Showing papers on "Secularization published in 2020"

Rethinking Religion: Toward a Practice Approach1

Abstract: Over the last three decades, fruitful new lines of research and theorizing have revealed the inadequacy of secularization and rational choice explanations of religion. This article argues that soci...

Religion as a Macro Social Force Affecting Business: Concepts, Questions, and Future Research

Abstract: Religion has been in general neglected or even seen as a taboo subject in organizational research and management practice. This is a glaring omission in the business and society and business ethics...

Religion in Economic History : A Survey

Abstract: This chapter surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion. Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and on the period up to WWII. Works on Judaism address Jewish occupational specialization, human capital, emancipation, and the causes and consequences of Jewish persecution. One set of papers on Christianity studies the role of the Catholic Church in European economic history since the medieval period. Taking advantage of newly digitized data and advanced econometric techniques, the voluminous literature on the Protestant Reformation studies its socioeconomic causes as well as its consequences for human capital, secularization, political change, technology diffusion, and social outcomes. Works on missionaries show that early access to Christian missions still has political, educational, and economic consequences in present-day Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Much of the economics of Islam focuses on the role that Islam and Islamic institutions played in political-economy outcomes and in the “long divergence” between the Middle East and Western Europe. Finally, cross-country analyses seek to understand the broader determinants of religious practice and its various effects across the world. We highlight three general insights that emerge from this literature. First, the monotheistic character of the Abrahamic religions facilitated a close historical interconnection of religion with political power and conflict. Second, human capital often played a leading role in the interconnection between religion and economic history. Third, many socioeconomic factors matter in the historical development of religions.

Secularization theories in the twenty-first century: Ideas, evidence, and problems. Presidential address

Abstract: This article argues that quantitative secularization research has made important progress in the last 20 years in seven areas. We have gained knowledge of how religion and religiosity are connected...

Freethought and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe: The Development of Secularity and Non-Religion

Abstract: This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the ‘decline of religion’ and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the ‘rise of non-religion’ itself. While the label of ‘post-communism’ might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse.

Modernization Before Industrialization: Cultural Roots of the Demographic Transition in France

Abstract: This research identifies the origins of the early demographic transition in eighteenth-century France. A turning point in history and an essential condition for development, the demographic transition first took hold in France more than a hundred years before any other country—and this event remains one of the ''big questions of history'' because of its timing and limited data availability. My results suggest that secularization accounts for the decline in fertility. I document an important and early process of dechristianization with never-before-used data on religious beliefs across time and space. Using census data, I show a strong association between religiosity and the timing of the transition. Finally, I draw on a novel dataset crowdsourced from publicly available genealogies to study individuals at the time. In order to establish a causal interpretation, I control for time-varying unobservables with fixed effects, study the effect of religiosity before and after secularization with difference-in-differences, and exploit the choices of second-generation migrants to account for unobserved institutional factors. These findings reveal that changes in preferences and the transition away from tradition may shape development.

Reflexive secularization? Concepts, processes and antagonisms of postsecularity:

Abstract: This article deals with the concepts, processes, and antagonisms that are associated with the notion of postsecularity. In light of this article’s expanded interpretation of Jose Casanova on the se...

Can the State Accelerate the Secular Transition? Secularization in East and West Germany as a Natural Experiment

Abstract: Germany was a divided country from 1949 until 1989. During this period, West Germany remained a rather religious country, while East Germany became, under socialist rule, one of the most secular regions in the world. We use this case of socialist state intervention as a natural experiment to test Voas’ model of secular transition, which states that all Western and Central European countries follow the same path and speed of secularization. We employ ESS, GSS, and KMU surveys, as well as church statistics, to show that Voas’ model holds for West Germany but not for the East. In East Germany, the state accelerated the secular transition substantially: through coercion, incentive structures, and education, it succeeded in triggering mass disaffiliations from the church irrespective of age, and in discouraging parents from socializing their children religiously. This led to a self-perpetuating process that resulted in a rapid increase in the number of people who were never socialized religiously at all.

Post-Liberal Religious Liberty : Forming Communities of Charity

Abstract: Why should we care about religious liberty? Leading commentators, United Kingdom courts, and the European Court of Human Rights have de-emphasised the special importance of religious liberty. They frequently contend it falls within a more general concern for personal autonomy. In this liberal egalitarian account, religious liberty claims are often rejected when faced with competing individual interests – the neutral secular state must protect us against the liberty-constraining acts of religions. Joel Harrison challenges this account. He argues that it is rooted in a theologically derived narrative of secularisation: rather than being neutral, it rests on a specific construction of 'secular' and 'religious' spheres. This challenge makes space for an alternative theological, political, and legal vision. Drawing from Christian thought, from St Augustine to John Milbank, Harrison develops a post-liberal focus on association. Religious liberty, he argues, facilitates creating communities seeking solidarity, fraternity, and charity – goals that are central to our common good.

Religion in economic history : a survey

Abstract: This chapter surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and on the period up to WWII Works on Judaism address Jewish occupational specialization, human capital, emancipation, and the causes and consequences of Jewish persecution One set of papers on Christianity studies the role of the Catholic Church in European economic history since the medieval period Taking advantage of newly digitized data and advanced econometric techniques, the voluminous literature on the Protestant Reformation studies its socioeconomic causes as well as its consequences for human capital, secularization, political change, technology diffusion, and social outcomes Works on missionaries show that early access to Christian missions still has political, educational, and economic consequences in present-day Africa, Asia, and Latin America Much of the economics of Islam focuses on the role that Islam and Islamic institutions played in political-economy outcomes and in the “long divergence” between the Middle East and Western Europe Finally, cross-country analyses seek to understand the broader determinants of religious practice and its various effects across the world We highlight three general insights that emerge from this literature First, the monotheistic character of the Abrahamic religions facilitated a close historical interconnection of religion with political power and conflict Second, human capital often played a leading role in the interconnection between religion and economic history Third, many socioeconomic factors matter in the historical development of religions

Universal Love or One True Religion? Experimental Evidence of the Ambivalent Effect of Religious Ideas on Altruism and Discrimination

Abstract: Contrary to the expectations of secularization theory, religion remains socially important and affects politics in multiple ways—especially regarding conflict between religious communities. Theoretically, religion can increase altruism, but belief in the superiority of one's faith may facilitate intergroup discrimination and related conflict. Previous findings remain inconclusive, however, as specific religious ideas have hardly been tested. In this article, we argue that the content of religious ideas has causal effects on intergroup discrimination. We hence test the impact of two opposing, prominent religious ideas on altruism and discrimination: universal love and the notion of one true religion. Conducting dictator games with Christians and Muslims in Ghana and Tanzania, we find causal effects: Whereas the idea of one true religion increases intergroup discrimination, that of universal love fosters equal treatment. The policy implications hereof are obvious—promoting tolerant religious ideas seems crucial to avoiding conflict.

The tide that failed to rise : Young people’s politics and social values in and after the arab uprisings

Abstract: The Arab Transformations Project is an international research project operating within the European Commission’s FP7 framework, Grant No. 320214. The authors acknowledge the contribution of the partners to the project and specifically the design and conduct of the Arab Transformations survey on which this paper draws. The authors alone remain responsible for the content of this Article; it does not necessarily represent the views of the EU, the Court of the University of Aberdeen or any of the project partners.

The buffered, technological self: Finding associations between Internet use and religiosity:

Abstract: Explanations for the rise of the religiously unaffiliated have regained attention from sociologists in light of recent declines in religiosity. While the secularization thesis has seen revisions ac...

Beyond Positivism: Building Turkish Laiklik in the Transition from the Empire to the Republic (1908–38)

Abstract: The literature on the development of secularism in Turkey, or laiklik, often cites the national state builders’ positivist worldviews as a principal explanatory factor. Accordingly, the legal-institutional form Turkish secularism took in the 1920s and 1930s is derived, to a large extent, from the Unionists’ and Republicans’ science-driven, antireligious ideologies. Going beyond solely ideational narratives, this article places the making of secularism in Turkey in the context of the sociopolitical contention for national-capitalist state building. In so doing, the article contributes to the latest “spatiotemporal” turn in the secularization literature, characterized by an increased attention to historical critical junctures, and sensitivity to multiple secularities occurring in Western as well as non-Western geographies. Based on a bridging of the secularization scholarship with that of state formation, and building extensively on Turkish archival material, I argue that the trajectory, fluctuations, and contradictions of secularization can be closely associated with two intertwined master processes: (1) the construction of internal and external sovereign state capacity, and (2) geographically specific trajectories of class formation/dynamics. The Turkish case demonstrates that secular settlements cannot be explained away simply by reference to the guiding ideas of actors. Contentious episodes such as civil-bureaucratic conflict, war and geopolitics, and class struggles/alliances make a significant imprint on the secularizing process.

Dutch tolerance in black and white; From religious pragmatism to racialized ideology

Abstract: Did and does the Netherlands live up to its international image of tolerance? This contribution argues that, over the centuries, at least a shift has taken place in which tolerance has transformed from a discourse employed by those in power to something that is to be expected from ‘others’. That shift was carried by a secularization of Dutch tolerance from the religious to the cultural sphere. Meanwhile the question is what, in the changing roles of tolerance, has been the impact on issues related to skin colour? The recent heated national debate around the Dutch blackface figure of Zwarte Piet (Black Peet) and its relation to Dutch national cultural identification is a case in point.

Inequality and Religiosity in a Global Context: Different Secularization Paths for Developed and Developing Nations

Abstract: Drawing on data from the World Values Survey (1995–2014), and using a multilevel modeling technique, this article explores the relationship between social inequalities and religiosity for a sample ...

Pastoral Power and Algorithmic Governmentality

Abstract: This paper contributes to inquiries into the genealogy of governmentality and the nature of secularization by arguing that pastoralism continues to operate in the algorithmic register. Drawing on A...

The challenges of ideal theory and appeal of secular apocalyptic thought

Abstract: Why do thinkers hostile or agnostic toward Christianity find in its apocalyptic doctrines—often seen as bizarre—appealing tools for interpreting politics? This article tackles that puzzle. First, i...

The changing roman catholic pilgrimage centres in Europe in the context of contemporary socio-cultural changes

Abstract: The socio-cultural changes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, i.e. the development of mass tourism and transport, the secularization, the commercialization and globalization of societies ...

Is the secularization research programme progressing? Debate on Jörg Stolz’s article on Secularization theories in the 21st century: ideas, evidence, and problems:

Abstract: The methodology of scientific research programmes, developed by Imre Lakatos, can help us to identify which theories are strong or weak. Applying this approach suggests that the secularization rese...

Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century: A Literary History of Atheism

Abstract: Although there were no self-avowed British atheists before the 1780s, authors including Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Sarah Fielding, Phebe Gibbes, and William Cowper worried extensively about atheism's dystopian possibilities, and routinely represented atheists as being beyond the pale of human sympathy. Challenging traditional formulations of secularization that equate modernity with unbelief, Reeves reveals how reactions against atheism rather helped sustain various forms of religious belief throughout the Age of Enlightenment. He demonstrates that hostility to unbelief likewise produced various forms of religious ecumenicalism, with authors depicting non-Christian theists from around Britain's emerging empire as sympathetic allies in the fight against irreligion. Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century traces a literary history of atheism in eighteenth-century Britain for the first time, revealing a relationship between atheism and secularization far more fraught than has previously been supposed.

Educational Biblical Nationalism and the Project of the Modern Secular State

Abstract: Biblical Criticism, the historical study of Biblical texts, spread across the European universities during the late 19th century, the same period when the European states modernized, and identifying state and nation became a political project. The new scientific view on the Bible became in this political reform context a topic of public debate: Should the national education systems under construction implement the modern scientific understanding of the Bible, should school keep teaching the Catechism, or should religious instruction be separated from the school of the nation in order to become a ‘school for all’? Whereas the academic hotbeds of Biblical Criticism were not least the Germanspeaking universities and academic institutions in France, the popularization of Biblical Criticism through education proved more successful in the Nordic states than in e.g. Prussia and France. The article explores the gradual success of Biblical Criticism education reform efforts in the case of Denmark from the late 19th to mid-20th century in relation to the development of the state from an absolutist kingdom to a nation state with constitutional monarchy and parliamentarism, and discusses on this basis the relation between religion, secularization and educational nation-state crafting. Keywords: Biblical Criticism; Christian modernism; education reform; meso-level actors; nation-state crafting.

Gender Politics at Home and Abroad: Protestant Modernity in Colonial-Era Korea

Abstract: Hyaeweol Choi examines the formation of modern gender relations in Korea from a transnational perspective. Diverging from a conventional understanding of 'secularization' as a defining feature of modernity, Choi argues that Protestant Christianity, introduced to Korea in the late nineteenth century, was crucial in shaping modern gender ideology, reforming domestic practices and claiming new space for women in the public sphere. In Korea, Japanese colonial power - and with it, Japanese representations of modernity - was confronted with the dominant cultural and material power of Europe and the US, which was reflected in Korean attitudes. One of the key agents in conveying ideas of “Western modernity” in Korea was globally connected Christianity, especially US-led Protestant missionary organizations. By placing gender and religion at the center of the analysis, Choi shows that the development of modern gender relations was rooted in the transnational experience of Koreans and not in a simple nexus of the colonizer and the colonized.

Science and the indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore

Abstract: This new text is a detailed study of an important process in modern Indian history. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, India experienced an intellectual renaissance, which owed as much to the influx of new ideas from the West as to traditional religious and cultural insights. Gosling examines the effects of the introduction of Western science into India, and the relationship between Indian traditions of thought and secular Western scientific doctrine. He charts the early development of science in India, its role in the secularization of Indian society, and the subsequent reassertion, adaptation and rejection of traditional modes of thought. The beliefs of key Indian scientists, including Jagadish Chandra Bose, P.C. Roy and S.N. Bose are explored and the book goes on to reflect upon how individual scientists could still accept particular religious beliefs such as reincarnation, cosmology, miracles and prayer. Science and the Indian Tradition gives an in-depth assessment of results of the introduction of Western science into India, and will be of interest to scholars of Indian history and those interested in the interaction between Western and Indian traditions of intellectual thought.