Showing papers on "Secularization published in 2006"

Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives

Abstract: Social scientists sometimes seem not to know what to do with religion. In the first century of sociologys history as a discipline, the reigning concern was explaining the emergence of the modern world, and that brought with it an expectation that religion would simply fade from the scene as societies became diverse, complex, and enlightened. As the century approached its end, however, a variety of global phenomena remained dramatically unexplained by these theories. Among the leading contenders for explanatory power to emerge at this time were rational choice theories of religious behavior. Researchers who have spent time in the field, observing religious groups and interviewing practitioners, however, have questioned the sufficiency of these market models. Studies abound that describe thriving religious phenomena that fit neither the old secularization paradigm nor the equations predicting vitality only among organizational entrepreneurs with strict orthodoxies. In this collection of previously unpublished essays, scholars who have been immersed in field research in a wide variety of settings draw on those observations from the field to begin to develop more helpful ways to study religion in modern lives. The authors examine how religion functions on the ground in a pluralistic society, how it is experienced by individuals, and how it is expressed in social institutions. Taken as a whole, these essays point to a new approach to the study of religion, one that emphasizes individual experience and social context over strict categorization and data collection.

Religion and Political Economy in an International Panel

Abstract: Two important theories of religiosity are the secularization hypothesis and the religion-market model. According to the former, sometimes called a demand-side theory, economic development reduces religious participation and beliefs. According to the latter, described as a supply-side theory, religiosity depends on the presence of a state religion, regulation of the religion market, suppression of organized religion under Communism, and the degree of religious pluralism. We assess the theories by using survey information for 68 countries over the last 20 years, measuring attendance at formal religious services, religious beliefs, and self-identification as religious. In accordance with the secularization view, overall economic development-represented by per capita GDP-tends to reduce religiosity. Moreover, instrumental estimates suggest that this link reflects causation from economic development to religiosity, rather than the reverse. The presence of an official state religion tends to increase religiosity, probably because of the subsidies that flow to organized religion. However, in accordance with the religion-market model, religiosity falls with government regulation of the religion market and Communist suppression. Greater religious pluralism raises attendance at formal services but has no significant effects on religious beliefs or self-identification as religious. Although religiosity declines overall with economic development, the nature of the interaction varies with the dimension of development. For example, religiosity is positively related to education and the presence of children and negatively related to urbanization.

Mapping Global Values

Abstract: Modernization goes through two main phases, each of which brings distinctive changes in people's worldviews. The Industrial Revolution was linked with a shift from traditional to secular-rational values, bringing bureaucratization, centralization, standardization and the secularization of authority. In the post-industrial phase of modernization, a shift from survival values to self-expression values, brings increasing emancipation from both religious and secular-rational authority. Rising mass emphasis on self-expression values makes democracy increasingly likely to emerge.Although the desire for freedom is a universal human aspiration, it does not take top priority when people grow up with the feeling that survival is uncertain. But when survival seems secure, increasing emphasis on self-expression values makes the emergence of democracy increasingly likely where it does not yet exist, and makes democracy increasingly effective where it already exists.

Religion, European Secular Identities and European Integration

Abstract: Since the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 that established the EEC and initiated the ongoing process of European integration, Western European societies have undergone a rapid, drastic, and seemingly irreversible process of secularization. In this respect, one can talk of the emergence of a post-Christian Europe. At the same time, the process of European integration, the eastward expansion of the European Union, and the drafting of a European constitution have triggered fundamental questions concerning European identity and the role of Christianity in that identity. What constitutes “Europe”? How and where should one draw the external territorial and the internal cultural boundaries of Europe? The most controversial, yet rarely openly confronted and therefore most anxiety-producing, issues are the potential integration of Turkey and the potential integration of non-European immigrants, who in most European countries happen to be overwhelmingly Muslim. But the eastward expansion of the European Union, particularly the incorporation of an assertive Catholic Poland, and the debates over some kind of affirmation or recognition of the Christian heritage in the preamble of the new European constitution, have added unexpected “religious” irritants to the debates over Europeanization. It is the interrelation between these phenomena – the role of Catholic Poland, the incorporation of Turkey, the integration of Muslim immigrants, and references to the Christian heritage in the European constitution – and the European secular mindset that I would like to explore in this chapter.

How secular is Europe

Abstract: A large body of literature has developed, yielding evidence that religion in general and Churches and Church leaders in particular have lost their once dominant position in contemporary Europe. Evidence is often cited in declining levels of church attendance. Whether Europe should also be qualified as secularized in terms of religious beliefs remains unclear. In this paper we investigate the degree to which European people are secular, focusing not only on religious practices, but also on beliefs. We argue that trajectories of religious change occur all over Europe, but not at similar speeds. We formulate hypotheses regarding the differences in the degree to which individuals and societies are secularized. Data from the recent European Values Study surveys are used to empirically test these hypotheses concerning patterns of variation in religious beliefs and practices. The findings provide evidence in favour of secularization theories and in contradiction to rational choice theories. In Europe, religious pluralism produces not higher levels, but lower levels of religiosity. The findings also reveal that religious denomination as well as cultural and socio-economic heritages are important factors in explaining the patchwork pattern in levels of religiosity and religious participation in contemporary Europe.

Secularization and Cultural Criticism: Religion, Nation, and Modernity

Abstract: Religion is an undiscovered country for much of the secular academy, which remains deeply ambivalent about it as an object of study. On the one hand, secular scholars agree that it is time to take religion seriously. On the other, these same scholars persist in assuming that religion rests not on belief but on power and ideology. According to Vincent Pecora, the idea of the secular itself is the source of much of the contradiction and confusion in contemporary thought about religion. Pecora aims here to work through the paradoxes of secularization, which emerges in this book as an intractable problem for cultural criticism in the nation-states of the post-Enlightenment West. "Secularization and Cultural Criticism" examines the responses of a wide range of thinkers Edward Said, Talal Asad, Jurgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, Emile Durkheim, Carl Schmitt, Matthew Arnold, and Virginia Woolf, among others to illustrate exactly why the problem of secularization in the study of society and culture should matter once again. Exploring the endemic difficulty posed by religion for the modern academy, Pecora makes sense of the value and potential impasses of secular cultural criticism in a global age. "

Introduction: Theorizing and Studying Religion

Abstract: Though religion appears to play a prominent role in the contemporary political and cultural landscape of the United States and elsewhere, relatively few geographers are contributing toward a better appreciation of this phenomenon. A 2001 review of the field countered earlier charges of incoherence by noting particular strengths in geographic research on religion, and more recent publications by geographers have appeared, but the overall picture has not yet matched the strong wave of media treatment and popular interest in religion. A basic question is whether religion really matters in the world today. This question has been addressed in a highly prominent recent debate over secularization theory, which raises important implications for the relevance of geography and suggests the need for both theoretical and empirical contributions. The articles in this theme section comprise the contributions of five geographers toward theorizing and studying religion. Our broad intent is to reinvigorate discou...

Political Roof and Sacred Canopy?: Religion and the EU Constitution

Abstract: Debate over the place of Christianity in European politics and society has made an important come-back. The Convention on the Future of Europe’s deliberations over the EU Constitution has thrown into relief the role of religion in defining ‘Europeanness’. In the context of a secularized Europe, Christianity is fighting for its institutional recognition and space in the public sphere. Religion may offer a cultural identity and work both to resist and to accommodate change. However, the Christian mobilization has been challenged by those who defend the secular order. The debate over whether Christianity should be seen as constitutive of European identity has been framed by wider concerns about collective identities and memories in Europe.

Secularization and the impotence of individualized religion

Abstract: The secularization paradigm combines two things: an assertion about changes in the presence and nature of religion, and a collection of related explanations of those changes. It is not a universally applicable scientific law, but a description and explanation of the past of European societies and their settler offspring. Contrary to often repeated caricatures, it is not a simple evolutionary model and does not imply a single uniform future—but it does suppose that there are “socio-logics” to societal changes. Some changes go together; others do not. For example, feudal societies can have effective state churches; culturally diverse liberal democracies cannot. And that is not an accident. As I show below, it can be explained by fundamental features of the latter sort of society.

Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction

Abstract: Introduction 1. Dissent: Wesley to Blake 2. Unitarianism: Priestley to Gaskell 3. The Oxford Movement: Wordsworth to Hopkins 4. Evangelicalism: Bronte to Eliot 5. Secularization: Dickens to Hardy 6. Catholicism and Mysticism: Husymans to Chesterton

The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era

Abstract: Preface Introduction. Nature is the Book of God Chapter 1. The Argument Against Design from Deism to Blake Chapter Two. Arbitrary Acts of Mind: Natural Theology in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Chapter Three. Theory, Practice, and Anna Barbauld Chapter Four. Natural Designs: William Paley, Immanuel Kant, and the Power of Analogy Chapter Five. Mansfield Park and the End of Natural Theology Chapter Six. Wordsworth: The Shape of Analogy Chapter Seven. Reading With a Worthy Eye: Secularization and Evil Chapter Eight. Religion Three Ways Afterword. Intelligent Design and Religious Ignoramuses or, the Difference between Theory and Literature Endnotes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

Religious Participation among Muslims: Iranian Exceptionalism

Abstract: Recent research has suggested that secularization, understood either as the decline of religious beliefs or the marginalization of religion in public life, has not occurred in most parts of the world. Islam especially has remained a vibrant force that affects how people make sense of social relations and politics. However, the indicators of religiosity in predominantly Muslim countries have not been studied extensively. Although these societies are assumed to be characterized by high levels of religious belief, research has demonstrated significant variance in mosque attendance rates. In particular, mosque attendance rates in Iran are surprisingly low. This article aims to specify the reasons for the low rates of mosque attendance among Iranians. The data for the article come from the World Values Survey that was conducted in Muslim countries 1 and a survey conducted in Tehran by the authors. The article asks whether the peculiar characteristics of Shi’ism or of Islamic government in Iran are responsible for the low rates of mosque attendance. The survey evidence indicates a strong correlation between frequency of mosque attendance and positive evaluations of political governance. It also reveals that many people with strong religious beliefs do not attend Friday congregational prayers. Consequently, we need to inquire whether the politicization of religion in Iran has been a factor in its ‘privatization,’ that is, the tendency of pious believers to restrict their prayers to the privacy of the home. The revitalization of religion as a major social force has been most remarkable—and even controversial—in countries with Muslim majorities or significant minorities. Islamic social and political movements enjoy considerable public support in Middle Eastern countries and have been among the major revisionist forces that challenge the political and social hegemony of authoritarian rulers. Islamic movements pursue agendas of social justice that resonate strongly with the working poor and lower middle classes. Meanwhile, violence, which has been carried out in the name of Islam or against Islam as in the former

Religion in Contemporary Society: Eroded by Human Well-being, Supported by Cultural Diversity

Abstract: Most versions of secularization theory expect advanced modernity to weaken religion. In contrast, this chapter argues that two different dimensions of contemporary society affect religion in opposite ways. Rising levels of human security and well-being are assumed to drive towards religious decline, while growing cultural diversity is assumed to push towards religious growth. These two hypotheses are simultaneously investigated, using world wide data for 50 000 respondents from 37 countries with a predominantly Christian heritage. As dependent variables, two dimensions of religious involvement which relate to two core aspects of secularization theory are analyzed: church-oriented religious involvement and preferences for a religious impact on politics. The findings from three different analytical strategies demonstrate that each of the two religious orientations is positively related to the cultural diversity, and also that each of them is negatively related to human security and well-being. Furthermore, the results also indicate that the religious changes which took place between 1981 and 1999/2000 are negatively related to human well-being and security, and positively to cultural diversity. Thus, a set of comprehensive analyses of one and the same set of world wide data indicate that human security and cultural diversity affect religious involvement in opposite ways. It seems too simplistic, therefore, to view modernization as a universal cause of religious decline.

Nazism as a secular religion

Abstract: This article examines the implications of Richard Steigmann-Gall's recent revisionist representation of Nazism as a Christian (Protestant) movement for the increasingly fashionable accounts of Nazism as a secular or political religion. Contrary to Steigmann-Gall's contention that Protestant Nazism undermines these accounts, I suggest that his portrayal of Nazism as a variant of Protestant millennialism is not necessarily inconsistent with the secular religion approach. A closer look at the so-called lowith-Blumenberg debate on secularization indeed reveals that modern utopianisms containing elements of Protestant millennialism are the best candidates for the label of secularized eschatology. That Steigmann-gall has reached exactly the opposite conclusion is primarily because his conceptual understanding of secular religion is uninformed by the secularization debate. Insofar as Steigmann-Gall extracts his model of secular religion from contemporary political religion historiography on Nazism, this article points to a larger problem: a disjunction between historians utilizing the concept, on the one hand, and philosophers and social theorists who have shaped it, on the other.

Secular Psychology: What'S the Problem?:

Abstract: Although both psychology and religion are concerned with many similar issues (e.g., health and well-being, meaning and purpose) and treat them in some analogous ways (e.g., counseling) they have long been formally separated. This formal separation is due, in part, to the secularization of modern society, which, according to most definitions, means that "religious ideas, practice, and organizations lose their influence in the face of scientific and other knowledge" (McLeish, 1995, p. 668). For many secularists, relying on faith in supernatural beings or processes is tantamount to the primitive superstitions of undeveloped societies (de la Chaumiere, 2004). In these societies, argue the secularists, the practice of religious superstition often subjugates members of the society to an unseen authority and an unjustified dogma in a way that works against the free exercise of thought and results in closed-mindedness and developmental stagnation. For the secularist, notes Gunton (1993), "the worship of God takes place necessarily at the expense of human individuality and freedom" (p. 26). Moreover, because power is typically held and wielded by those few individuals who claim a privileged relationship to supernatural beings and forces--such as priests, shaman, and the like--the common person has little choice but to obey their commands. Upon consideration of the historical and current repercussions of these conditions, modern day secularists, including secular psychologists, have concluded that religious authorities and ideas ought to be rejected as a basis for society and treated by academics as oppressive and/or irrelevant holdovers from an earlier, more primitive stage of society (de la Chaumiere, 2004). In this sense, secularization stands for more than simply separating scientific disciplines like psychology from religion. It also relegates religion to a second-class status because religion relies on faith for its truth claims and as a result simply cannot be in the same class as disciplines like psychology that rely on knowledge gained through proper scientific inquiry (Kaplan & Saccuzzo, 2001). "Faith," asserts research psychologist, Gary Heiman (1998), "is the acceptance of the truth of a statement without questions or needing proof" (p. 7). Scientists, on the other hand, he argues, "question and ask for proof" (p. 7), "by obtaining empirical, objective, systematic, and controlled observations that allow them to describe, explain, predict, and control the behavior. Each finding is rigorously evaluated in a skeptical yet open-minded manner, so that an accurate understanding of the laws of behavior can be developed" (p. 11). For the secularist, scientific epistemologies are not only different from, but also superior to religious ones. At first blush, we may want to applaud the state of affairs secularization seems to have brought about. After all, many scientists and laypeople alike believe that secularization helped bring us out of the dark ages and into the bright glow of the enlightenment by successfully extricating academic disciplines--particularly those in the natural and social sciences--from religious control (Sagan, 1997). But religion has not been altogether left behind in the wake of an evermore scientific and secularized society. A number of psychologists, for example, are religious people who attend church and espouse a religious worldview (at least in their personal spiritual life), as do many of the students in their classes, the participants in their research, and the clients on their couches (Bilgrave & Deluty, 1998; Galllup & Lindsey, 1999; Larsen, 1996). Several psychology departments in America are housed within Universities that are sponsored by churches and guided by mission statements with explicitly religious objectives. Many psychologists also recognize religion as a viable psychological research topic (Emmons, 1999; Spilka, Hood, & Gorusch, 1985), and for psychologists who are therapists, sensitivity to their own and their clients' religious beliefs and practices is not only a necessary component of multicultural awareness but it has also helped therapists develop a number of techniques that can be applied to religious and nonreligious clients alike (Bergin, 1980; D'Souza & Rodrigo, 2004; Genia, 1994). …

The Catholic Church and the Nation-State: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract: Foreword: Faith and Culture in a Turbulent Age,Thomas Massaro, SJ, and James Morone Introduction: Theoretical Considerations on the Relationship between the Catholic Church and the Nation-State Part One: THE THEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL CHALLENGES OF THE VATICAN 1. Vatican II and Contemporary PoliticsKenneth R. Himes, OFM 2. The Vatican as a Transnational ActorLisa L. Ferrari Part Two: THE CHALLENGES OF SECULARIZATION 3. The Latin European Church: "Une Messe est Possible"Paul Christopher Manuel and Margaret MacLeish Mott 4. The American Church: Of Being Catholic and AmericanTed G. Jelen 5. The Chilean Church: Declining Hegemony?William Lies, CSC and Mary Fran T. Malone Part Three: THE CHALLENGE OF OPPOSITION 6. The Polish Church: Catholic Hierarchy and Polish PoliticsTimothy A. Byrnes 7. The Catholic Church in Ireland and Northern Ireland: Nationalism, Identity, and OppositionWilliam Crotty 8. The East Timorese Church: From Oppression to LiberationAlynna J. Lyon Part Four: THE CHALLENGE OF JUSTICE 9. The Brazilian Church: Reintegrating Ontology and EpistemologyChristine A. Kearney 10. The Rwandan Church: The Challenge of ReconciliationElisee Rutagambwa, SJ 11. The Angolan Church: The Prophetic Tradition, Politics, and the StateLinda Heywood Part Five: THE CHALLENGE OF ACCOMMODATION 12. The Indian Church: Catholicism and Indian NationhoodMathew N. Schmalz 13. The Chinese Catholic Church: Obstacles to ReconciliationLawrence C. Reardon 14. The Congolese Church: Ecclesial Community within the Political CommunityYvon C. Elenga, SJ Appendices A. Vatican Documents with Relevance to Church-State Issues B. Religious Concentration of the Countries Considered in this Volume C. Timeline of Significant Events in the Life of the Roman Catholic Church, 1800 to the Present D. World Values Survey: How Important Is Religion in Your Life? Contributors Index

The Roman Catholic Church and the Immigration Issue: The Relative Secularization of Political Life in Spain

Abstract: Immigration has come to the fore in Spain, Italy, and Portugal, turning into a political issue both with regard to public policy and political jousting in Spain and Italy. In this context, secular ...

Contemporary Mormonism : social science perspectives

Abstract: "Contemporary Mormonism" is the first collection of sociological essays to focus exclusively on Mormons. Featuring the work of the major scholars conducting social science research on Mormons today, this volume offers refreshing new perspectives not only on Mormonism but also on the nature of successful religious movements, secularization and assimilation, church growth, patriarchy and gender roles, and other topics. This first paperback edition includes a new introduction assessing the current state of Mormon scholarship and the effect of the globalization of the LDS Church on scholarly research about Mormonism.

The Postsocialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe

Abstract: Assumptions of increasing secularization have been called into question across the globe but under the socialist variants of modernity traditional forms of religious belief and practice were subject to quite specific forms of repression in favour of 'scientific atheism'. What is the legacy of this socialist experience for the postsocialist era? How is religion mobilized in the public sphere to support assertions of ethnic identity and the building of nations and states? In the private sphere, how does religion help persons to cope with uncertainty and dislocation? What has been the impact of external influences, including pressures to implement religious human rights as well as the missionising efforts of modernist, 'universalizing' faiths, both Christian and Muslim? This book explores new configurations of local, national and global religious communities through ethnographic studies from two regions, Central Asia and East-Central Europe. The main focus is on the consequences of changes in the sphere of religion for generalized civility, which is understood minimally as the acceptance of diverse beliefs and practices in everyday social life.

The English Cult of Literature: Devoted Readers, 1774-1880

Abstract: What constitutes reading? This is the question William McKelvy asks in ""The English Cult of Literature"". Is it a theory of interpretation or a physical activity, a process determined by hermeneutic destiny or by paper, ink, hands, and eyes? McKelvy seeks to transform the nineteenth-century field of ""Religion and Literature"" into ""Reading and Religion,"" emphasizing both the material and the institutional contexts for each. In doing so, he hopes to recover the ways in which modern literary authority developed in dialogue with a politically reconfigured religious authority. The received wisdom has been that England is literary tradition was modernity's most promising religion because the established forms of Christianity, wounded in the Enlightenment, inevitably gave up their hold on the imagination and on the political sphere. Through a series of case studies and analysis of a diverse range of writing, this work gives life to a very different story, one that shows literature assuming a religious vocation in concert with an increasingly unencumbered freedom of religious confession and the making of a reading nation. In the process, the author shifts attention away from the idea of the literary critic in favor of considering the historic role of religious professionals in shaping and contesting the authority of print. Indebted to recent findings of book history and newer historiographies at odds with conventional secularization theory, this work makes an interdisciplinary contribution to revising the existing models for understanding change in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Einwanderung und der neue religiöse Pluralismus

Abstract: One of the most significant consequences of the new immigration has been a dramatic growth in religious diversity on both sides of the Atlantic In the United States the new immigrant religions are contributing to the further expansion of an already vibrant American religious pluralism, which is incorporating all world religions in the same way in which it incorporated the old immigrant religions, Catholicism and Judaism In the case of Europe, by contrast, immigrant religions and particularly Islam present a greater challenge to local patterns of limited religious pluralism and even more importantly to recent European trends of drastic secularization Islam is perceived as “the other” of Western secular modernity, an identification that becomes superimposed upon the older image of Islam as “the other” of European Christianity

El uso religioso de la política y/o el uso político de la religión: la ideología-sucedáneo versus la religión-sucedáneo

Abstract: This article analyses the relationships existing between religion and politics, particularly in totalitarian regimes. One of these relationships is the role played by «ersatz religion» in political religions, which in turn link up with secularization processes. Offered as a contrast to the interventionist role of the State in political religion is the liberal model of friendly separation between Church and State or the hostile model of this separation, when cultural pluralism is rejected. Another kind of relationship is «ersatz ideology» in politicized religion, a good example of which is Spanish national Catholicism. Political and religious nationalism is also analysed with reference, among others, to the Basque case. The article finishes with an examination of the express, latent functions of politicized religion and how it differs from political religion, besides the implications this has as regards religion and politics. In an authoritarian setting, as was the Spanish case, politicized religion can be a latent element of political pluralism.

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

Abstract: In addressing the role of religion in politics and law, American political theory has strongly embraced the principle of religious equality. In this article, I explain how this principle has evolved and how it has nourished the privatization of religion and the secularization of public discourse by generating the view that public evaluations of religion are inappropriate. Under this view, religion is a private good that lacks public significance. As matters merely of private taste, matters that cannot be evaluated publicly, religious positions on political issues are not to be "imposed" on other citizens. I challenge this reading of the equality principle, contending that different religions and different religious arguments can and should be distinguished. I argue that some religious claims have more value than others in American political discourse and legal policymaking, and I propose various criteria by which competing religious traditions might be compared and contrasted. I discuss criteria that include the religion's method of determining truth, its basic stance toward the modern world, and its substantive positions on political and moral issues. Utilizing these and other criteria, I evaluate the role of religious fundamentalists, religious modernists, and a group I call "religious reconcilers." I question the value of fundamentalist and modernist contributions, but conclude that religious reconcilers can play a valuable role, potentially enriching our politics and our law.

Charitable Choice: The Religious Component of the US-Welfare-Reform — Theoretical and Methodological Reflections on "Faith-Based-Organizations" as Social Service Agencies

Abstract: Are religious institutions gaining new strength in the modern welfare state? The concept of "Charitable Choice" is part of a comprehensive welfare reform under the Clinton-Government in 1996. It aims at the formal inclusion of religious organizations ("Faith-Based-Organizations") into the public welfare system. The new relevance of religious organizations as social service providers goes along with a shift of ideas of social inequality and deviant behaviour in terms of having not only structural and economic but also behavioural and moral reasons. The question arises, what is so productive about Faith-Based-Organizations, and, are religious institutions perhaps even more efficient than "secular" agencies? In this essay, I will discuss these questions from a theoretical and methodological point of view, arguing that religious studies have to adjust their analytical framework to the new situation. Religion has by no means lost its collective and material dimension. Therefore, I shall present neo-institutional- and neo-capital-theories as more appropriate approaches than the outdated remains of secularization theory or postmodern etherealism.

The Identity of a Catholic University in Post-Christian European Societies: Four Models

Abstract: — This article reflects on four possible strategies for responding to the growing secularization that is threatening Catholic universities both from without and within. These include the abandonment of all claims to Catholic identity; the reassertion of a distinctively confessional identity; the promotion of the university as a place where so-called Christian values, and humanitarianism in particular, are promoted; and the option to promote Catholic identity in all its particularity by means of an ongoing dialogue with the contemporary pluralistic context. Each of these options say something about both the university’s self-understanding and its perception of its relationship to the culture in which it finds itself. The fourth would seem to do more justice to the tradition, and offer more hope for the future of, Catholic universities in an increasingly pluralistic and post-secular context.

Religion and the Origins of the German Enlightenment: Faith and the Reform of Learning in the Thought of Christian Thomasius

Abstract: The Enlightenment continues to be associated with the secularization and de-Christianization of intellectual culture in the West. And yet, religious thought played a far greater role in the emergence of the Enlightenment than is often recognized. In this book, Thomas Ahnert analyzes the close relationship between religion and secular learning in the works of one of the central figures of the early German Enlightenment, the jurist and philosopher Christian Thomasius (1655-1728). Thomasius is now known mainly for his "enlightened" intellectual reform program, but Thomasius also believed that such reform necessarily involved a regeneration of Christian faith, which had been corrupted by self-interested clergymen and ecclesiastical institutions. This book is the first to examine the importance of Thomasius's complex religious beliefs for the entire spectrum of his main intellectual interests, which ranged from moral philosophy and law to history and the explanation of natural phenomena. Thomas Ahnert is a lecturer in early modern intellectual history at the University of Edinburgh.

Religion and politics in Turkey

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Locating the Ottoman Alevis (Kizilbas) 3. Religious Dimension in Mahmut 2nd's Reforms 4. Religion in Late Ottoman Education 5. Economic Modernization and Secularization in the Late Ottoman Empire 6. Institutional and Other Memories in Contemporary Turkish Islam 7. Recep Tayyip Erdogan: From Mayor To Prime Minister 8. The Political Economy of Islam and Democracy: The Prospects For Democratic Consolidation 9. Religion, Transnationalism and Turks in Europe 10. The Mystery of the Turban Issue in Turkish Politics 11. Alevis in Turkey 12. Political Preferences of the Turkish Electorate: Reflections of an Alevi-Sunni Cleavage 13. Is an Islamic Democracy Viable in the Turkish Context? 14. Muslim and Christian Democrats: A Comparative Assessment 15. Explaining Religious Politics at the Crossroads: AKP and SP 16. Conclusion