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Any reflection on the relationship between religion and politics in the Catholic thought cannot do without reminding the Augustinian distinction between the civitas Dei and civitas terrena. The goal and foundation of any just political community should be the orientation to wards the common good. In the contemporary catholic thought, Johann Baptist Metz proposes a political theology revolving around the concepts of the value of the human person, the necessary refusal, on the part of the Church, of any mundane ideology and the necessary use of the socially critical potential of theological thought. Hans Küng criticizes any politicization of theology. He insists on the development of an internal pluralism within the Church and advocates a self-limitation of the magisterial intervention in the world in the name of a necessary "eschato logical reserve". Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict the XVIth , invested with the magisterial authority, relies heavily on official documents of the Catholic social doctrine. He emphasizes the necessity of founding the state on the central value of justice and its acting according to the principle of subsidiarity. In this context, the Christian faith and the Church in particular may have a pedagogical role, as it may guide reason to follow the right priorities. All three thinkers agree on the public significance of the Christian vision of society and on the fact that it may help society both by its critical and by its constructive dimension.

Pierre Manent is viewed as a French thinker that develops in modern times the liberal tradition of political thinking. One of the most important issues of Manent's thinking that was not enough underlined it is the relationship between religion an politics and how this evolved from the beginning of Christianity until the main consequences of modernity. Manent view on religion and politics is the core of this paper analysis. The main contributions of Manent, such as Naissances de la politique moderne. Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau (1977), Histoire intellectuelle du lib.ralisme (1987) La cit. de l'homme (1994), Cours familier de philosophie politique (2001), La raison des nations. R.flections sur la d.mocratie en Europe (2006) are analyzed from this perspective. Our conclusion is that in the way Manent deals with the relationship between politics and religion there are some constants that may be found in all his work. These are: the relationship between the Church and the different forms of political organization in Europe (Civitas, Imperium, monarchy); the fact that Christianity is one of the few current relevant concepts for political, due to the failure of totalitarian ideologies; the idea that secularization in Europe is not irreversible; we live in "an age of separations", and Church-State is one of these separations; we witness the religion transformation process and the .tat la.que cannot survive to .tat-nation; the role of Islam in modern societies and his perpetual finding of a political form; the relationship between Judaism, state and nation; the issue of the Christian identity of Europe.

Klappentext: From the mid-1970s, the awareness of injustice and apartheid in South Africa increased in the media and in scholarship. From the secular perspective, it was no surprise to find a Christian denomination directly involved in the formulation of the apartheid-doctrine. However, it was far more surprising to fing opposition leaders, even many members of the African National Congress, referring in their strucggle to religious doctrines. South Africa imposed a challenge to all the voices that claimed that the process of democratisation was only possible through secularisation. The contributions to this book represent a spectrum of religious and political perspectives in South Africa in their social context. Some tackle the important question of transformation within religions. Since the period of transition and democracy, the country is witness to a re-ordering and re-classification of values and priorities within society and religious traditions. The contributions also focus on the possible role of religions in fashioning values and identities on a broad national scale. They subject to evaluation multi-culturalism, education, and development under the impact of religious values, ethics and symbols.

Die Ökonomie hat schon seit längerem ihr ursprüngliches Tätigkeitsfeld von Produktion, Geld und Zins verlassen. Immer häufiger beschäftigen sich Wirtschaftswissenschaftler mit Dingen wie Kriminalität, Familie, Kunst und in letzter Zeit auch mit Religion. Die Berührungspunkte zwischen Ökonomie und Religion sind vielfältig, steht doch am Anfang der Ökonomie ein von den Religionen überliefertes Ereignis: Die Vertreibung aus dem Paradies. Mit ihr begann die Knappheit und Ökonomie ist nichts anderes als die Lehre vom Umgang mit Knappheit. Wenn sich Religion und Ökonomie bisher begegneten war jedoch eine Betrachtung ökonomischer Sachverhalte durch eine theologische Brille üblich, bei der Geistliche aller Religionen eine auf ihren jeweiligen religiösen Lehren fußende Wirtschaftsordnung entwarfen. Hier wird der entgegengesetzte Weg beschritten. Dieses Buch führt erstmals die von Ökonomen getroffenen Aussagen zum Thema Religion zusammen und zeigt auf, welchen Beitrag das wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Instrumentarium zur Erklärung religiöser Phänomene leisten kann. Es eröffnet damit eine neue Perspektive und gibt einen guten Überblick über den bisherigen Stand der ökonomischen Forschung auf diesem Gebiet.