The 2013 Telos Conference is currently seeking paper submissions on the subject of Religion and Politics in a Post-Secular World.
Posts Tagged ‘post-secular’
August 20th, 2012
Religion and modern communication
posted by Bryan S. Turner
There has been considerable amount of research on how commodification and the Internet are transforming the religious lives of young people. For young Muslims, Internet use is an important means of building a consensus about, for example, whether the use of henna for cosmetic purposes is compatible with Muslim tradition or whether dating and premarital intimacies are compatible with the life of a “good Muslim.” Whereas the religious system of communication in an age of revelation was hierarchical, unitary, and authoritative, the system of communicative acts in a new media environment are typically horizontal rather than vertical, diverse and fragmented rather than unitary, devolved rather than centralized. Furthermore, the authority of any message is constantly negotiable and negotiated. The growth of these diverse centers of interpretation in a global communication system has produced considerable instability in the formal system of religious belief and practice.
August 16th, 2012
Enter the Post-Secular
posted by Michele DillonIt was, then, a stirring sight to see Habermas sit down with Cardinal Ratzinger in 2004 for a philosophical dialogue. It is hard not to miss a breath at the image of both men in conversation, one the arch-defender of reason and rationality, described by Habermasian scholar Thomas McCarthy as the “last great rationalist,” and the other, renowned as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (and subsequently as Pope Benedict XVI), for his steadfast theological defense of Catholic tradition and moral teaching. At the same time, the twinning of the two Germans made for a fitting tableau: through their long careers, both have shown little interest in sociological realities and have remained intellectually aloof from lived experience.
June 28th, 2012
American civil religion in the age of Obama: An interview with Philip S. Gorski
posted by Joseph Blankholm
Philip S. Gorski is Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Research at Yale University. His work as a comparative historical sociologist has been influential in recovering Max Weber and asserting the strong influence of Calvinism on state formation in early modern Europe. In his recent book, The Protestant Ethic Revisited (Temple, 2011), he challenges Charles Tilly’s thesis that the technologies of war drove the creation of stable nation-states and argues that post-Reformation religious conflicts were the primary impetus of European state formation. In addition to co-editing The Post-Secular in Question earlier this year as part the SSRC’s series with NYU Press, Gorski is editor of another volume coming out early next year entitled Bourdieu and Historical Analysis (Duke, 2012). He and I sat down in Theodore Roosevelt Park in New York City, where we discussed the book he’s writing on civil religion, joked about Obama’s messianic burden, and considered what present-day America might learn from Émile Durkheim.
March 26th, 2012
Public religions and the postsecular
posted by John D. BoyThe latest issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion contains the presidential address of British sociologist James Beckford. In it, Beckford critically reflects on the concepts of public religion and the postsecular.
March 14th, 2012
Imagining radical refusal
posted by John D. BoyIn Reviews in Cultural Theory, Erin Wunker reviews Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory, and Postsecular Modernity by Simon During.
November 29th, 2011
The resurgence of the civic
posted by Adrian Pabst
Occupy Wall Street and cognate groups around the world are part of a protest movement that is both global and local. It is global in terms of geographic scope, thematic range, and social composition. It is local in terms of the specific objects of protest and the protesters’ goals. The organic blending of the global with the local is reflected in the very unfolding of this worldwide wave. As the Egyptian activist Asmaa Mahfouz has remarked, the various groups “work in symbiosis, learning from and imitating each others’ strategies . . . the call for Occupy protests came from Canada, the General Assembly structures came from Spain, and the outcry of ‘We are the 99%’ came from Italy. Many occupiers took inspiration from our Tahrir Square; now the Occupy movement across the United States is inspiring us in Egypt.”
August 22nd, 2011
Milton and the postsecular
posted by John D. BoyIn The Huffington Post, Feisal Mohammed offers an excerpt from his new book, Milton and the Post-Secular Present: Ethics, Politics, Terrorism, published in Stanford University Press’s beautiful “Cultural Memory in the Present” series.
May 20th, 2011
Physicists making religion headlines
posted by John D. BoyEver since he told a Guardian reporter last weekend that the idea of an afterlife is a “fairy story,” Stephen Hawking has been in the religion news. The author of A Brief History of Time isn’t the only physicist making religion headlines. Not long ago, a paper presented at the American Physical Society’s annual meeting led the BBC to report: “Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says.” Finally, the ongoing work on particle physics at CERN prompted its director to tell an interviewer: “we are crossing the boundary between knowledge and belief.”
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