Academic literature on the topic 'Secularized world'

The various ‘quests for meaning’ of the ‘decentralized’ contemporary Western youths are interpreted as so many attempts to ‘recenter the world’ around new ‘elective centers’. Rather than being centers of the contemporary world into which the individual is born, such centers are located outside it, and freely chosen by the seekers. Four such elective centers are discussed: (1) traditional religious conversion, (2) the occult, (3) science fiction, and (4) tourism. Each of these elective centers is first briefly described and then analysed in a comparative framework, focused on six principal questions: (a) the social and cultural conditions which engender the contemporary ‘quest for a center’, (b) the nature of elective centers, (c) mechanisms of election and rejection of alternative elective centers, (d) extent of involvement with elective centers, (e) elective centers and the wider social framework, (f) the institution-building potential of the elective centers.

The study contains the interpretation of F. Nietzsche's concept “Übermensch” as a program of modern human’s orientation within conditions of secularization. The “Übermensch” is presented as a form and a mode of secularized ethics. Such interpretation gave the methodological instruments to describe the main features of contemporary ideological and world view tendencies and their changes character, including such processes in Ukraine.

Secularization and diversity are two social features that characterize the contemporary world. The rhetoric of the public debate in a number of countries has become increasingly polarized and characterized by a “we” and “them” thinking that relates a national “we” to a specific religion. This occurs in part as a reaction to the changes in national monocultural paradigms as most communities today are characterized by pluralism regarding lifestyles, religion, language and geographical background. Thus, secularization processes are ongoing while many countries, not least Sweden, are becoming increasingly pluralistic and multi-religious. The school and classrooms are a mirror of the communities they are a part of. The aim of the article is to explore how secularization and increasing pluralism finds expression and interact in the classroom practice of Religious Education. The analysis is based on ethnographic data from classroom observations of Religious Education in four different Swedish upper secondary schools. The results indicate that secularism and non-religious positions are considered a neutral and objective position and that secularism is used as a way to maneuver diversity in the classroom which affects the possibilities of dialogue and understanding.

Paul Evdokimov endeavored to bring into a secularized and desecrated world the solution of the Russian mystics as a means for transfiguring the bland and gray ‘reality’ of a world focused only on material values in which everything ends now and here without referral to the transcendent. In this mindset, only a different approach will resound in the soul and consciousness of the contemporary person and the old approaches, which appealed to fear and terror, have long lost any power of persuasion. Evdokimov believed that only a God of love could speak to the contemporary world. This paper aims to reveal the details of Paul Evdokimov’s vision and solution for the moral crisis of contemporary society.

Despite the evidence of a progressive disenchantment, the religious sphere maintains a strong grip on current societies though undertaking some transformations. Pluralism, individualism and privatization are three features we cannot ignore if we choose to study religion in the contemporary world and, more broadly, if we choose to study modernity. The aim of this article is to illustrate some features of the different forms of religiosity in the secular age (Taylor, 2007). We have focused on modern Catholicism, with particular reference to religious experience in the Catholic lay group. The stories of Catholic militants show that the motivation behind their choice is the crucial factor to analyze their religious experience and worldview. In this sense, we will try to reflect on some indicators that can help us to understand the resources and limits of the contemporary Catholic pluralism and the aspects of the ‘modern desire for God’ (Abbruzzese, 2010).

Throughout six decades as a theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx has attempted to interpret Christian faith in a credible way in the context of contemporary culture. After reviewing Schillebeeckx's early groundbreaking contributions to sacramental theology, this article highlights his turn to history in the mid-1960s, the hermeneutical and critical shifts in his theological method, his proposals for rethinking a theology of ministry, and the impact of his monumental christological trilogy. Pervading the shifts in Schillebeeckx's theology is the sacramental conviction that the mystery of God can be encountered in creation and human history, even in a secularized and suffering world.

Upbringing children in family in the context of secularized society The present thesis presents religious, psychological and pedagogical a view of the family as a place of fundamental unit of society. Just from the basic unit of society depends on personal happiness and fulfillment of every human life. Its prominent position is not only a formal status, which are today's busy times and unhealthy and coexistence education system offers. Family, which has its roots somewhere deep in our human nature, is the most precious treasure of all mankind, because no other community does not interfere with a man so strong as the right family, in which a man comes into the world, which it grows and shapes for further life in the family, Church and State. Each family has not only private, but also the social dimension and is focused on two basic objectives and the spiritual and earthly, and therefore a good family to be of concern not only the Church but society as a whole, they are just family.

Abstract The Dutch missiologists J.H. Bavinck (1895-1954) has become well-known for his far-sighted view of human religious consciousness. Bavinck believed that the religious impulse of mankind would not disappear, not even with increasing secularity in the West. In this article it is asked to what extent Bavinck’s view of religiosity is still of use in a missiological approach of the most secularized part of the world, Europe. Its conclusion is that Bavinck’s essentially psychological view did not take the cultural nature of religion sufficiently into account, and therefore the possibility that it will disappear. Therefore, a more realistic view of religious consciousness than Bavinck’s is needed in a missiology of Europe.

This article explores issues involved in representing Buddhism in museums, drawing on the author’s experience of curating the Buddhism display at the World Museum Liverpool. It is concerned with processes of de-contextualization and re-contextualization, focussing on whether sacred images become divested of their religious functions once they enter a museum or if, instead, the gallery can be considered an alternative arena for contemplation. The article begins by reviewing the literature on museums and the sacred. It discusses the lack of concern historically for religion in museums, noting how sacred objects have tended to be ‘secularized’ in exhibitionary contexts. It then examines the Buddhism display at the World Museum Liverpool, part of the permanent World Cultures gallery which opened in 2005, with its reconstructions of a shrine, an altar and a protective chapel — this is a museological environment which deliberately evokes the atmosphere of a temple.

PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO
COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR
PROGRAMA DE SUPORTE À PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO DE INSTS. DE ENSINO
O processo de secularização do mundo ocidental trouxe, em sua esteira, diversas implicações teológico-pastorais para o cristianismo. Diante desta realidade, as Igrejas cristãs e cristãos necessitam de articulação para apresentar à seus contemporâneos a mensagem de Jesus de Nazaré de forma contextualizada. Com o objetivo de encontrar um caminho lúcido para responder às interpelações da sociedade secularizada, esta pesquisa recorreu às reflexões do teólogo Hans Kung, que permitiu responder as implicações e firmar a convicção à fé cristã e, sua relevância na atualidade e futuro.
The process of secularization in the Western World brought, in its wake, several pastoral theological implications for Christianity. Faced by this reality, the Christian churches need to be articulated to be able to show the message of Jesus Christ from Nazareth in a coherent, mature and contextualized manner to their contemporaries. In order to find a lucid path to answer the questioning of a secularized society, this research made use of contributions by Hans Kung the theologian, allowing to clear up the Christian faith nowadays. Following this will be possible to find a good reflection about the secularization and current religious effervescence allowing the extreme conviction of a necessary and relevant Christian message in the modern world. Closing this exposure with pastoral theological proposals to the present time and a very soon explanation about the future of Christianity.

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This research analyzes the way Hannah Arendt thinks the politics in the secularized world. We start from her criticism about the tradition of the Western Political Philosophy, characterized by the submission of the politics to the immutable truths, contemplated by philosophers. This concept was initiated by Plato and continued through the alliance between Church and Empire, extending to the beginning of the Modern Age. Philosophers like Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx and Nietzsche, wanted to break with this tradition, but they could not do that on a satisfactory way. According to Arendt, the exchange of traditional patterns by others happened in the twentieth century, specifically in the deployment of totalitarian regimes, like the Nazism and the Bolshevism. Thus, the issue is to determine if it is possible to overcome the tendency to totalitarianism in the politics without resorting to transcendent categories offered by philosophy and religion. Our position is that Arendt defends the secularization, but does not consider enough the break with the transcendent reference. There are other positions that need to be observed for the policy happens, especially the exchange of views, based on the respect for human plurality. Besides the independence between politics and religion, we believe that her political theory propose a new relationship between politics and philosophy. After considering the overcoming of the metaphysics in politics, and the consequent hierarchy elimination between contemplation and action, we analyze the way the author presents the relationship between the speech and appearance. We realize that the political action requires a defined space, in which citizens can make pacts with each other. The durability of a common world depends on overcoming the subjectivism, characteristic of the modern times liberalism, in which predominates the private freedom. Similarly as in the revolutions of the eighteenth century, the difficulty of the politics in the modern world is to balance stability and novelty. Arendt offers the promise to ensure continuity, and the forgiveness to break the causal chain of the events and provide a new start. In politics, the novelty is possible when the action is linked to thought, but not the speculative thought, which aims to make universalization. That s why, for Arendt the policy does not require a rational system of predefined truths, but this does not mean that she is opposed to any kind of encounter between philosophy and politics, but the traditional model. She accepts the proposal of Socrates, in which the activity of thinking is more important than the result of thought. There she meets a limit to evil and allows us to start thinking about the relationship between ethic and politics. However, the Socratic principle is also limited, revealing what not to do, but not helping to establish a new action. Then, Arendt analyzes the Kantian philosophy, and despite rejecting the requirement of the will concept, she accepts the notion of judgment faculty, considering that this is the faculty that allows us to make policy.
Esta pesquisa analisa o modo como Hannah Arendt pensa a política no mundo secularizado. Partimos de sua crítica à tradição da Filosofia Política Ocidental, caracterizada pela submissão da política às verdades imutáveis, contempladas pelos filósofos. Esta concepção foi iniciada por Platão e continuada através da aliança entre Igreja e Império, estendendo-se até o início da Idade Moderna. Filósofos como Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx e Nietzsche, quiseram romper com esta tradição, mas não conseguiram isto de modo satisfatório. Segundo Arendt, a troca dos padrões tradicionais por outros aconteceu no século XX, especificamente na implantação dos regimes totalitários, como o Nazismo e o Bolchevismo. Diante disso, o problema é determinar se é possível superar a tendência ao totalitarismo na política sem recorrer às categorias transcendentes oferecidas pela filosofia e pela religião. Nossa posição é que Arendt defende a secularização, mas não considera suficiente o rompimento com os referenciais transcendentes. Há outras condições que precisam ser observadas para que a política aconteça, especialmente a troca de opiniões, baseada no respeito à pluralidade humana. Além da independência entre política e religião, consideramos que sua teoria política propõe uma nova relação entre política e filosofia. Depois de considerar a superação da metafísica na política, e a consequente eliminação da hierarquia entre contemplação e ação, analisamos o modo como a autora trabalha a relação entre o discurso e a aparência. Percebemos que a ação política necessita de um espaço público definido, no qual os cidadãos possam fazer pactos entre si. A durabilidade de um mundo comum depende da superação do subjetivismo, característico do liberalismo da era moderna, no qual predomina a liberdade privada. Assim como nas revoluções do século XVIII, a dificuldade da política no mundo moderno é equilibrar a estabilidade e a novidade. Arendt propõe a promessa para garantir a continuidade, e o perdão, para romper a cadeia causal dos acontecimentos e proporcionar um novo começo. Na política, a novidade é possível quando a ação está vinculada ao pensamento, mas não um pensamento especulativo, que visa fazer universalizações. É por isto que, para Arendt a política não necessita de um sistema racional de verdades predefinidas, o que não significa que ela se oponha a todo tipo de encontro entre filosofia e política, mas ao modelo tradicional. Ela aceita a proposta de Sócrates, na qual a atividade de pensar é mais importante que o resultado do pensamento. Aí ela encontra um limite para o mal e nos permite iniciar uma reflexão sobre a relação entre ética e política. Contudo, o princípio socrático também é limitado, revelando o que não fazer, mas não ajudando a determinar uma nova ação. Então, Arendt analisa a filosofia kantiana e, apesar de rejeitar o seu conceito de obrigatoriedade da vontade, aceita a noção de faculdade do juízo, considerando que esta é a faculdade que nos permite fazer política.

Thesis (M.A.)--Auburn University, 2008.
Abstract. Vita. Includes pictures of the Institut Catholique de Paris, a seminary which was formerly the monastery where Brother Lawrence lived and wrote. Includes bibliographical references.

The World Come of Age offers a cultural history of ideas that culminated in a radical political theology forwarded by the first generation of liberation theologians. Representing those marginalized by modern politics and religion due to race, class, or sex status, liberationists built a trans-American intellectual movement. Lilian Calles Barger sets the stage in the 1960s and 1970s, as black theologian James Cone, Catholic priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, and feminists Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether led the way in bridging the gulf between the religious values of justice and equality and political pragmatism. Sharing a heightened awareness of oppression with Latin American revolutionaries, Black Power and women’s liberation movements, and a Third World consciousness, liberationists honed their theo-political impulses. They unmasked the ideas that underwrote the white/black, male/female, rich/poor ordering of the world, not only within given societies but between the political and economic center and the periphery of the modern world. Questioning the religious/political divide with its privatized religion, they reconstructed thinking about God’s relationship to the world. Combining strands of radical politics, social theory, theological antecedents, and the history and experience of subordinated groups, they challenged the legitimating role of theology that dominated the mid-twentieth century. Liberationists secularized the meaning of Christian salvation combined with enlightened notions of freedom into an integral liberation and sought to recover a religious vitalism to instigate social action. The World Come of Age demonstrates how, by redefining the theo-political public space, liberation theologians set the stage for the subsequent torrent of religious activism across the ideological spectrum.

In recantation of his earlier approach, Peter L. Berger now claims: ‘The world today, with some exceptions […], is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.’ The most important exception that Berger refers to is Western Europe. The introduction to Part II provides an overview of the religious landscape in Western Europe. The data show that the current religious situation in the countries of Western Europe is in fact subject to considerable variation. It would therefore be erroneous to describe Western Europe as secularized. At the same time, the data reveal that there have been clear secularization tendencies over the last few decades. To grasp the diversity of religious tendencies, Part II deals with three cases: West Germany with moderate downward tendencies, Italy with a considerably high degree of stability, and the Netherlands displaying disproportionately strong secularizing tendencies.

This chapter explores the reasons why the doctrine of probabilism is no longer prominent in our intellectual and scholarly horizon. These reasons include the advent of Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori’s equiprobabilism; the progressive loss of political, social, and cultural capital of the nineteenth-century Roman Curia; and the triumph of Cartesian epistemology in the modern secularized world. This chapter also argues for the necessity to recover the centrality of probabilism, both because probabilism and moral theology were a crucial component of the cultural, political, and religious history of early modern Europe, and because learning how early modern probabilists grappled with uncertainty can be distinctively useful for us today. Even though we are the most informed generation on Earth, we seem to be losing the ability to distinguish facts and truths from opinions. Thus, appreciating the historical significance of probabilism can help us to navigate our current epistemological and moral uncertainties.

This chapter traces trends in nineteenth-century thought concerning eschatology and apocalypticism. Contrary to twentieth-century wisdom, eschatology was of central importance in nineteenth-century Christian consciousness and its philosophical inflections. Radical developments were seen in the doctrines of hell (whose eternal duration was increasingly questioned or rejected in favour of versions of apocatastasis) and the question of an imminent earthly messianic kingdom. Eschatological conceptions of history were secularized in Idealist and Romantic narratives of education and nationalist aspiration. In all these areas, the nineteenth-century eschatological consciousness was overwhelmingly one of continuity between earthly progress and transcendent continuation or fulfilment. This model of continuity began to be questioned in theology and biblical studies in the waning nineteenth century, and collapsed by the dawn of the First World War. Models of rupture now took its place, tendentiously projecting back onto the nineteenth century an ‘eschatological slumber’ from which only the twentieth century roused theology.

The presence of the theatre of the Spanish Siglo de Oro in the theatre and literary culture of Germany (or the German-speaking countries) in the 17th and 18th centuries is a multifaceted one, and was influenced by many factors. We have to take in account that in the second half of the 17th century and in a large part of the 18th century Spain had been a terra incognita for the Germanic world. This long lack of basic knowledge led to a decontextualization of the Golden Age theatre and sometimes to an unconditional enthusiasm that was not based on historical realities. The protagonists of the ‘construction’ of a ‘Spanish national theatre’ included Lessing, Herder, Goethe, the Schlegel brothers and the philosopher Schelling, the most prominent German intellectuals of the time. Within this ‘construction’ Lope de Vega, Rojas Zorrilla and, above all, Calderón de la Barca are the three icons that will guide both the theory and the practice of drama during the ‘two most Spanish decades’ of German literary history (1790-1810), even reaching - in the secularized world of the classics and the first generation of German Romantics - the ‘deification’ of Calderón as perfect poet and author of modern tragedies (without paying much attention to his comedias in a stricter sense and without taking account of his autos sacramentales).

This chapter argues that Western religion today, besides losing public importance, has also largely been transformed in accordance with this cognitive shift to the ‘this-worldly’. The chapter shows how arguments like ‘believing but not belonging’ and ‘vicarious religion’ do not discredit the secularization thesis; nor does the idea that Christianity gave rise to Western modernity and therefore the West must be religious. The decreasing salience of Christianity became undeniable in the Victorian age. The 1960s saw this trend intensified and diffused more widely; this cognitive shift is illustrated in both the workings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and in the World Council of Churches Uppsala Assembly (1968). The Christianity that the mainline Western churches exhibit today has become internally secularized, evidenced in characteristic works of modern academic theology.

This chapter focuses on human rights. Human rights are derived historically from the idea of natural law as it developed on a strong religious basis in late medieval Europe and, later, in a more secularized form during the more rationalist period of the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, the contemporary human rights movement stems from the aftermath of World War II. It is associated, domestically, with constitutional bills of rights and, internationally, with the work of the United Nations. Human rights may be defined as universal rights of great moral and political significance that belong to all human beings by virtue of their humanity. They are said to be overriding and absolute. Human rights may be divided into three overlapping groups: civil and political rights; economic, social, and cultural rights; and group or collective rights for development and self-determination.

How does a faith community that understands morality as objective and universally valid operate in a secularized world without lapsing into moral fundamentalism? The reactive, oppositional, hermetic character of religious fundamentalism extends to a faith community’s moral convictions and commitments, disposing religiously fundamentalist communities to moral fundamentalism as well. Catholic debates about conscience illustrate internal struggles over the moral presuppositions of modernity and secularism and their import. Taking Catholic responses to the anti-LGBT attack on the Pulse nightclub as an example, Weaver argues that conscience is closely bound with personal and communal moral identity. Catholic responses to secularism and modernity involve morally freighted choices about what to emphasize, defend, and adapt; who to include, empower, or marginalize; and how to interpret internal plurality, external influences, and alternative modes of thought. Indeed, Catholic responses to fundamentalism, secularism, and modernity enact conscience, as individuals and communities decide what sort of ecclesial community the church will be.

This chapter looks at several key moments in the 1960s: After Vatican II and the triumph of religion's self-secularization came the encyclical Humanæ vitæ in 1968, advocating a maximalist position forbidding any sexual activity not intended for procreation. Catholics did not understand this position that had seemingly come out of the blue. Secularists were outraged at the reactionary pope. Why, when the Church Council had elaborated a theology of modernity, would Pope Paul VI reaffirm traditional norms? He did so because he realized there had been a radical change in shared values, meaning that ‘natural’ law and morality were no longer in accordance. Society's values were no longer secularized Christian values; new values had been founded on individualism, freedom, and the valorization of desire. Moreover, at a time when the Church and secular society seemed to have reconciled over the defence of common values, the 1960s witnessed the affirmation of a new anthropological paradigm that shattered this common base. A wave of youth revolts swept through the world during the ten years between 1963 and 1973. In Western Europe and the United States, these youth movements brought about a radical change in the system of dominant values, which gradually became enshrined in law everywhere over the fifty years that followed 1968.

This chapter looks at how many people think of Buddhism, seeing it as at odds with reflective, rational, or abstract thinking. Indeed, Buddhism in the West is often placed on the emotion side of the divide between reason and emotion, but there are lots of reasons to question this. For one thing, there is good reason to question the divide itself. When one engages in reasoning, one often relies on subtle emotional cues. Thinking and feeling are not separable domains and are often intertwined in complicated ways. The chapter then considers another dispute that Western Buddhists in particular are fond of having: Is Buddhism a religion? Often, people who like Buddhism but do not like religion insist that Buddhism is not a religion. Certainly, many people in many places around the world relate to Buddhism in ways that are religion-like. This is one aspect of what is sometimes called “traditional” Buddhism. Others de-emphasize these aspects and attempt to fit Buddhist ideas into a scientific worldview, sometimes called “modern” or “secularized” Buddhism.

This chapter evaluates Hans Blumenberg's interpretation of the modern age, which is thrown into sharper relief in a text that would become the basis for his most famous book, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Presented in 1962 at the seventh German congress of philosophy, “'Secularization': Critique of a Category of Historical Illegitimacy” (1964) challenges the notion of modernity as the illegitimate appropriation of medieval theological patterns, concepts, and institutions. Against such a substantialist view of history, Blumenberg presents a functional model in which “positions” of past thought systems become vacant and are “reoccupied” with new but unrelated concepts. Eschatology, to give an example, is not secularized into the concept of progress. Instead, once it loses its status as an explanation for the course of history, this function is taken up by the entirely distinct concept of scientific progress.