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"Religion and Secularization"
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Institutionally organized religious life in the United State is undergoing a dramatic transformation. While individual beliefs and practices remain relatively stable, institutional affiliation and participation has declined dramatically. In this article, we explore the religious \"Dones\"—those who have disaffiliated with their religious congregations but, unlike the Nones, continue to associate with a religious tradition. Drawing on a unique dataset of 100 in-depth interviews with self-identified Christians, we explain the \"push\" and \"pull\" factors that lead a person to intentionally leave their congregations. We find that a bureaucratic structure and a narrow focus on certain moral proscriptions can drive people away, while the prospect of forming more meaningful relationships and the opportunities to actively participate in social justice issues draw people out. From these factors, we show that an \"iron cage of congregations\" exists that is ill-suited to respond to a world where religious life is increasingly permeable as people enact their spirituality outside traditional religious organizations. We conclude by questioning whether the spiritual lives of the Dones are ultimately sustainable without institutional support.
Journal Article
Selection versus Socialization? Interrogating the Sources of Secularity in Global Science
Science and secularization have been linked in scholarship and the public imagination. Some suggest that scientific training leads to loss of religion. Yet there is only speculation about the processes by which scientists might become less religious and whether such processes are confined to the west or hold across national contexts. Using original survey data (N = 5,006) of biologists and physicists in India, Italy, and the United States, as well as 215 in-depth interviews, we examine the religious transitions of academic scientists and the factors that they say prompted their religious shifts. We find some support for work suggesting that scientific training is secularizing. Yet we also show that, across national contexts, the nonreligious disproportionately select into scientific careers. Furthermore, we find that scientists tend not to identify science as the primary factor in their own religious transitions. These results challenge long-held assumptions about the relationship between science and secularization.
Journal Article
Intimate Distance: Rethinking the Unthought God in Christianity
The work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy shares with the thinkers of the ‘theological turn in phenomenology’ the programmatic desire to place the ‘theological’, in the broad sense of rethinking the religious traditions in our secular time, back on the agenda of critical thought. Like those advocating a theological turn in phenomenology, Nancy’s deconstructive approach to philosophical analysis aims to develop a new sensibility for the other, for transcendence, conceptualized as the
non-apparent
in the realm of appearing phenomena. This is why Nancy launches a project looking for the ‘unthought’ and unexpected within the Christian traditions, called
deconstruction of Christianity
. However, the deconstructive approach to the non-apparent differs fundamentally from that of the thinkers of the turn (1) in its being non-apologetic and non-restorative with regard to religion, because it starts from a problematization of the—typically modern, that is romantic—desire to defend and protect what would be ‘lost’ and possibly to restore this, (2) in its focus on the complex difference-at-work (
différance
) between religion and secularism, a difference that can be termed
entanglement
and
complicity
between these two, (3) in its hypothesis that this entanglement is essentially one between (the meaning and experience of, the rituality around) presence and absence in modern culture, (4) in its conviction that the philosophy and history of culture must join, support, complete and maybe even turn around phenomenology when dealing with the difficult task of determining what exactly would be ‘left’ of the ‘theological’ in our time. In this article, both positions are compared and confronted further, leading to an account of Nancy’s re-readings of the Christian legacy (its theology, doctrine, art, rituals etc.), and ending in a more detailed, exemplary inquiry into the tension between distance and proximity, characteristic of the Christian God.
Journal Article
No Country for Muslims? The Invention of an Islam Républicain in France and Its Impact on French Muslims
Since the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October 2020, the call for a fight against the so-called ‘Political Islam’ has been heard once again, not only in France, but all over Europe (EU). The politicization of Islam is held to be responsible for the increasing attacks by radical Islamic actors within European metropoles, and the EU states’ call for action and revenge in response to this ideology and its adherents, in order to guarantee public security and democratic values. Starting from the major terrorist attacks in France in the last few years, this paper seeks to compare the interlinking between domestic policy and religious radicalization and its impact on neighboring states. With regard to the attacks on 13 November 2015 in France, the attackers were traced back to radical networks in Belgium and Germany. Based on selected interviews that have been conducted by the author with female adherents of jihadist milieus within the years 2015 and 2016 in France and social media examples of Muslim reactions on the current French law enforcement, the tension between domestic policy and religious freedom related to Islam in France will be highlighted in this article. Among other reasons, the interview quotations and social media reactions can be seen as a result of a specific religious understanding and practice related to Islam by some actors. In addition, the ongoing othering of Muslims by France and other European societies can be seen to be in sum to be responsible for the increasing interest of young Muslims in radical Islamic thought that led to jihadist attacks within France in the not-so-distant past. With respect to the aforementioned development, this article will conceptualize the problematique of a (politically motivated) category formation related to one religion that is currently practiced in France, as seen from the perspective of a religious studies scholar.
Journal Article
Religion and Individualism in Modernity. Reflections on the Occasion of a Pandemic
Modernity in the West had, among other things, the effect of encouraging people to distance themselves, especially from the more cultivated classes, from ecclesiastical structures, at first, and then from the Christian religion itself. This distancing had incidence on individualism, which also led to a modern vision of man and society. This paper discusses the main philosophical, political and cultural motives that directly influenced, especially after the French Revolution, the accelerated process of secularization. This process led to the skeptical and post-metaphysical attitude of the post-modernity of the 20th century. Unlike previous ones, it was a century in which atheism was not an attitude of few individuals among the intellectuals but it spread also to large groups of citizens. However, since the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st, some changes can be perceived that could indicate a return of interest towards religion in the West.
Journal Article
A Secular Christian
Jesus had preached the arrival of Kingdom. It was time to start living the life of the Last World, as if you were standing at the very end of Time. And that is the position in which I find myself, a secular Christian at the end of my world. At times I have called my religion ‘Emptiness and Brightness’, ‘Empty radical humanism’, ‘the religion of life’, and ‘Kingdom theology’. It’s nothing very special; it’s where we post-Christian Westerners now are. And I rather like it: I’m not complaining.
Journal Article
From the Natural Self-Orgnizaton of Religion to the Modern Magical Realism of the Religious Experience
Religion is a powerful phenomenon arising in and from society. Various efforts have been done to understand religion as a natural phenomenon, which could be framed in the language of science. In this paper, I forward a sui generis approach to the naturality of religion, where religion is explained as one of the next stages in broader natural processes of self-organization. Furthermore, having framed like this the naturality of the religious experience, the paper explores the contemporary debate of current religious expressions. It is suggested that the arrival of science and the modern society have changed some expressions of religious experiences; while, nonetheless, keeping their capacity to self-organize societies. The magical realist society, as the society capable of disguising the magic of religion within the realism of the scientific ethos, is presented and discussed as a modern secular expression of religion, capable to cope with the challenges of science through the dynamics of modernity and capitalism.
Journal Article
Laicidade, Estado e Religião: o novo paradigma (Secularity, State and Religion: the new paradigm) - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2010v8n19p41
As relações Estado-Religião têm sido regidas na modernidade pelo princípio da laicidade do Estado. Esta laicidade assumiu, muitas vezes, o caráter de negação dos valores transcendentes, sob a capa de neutralidade do Estado. Tal posição se explica pela origem do Estado laico como reação à influência dominante das Igrejas cristãs sobre toda a vida social, no período anterior à Revolução Francesa. Ora, esta contraposição entre as esferas religiosa e política perdeu qualquer sentido no mundo atual, pelo menos, no Ocidente. Com efeito, as mudanças culturais advindas com a secularização da sociedade reclamam - está é a proposta do artigo - um novo modelo de laicidade, segundo o qual o Estado, longe de pretender impor aos cidadãos uma determinada visão do mundo, pretensamente científica, mas, na verdade, ideológica, promova a participação de todas as forças vivas da nação, em particular, das comunidades religiosas, no debate público sobre as questões de interesse comum, sobretudo no seu aspecto ético. Palavras-chave: Laicidade; Estado; Religião; Tradições culturais; Secularização; Ética. Abstract The relations between Religion and State have been ruled in modern times by a secularist view of politics. Official secularism has often assumed the denial of transcendent values, under cover of State neutrality. This position can be explained in view of the origins of the secular State as a reaction against the hegemonic social influence of Christian Churches prior to the French Revolution. The opposition between the religious and political spheres, however, has lost all meaning in today's world, at least in the West. In fact, as this article intends to show, the cultural changes arising precisely from the secularization of society require a new model of secular State, wherein the State should not seek to impose on its citizens a certain worldview which, although purportedly scientific, would in fact be ideological. On the contrary, it should promote the participation of all of civil society, and of the nation's religious communities in particular, in the public debate about issues of common interest, especially regarding their ethical aspects. Key Words: Secularity; State; Religion; Cultural traditions; Secularization; Ethics.
Journal Article
Mediatisation of Catholicism in Croatia: A Networked Religion?
Ovaj se rad bavi temom medijatizacije religije, shvaćene kao proces u kojemu strukturna logika medija ima veliku ulogu u religijskoj komunikaciji i tako utječe na uspjeh u prenošenju tih poruka, ali utječe i na religiju kao cjelinu. Stoga se pokušava argumentirati pozicija po kojoj današnju društvenu transformaciju religije nije moguće uspješno analizirati ni razumjeti bez uzimanja u obzir povećane važnosti medijatizacije religije i njezinih posljedica. Imajući u vidu sveobuhvatnu važnost interneta kao komunikacijske platforme, autori su nastojali istražiti može li se internetska prisutnost katolicizma u Hrvatskoj opisati kao umrežena religija sa svojim temeljnim sastavnicama (umrežena zajednica, narativni identiteti, promjene u pozicijama autoriteta, konvergentne prakse i integracija između stvarnog i internetskog konteksta). Korištena je analiza medijskog sadržaja na uzorku (N = 200) različitih kategorija katoličkih internetskih i Facebook stranica. Iako postoje važne razlike između, u odnosu na Katoličku crkvu, službenih, poluslužbenih i neslužbenih stranica, kao i između tih internetskih i Facebook stranica, rezultati ovoga istraživanja sugeriraju da u slučaju katolicizma u Hrvatskoj internetska religijska komunikacija ima bliske veze sa stvarnim svijetom, ne osporava formalne religijske autoritete, kao i da ne dovodi do novih tumačenja religijskih doktrina i tekstova. Autori zaključuju da internetska prisutnost katolicizma u Hrvatskoj dovodi do reafirmacije i jačanja postojećih religijskih formi u novom medijskom okruženju.
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