolidation of the establishment of the three main Christian Churches, closely associated but subordinated to the State.Between 1960 and 1991, the spectacular growth of the provincial and federal State apparatuses led to the decline of the majority historical religions. Their loss of influence, demographic stagnation and lack of resources have combined with growing state regulation and dispossession of sectors that the State had traditionally abandoned to the Churches. According to the authors, this constant and growing extension of State control better explains the loss of influence of Churches than secularization.

The Globalization of Religious Markets: International Innovations, Malaysian Consumption

Abstract: Religion in late capitalism may be conceptualized as an international salvationary market. As suggested by proponents of the secularization thesis, the declining public power of religion frees individuals to privately select from a wide range of religious services without necessarily responding to institutional pressures. In Malaysia secularization is an uneven process, bifurcating religious practices into an Islamic and non-Islamic field. The former is linked to international Islamic institutions and maintains a high public profile with little room for private choice. The latter lacks currency in the political structure and is freer to innovate with less government interference. The aim of this paper is to explore the market implications of religious asymmetry in Malaysia.

Liberals and Conservatives, Religious and Political: A Conjuncture of Modern History

Abstract: In the twentieth century, religious and political liberalism have generally been congruent, as were religious and political conservatism, along the dimension of universalism and particularism. In recent years the terminology has grown confused, when communists in the ex-Soviet region are described as conservatives, and proponents both of market capitalism and of ethnic nationalism are described as liberals. Changes in content of liberalism and conservatism are also found in religious history. The issue of married priests today is considered to be a liberal reform within Catholicism; whereas in the twelfth century, reformers attacked married priests as corruption and abuse; at the Protestant Reformation, it was presented as church reform to abolish clerical celibacy. The rhetorical contrast "liberal/conservative" ties the concepts to the mobilization of conflict irrespective of its content. Our familiar congruence of liberalism and conservatism in religion and politics is historically specific; it emerged at the exhaustion of the religious wars in the late seventeenth century, and developed along with secularization into the early twentieth century. As particularism along ethnic and gender lines becomes a major grounds of mobilization in the late twentieth century, the classic liberal/conservative contrast appears to be eroding.

In From the Cold? Christian Parties in Scandinavia

Abstract: The combination of extreme religious homogeneity and advanced secularization is a special feature of the Scandinavian societies as compared to the rest of Europe. This difference largely explains why Christian parties have remained small compared to the rest of Europe. This article surveys the creation and popular following of the Christian parties in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The four parties acquired an image of “moral vigilantes” from the beginning. Their best electoral results, however, are a result of a more general political protest. Despite the recent success of the Swedish party, the parties are not likely to reach a position beyond that of a minor party with basically a moralist image.

Faith without dogma : the place of religion in postmodern societies

Abstract: We live in a time of high Church membership, but low Church attendance. Franco Ferrarotti, arguably the most important sociologist of religion alive, captures the source of this paradox In the title of his new book, Faith without Dogma. For it is belief that propels membership, while the absence of dogma results in a reticence to accept hierarchical direction from above or beyond. Basing much of his analysis on the postwar struggles within Roman Catholicism, Ferrarotti views the demand for religious renewal and revival as part and parcel of the emergence of broad social agendas--agendas to which not even the Roman curia could remain impervious. The former easy relationships between Church and State, especially authoritarian states in Europe and Latin America, gave way to a critical defense of individual rights within a context of a broadened vision of Christian doctrine. In addition to issues Involved in internal affairs of religion, Ferrarotti explores a series of developments that have changed for all time the nature of Church survival. The critical element, one that goes beyond specific doctrinal accommodations, is the new primary connection of Church to people rather than Church to State. This came about through the widespread acceptance of science and technology as frames of intellectual reference, the emergence of secularization as mediating religious claims and the creation from the Enlightenment to the Postmodern eras of "civil religions." The volume concludes with a set of chapters on the nature of sacred events and objects, the emergence of new varieties of prayer, and concludes with a chapter on the relationship of ideology to theology prepared especially for the English language edition of Faith without Dogma. This is a book likely to attract a broad audience among religionists and culturologists, as well as social scientists.

Confronting Secularization: Origins of the London Society for the Study of Religion

Abstract: The secularization process in western society, first clearly discernible in the Italian Renaissance, reached a certain plateau at the beginning of the twentieth century. Whatever else might be meant by “the secularization process,” it meant at least, and means in these pages, the gradual deposition of religion from almost every structure and dimension of society except, perhaps, the most private and personal. To thoughtful individuals possessed of mature religious convictions secularization sometimes seemed to portend the end of religion generally: not by law or sword, but simply by social absorption. To meet this challenge, not by denouncing the secularization process nor modernity in general, but simply by sharing their own thoughts on religion and what its role might or should be in the newly secularized western world, a group of prominent London-based men formed in 1904 the London Society for the Study of Religion. The pages which follow are a study of this Society's origins.

The secular ideology of jewish ethnicity in New Zealand

Abstract: Gans (1979) and Alba (1990) have argued that ethnicity in white America is becoming increasingly “symbolic” as the social structural factors which supported group solidarity become eroded by the forces of modernity. Jewish ethnicity has been fundamentally affected by these forces which have lessened occupational and social concentration and the cultural distinctiveness of Jews. In an era when personal identity is continually reconstructed and idiosyncratically defined, a countervailing ideology of civil Judaism has developed which stresses the survival and solidarity of the Jewish people in such a “posttraditional” environment. This paper examines the meaningfulness of the themes of secular Judaism to a sample of New Zealand Jews who were interviewed at length about the nature of their Jewish identity. Secular Judaism seems to have had a very small impact upon them. I suggest that the difference between New Zealand and the United States and Australia, where secular Judaism is seen as an important ideological force, can be accounted for by the position of New Zealand’s small, mobile and markedly unobtrusive Jewish community, in a society which has been described as being aggressively secular and egalitarian.

Rebuilding Sacred Worlds: Lay-Oriented Buddhist and Catholic Reformism in Malaysia

Abstract: Implicit in the reformist movements that have mobilized Catholic and Buddhist lay people is a strong response to the rapid pace of Islamization and aggressive Protestant evangelism in Malaysia Catholics and Buddhists, in rebuilding and defending their sacred worlds buffeted by ideological competition and hegemonic technologically based professionalism characteristic of capitalistic culture, have committed themselves to systematic programmes of renewal and reformism that greatly enhance the role of the laity These programmes, in each case, have taken place within distinctive institutional frameworks Among Catholics, laicization was initiated by the clergy in the context of reform from above, while among Buddhists the laity themselves took the lead Neither of these routes to laicization can avoid the paradox of secularization Mobilization of the laity to intensify religious practice , and to systematize world-views and organization, involves a contradictory process of re-enchanting a sacred enclave within a disenchanted world and defending it against the claims and intrusions of other such enclaves by secular methods of organization

L'Ancien Testament a-t-il contribuéà la territorialisation de la Suisse?:

Abstract: Has knowledge of the Old Testament - strongly internalized over the centuries - influenced the current upsurge in Swiss nationalistic feeling and therefore Swiss territorial consciousness? This article aims to test this hypothesis. First the possible limits of this comparison are considered. Insofar as correspondences exist between the Bible and the territory of Switzerland, they could be duplicated in other countries of the world. Above all, these correspondences could be replicated in European countries, but to varying degrees of exactitude. Second, the argument is justified by claiming that it is much more than formal analogy that approximates Switzerland to biblical Israel and it is an awareness of being “special” which in turn legitimates its will to be identified as a race apart. The major - paradoxical - convergence between the two springs from a current country-wide trend towards secularization which is strongly influencing Switzerland's development. This trend is responsible for the growth of a h...

Religious Factors and General Social Attitudes Among Five Industrial Nations

Abstract: Religious affiliation and religious commitment have been seen to affect, in a variety of ways, social and religious values and attitudes (cf. Herberg 1955; Lenski 1961; Johnstone 1975). However, traditional religion is seeing declining involvement and commitment among industrial nations (cf. Sorokin 1956; Berger 1967, 1969; Luckmann 1967, Stark & Glock 1968; Wilson 1982; Inglehart 1990). The role of religion in these societies is waning as science and technology take on greater and greater significance and as the social life once defined by religion changes considerably (Wilson 1982). Nonetheless, not all researchers agree with the “secularization thesis”. In the United States, for example, it has been claimed that “religion is one of the most important of the many ways in which Americans ’get involved’ in the life of their community and society.... religion has an important role to play in the realm. But as with every other major institution, the place of religion in our society has changed drastically over time” (Bellah et al. 1985, p. 219).

Secularisatie als gezichtsbedrog

Abstract: Secularization, conceived as a process of growing social marginalization of religion, is one of the main topics of the sociology of religion But how is this process possible, in the light of the many functions ascribed to religion by many classical sociologists? The usual answer is: by virtue of so called functional alternatives In this article, the thesis is presented, that the so-called functional alternatives are themselves religious Anything can be religious as it is charged with charismatic emotions Religiosity is conceived as an anthropological category Man is an animal religiosum He needs religiosity in order to keep his worldview stable When this idea of religiosity is accepted, secularization becomes partly a misconception

The Jesuit Journal Relations, 1959-1969: Modernity, Religion and Nationalism in Quebec

Abstract: In this paper I wish to trace the development of the relationship of religion and nationalism in Relations, a journal produced since 1941 by a group of French-speaking Montreal Jesuits. In particular, I would like to examine the influence of the social modernization represented by Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s and the Catholic Church’s own wrestling with modernity which found expression in the Second Vatican Council. These two dramatic events introduced a painful period of transition for the Jesuits of Quebec since the secularization of Quebec politics and society diminished their status and power while the redefinition of the church that was called for during the Second Vatican Council challenged their conservative Catholicism. Because the writers of Relations hoped to remain faithful to their heritage while adapting it to new circumstances, one can note a constant effort to redefine both Quebec Society and Catholicism. During the 1960s, the Jesuits refused to abandon the corporatist orientation of traditional nationalism which marked the first twenty years of the journal. However, they did not simply restate the corporatist policies of the 1930s which had been discredited by the actions of right-wing governments in the 1940s. The Jesuits of Relations transformed corporatism from a concrete political strategy into a philosophical basis for their criticism of the modernization of Quebec society as it was defined by the liberals, social democrats and socialists who supported Quebec’s Quiet Revolution. I wish to argue that this nationalist opposition was not opposition to modernity itself as some might argue (see Tiryakian and Nevitte

Secularization—a Boon to Mankind?

Abstract: With the progress of science and technology, man has stopped believing in magic powers, in spirits, and demons; he has lost his sense of prophecy and, above all, his sense of the sacred. Reality has become dreary, flat and utilitarian, leaving a great void in the souls of men which they seek to fill by furious activity and through various devices and substitutes…. Mysticism becomes mystification, community becomes communitarianism, and life is reduced to a series of unrelated experiences. Academicians and intellectuals are begged for a message, although by the very nature of things they are entrenched each in his own specialty. —Julien Freund, The Sociology of Max Weber