How do we deal with difference personally, interpersonally, nationally? Can we weave a cohesive social fabric in a religiously plural society without suppressing differences? This collection of significant essays suggests that to truly honour differences in matters of faith and religion we must publicly exercise and celebrate them. The secular/sacred, public/private divisions long considered sacred in the West need to be dismantled if Canada (or any nation state) is to develop a genuine mosaic that embraces fundamental differences instead (...) of a melting pot that marginalizes. An ethics of difference starts with a recognition of difference, not as deviance or deficit that threatens but as otherness to connect with, cherish, and celebrate. The book begins with the suggestion that our inability to come to terms with social plurality is not fundamentally the fault of religious differences, and that a public/private split inadequately deals with matters of basic difference. It then explores how encouraging people to live out their respective faiths may open new possibilities for respectful, honourable, and just negotiations of contemporary dilemmas arising out of the multicultural fabric of Canadian life. Towards an Ethics of Community introduces readers to some of the most challenging and divisive dilemmas we face in this increasingly pluralistic, postmodern world — issues such as family and domestic violence, Aboriginal rights, homosexuality and public policy, and female genital mutilation. This is a book truly global in scope and significance. (shrink)

This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly (...) among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations. (shrink)

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

How to theorise religion in International Relations (IR)? Does the concept of post-secularity advance the debate on religion beyond the ‘return of religion’ and the crisis of secular reason? This article argues that the post-secular remains trapped in the logic of secularism. First, a new account is provided of the ‘secularist bias’ that characterises mainstream IR theory: (a) defining religion in either essentialist or epiphenomenal terms; (b) positing a series of ‘antagonistic binary opposites’ such (...) as the secular versus the religious; (c) de-sacralising and re-sacralising the public square. The article then analyses post-secularity, showing that it subordinates faith under secular reason and sacralises the ‘other’ by elevating difference into the sole transcendental term. Theorists of the post-secular such as Jürgen Habermas or William Connolly also equate secular modernity with metaphysical universalism, which they seek to replace with post-metaphysical pluralism. In contrast, the alternative that this article outlines is an international theory that develops the Christian realism of the English School in the direction of a metaphysical-political realism. Such a realism binds together reason with faith and envisions a ‘corporate’ association of peoples and nations beyond the secularist settlement of Westphalia that is centred on national states and transnational markets. By linking immanent values to transcendent principles, this approach can rethink religion in international affairs and help revive grand theory in IR. (shrink)

From starting his intellectual career as a surrealist, communist and co-founder of the Collège de Sociologie in 1937, Jules Monnerot (1911?95) ended it as a candidate for the Front National in 1989.In this article I offer an explanation for the unexpected trajectory of this thinker whose work is little known in the English-speaking world. Without overlooking the idea that the infamous College encouraged such tendencies, I argue that the notion of ?secular religion?, as Monnerot developed it in his (...) Sociology of Communism (1949), goes some way to explain his gradual radicalization from Cold Warrior to fascist, a path that otherwise seems unlikely for a French intellectual after World War II. In order to emphasize the unusualness of Monnerot's case, I contrast it with that of his erstwhile collaborator, Georges Bataille. I show that accusations of fascism often levelled against Bataille should be more accurately directed at Monnerot, indeed that the fascism inherent within the College of Sociology was brought out not by Bataille but by Monnerot. Monnerot's case is unsettling first because his definition of ?secular religion? contributed to his pro-fascist stance; and second, because it forces us tore think what is meant by ?philosophy after Auschwitz.? This term usually brings to mind scholars such as T.W. Adorno, Emil Fackenheimor Emmanuel Levinas. Monnerot provides a rare example of a thinker whose fascism only developed after the Holocaust, a shocking response that demands the attention of all those interested in the relationship between religion and politics. (shrink)

Nietzsche's early work is located in the context of the various nineteenth century attempts to found a secular religion. His own attempt, it is argued, was particularly influenced by the work of Richard Wagner and F.A. Lange. It is premised on the claim that the ordinary rational capacities of most human beings are not sufficient for them to arrive at true beliefs. Philosophers do have the required expertise, but in the absence of widespread recognition of this expertise, it (...) can have little effect on popular belief. Nietzsche therefore seeks a means of making philosophical insight popularly effective by harnessing the non-rational, persuasive power of art. However, the project does not turn out to be well-founded; its failure seems to demonstrate that a ‘secular religion’ thus conceived cannot provide us with a coherent conception of intellectual authority. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study is to present a critical view on Hans Kelsen's new work, Secular Religion , finished in 1964 but published only in 2012. The treatise starts with a reflection on the contemporary relevance of the problem of the bonds between Science, Politics and Religion in the Modern Times, and examines the main theses contained in Secular Religion , by pointing out its strong and weak points, and concludes with a general (...) account on Kelsen's point of view concerning the nascent "political theology". In short, Kelsen intends to demonstrate the conservative and deceptive outlines of the attitude held by many intellectuals – Erich Voegelin, Karl Löwith, Arnold J. Toynbee, Etienne Gilson, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger etc. – who see religious elements in the fundamental structures of the Modern times, such as: Philosophy, Science and Politics. According to Kelsen, such identification is not only false but also dangerous, given the fact that the characterization of the laic and democratic project of the Modern Times as some kind of religion can lead to the theologization of the thought, which is typical of totalitarian political systems. (shrink)

Identifying scientism as religion’s secular counterpart, this collection studies contemporary contestations of the authority of science. These controversies suggest that what we are witnessing today is not an increase in the authority of science at the cost of religion, but a dual decline in the authorities of religion and science alike. This entails an erosion of the legitimacy of universally binding truth claims, be they religiously or scientifically informed. Approaching the issue from a cultural-sociological perspective and (...) building on theories from the sociology of religion, the volume unearths the cultural mechanisms that account for the headwind faced by contemporary science. The empirical contributions highlight how the field of academic science has lost much of its former authority vis-à-vis competing social realms; how political and religious worldviews define particular research findings as favorites while dismissing others; and how much of today’s distrust of science is directed against scientific institutions and academic scientists rather than against science per se. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se ocupa del lugar de la religión en la última etapa de la obra de Habermas. En la primera parte se muestran las diferentes aristas de la cuestión de la religión, poniendo énfasis en los aspectos filosófico-políticos, sobre todo el que concierne a la “traducción” del lenguaje religioso al secular como un “requisito” de acceso a la esfera pública. En la segunda parte, se reconstruye, señalando sus límites o dificultades, el concepto de “traducción” en Habermas. Para (...) ello, se apela, además, a algunas categorías conceptuales propuestas por Jean-Marc Ferry. La traducción en este marco puede ser entendida en dos sentidos: como una reformulación semántica que apunta a ampliar el universo discursivo de origen (traducción como desencapsulamiento) y como una transformación de los géneros pre o para-argumentativos en argumentativos (traducción como cambio de género discursivo). (shrink)

New cross-cultural approaches to philosophy of religion seek to move it beyond the preoccupations of Christian theology and the abstractions of ‘classical theism’, towards an appreciation of a broader range of religious phenomena. But if the concept of religion is itself the product of extrapolation from modern, Western, Christian understandings, disseminated through colonial encounter, does the new philosophy of religion simply reproduce the deficiencies of the old, under the guise of a universalizing, albeit culturally and historically particular, (...) category? This article argues that it is necessary to interrogate the secular episteme within which religion is thematized as a discrete topos. (shrink)

The proper role, if any, for religion-based arguments is a live and sometimes heated issue within the field of bioethics. The issue attracts heat primarily because bioethical analyses influence the outcomes of controversial court cases and help shape legislation in sensitive biopolicy areas. A problem for religious bioethicists who seek to influence biopolicy is that there is now widespread academic and public acceptance, at least within liberal democracies, that the state should not base its policies on any particular (...) class='Hi'>religion’s metaphysical claims or esoteric moral system. In response, bioethicists motivated by religious concerns have adopted two identifiable strategies. Sometimes they rely on slippery-slope arguments that, sometimes at least, have empirically testable premises. A more questionable response is the manipulation and misuse of secular-sounding moral language, such as references to “human dignity,” and the plights of groups of people labeled “vulnerable.”. (shrink)

The authors revisit the idea that Enlightenment spearheaded secularization. This book invites all to look at the Enlightenment religiosity as founded on a merger of religious criticism and heterodoxy.

This study was designed to examine the determinants of and differences between the ethical beliefs of two groups of Japanese students in religious and secular universities. Multiple regression analysis revealed that students of the Japanese religious university perceived that young, male, relativistic, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did older, female, and idealistic students. Students of the Japanese secular university perceived that male, achievement-oriented, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did female and (...) experience-oriented students. Opportunism was found to be one of the most important determinants in explaining misconduct. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) revealed that students of the Japanese secular university tended to score higher on achievement and humanism, and lower on theism and positivism than did students of the Japanese religious university. In addition, students of the Japanese secular university were somewhat more sensitive to academic dishonesty practices than were students of the Japanese religious university. (shrink)

In Religion in Secular Education Cathy Byrne explores the secular principle as a guiding compass for religions in state schools. Historical and contextual research and international comparisons explore the ideologies, policies, pedagogies and practices affecting national and individual religious identity.

Jeremy Bentham was an ardent secularist convinced that society could be sustained without the support of religious institutions or beliefs. This is writ large in the commonly neglected books on religion he wrote and published during the last twenty-five years of his life. However his earliest writings on the subject date from the 1770s, when as a young man he first embarked on his calling as a legal theorist and social reformer. From that time on, religion was never (...) far from the centre of his thoughts. In Secular Utilitarianism, James Crimmins illustrates the nature, extent, and depth of Jeremy Bentham's concern with religion, from his Oxford days of first doubts to the middle years of quiet unbelief, and finally, the zealous atheism and secularism of his later life. Dr Crimmins provides an interpretation of Bentham's thought in which his religious views, hitherto of little interest to Bentham scholars, are shown to be integral: on the one hand intimately associated with the metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological principles which gave shape to his system as a whole, and on the other central to the development of his entirely secular view of society. (shrink)

Sociological studies of women's experiences with conservative religions are typically framed by a paradox that ponders women's complicity. The prevailing view associates agency with strategic subjects who use religion to further extra-religious ends and pays little attention to the cultural and institutional contexts that shape “compliance.” This paper suggests an alternative framing. Rather than asking why women comply, I examine agency as religious conduct and religiosity as a constructed status. Drawing on a study that examined how orthodox Jewish Israeli (...) women observe, negotiate, and make sense of regulations of marital sexuality, this paper explains religious women's agency as religious conduct, or the “doing” of religion. I demonstrate that doing religion is associated with a search for authentic religious subjecthood and that religiosity is shaped in accordance with the logics of one's religion, and in the context of controlling messages about threatened symbolic boundaries and cultural Others. (shrink)

The collection of essays in this volume critically explore various aspects of the modern development of the religion-secular dichotomy and its ideological function in the assertion of colonial power since the 16th century. The authors hope to illuminate the role and formation of the modern category of religion, and of the academic study of religion, as colonial instruments in the more general subjection of indigenous concepts of order to the classificatory needs of Euro-America. The methodology tends (...) to overflow traditional disciplinary boundaries and offers analyses that are historiographical, literary and ethnographical. However, rather than seeking comprehensiveness in such a vast field, the authors here concentrate on specific aspects of the colonial relationship either from the point of view of a particular colonized culture, for example Mexico, Guatemala, Vietnam, India, Japan, South Africa, Canada; or from the point of view of the colonizing powers, in this case England, Germany and the United States. The authors hope to encourage further studies by specialists in different cultures and languages in the problems of imposition, translation, and reception of the separation of 'religion' from other domains such as 'politics', 'economics' and the 'non-religious' civil domain. (shrink)

The increasing secularization of political thought between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries has often been noted, but rarely described in detail. The contributors to this volume consider the significance of the relationship between religious beliefs, dogma and secular ideas in British political philosophy from Thomas Hobbes to J.S. Mill. During this period, Britain experienced the advance of natural science, the spread of education and other social improvements, and reforms in the political realm. These changes forced religion to account (...) for itself and to justify its existence, both as a social institution and as a collection of fundamental articles of belief about the world and its operations. This book, originally published in 1990, conveys the crucial importance of the association between religion, secularization and political thought. (shrink)

Full-Blooded religion is not acceptable in mainstream bioethics. This article excavates the cultural history that led to the suppression of religion in bioethics. Bioethicists typically fall into one of the following camps. 1) The irreligious, who advocate for suppressing religion, as do Timothy F. Murphy, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. This irreligious camp assumes American Fundamentalist Protestantism is the real substance of all religions. 2) Religious bioethicists, who defend religion by emphasizing its functions and diminishing its (...) metaphysical commitments. Religious defenders empty religion of its theology to present its feel-good functions in a way that is acceptable to the irreligious. However, religion reduced to its functions dissolves into a counter-culture that may counteract materialism but lacks the power to motivate much more. This article criticizes both camps, as both presume Enlightenment myths and consequently neuter religion. Both irreligious and religious bioethicists commonly presume Enlightenment myths about secularity and religion. Secularity is presumed neutral and rational. Religion is presumed divisive and irrational. This myth provides built-in value-judgements; we have already judged secularity as good and religion as bad. Much of the debate over religion in bioethics is arguing over false stereotypes of religion. Consequently, mainstream bioethics neuters religion, while the irreligious are gifted political power to define the field. (shrink)

Apresento neste artigo as linhas gerais do pensamento do filósofo e epistemólogo catalão Marià Corbí, bem como sua teoria acerca da função da religião nas sociedades tradicionais e da perda desta função nos quadros da moderna sociedade científica e tecnológica. Para Corbí, a era industrial fez desaparecerem as condições de vida que tornavam necessárias as culturas pré-industriais e suas mitologias e religiões. Os sistemas de programação coletiva baseados nessas religiões e mitologias perderam sua função, e por isso estão todos em (...) colapso. Em seguida abordo sua proposta de uma espiritualidade leiga, voltada para o conhecimento silencioso e o caminho interior. A espiritualidade leiga, livre da submissão a sistemas de crença, deve preservar o rico legado espiritual presente nas várias tradições religiosas como contribuição para uma sociedade mais humana e livre. Por fim, faço algumas observações e comentários sobre questões que considero sensíveis no modelo teórico de Corbí, sobretudo sua afirmação sobre o fim da religião e a falta de substitutos para ela, sua compreensão da história e a possível universalização de sua proposta de espiritualidade. Palavras-chave: Religião; Espiritualidade; Cultura; Revolução científica; Corbí.This article presents the general lines of thought of the catalan philosopher and epistemologist Marià Corbí, as well as his theory about the role of religion in traditional societies and the loss of this function within the frameworks of modern scientific and technological society. For Corbí, the industrial era made disappear the living conditions which made necessary the pre-industrial cultures and their mythologies and religions. Social programming systems based on these mythologies and religions have lost their function, so they are all collapsing. Then I discuss his proposal for a lay spirituality, which seeks the quiet knowledge and the interior path to oneself. This lay spirituality, free from submission to belief systems, should preserve the rich spiritual heritage present in the various religious traditions as a contribution to a more human and free society. Finally, I make some observations and comments on sensitive issues in Corbí´s theoretical model, especially his statement about the end of religion and the lack of substitutes for it, his understanding of history and the possible universality of his spirituality proposal. Key words: Religion; Spirituality; Culture; Scientific revolution; Corbí. (shrink)

Religion’s persistent and new visibility in political life has prompted a significant global debate. One of its key features concerns the nature and impact of secularization. This book intervenes in two ways. Firstly, it provides summative accounts of the history, culture and legal interactions that have informed Australia’s unique example. Secondly, it critically analyzes secular political theory concerning the public sphere, deliberative politics and democratic practices. The compendium aims to propel the debate in new directions and promote urgently (...) needed public understanding. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kant’s distinction between “civil union” and “ethical community” can be of great value in dealing with a problem that causes considerable trouble in contemporary political and social philosophy, namely the question of the normative significance and role of religion in political and social life. The first part dwells upon the third part of Kant`s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason with the intention of exposing the general features of ethical community. It highlights the (...) fact that Kant considers publicity, and indeed public authority, to be constitutive of the ethical community. The second part discusses his argument that we have a unique ethical duty to enter into an ethical community. This discussion clarifies the constitutive purpose of ethical community and sets forth why Kant thought that the ethical community should have a religious form. The third part presents an account of the constitutive purpose of the state in light of the Doctrine of Right. Throughout these steps, as is concluded, the essentials of a model for the relations between law, ethics, and religion emerge, which shows the way in which both religious and secularist worries can be met on a principled basis. (shrink)

In this essay I review three important volumes for the field of secular studies: Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, Rethinking Secularism, and The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. All three volumes explore the nature of the secular and the status, role, and possible futures of religion in our late modern, globalized world. The volumes present 34 essays by 30 authors representing seven disciplines, and at least six end games. For some, questions (...) of religion-secular entanglement are a historical matter and the task is to map intellectual and ideological trajectories. A second purpose is to empirically document the complexities of particular religion-secular entanglements in particular socio-cultural locations. For others, the remit is theoretical, to discern a conceptual agenda for the ongoing study of religion-secular entanglements. Others are more philosophical, chasing the existential consequences of secularity. A fifth end game is applied in nature: reflections on how political actors might best engage the religious and the secular in acts of governance and international relations. Finally, there are normative voices, those seeking to name what a good, productive religion-secular entanglement ought to look like. Taken together, the volumes mark a thriving, mature field of scholarly inquiry: secular studies has come of age. (shrink)

How to accommodate diverse religious practices and laws within a secular framework is one of the most pressing and controversial problems facing contemporary European public order. In this provocative contribution to the subject, Lorenzo Zucca argues that traditional models of secularism, focusing on the relationship of state and church, are out-dated and that only by embracing a new picture of what secularism means can Europe move forward in the public reconciliation of its religious diversity.The book develops a new model (...) of secularism suitable for Europe as a whole. The new model of secularism is concerned with the way in which modern secular states deal with the presence of diversity in the society. This new conception of secularism is more suited to the European Union whose overall aim is to promote a stable, peaceful and unified economic and political space starting from a wide range of different national experiences and perspectives. The new conception of secularism is also more suited for the Council of Europe at large, and in particular the European Court of Human Rights which faces growing demands for the recognition of freedom of religion in European states. The new model does not defend secularism as an ideological position, but aims to present secularism as our common constitutional tradition as well as the basis for our common constitutional future. (shrink)

Some recent state formations are offshoots of religious societies where the elite clothed the state with religious apparel. Diverse communities and their beliefs compel many modern nations to adopt a secular state ideology in order to avoid religious domination of time. Constitutionally, Islam is the official religion in Malaysia, while the state has maintained peaceful co-existence among its religious groups with an emphasis on religious tolerance and improved wealth distribution. Conversely, Nigeria, constitutionally a secular state with shared (...) populations of mainly Christians and Muslims, is embroiled in yearly religious conflicts. This article aims to show how Nigeria’s secular state status is engulfed in religious bigotry due to institutional inadequacies. This is unlike Malaysia’s state-centered influence on religion, yet its wealth distribution policy makes room for peaceful co-existence in its polity as against more severe challenges of corruption in Nigeria. The paper argues that leadership and institutional failures have exacerbated religious conflicts in Nigeria and hence the state totters in the face of tension. A theoretical debate unveils our proposition on religious practices in both countries. We rely on secondary data and empirical evidence in unveiling issues and conclude with modest recommendations. (shrink)

The postsecular turn within feminist theory refers to a renewed attention to religion within feminist scholarship. However, rather than conceptualizing the postsecular as a new moment within feminist theorizing that breaks with a previous trend of secular feminism, this article stresses that it is important to recognize the long history of coexistence and contestations between religious and secular feminist approaches. In this article, the different reception histories of the story of Sojourner Truth are examined to elucidate and (...) reflect on the complicated relationship of the religious and the secular within feminist scholarship. Three different types of feminist theoretical engagement with the story of Sojourner Truth are examined and contrasted: the implicitly secular use of the story of Sojourner Truth in black feminist scholarship and theorizing of intersectionality, the explicitly religious interpretations found in the work of feminist and womanist theologians, and the deconstructive reading by Donna Haraway. In discussing and comparing these different engagements with the story of Sojourner Truth, it is stressed that the boundaries between the religious and the secular are perhaps less clear-cut than initially imagined, and that a dialogue between secular and religious feminist approaches is very fruitful. The article closes by examining how the complex intersections of gender, religion and race in the story of Sojourner Truth can be connected to the contemporary theorizing on the racialization of religion within critical race scholarship. (shrink)

This study was designed to examine the determinants of and differences between the ethical beliefs of two groups of Japanese students in religious and secular universities. Multiple regression analysis revealed that students of the Japanese religious university perceived that young, male, relativistic, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did older, female, and idealistic students. Students of the Japanese secular university perceived that male, achievement-oriented, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did female and (...) experience-oriented students. Opportunism was found to be one of the most important determinants in explaining misconduct. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) revealed that students of the Japanese secular university tended to score higher on achievement and humanism, and lower on theism and positivism than did students of the Japanese religious university. In addition, students of the Japanese secular university were somewhat more sensitive to academic dishonesty practices than were students of the Japanese religious university. (shrink)

Ananda Abeysekara contends that democracy, along with its cherished secular norms, is founded on the idea of a promise deferred to the future. Rooted in democracy's messianic promise is the belief that religious—political identity-such as Buddhist, Hindu, Sinhalese, Christian, Muslim, or Tamil—can be critiqued, neutralized, improved, and changed, even while remaining inseparable from the genocide of the past. This facile belief, he argues, is precisely what distracts us from challenging the violence inherent in postcolonial political sovereignty. At the same (...) time, we cannot simply dismiss the democratic concept, since it permeates so deeply through our modernist, capitalist, and humanist selves. In _The Politics of Postsecular Religion_, Abeysekara invites us to reconsider our ethical-political legacies, to look at them not as _problems_, but as _aporias_, in the Derridean sense-that is, as contradictions or impasses incapable of resolution. Disciplinary theorizing in religion and politics, he argues, is unable to identify the aporias of our postcolonial modernity. The aporetic legacies, which are like specters that cannot be wished away, demand a new kind of thinking. It is this thinking that Abeysekara calls mourning and un-inheriting. Un-inheriting is a way of meditating on history that both avoids the simple binary of remembering and forgetting and provides an original perspective on heritage, memory, and time. Abeysekara situates aporias in the settings and cultures of the United States, France, England, Sri Lanka, India, and Tibet. In presenting concrete examples of religion in public life, he questions the task of refashioning the aporetic premises of liberalism and secularism. Through close readings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, Butler, and Agamben, as well as Foucault, Asad, Chakrabarty, Balibar, and Zizek, he offers readers a way to think about the futures of postsecular politics that is both dynamic and creative. (shrink)

This article seeks to consider the ways in which substitutes for religion have been found both through a discussion of the treatment of religion in the classical sociological theories of Weber; Durkheim and Marx and then the way in which in modern societies alternative sets of belief and practices which fulfi l the same function as religion have been developed in the Communist and the postCommunist and Western worlds.

Secularization is a polysemantic word quite difficult to explain. If it is viewed as being characterized by two processes related to the religious changes of society and the social changes of religion, then there can be little pertinent utilization of this term in theology. This is what I’ll try to explain in this articleKey words: secularization, state and church, theology, evanghelization.

Religion for a Secular Age provides a transnational history of modern Ved nta through a comparative study of two of its most important exponents, Friedrich Max Muller (1823 1900) and Swami Vivekananda (1863 1902). This book explains why Ved nta's appeal spanned the ostensibly very different contexts of colonial India and Victorian Britain and America, and how this ancient form of thought was translated by Muller and Vivekananda into a modern form of philosophy or religion. These religiously-committed (...) men attempted to reconcile religion with modernity by appealing to Advaita (literally, 'non-dualistic') Ved nta's monistic interpretation of reality. The 'scientific' study of religion allegedly demonstrated the evolutionary superiority of Ved nta and the possibility of religion's survival in 'the light of modern science'. They believed Ved nta could also provide the religious basis for moral engagement in this world, even as the hold of orthodox Christianity and traditional Hinduism appeared to be weakening. Ved nta thus served as a way of articulating a form of religion suitable for a secular age religion which has embraced modern forms of thought while breaking away from creeds, scriptures and institutions to thrive in the spheres of public debate of London, Calcutta and New York.". (shrink)