Recent Posts

January 26th, 2012

The context of religious pluralism

posted by Nadia Urbinati

Akeel Bilgrami’s article, “Secularism: Its Content and Context,” is an important and welcome contribution on a topic that has acquired momentum with the renaissance of the public role of religions, in democratic and non-democratic societies alike. Bilgrami clarifies in a penetrating and lucid way, three fundamental ideas on secularism: first, that it is “a stance to be taken about religion”; second, that it is not an indication of the form of government or the liberal nature of a regime; and third, that the context is a crucial factor in issues concerning the relationship between politics and religion.

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January 19th, 2012

Religious freedom defeats secular law

posted by Leslie Griffin

January 9th, 2012

Normative or empirical comparisons?

posted by Veit Bader

January 5th, 2012

Axial axioms

posted by Wendy Doniger

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January 18th, 2012

Frequencies 91/100 – 100/100

posted by Kathryn Lofton and John Lardas Modern

Today marks the hundredth entry in Frequencies. In the ten most recent entries, Nancy Levene takes our terms to task, John Modern considers the smell of language, Tomas Matza touches the healing screen, Gabriel Levy rides the waves of thought, Sarah McFarland Taylor goes thrifting, Adam Frank studies the spirit of science, Jeremy Rapport seeks the social in Unity, S. Brent Plate visits a galaxy far, far away, Omri Elisha prays for prayer, and Darryl Caterine writes automatically.

With 100 essays posted between September 1, 2011 and January 18, 2012, this phase of the Frequencies project is now complete. In future months, responses to the collection will be published here on The Immanent Frame.

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December 19th, 2011

Public sociology: rigor and relevance

posted by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam

Any authors would be pleased by an array of laudatory and thoughtful comments on their work, especially by a group of critics as distinguished and diverse as this. We are grateful for the care and attention our commentators have taken with American Grace, especially given that they are outside of our own discipline of political science. In writing this book, our hope was to speak beyond disciplinary boundaries. It is thus particularly gratifying to read John Torpey describe American Grace as “public sociology.” This is precisely what we hoped to achieve. We believe that more social science should be directed toward informing our public discourse, and that rigor versus relevance is a false choice.

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Featured discussion

Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Leslie Griffin, and George C. Heider consider the recent argument heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, an employment case that brings into question the “ministerial exception.”

 

 

Featured publication

American Religion: Contemporary Trends

Drawing from various important sources, including the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study, Mark Chaves takes a quantitative look at key trends in diversity, belief, involvement, congregational life, leadership, liberal Protestant decline, and polarization in the United States today.

Featured interview

Focus on the funk

In dialogue with Eduardo Mendieta, co-editor of The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, Cornel West—University Professor at Princeton, public intellectual, and contributor to The Power of Religion—discusses the meaning of philosophy and human fragility in an increasingly globalizing world.