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Journal articles on the topic 'Secularized world'
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1
Bourgeois, Jason Paul. "Seeking Truth in a Secularized World: a B althasarian Approach to Dialogue." Heythrop Journal 60, no. 3 (June 25, 2014): 362–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12082.
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Cohen, Erik, Nachman Ben-Yehuda, and Janet Aviad. "Recentering the World: The Quest for ‘Elective’ Centers in a Secularized Universe." Sociological Review 35, no. 2 (May 1987): 320–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.1987.tb00012.x.
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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.
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Mudrakov, Vitaliy Viktorovych. "The "Übermensch" project as a form and mode of secularized ethics." Ukrainian Religious Studies, no. 84 (January 9, 2018): 50–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.32420/2017.84.791.
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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.
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Flensner, Karin. "Secularized and Multi-Religious Classroom Practice-Discourses and Interactions." Education Sciences 8, no. 3 (August 7, 2018): 116. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030116.
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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.
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ČšuČ›uianu, Iulia. "PAUL EVDOKIMOV, AN APOSTLE OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD." CBU International Conference Proceedings 5 (September 23, 2017): 862–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.12955/cbup.v5.1039.
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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 â€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.
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Turco, Daniela. "Religious forms in secularized society: Three Catholic groups in comparison." Social Compass 63, no. 4 (September 23, 2016): 513–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0037768616663986.
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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).
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Hilkert, Mary Catherine. "Edward Schillebeeckx, OP (1914-): Encountering God in a Secular and Suffering World." Theology Today 62, no. 3 (October 2005): 376–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004057360506200308.
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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.
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Slodičková, Monika. "Upbringing children in family in the context of secularized society." E-Theologos. Theological revue of Greek Catholic Theological Faculty 3, no. 1 (April 1, 2012): 96–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10154-012-0008-7.
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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.
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Paas, Stefan. "Religious Consciousness in a Post-Christian Culture: J.H. Bavinck’s Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith (1949), Sixty Years Later." Journal of Reformed Theology 6, no. 1 (2012): 35–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156973112x644001.
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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.
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Tythacott, Louise. "Curating the Sacred: Exhibiting Buddhism at the World Museum Liverpool." Buddhist Studies Review 34, no. 1 (September 11, 2017): 115–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.29020.
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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.
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Streza, Ciprian Ioan. "Sexuality and its Deviations in the Post-Modern World." Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 8, no. 3 (December 1, 2016): 423–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ress-2016-0030.
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Abstract As the modern world oscillates between powerful contrasts and profound discords, while promoting an individualistic relativism and placing excessive value on the biological life, seen as the only means towards fulfillment for a human existence reduced almost exclusively to the material plane, as the modern secularist views dispute Christian spiritual values more and more, the Church is called to adopt a new type of ministry. The Creed of the post modern society is the “transvaluation of all values”, which questioning and criticizing everything that offers stability to a society by anchoring it to history and tradition. Therefore, pornography, homosexuality, abortion, licentiousness and divorce have become everyday realities promoted through media and elevated to the level of a mandatory normality. Sex is now not only a commodity, but also a means to controlling the person. To overcome this real social crisis of the modern secularized society, the Christians of the 21st century are called to rediscover their liturgical vocation and the true meaning and power of the Worship with all its eschatological, ecclesiological, ascetical and cosmic dimensions and content.
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Newman, Jane O. "Enchantment in Times of War: Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, and the Secularization Thesis." Representations 105, no. 1 (2009): 133–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rep.2009.105.1.133.
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This article reads Aby Warburg's and Walter Benjamin's work on the astrological movements of the Reformation era in dialogue with the theory of relations between the spiritual and the temporal developed in Protestant "war theology" during World War I. War theology developed themes already present in historical Protestant doctrine, notably Luther's Two Kingdoms theory (Zwei Reiche Lehre). Warburg and Benjamin were wrestling with the challenge of living at a time of great conflict in a highly sacralized——rather than secularized——world with deep roots in early modern Lutheranism. Max Weber was working out his ideas about magic, Calvinism, and secularization at the same time. The article thus also suggests the need to reassess his theses about the emergence of a secular world purged of irrationalism in dialogue with Warburg's and Benjamin's work.
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Fordahl, Clayton. "Suffering and sovereignty." Thesis Eleven 146, no. 1 (June 2018): 42–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0725513618776678.
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This article investigates the recent martyrdom of the French Catholic priest Jacques Hamel in order to assess the possibilities of sacrificial commemoration in a world that is increasingly globalized, increasingly secularized, and also increasingly subject to the capricious violence of religiously-infused terrorism. I argue that under contemporary conditions it has become increasingly difficult to articulate a meaningful form of sacrifice that exists beyond the logic of sovereignty. However, I conclude by identifying rare and fleeting instances of martyrdom which seem to promise the return to the concept’s counter-sovereign heritage.
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Laschinger, Verena. "Whirls of Faith and Fancy." Journal of World Literature 5, no. 1 (February 14, 2020): 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/24056480-00403100.
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Abstract Elif Shafak’s The Flea Palace (2004) exposes secularized Istanbul as a grotesque world. By establishing the apartment building as a synecdoche for the city and negotiating the characters’ trajectories within the historical context of modernizing Istanbul, the novel presents their alienation as the sine qua non of the modern individual which is best confronted playfully or rather in the Sufi way. The argument is supported by the novel’s complex employment of circles and lines as thematic and formal patterns which refer to Islamic ritual practice of the Mevlevi Sufis in numerous ways.
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Elukin, Jonathan. "Shylock, the Devil and the Meaning of Deception in The Merchant of Venice." European Judaism 51, no. 2 (September 1, 2018): 44–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/ej.2017.510208.
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The article explores Shakespeare’s secularized retelling of the Christian theological narrative of deceiving the Devil, with Antonio playing the role of Christ and Shylock as the Devil. The article argues that recasting the contest between Christ and the Devil in the world of Venice sets the stage for Shakespeare’s larger exploration of the pervasive nature of deceit in human affairs. Although it seems that Shakespeare’s characters are resigned to live in a fallen world where truth is obscured, Portia’s invocation of mercy may be Shakespeare’s attempt to offer some hope of an earthly salvation. The article argues that this portrait of a world filled with deception resonated with Shakespeare’s audience. Men and women in early modern England lived in a world where they often had to hide their religious identities and loyalties. This interpretation challenges more recent attempts to see the play as primarily concerned with race and tolerance.
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Elukin, Jonathan. "Shylock, the Devil and the Meaning of Deception in The Merchant of Venice." European Judaism 51, no. 2 (September 1, 2018): 44–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/ej.2018.510208.
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Abstract The article explores Shakespeare’s secularized retelling of the Christian theological narrative of deceiving the Devil, with Antonio playing the role of Christ and Shylock as the Devil. The article argues that recasting the contest between Christ and the Devil in the world of Venice sets the stage for Shakespeare’s larger exploration of the pervasive nature of deceit in human affairs. Although it seems that Shakespeare’s characters are resigned to live in a fallen world where truth is obscured, Portia’s invocation of mercy may be Shakespeare’s attempt to offer some hope of an earthly salvation. The article argues that this portrait of a world filled with deception resonated with Shakespeare’s audience. Men and women in early modern England lived in a world where they often had to hide their religious identities and loyalties. This interpretation challenges more recent attempts to see the play as primarily concerned with race and tolerance.
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Schmidt, Rigmor Kappel. "Unio mystica. Skabelse af en topos." K&K - Kultur og Klasse 45, no. 123 (August 28, 2017): 135–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/kok.v45i123.96833.
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The secular carpe diem and the religious unio mystica are historically very active in the Renaissance and the Baroque. Both form important steps in the development towards a secularized culture, abandoning the idea of eternal life with the carpe diem, and giving up the ecclesiastical hierarchy in favour of direct contact to God in the unio mystica, cf. Rudolf Otto. The topos unio mystica is restructured and secularized in the “Aleph” by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges introducing the complex figure of the repeated visual verb ver combined with a synedochical selection among the entirety of the vision. The complex figure reoccurs in Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, in the Black Book by the Orhan Pamuk, and without the figure in The War at the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, each of them altering the topos according to their narrative needs. As stated in Ernst Robert Curtius, the topos can be seen as historically variant, and with Marie Lund Klujeff it is proposed that the figure as such can contribute actively in the creation and restructuring of the topos, thus not only being confined to the elocutio, but also contributing to the inventio.
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Bevans, Stephen. "Mission in Britain today: some modest reflections and proposals." Holiness 1, no. 2 (April 5, 2020): 161–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/holiness-2015-0004.
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AbstractWhile ‘Mission in Britain today’ includes many aspects, this article focuses on the witness of the Church within Britain’s contemporary highly secularized culture. Rather than ‘technical change’, the Church is called to work at ‘adaptive change’, and so to concentrate less on strategies and more on internal renewal. Such adaptive change involves freeing people’s imagination from simplistic and abusive images of God, offering a positive image of God that is inspiring and truly challenging, recognizing the kenotic nature of the Church, and realizing that mission is carried out in a world of grace where God is already present and working
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Weidner, Daniel. "„Das indianische Kanaan“: Weltliteratur, Exil und epischer Fluss in Alfred Döblins Amazonas." arcadia 56, no. 1 (June 1, 2021): 82–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/arcadia-2021-9017.
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Abstract The paper reads Alfred Döblin’s novel Amazonas (1937/1938) in the context of current debates about world literature. It argues that these debates not only refer to a certain group of texts or to a literary system, but concern problems of reading and representation, namely how to read literature beyond the paradigms of national and comparative literature and how to represent a world, especially the modern globalized and secularized world. Döblin’s novel refers to different meanings of ‘world’ that are implied in these questions: It depicts the ‘discovery’ and violent colonization of the ‘New World’ both from the perspective of the indigene people and the Europeans, as well as the ‘Jesuit republic’ as a different project of colonization with an utopian aspect. Written in exile, it also uses the detour via an exotic setting to diagnose a crisis of Europe. Finally it tries to develop a narrative form beyond the novel, using different forms of mythic but also topographic narration which are figured as the materiality of the Amazonas-‘stream.’
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Williams-Hogan, Jane. "Discovering the two faces of religious charismatic action – traditional and modern: a model." Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 17, no. 1 (January 1, 1999): 273–304. http://dx.doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67259.
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In this paper, the author examines the issue of charisma and prophecy in secularized societies. In traditional society the charismatic personality or the prophet brought a universalizing and rationalizing message which simultaneously expanded and penetrated the sphere of external order in the world, giving people the ability to manipulate and control the natural world. The disenchanted world is the end product of this process, when no more mysterious forces come into play, and when one can in principle master all things through rational calculation. The gift of rationality almost randomly bestowed in the ancient world becomes, for Weber, the rightful inheritance of the modern individual. Clarity brought by charisma in a dark and foreboding world loses its brilliance and its ability to beckon when the world is filled with light. In investigating charisma in only traditional societies, Weber saw charisma as one dimensional, solely as the force of rationality. So envisioned, charisma dissipates in the very act of realizing itself through the transformation of the world. Given Weber's analysis, therefore, one would not expect to find genuinely new religions emerging within our transformed and rational modern society. In the examination of the founding something that is best identified by the sociological term charisma, though obviously in modern guise, is clearly evident. This points to the possibility that charisma is not static but has the dynamic capacity to be responsive to the structural characteristics of the society in which it operates.
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Zdioruk, Serhiy I. "Ukraine, Islam, Europe: Contemporary World Context (Comparative Analysis of Muslim and Community Orientations of Muslims)." Ukrainian Religious Studies, no. 37 (December 6, 2005): 95–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.32420/2006.37.1708.
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It is well known that the European cultural space has been developing under the slogan of secularization over the last five centuries. It is social secularization that has become one of the main forces that has shaped the modern image of Europe. Secularization has affirmed the secular spirit inherent in modern man. Therefore, we Europeans now live in a secularized society. This is manifested in the fact that the appeal of citizens to God, the scale of appeals to religious interpretation in finding out different aspects of reality, the participation of religious institutions in solving life's problems of society and personality are significantly reduced. The language of religion and its concepts are increasingly distant from everyday experience. There is less and less mutual space between the life of the modern world and church preaching. According to P. Berger, "the current situation does not contribute to the truth of the authority of religion."
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Gudyma, I. "The theological doctrine of the miracle and the concept of the initial nomology of the universe." Ukrainian Religious Studies, no. 67 (May 28, 2013): 46–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.32420/2013.67.309.
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Factors of a secularized world, among which, alongside with which there is Christian theology, encourage the latter to meet the high intellectual guidelines of the present culture, gain signs of persuasiveness, comprehensiveness, consistency and generally take into account the requirements and norms of common sense. However, trying to reflect reality, moreover, claiming Truth, religion and its ideas arise and function within the limits of subjective and accordingly can not be forced to adjust (such as, in particular, scientific hypotheses and theories). This is largely reflected in theology as its reflective presentation. However, not only the religious intellectual, but also any ordinary believer prefers to find in daily routine such arguments that it would undoubtedly point out that his faith is not an illusion that he meets the highest requirements of historical truth. In this sense, the well-known Catholic cleric and theologian Hans Kyung was not mistaken and even exaggerated, when he categorically reiterated: "Where faith is based on illusion, there is not faith, but superstition"
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Danner, Victor. "Western Evolutionism in the Muslim World." American Journal of Islam and Society 8, no. 1 (March 1, 1991): 67–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v8i1.2644.
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As a general system of thought, evolutionism is the most powerful ideologyin modem Western secularist civilization. It arose in the West over a centuryago and spread there first, gradually reducing the Christian culture of theWest until it became a residual influence. Because Western nations such asEngland, France, and the Soviet Union imposed themselves on Muslim landsin the form of colonialist regimes, we should not be surprised to find withinthe Muslim world the echoes of evolutionary thdang in many of the modernist,or Westernized, Muslims, and even amongst their opponents, the Muslimfundamentalists. This was perhaps inevitable, given that the educational systemof the Muslim world has been patterned on that of the West.In the West, evolutionary modes of thought have gradually created asecularized world devoid of religious attachments. In the Muslim world, itis only natural that modernist Muslims, the so-called Westernized Muslimswho take their bearings from Western as opposed to Islamic thinking, shouldhave sought to create within Islam a similarly secularized culture, likewisecut off from its religious mots. Such Muslims have been the dominant influencein the Muslim world from the nineteenth century up to the Second WorldWar, ample time in which to realize their ambitions. In this fashion,evolutionism, an ideology that arose in the West and succeeded in utterlyde-Christianizing the West, has now penetrated into the Muslim world likea Trojan horse.That being so, we would do well to examine the origins of evolutionarythinking in the West to discern both its nature and to see how it displacedChristian beliefs and institutions. The secularist civilization it produced isnow sweeping the entire globe and threatening to destroy the lingering elementsof traditional Islamic civilization. By first examining what happened in theChristian world, we are in a better position to grasp what has been goingon within the domains of Islam in the recent past. That understanding shouldhave a direct bearing on the question of whether the traditional culture ofIslam can be preserved. Indeed, the world of Islam may very well be the ...
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Bowman, Steven. "Louis H. Feldman. “Remember Amalek!” Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible According to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004. x, 272 pp." AJS Review 29, no. 2 (November 2005): 363–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0364009405220172.
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Genocide, a neologism coined during World War II and now enshrined in international law, reflects an ancestral phenomenon as old as human history, if not older. It is a secularized version of what our predecessors understood by holy war, just war, and jihad as divine sanctions of murder and mayhem. The twentieth century anachronistically has applied the term to the Armenian massacres of World War I, and the United Nations today struggles how not to apply its definition to similar actions such as the tragic events in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan, let alone threats of mass terrorist murder by a bevy of religious killers. While our contemporary market is nearly saturated with books on the rebirth of jihad in its current terrorist manifestation, and a number of studies have examined the biblical antecedents of genocide, Louis Feldman offers a unique perspective on several ancient rereadings of a revered text that can be read as potentially genocidal.
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Pawluczuk, Włodzimierz. "THE CONCEPT OF CIVILIZATIONAL BOUNDARY." CREATIVITY STUDIES 2, no. 1 (June 30, 2009): 57–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.3846/2029-0187.2009.1.57-63.
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In this paper the concept of the boundary of civilizations is discussed on the example of Polish‐Belarusian and Polish‐Ukrainian borderlands. The author starts from the assumption, shared by many historians and sociologists, that civilizations are real cultural entities based on certain long‐lasting patterns of symbolical order. Those patterns are closely related to respective religions like Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but they act even though people's religiosity is weak. The differences between Western Christian and Eastern Christian patterns remain important in a secularized world as well. The author analyses how these civilization differences influence both cross national and political identities in countries, situated on the boundary of civilizations. He shows, in particular, how symbolic patterns shape the identity of Catholic minority in modern Belarus and that of Orthodox minority in today's Poland.
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Jansen, Perry. "The Role of Faith-Based Organizations and Faith Leaders in the 2014-2016 Ebola Epidemic in Liberia." Christian Journal for Global Health 6, no. 1 (May 31, 2019): 70–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.15566/cjgh.v6i1.265.
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Since the time of Christ, caring for the sick and the poor has been a core distinctive of authentic Christianity. The response of Christians during many of the great plagues of antiquity played an important role in the spread of Christianity. In modern history, response to epidemics have been professionalized and, to a certain extent, secularized. The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa offers an important illustration of the role that faith leaders and faith-based organizations still play in providing a trusted link between communities and international relief workers. In late 2018, the world was faced with another outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is vital to build upon the lessons of prior epidemics as we support local efforts to prepare for, detect and respond to inevitable future outbreaks.
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Sawicki. "Rediscovering Monasticism through Art." Religions 10, no. 7 (July 10, 2019): 423. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10070423.
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Looking at modern monasticism and its role in society one can see how traditional monastic concepts or values find their new forms. On the other hand, art and artists willingly, though not always consciously, use or refer to some monastic themes. In this paper, on the base of texts of some authors open to the dialogue between monasticism and art, a reading of monasticism in the key of art is proposed, exclusively in reference to the Christian monasticism. Given its present cultural and social context, the thesis of this paper is that through the rediscovering of monasticism through art, one can and should refresh and save it in a more and more secularized society, what may be also a perspective of a new role of monasticism in the modern world.
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Huang, Yong. "God as Absolute Spirit: a Heideggerian Interpretation of Hegel's God-Talk." Religious Studies 32, no. 4 (December 1996): 489–505. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412500001669.
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In this postmodern era, God-talk is facing serious challenges. Is it still possible to have a meaningful concept of God after the demise of metaphysical realism? How can we make sense of the idea of absolute transcendence in a secularized world? In what sense can we still believe something as divine revelation when foundationalism is no longer taken for granted? While some believe that we can go about our old theological business as usual, others have entirely given up on the hope of any intelligible theology. It is my hunch, however, that there are ways of doing theology that can take our postmodern conditions into serious account. In this article, I shall argue that, however anachronistic it might seem, Hegel's God-talk, seen through the lens of Heidegger's understanding of Being, provides one such possibility.
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Van Engen, Charles. "Book Review: Faith in the City: Fifty Years of the World Council of Churches in a Secularized Western Context: Amsterdam, 1948–1998." International Bulletin of Missionary Research 25, no. 2 (April 2001): 92–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/239693930102500218.
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Shimamura, Ippei. "Magicalized Socialism: An Anthropological Study on the Magical Practices of a Secularized Reincarnated Lama in Socialist Mongolia." Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques 73, no. 4 (April 26, 2020): 799–829. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/asia-2019-0038.
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AbstractSocialist regimes lead by the Soviet Union were one of the great experiments for human life “without religions”. In Mongolia, as in other socialist countries, modernity was constructed by expelling religious practices from the sphere of everyday life in the name of atheism. However, modernity has never completely succeeded in fully establishing secularization anywhere in the world, and the phenomena of magico-religious practices continue and even are rampant, not least behind the facades in post-socialist countries. In other words, it can be said that the affiliation between secularization, de-sacralization, and modernity, which many scholars imagined, was just fantasy. Following the way in which Talal Asad examines the “novel” form of secularism present in Euro-American societies, it becomes quite easy to understand that socialist modernity was formulated as the “novel secular” by the Soviet Union. While examining Soviet-style atheism or Soviet-formed secularization, we need to rethink the practices that are “in between” the religious and the secular. Mongols have been practicing religion secularly. We see this in how selecting reincarnated lamas has been a political act, and in the way they have been practicing secular politics so religiously – for example, the importance of fortune telling and shamanism in political decision-making. Further, we need to note that the socialist expulsion of institutional aspects of religions such as churches, clergies, and religious scriptures resulted in the spread of magical/occult practices. In this paper we explore Mongol practices that are in between the religious and the secular by examining Buddhist practices in Zavkhan Province, where people maintained strong worship for reincarnated lamas secretly and in disguise during the socialist era.
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Thomas, Jesse J. "From Joy to Joy." Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 12, no. 1 (2000): 109–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jis2000121/26.
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C. S. Lewis acknowledged Rudolf Otto's influence in his use of the term numinous to describe the uniqueness of religious experience, the experience of awe and with it the reality of absolutes, in contrast to prevailing naturalistic, materialistic, and subjectivist interpretations of morality and religion. Otto hints at and Lewis develops in more detail the idea of the numinous in human relationships. In Lewis' personal life, he does this in his relationship to his wife, Joy Davidman Lewis, In his writings, he does this in Till We Have Faces and other works. In each case, Lewis provides apt illustrations of how the numinous is at the heart of what by almost any staruiards are meaningful and satisfying relationships. Intense personal relationships become ideal environments for the experience of the numinous, even in situations of tragedy and loss. This is a message that a postmodern, secularized world needs to hear.
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Kasselstrand, Isabella, and Setareh Mahmoudi. "Secularization among immigrants in Scandinavia: Religiosity across generations and duration of residence." Social Compass 67, no. 4 (August 18, 2020): 617–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0037768620948478.
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The integration of religious minorities within the secularized West has been a recurring topic of scholarly interest. Previous studies show that religious identities are shaped by family background and social context. Using data from the European Social Survey, this study turns to Scandinavia, the most secular region of the world, to examine religious salience among immigrants over time and across generations. The findings reveal that on most measures, second-generation immigrants are more secular than the first generation, but more religious than their native peers. However, individuals with one immigrant and one native parent are less likely to identify with a religion than other groups, including the native majority. Furthermore, among first-generation immigrants, there is a negative relationship between the duration of residence and religiosity. This study argues for the fluidity of religiosity among immigrants and the secularizing effect of structural agents on the salience of religious identities.
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Prostak, Rafał. "(Non)Religious Freedom: A Critical Perspective on the Contemporary Understanding of Freedom of Conscience and Religion." Politeja 18, no. 2(71) (August 5, 2021): 183–202. http://dx.doi.org/10.12797/politeja.18.2021.71.10.
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Nowadays, liberty of conscience as an inalienable right is a standard of demoliberal constitutionalism. It is an obvious component of a well-organized society and state. However, at the very beginning of its presence in the political discourse, it was more a product of Christian theology (the free conscience perceived as a gift of God) than a legal category; more an endowment of divinity than an intrinsic human value. In the contemporary, secularized world, our understanding of freedom of religion includes not only free exercise of religion but also freedom from religion. An increasing number of non-believers changes our expectations of the state that is obliged to protect the freedom of conscience of all citizens regardless of their beliefs. The goal of the article is to consider the difficulties faced by people with a theistic worldview in the reality of a state founded on the principle of ideological neutrality.
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Shmorgun, O. "Modern Ethno-national Processes: the Potential of Anti-crisis Development of Ukraine." Problems of World History, no. 2 (December 1, 2016): 30–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.46869/2707-6776-2016-2-2.
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On the basis of the analysis of existing theories about the origin and historical genesis of modern nationalism the conceptual approach is proposed, according to which the process of nation formation is one of the important dimensions of the world historical process. The author reveals the complex interdependance and mutual opposition of specific historical types of national identity as well as the importance of a new national patriotism for formation of the universal innovative model of anti-crisis development and mechanisms of its implementation in Ukraine. In particular, the author refutes mystical and mythological projects of the crisis-free future as well as only outwardly opposing them, globalist anti-utopian projects (the model of so-called network society of M. Castells). The article proves the actuality of real national revival against a background of the naturally determined collapse of the neoliberal globalist trend and continuation of fragmentation of global geopolitical space. It is shown that the formation of new forms of national identity is inseparably linked with the formation of humanistic secularized world outlook during the Modern Ages and currently is the basis of the creative type of thinking.
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Vollaard, Hans J. P. "Re-emerging Christianity in West European Politics: The Case of the Netherlands." Politics and Religion 6, no. 1 (February 27, 2013): 74–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1755048312000776.
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AbstractDoes Christianity re-emerge in politics even in the most secularized part of the world, Western Europe? In this article, the exemplary case of the Netherlands provides empirical evidence for two mechanisms of resurgent Christianity in party politics. In this way, the article also offers a more precise understanding under what conditions various dimensions of religion become (again) or remain politically significant. The first mechanism has been the incentive of secularization and secularism for remaining Christians to regroup in a so-called creative minority to convey an explicitly faith-based message to a broader public. Modernization has therefore not automatically meant less religion in politics. However, creative minorities remained a relatively minor affair in Dutch party politics, despite the large number of Christian migrants and their descendants. Second, Christian and culturally rightwing, secular parties have increasingly referred to a Judeo-Christian culture to mark the political identities of the European Union and its nations in response to Islam's growing visibility. The concept of Judeo-Christian culture foremost functioned as a sacred word to denote the liberal and secular order of the West, reflecting the re-emergence of Christianity as cultural phenomenon rather than faith in West European politics.
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Corsico, Luciano. "Image and Freedom in Fichte’s Doctrine of the State of 1813." Fichte-Studien 48 (2020): 240–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/fichte20204817.
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In this paper, my aim is to offer an approach to the practical meaning of the concept of image in Fichte’s Doctrine of the State of 1813. The word “image” (Bild) plays an important role within Fichte’s philosophical terminology, especially during the last period of his intellectual production and his academic life, after leaving the University of Jena. Even a superficial reading of the several different versions of the Doctrine of Science allows one to recognize that the above-mentioned term is used by Fichte more frequently during his years in Berlin (1800–1814). Despite this, the determination of the concrete meaning of the term “image” represents a difficult interpretative challenge for readers of Fichte’s philosophy. From my point of view, Fichte uses the term “image” not only at the level of theoretical or methodological reflection, but also at that of praxis. For this reason, Fichte’s transcendental reflection in the Doctrine of the State contains not only an analysis of the negative relationship between image and being, but also, necessarily, an analysis of the positive relationship between image and freedom (Freiheit). Although his Doctrine of the State is based on a theological-religious conception, which could be questioned from the perspective of a secularized rationality, Fichte maintains a consistent conception of knowledge as an image of a world ordered by the moral law. Definitively, this image plays a central role as an original model for the action of every rational being in the sensible world.
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Barmann, Lawrence. "Confronting Secularization: Origins of the London Society for the Study of Religion." Church History 62, no. 1 (March 1993): 22–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3168414.
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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.
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D’Orsi, Lorenzo, and Fabio Dei. "What is a rite? Émile Durkheim, a hundred years later." Open Information Science 2, no. 1 (October 1, 2018): 115–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opis-2018-0009.
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Abstract This paper is focused on the anthropological concept of ritual, starting from Emile Durkheim's approach in Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912). We discuss three different aspects of the Durkheimian perspective on religion and rituals: a) the sacred/profane dichotomy; b) the concept of collective representations - which establishes a substantial continuity between religious and scientific thought; c) a ‟practical” and performative interpretation of rites as the basis of social bond. During the twentieth century, these aspects have influenced different and sometimes opposing theoretical approaches (including ‟symbolist” and ‟neo-intellectualist” theories and Victor Turner's ‟anthropology of experience”). We briefly review each of them, arguing for the importance of reconsidering them into a unitary perspective, centred on religious phenomena as basically moral experiences and as the language of social relations. In the conclusions, we will show how such unitary approach helps us understand the transformations as well as the continuities of rituality in the individualized and secularized societies of what we call nowadays the Western world.
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Keane-Dawes, Antony Wayne. "Remaking the Catholic Church in Santo Domingo." New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 94, no. 3-4 (November 25, 2020): 245–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22134360-bja10011.
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Abstract In 1824, the Haitian government passed a series of laws that secularized the Catholic Church’s lands in Santo Domingo and placed this religious institution under state control. Using correspondences, pamphlets, and petitions, this article argues that Haitian reforms of the Church in Santo Domingo created a new power dynamic that incorporated local communities with these secular and religious institutions. In doing so, this literature brings together two literatures that rarely speak to one another: the impact of the Haitian Unification on the Church in Santo Domingo and Haitian diplomatic negotiations over sovereignty in the Atlantic world. This article will discuss how different relationships between Church and state in Santo Domingo and Haiti resulted in conflict after Haiti’s annexation in 1822. Next, it will focus on the clerics’ responses to Haitian rule that includes the consequences of the 1824 secularization law. Finally, it will examine the impact of Haitian reforms on local communities particularly their relationships with their priests.
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Sepp, Tiina, and Atko Remmel. "The Pilgrimage Landscape in Contemporary Estonia: New Routes, Narratives, and Re-Christianization." Numen 67, no. 5-6 (September 1, 2020): 586–612. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341603.
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Abstract This article is the first attempt at mapping the pilgrimage landscape in contemporary Estonia, reputedly one of the most secularized countries in Europe. Based on fieldwork on three case studies — the Estonian Society of the Friends of the Camino de Santiago, the Pirita-Vastseliina pilgrim trail, and the “Mobile Congregation” — we have identified three distinctive features that shape the Estonian pilgrimage scene. The processes of Caminoization and heritagization characterize pilgrimage on a European scale, while the phenomenon that we call “bridging” has a more local flavor. Bridging refers to using pilgrimage to create connections between the Church (of any Christian denomination) and “secular” people. Historically a Christian practice, pilgrimage has transformed into something much more ambiguous. Thus, people often perceive pilgrimage as religion-related but still inherently secular. As the relationships between institutionalized religion and the vernacular world of beliefs and practices are multivalent, there is evidence of an ongoing “re-Christianization” of pilgrimage.
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Halldorf, Joel. "Lewi Pethrus and the Creation of a Christian Counterculture." Pneuma 32, no. 3 (2010): 354–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157007410x531907.
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AbstractThis article presents and analyzes the life and work of Lewi Pethrus (1884-1974), the leader of the Swedish Pentecostal movement. The argument is that Pethrus created a Christian counterculture in the midst of a secularized Western society. Although a radical congregationalist skeptical toward organization, Pethrus spent most of his life building institutions. The first institutions he created were for the benefit of the spiritual life of Pentecostal congregations and churches. These included a publishing house, an edifying journal, a hymn book, and a school for evangelism. During World War II, however, Nazism and Communism made Pethrus attentive to the dangers of secularization. He now began founding institutions that were part of the broader civil society, such as a daily newspaper, a radio station, a bank, and a political party. His goal was to turn Sweden into a Christian society. He did not achieve this, but what he did leave was the legacy of a Christian counterculture.
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Adedibu, Babatunde Aderemi. "Reverse Mission or Migrant Sanctuaries? Migration, Symbolic Mapping, and Missionary Challenges of Britain’s Black Majority Churches." Pneuma 35, no. 3 (2013): 405–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700747-12341347.
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Abstract The spread of African Christianity to Europe (including Britain) and North America over the last six decades has heralded a distinctive phase in global church history. Religion, which had been hitherto ignored as one of the motivations for migration, is gradually becoming a major mover in the global proliferation of African Christianity to the point that it is now a transatlantic phenomenon. Britain’s Black Majority Churches (BMCs) make use of self-representation and symbolic mapping in their discourses. The image of Britain as a post-Christian nation is projected with such epithets as “dead continent,” “prodigal nation,” and “secularized Britain.” It is apt to note that Britain’s BMCs are but one case of reverse mission that, in reality, more resembles migrant sanctuaries all across the Western world. The lack of understanding of the British culture, flawed church-planting strategies, and the operational methods employed by these churches have severely hampered the BMCs’ missionary endeavors in Britain.
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Heitink, G. "Het publieke karakter van de kerk." Verbum et Ecclesia 21, no. 2 (September 9, 2000): 260–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v21i2.1258.
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The public character of the churchThe subject of this article is the public character of the church. In the Netherlands one can make a distinction between three actual models. Each of them has had influence on the relationship between church and society in a particular time of history. The first model of A Kuyper, has its roots in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken) and was important in the first half of the 20th Century. The second model is rooted in the Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk) of the Netherlands in the period after World War 2. The third model is the ecumenical model of the "church for others", related to the secularized society. In each of these models we can find building blocks for the fourth model, called "open church", which has to be developed in this time of rapid social changes. In this article, the author tries to develop a design for the fourth model. This article is written out of the context of Western Europe. I hope it also can be helpful in the context of South Africa.
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Bouzenita, Dr Anke Iman. "The Dilemmas of Islamic Bioethics in the Twenty-first Century." American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28, no. 1 (January 1, 2011): 45–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajiss.v28i1.346.
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The current discourse on bioethical questions often reveals a certain patchiness or seeming inability to answer contemporary bioethical problems within an Islamic epistemological paradigm. Attempting to analyze the causes of this phenomenon, the author describes the decontextualization of Islamic concepts from a background of secularized medical care and the ethics in the Islamic world—as well as the estrangement due to these questions of Islamic law from its holistic framework of application as a pervasive phenomenon, which brought about the dilemmas of bioethics in the twenty-first century. The author discusses chosen bioethical case studies in this light, with a focus on the concept of brain death. Doing so, the author takes into consideration the paradigmatic relationship between science, bioethical models, and the implications of the relevant different worldviews. The author shows how constructed realities related to the life sciences have been imported from the secular setting into an already estranged Islamic context to be answered, and describes the evolving dilemmas that make Islamic bioethics appear like a stranger moving in a strange land.
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Taylor, Leonard. "Catholic Cosmopolitanism and the Future of Human Rights." Religions 11, no. 11 (October 30, 2020): 566. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11110566.
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Political Catholicism began in the 20th century by presenting a conception of confessional politics to a secularizing Europe. However, this article reveals the reworking of political Catholicism’s historical commitment to a balance of two powers—an ancient Imperium and Sacerdotium—to justify change to this position. A secular democratic faith became a key insight in political Catholicism in the 20th century, as it wedded human rights to an evolving cosmopolitan Catholicism and underlined the growth of Christian democracy. This article argues that the thesis of Christian democracy held a central post-war motif that there existed a prisca theologia or a philosophia perennis, semblances of a natural law, in secular modernity that could reshape the social compact of the modern project of democracy. However, as the Cold War ended, human rights became more secularized in keeping with trends across Europe. The relationship between political Catholicism and human rights reached a turning point, and this article asks if a cosmopolitan political Catholicism still interprets human rights as central to its embrace of the modern world.
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Pavicevic, Aleksandra. "Heralds and witnesses poets of Serbian romanticism - between religion of the nation and loss of faith." Zbornik Matice srpske za drustvene nauke, no. 164 (2017): 635–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/zmsdn1764635p.
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Ideas of Enlightement, national romanticism and transformation of geopolitical situation on the Balkans, were cultural and historical context in which bases of modern Serbian state was established. That was the time of intensive social change directed towards building institutional infrastructure as well as towards transforming traditional, ?obsolete? folk customs and habits. Poor condition of Serbian Orthodox Church and domination of religious world views among people were considered to be the most serious obstacles in creating modern state. Thus, great number of intelectuals were anticlerical and promoted liberal and secularized social organization. On the other hand, the whole epoch was characterized by strong antiscientistic orientation which was expresed through developing of different mistical, alternative, neopagan cults. Specific for our region was so called ?religion of the nation? which appeared as substitution for loss of eshatological perspective in life of Christian civilization. Poets of Serbian romanticism were heralds and witnesses of this civilization ?turn?. Their poetry can be observed as reflex and announcement of secularization in Serbian society. In this paper, we analyzed their writings about death, love, hope, nature and nation.
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Ricci, Alessandro. "The affirmation of image and maps in the modern age: cartographic secularization and Protestant Reformation." Rendiconti Lincei. Scienze Fisiche e Naturali 32, no. 1 (January 19, 2021): 45–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12210-020-00973-z.
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AbstractThe contribution aims to focus the attention on the consequences on the use of images and in particular on the cartographic ones deriving from the Protestant Reformation. Analysing the debate around images which originated during the sixteenth century from Luther’s revolution, the article tries to answer how much the Reformation contributed to change the main aspects of mapmaking in a more realistic and secularized way. Three main questions will be posed: how much did the Protestant Reformation contribute to the affirmation of the cartographic images, to the pushes towards realism and to reality? How much did the way of representing the world change, standing on the innovations promoted by the European Protestants? Did the Reformation have also consequences on the Counter-Reformation way of depicting maps? Starting from the main literature, which focused the attention on the effects of that debate about the artistic images, a parallelism with the use of new cartographic models will be proposed, wondering if the Reformation contributed to the modern way of mapmaking, overpassing the religious, metaphorical of the medieval models.
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Bouzenita, Dr Anke Iman. "The Dilemmas of Islamic Bioethics in the Twenty-first Century." American Journal of Islam and Society 28, no. 1 (January 1, 2011): 45–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v28i1.346.
Full textAbstract:
The current discourse on bioethical questions often reveals a certain patchiness or seeming inability to answer contemporary bioethical problems within an Islamic epistemological paradigm. Attempting to analyze the causes of this phenomenon, the author describes the decontextualization of Islamic concepts from a background of secularized medical care and the ethics in the Islamic world—as well as the estrangement due to these questions of Islamic law from its holistic framework of application as a pervasive phenomenon, which brought about the dilemmas of bioethics in the twenty-first century. The author discusses chosen bioethical case studies in this light, with a focus on the concept of brain death. Doing so, the author takes into consideration the paradigmatic relationship between science, bioethical models, and the implications of the relevant different worldviews. The author shows how constructed realities related to the life sciences have been imported from the secular setting into an already estranged Islamic context to be answered, and describes the evolving dilemmas that make Islamic bioethics appear like a stranger moving in a strange land.
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Paas, Stefan. "Mission from Anywhere to Europe." Mission Studies 32, no. 1 (April 10, 2015): 4–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341377.
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World Christianity entails a multi-centric Christianity, and mission from anywhere to anywhere. Today, any place can be a mission base and a mission field at the same time. According to Andrew Walls this may lead to a new “Ephesian moment” in Christianity. To what extent this is happening can only be found out, however, by doing actual research into local encounters of different Christianities. In this article three post-War missionary movements to Europe are subjected to scrutiny: American evangelicals, who came to Europe after the Second World War; African immigrants, who started to plant churches in the 1980s; and Australian neo-Pentecostals, who have recently extended their missionary efforts to European cities. Especially, attention is paid to their views of Europe and European churches, their methods of mission, and how they are received by Europeans. This analysis forms the basis of several missiological reflections regarding mission in secularized (Western) Europe, with a view to the realization of “Ephesian moments”. It is demonstrated that the late modern missionary movement to Europe is determined to a large extent by globalizing tendencies, which threaten local expressions of Christianity. Also, some stereotypical pictures of Europe, as they are held by missionaries, are challenged. Different approaches are suggested in order to have a genuine encounter between different kinds of Christianity on the European mission field.
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Westerink, Herman. "Participation and Giving Ultimate Meaning: Exploring the Entanglement of Psychology of Religion and Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands." Numen 57, no. 2 (2010): 186–211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852710x487583.
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AbstractPsychology of religion in the Netherlands is rediscovering its historic entanglement with phenomenology of religion in the context of a current transition emancipating itself from the theological objective of re-establishing the relation between theology and faith practice (from the 1960s onwards), and developing into a discipline focusing on “lived religion” and interculturality in closer cooperation with religious studies. In this article the entanglement of psychology of religion and phenomenology of religion is explored starting with the writings of Gerardus van der Leeuw, his interest in a psychological method in phenomenology and his reception of Lévy-Bruhl’s concept of mystic participation. It is argued that psychology of religion in the Netherlands after the Second World War emerged out of the critique by Fokke Sierksma of the phenomenological method in the context of emancipating the science of religion (godsdienstwetenschap) from theology, and the reaction this provoked in the work of Han Fortmann, who defended Lévy-Bruhl and Van der Leeuw in order to “save” religiosity in a modern secularized world. This theological objective further colored developments in psychology of religion, notably the current discussion on “giving ultimate meaning” (zingeving). In the light of an expected closer cooperation between psychology of religion and religious studies, a critical reflection on the often unreflected theological positions and objectives in discussions on “giving ultimate meaning” is pleaded for.