Michael Rosen’s The Shadow of God includes an account of historical theodicy, which is the idea that the arc of history justifies the ways of God. Formulated by the German Idealists, its American expositors influenced the ideas of the nineteenth-century American theologian and activist Theodore Parker. As the orginator of the phrases “arc of history” and “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Parker’s influence extends to presidents and Supreme Court justices, demonstrating the long and influential (...) afterlife of the German philosophical discourses that Rosen explores. But examining this afterlife also challenges the assumption that we can discern the arc of history without the monotheistic presuppositions present in Parker. (shrink)

Postmodern political critiques speak of the death of ideology, the end of history, and the postsecular return of religious attitudes, yet radical conservative theorists such as Mark Lilla argue religion and politics are inextricably intertwined. Returning much-needed uncertainty to debates over the political while revitalizing the very terms in which they are defined, María Pía Lara explores the ambiguity of secularization and the theoretical potential of a structural break between politics and religion. For Lara, secularization means three things: (...) the translation of religious semantics into politics; a transformation of religious notions into political ideas; and the reoccupation of a space left void by changing political actors that gives rise to new conceptions of political interaction. Conceptual innovation redefines politics as a horizontal relationship between governments and the governed and better enables societies (and individual political actors) to articulate meaning through action--that is, through the emergence of new concepts. These actions, Lara proves, radically transform our understanding of politics and the role of political agents and are further enhanced by challenging the structural dependence of politics on religious phenomena. (shrink)

Hegel's philosophy of religion is characterized by what seems to be a deep tension. On the one hand, Hegel claims to be a Christian thinker, viewing religion, and in particular Christianity, as a manifestation of the absolute. On the other hand, however, he seems to view modernity as largely secular, devoid of authoritative claims to transcendence. Modernity is secular in the political sense of requiring the state to be neutral when it comes to matters of religion. However, it is also (...) secular in the sense of there being no recourse to authoritative representations of a transcendent God. Drawing on Charles Taylor's view of secularization, the article focuses on the second strand of his religious thinking, exploring how Hegel can be thought of as a theorist of secularization. It is claimed that his dialectic of religious development describes a process of secularization. Ultimately, Hegel's system offers a view of the absolute as immanent, suggesting that an adequate account of religion will necessarily have to accept secularization as the end-point of spirit's development. This is how the tension between religion and secularization can be resolved. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Das Vorschreiten der Säkularisierung. Erweiterte Neuausgabe [The Progression of Secularization], by Hans Werhahn.

This paper is focused, firstly, on the status of Christianity (as a whole) after a long period of secularization—examining in particular its “protective mechanisms”— and, secondly, on the modern tendencies that are transforming the present into an age of desecularization. The central interest here is the interaction between the civil and Christian values in the context of the two historical periods. The article provides a comparison between the aggressive use of reason during the Enlightenment and postmodern religious indifferentism in (...) an attempt to illuminate the present status of Christianity. (shrink)

O pentecostalismo é a religião que mais cresce, em número de fiéis, no Brasil de acordo com a última contagem populacional do IBGE. Este crescimento não se deu somente através dos métodos de evangelismo pessoal e de massa já empregados há anos pelas igrejas pentecostais, mas também teve um importante acréscimo se forem analisados os efeitos secularizantes da modernidade e que inevitavelmente afetaram essas igrejas. Com o incremento do número de pentecostais, houve também alterações significativas de suas tradições doutrinárias. Sendo (...) a secularização promovedora de pluralismo religioso, as denominações pentecostais passam por um processo de secularização, notadamente com um pluralismo doutrinário a fim de manterem-se plausíveis em meio à sociedade secularizada. Este trabalho cita o caso da igreja Assembleia de Deus, principal denominação pentecostal do País por seu número de fiéis, por sua trajetória histórica e sua consequente secularização. Palavras chave: Assembleia de Deus. Pentecostalismo. Pluralismo religioso. Secularização.The author points out that according to the latest data from the IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística), Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in Brazil. One reason for this growth binds to different methods of evangelism, used for many years by the Pentecostal churches. Another possible reason for the fast growth of Pentecostalism is related to the effects produced by the process of secularization of modernity that inevitably have affected the churches. Along with the increase in the number of Pentecostals, there were also significant changes in their doctrinal traditions. Because secularism promotes religious pluralism, the Pentecostal denominations undergo a process of secularization, especially with a doctrinal pluralism in order to maintain themselves plausible amid a secularized society. This paper cites the case of the Assembly of God church, a leading Pentecostal denomination in Brazil in terms of number of followers, and because of its historical trajectory and its consequent secularization. Keywords : Assembly of God. Pentecostalism. Religious pluralism. Secularization. (shrink)

The Last Judgement, heaven, hell, purgatory, the wrathful God: today, these notions seem to belong to a remote past we have - thank goodness! - left behind. The more remarkable is that, today, prisoners sometimes refer to the representation of God as Judge, as in the proposition ‘Only God can judge me’ you can find as graffito on a cell wall, or tattooed on the body of an inmate. Is this statement born from defiance of the constitutional state, from fundamentalism, (...) or from the fiction of an all-forgiving God? Nowadays, we, modern democrats, have a suspicion towards criminals and fanatics who seem to think that they can get away with an Only God can judge me. Much more common today is the reversal: not a judging God but people assuming judgement over God and over those who persist in referring to God. But the tradition of the ‘theodicee’ shows that this reversed movement of man judging God is not in the least a gesture limited to those outside the religions. In a theodicee, man summons God to appear in front of an imaginary tribunal, only for God to be defended and subsequently acquitted. As Odo Marquard argues, the modern problem of the theodicee – bringing into question God’s justice – in the end favoured atheism. Human autonomy which exonerates God by eliminating him, would imply something like an ‘atheism ad maiorem Dei gloriam’. But when humankind becomes responsible for the creation of its own history, God can no longer be summoned to any tribunal. Now only man can be summoned, and more particularly: humans which may be held accountable for the persistence of evil, responsible for our enduring discontent, obstacles of human progress or annoying remnants of the past. Here we find the beginning of the secularization of the Last Judgement. As Peter Sloterdijk argues, the vindictive God who judges and punishes at the end on times is succeeded by revolutionary groups from the nineteenth century onwards. These not only transform feelings of humiliated anger and powerlessness into those of pride and hope, but also into an effective force of revenge. In short, the theological constellation of rage and eternity has been succeeded by a political-psychological constellation of rage and history. Our representative democracy can be seen as an answer to the dangerous modern tendency to ‘tribunalising’ , because conditions of division and conflict are regarded as normal and lasting, and not as Fremdkörper or indicative of pathology. The Last Judgement becomes indefinitely suspended. However, a certain kind of ‘populism’ holds that unity and homogeneity can very well be made visible and audible’; and nowadays this seems to be accompanied by the longing to give evil, thus a form of negative transcendence, a face and parade it in front of the tribunal of the people. For prisoners, this is bad news. Against its background, the Only God can judge me may yet well up from a different source than that which I had suggested at the beginning of my argument. (shrink)

Recent years have seen numerous sociological disagreements devolve into heated debates, with scholars openly accusing their peers of being both empirically wrong and morally misguided. While social scientists routinely reflect on the ethical implications of certain research assumptions and data collection methods, the sociology of knowledge production has said little about how moral debates over scholarship shape subsequent research trajectories. Drawing on the new French pragmatic sociology, this article examines how sociologists respond to criticisms of the moral worth of their (...) research. The article outlines three typical responses: (1) accepting the criticism and changing direction completely; (2) accepting the criticism but changing discursive framing to incorporate existing research without being subject to critique; and (3) navigating through the debate by devising new research directions that do not trigger such criticism. To demonstrate, the article looks at how sociologists of religion responded, in their published scholarship, to criticisms of secularization theory as depreciating religious people and spiritual experience. Across the responses, we show that sociologists have included moral considerations in their empirical investigations, and have switched among several diverse moral justifications to address—and also avoid—criticism. We conclude by demonstrating that this model can be extended to other domains of sociological inquiry, including the study of gender-based wage inequality and methodological nationalism. The article highlights the importance of mapping the moral frameworks sociologists use for the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of morality. (shrink)

ExcerptSecularity is not merely to deny the existence of God or obstruct the practice of religion; it is also, and even more precisely, to confine God to the practice of religion.

This essay analyses Ernst Troeltsch’s writings on Protestantism and modernity in light of recent scholarship on the category of the secular. In his historical work on the relationship of Protestantism to the rise of the modern world, the essay argues, Troeltsch was not engaged primarily in a narrative of secularization; nor does he promote what current scholars call an ideology of secularism. Instead, Troeltsch was exploring how religion changes in different cultural contexts, and was intervening in debates in his (...) own society about the political structure, cultural ethos, and future of Germany. The essay therefore cautions against the hasty projection of concepts like secularism and secularization as theorized today back onto the works of nineteenth-century thinkers such as Troeltsch. The political and cultural concerns that animate Troeltsch’s work can be better captured by a more subtle understanding of the multiple meanings of abstract categories in their own intellectual-historical contexts. (shrink)

The article considers the problem of the relations between modernity and secularization. The author argues that the discourse on secularization is the most appropriate strategy for modern self-understanding. The discourse itself is not homogeneous. One approach is a classical theory of secularization, which considers the secularization as a universal world-historical process, which passed the stages “modernization – secularization – rationalization.” Other approach is to interpret modern society as a post-secular society, but with relevance to religious (...) ethos. This approach considers Modernity as a unique social reality with a specific type of rationality and a set of behavioral strategies, which were formed as a result of the transformation of religious social reality, the center of which was a Christian myth. Accordingly, modernization becomes the result of secularization, and not vice versa, as the proponents of the first approach assumed. The thematization in the discourse on the secularization of a new type of society, which J. Habermas called post-secular society, demonstrates a crisis of principles constituting the Modernity’s foundations. Predictions of the epoch of an irreligious society did not come true, and secular reason is now forced to reckon with other types of rationality and take them into account, including in public space. This situation suggests that we are witnessing the birth of a new form of social reality. Thus, the article concludes: discourse on secularization is recognized as the most adequate strategy of the comprehension of Modernity; secularization should be viewed as a consistent detranscendentalization of Christian social reality; the emergence of a post-secular society indicates fundamental transformations in the field of the most general ideas about the nature of cultural mind and cultural identities. (shrink)

It is argued here that our future depends on our completing the secularization of society. This means addressing the problem of authoritarian religions that suppress freedom of belief and opinion. We must promote a post-religious humanism to deal with this problem. This is no more than reviving the humanist consensus which all the major religions acknowledged at least till the 1970s. Until then a comparative religion movement sought to construct a world religion but its endeavours have come to nothing. (...) Secularization means that religious sentiments belong to individuals who work them out for themselves. These sentiments are no longer the prerogative of organizations that impose them on individuals. It is for everyone to develop their own creed on humanist principles. This humanist message contributes to a world monoculture which is now being established everywhere and on which the world’s future peace and security depends. (shrink)

Sjoerd Griffioen investigates the polemics between Löwith, Blumenberg and Schmitt in the German secularization debate (1950’s-1980’s). ‘Secularization’ is revealed as a contested concept in ideological struggles over modernity and religion, both in this debate and contemporary postsecularism.

This book examines "Taylorean social theory," its sources, main characteristics and impact. Charles Taylor's meta-narrative of secularization in the West, prominently contained in his major work A Secular Age (2007), has brought new insight on the social and cultural factors that intervened in such process, the role of human agency, and particularly on the contemporary conditions of belief in North America and Europe. This study discusses what Taylor's approach has brought to the scholarly debate on Western secularization, which (...) has been carried on mostly in sociological terms. McKenzie interprets Taylor's views in a way that offers an original social theory. Such interpretation is possible with the help of sociologist Margaret Archer's "morphogenetic theory" and by making the most of Taylor's particular understanding of the method of the social sciences and of his philosophical views on human beings, knowledge and modernity. After exploring the philosophical and sociological sources informing Taylorean social theory and proposing its basic concepts and hermeneutic guidelines, the author compares it with two widespread theories of secularization: the now waning "orthodox" account and that proposed by Rational Choice Theory scholars, particularly prevalent in the United States. In doing so, the book shows in which ways Taylorean social theory supersedes them, what new issues it brings into the scholarly discussion, and what difficulties might limit its future development. (shrink)

Resumo: A questão da secularização também tem espaço no pensamento de Hannah Arendt. A autora sempre procurou um conceito puro de política, que fosse independente de qualquer raiz religiosa ou que estivesse desvinculado de toda fonte metafísica e transcendente. No entanto, desde Platão, a tradição do pensamento político ocidental não encontra tal autonomia e esse problema se repete nos tempos modernos, sobretudo no momento da fundação de corpos políticos, como é o caso das revoluções, por exemplo. Além disso, Arendt também (...) esclarece como o vácuo de autoridade contribui para a permanência do problema e reforça a necessidade daquilo que ela entende como "o incômodo problema do absoluto". Este artigo privilegia a investigação de tais questões através dos textos Sobre a revolução, Religião e política e O que é autoridade? e sustenta a necessidade da separação das esferas política e religiosa, visando à boa manutenção de ambas.: One can argue that secularization is an important issue in Hannah Arendt's thought. This thinker always sought a pure concept of politics, one that is independent of any religious roots or transcendent and metaphysical sources. Nevertheless, the tradition of Western political thought since Plato has not found such independence. This problem remains in modernity, especially at the moment of the foundation of new political bodies, as in the case of revolutions. Furthermore, Arendt also explains how the absence of authority reinforces what she calls the "problem of the absolute". This article focuses on the investigation of these issues through texts that include On Revolution and What is Authority?, and defends the separation of the religious and political spheres in order to ensure their existence. (shrink)

The article presents Gogol as marking the end of a century-long phase of secularism in Russian culture, from Peter the Great to Pushkin, and as the first writer to represent the cultural phenomenon of the ‘New Middle Ages’ and renewed religious zeal, first described by Berdyaev; further, it highlights some commonalities between Gogol and Belinsky and takes Belinsky as a leading instance of ‘religious atheism’. The article goes on to consider Russian culture’s need for neutral ‘middle ground’ between its multiple (...) and extreme polarities and, in this context, highlights Sergej Averintsev’s plea for an orientation towards Aristotelianism. (shrink)

During the last ten or fifteen years of his life, Talcott Parsons (1902–79) discussed religion and secularization in a number of papers and essays. This work was left unfinished; in the last book that he saw into print, Parsons depicted these papers and essays as work-in-progress. This article focuses on Parsons’ approach to secularization in this late work. Building upon his AGIL-scheme, Parsons analyzed the relation between processes of inclusion and increasing differentiation, on the one hand, and (...) class='Hi'>secularization at the value-oriented level, on the other. This article presents a reconstruction and an immanent critique of Parsons’ approach, which highlights both its possibilities and its limitations in order to contribute to the development of a contemporary social theory of secularization and religious change. (shrink)

The traditional roles of Christian chaplains in aiding patients, physicians, nurses, and hospital administrators in repentance, right belief, right worship, and right conduct are challenged by the contemporary professionalization of chaplaincy guided by post-Christian norms located in a public space structured by three defining postulates: the non-divinity of Christ, robust ecumenism, and the irrelevance of God’s existence. The norms of this emerging post-Christian profession of chaplaincy make interventions with patients, physicians, nurses, and hospital administrators in defense of specifically Christian bioethical (...) norms and goals unprofessional, because the chaplain is now directed as a professional to support health care services held to standards articulated within a secular morality. These changes are exemplar of the profound recasting of the dominant moral culture with wide-ranging implications for bioethics. (shrink)

In this article, using the recent work by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age as my point of departure, I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to think past the competing binary of atheistic and religious experience and allows us to surpass the present narratives of secularism. In A Secular Age, Taylor himself seeks a middle ground between atheism and religion, arguing that it is possible to open ourselves to the cross-pressures of modern existence that find us caught between (...) scientific atheism and a need for spiritual and religious guidance. Here, Taylor finds a way of picturing ourselves within a secular age, remaining faithful to scientific rationalism, but still open to religion and a sense of a higher good. However, as I shall demonstrate, in his thesis Taylor misrepresents the Continental philosophical tradition (particularly Nietzsche and post-structuralism) that has itself sought to understand these cross-pressures of existence. Taking this misrepresentation, and specifically his reductive and colloquial analysis of Nietzsche, Camus, and Derrida, as my point of departure, I provide an alternative manner of thinking through the work of these writers, one that leads to a detailed analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy and his project the deconstruction of Christianity. In this analysis I argue that Nancy provides a manner of thinking that remains open and allows an experience of freedom, without seeking to close that sense of openness with explanation, nor maintaining that sense of openness with a conception of the divine. (shrink)

The Soviet government utilized a variety of tactics while attempting to secularize the U.S.S.R. Oppression of the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrates how interconnected faith and the former tsarist regime were. It is ironic that while trying to wipe out religion, the Bolsheviks replacement methods carried religious-type qualities as well.