The 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.
Posts Tagged ‘public religions’
Understanding resacralization (part 3)
posted by Brandon VaidyanathanShould religious discourse be welcomed in the public sphere, or should we require that it first be translated into secular terms? Part of the concern in the debate is that such translation would be demeaning to religiously-committed people, and that they would be unwilling to do this. But in something like the Rimini Meeting it seems that the opposite is the case—translation into secular idiom may in fact be an attractive prospect to religious groups: an attempt to retain a freshness of content by changing the form, a way to express their way of life in a public forum that might invite those who might otherwise steer clear.
Google, God, and the public
posted by John D. BoyGoogle’s attempt to bring its Street View service to Germany has met with strong opposition. Given the country’s history, the opposition feeds off many Germans’ wariness of encroachments upon their privacy—a wariness that Jeff Jarvis has called “something nearing a cultural obsession.” In this vein, a leading newspaper commented that ”Google knows more about you and me than the KGB, Stasi or Gestapo ever dreamed of.” Not least among those opposing the Californian internet giant’s service are the German churches. Several Protestant churches have registered concerns, including the largest of the Landeskirchen, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover.
Discussing mosques, minarets, and crosses
posted by Ruth Braunstein , David Buckley and Grace YukichRuthie, Grace and David here, reporting live from the IWM International Summer School in Philosophy and Politics in Cortona, Italy. We are here with forty graduate students and post-docs and an inspiring group of faculty from over 20 countries to explore a range of issues related to religion in public life. And over the next two weeks, we look forward to sharing some of our discussions with the readers of The Immanent Frame. Today we would like to talk about an issue we discussed in the first session of our course on “The Role of Faith in Public Discourse,” taught by Nilüfer Göle and Michael Sandel.
Embedded religion in Asia
posted by Richard Madsen
The secularity of modern Asian states has by no means led to widespread social secularity, Taylor’s second secularity, a decline of religious belief and practice among ordinary people. The degree of religious practice varies from country to country, but almost everywhere temples, mosques, churches, and shrines are ubiquitous and full of people, especially during festival seasons. Even in China, where the government actively propagates an atheist ideology and has severely restricted open religious activities, it has been estimated that as much as ninety-five percent of the population engages from time to time in some form of religious practice. Moreover, throughout Asia there have been impressive revivals and reformations of Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian religious beliefs and practices—Asia is religiously dynamic.
