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In order to avoid both religious intolerance and religious indifference, we need to develop a positive notion of an open laicity or secularity that permits us to respect our religiously plural as well as secular contemporary situation. Open laicity or secularity is the practical and political consequence of a Protestant theology and spirituality. It represents a critical answer to the disaster of secularism and laicism. Most of the difficulties in the discussion between traditionalist Christians (Orthodox, Catholic, or Evangelical!) and modern, critical Christians (Protestant, Catholic, and maybe some Orthodox too!) come from a confusion between the danger of secularism and laicism, that this article criticizes very deeply, and the positive reality of a secular world, grounded in the very biblical and theological understanding of a created world, in which God has given to all human beings the task to behave in a rational, responsible, creative, and respectful way.

"Secularization, Secularity, and Secularism in the New Millennium: Macro-theories and Research" published on by Oxford University Press.

The focal point of this paper stands on the polyvalent nature of secularity which is detected through its various forms and practical application as well as through ideological instrumentalization resulting in extreme derivatives. There is the specific influence of secular ideas and practices on the Bosniak social context, which has been marked during historical development by different phases of the relationship between religion and the state, dating back from the middle of the 20th century consequently leading to highly difficult and complex changes within the Bosniak existence. These changes were primarily aimed at a completely new perception of the notion itself and a considerably decreased application of religious standards. Those standards have been sustained under the pressure of secular moralities hence transformed into the pattern that has transitioned to antidotes briefly described by the phrase "fluctuating religiosity".It was these compromise solutions that enabled the "soft" transformation of Islamic legal norms into religious-moral norms (as a milder and more acceptable form of normative determination). This conversion of the Islamic spirit, practice, and worldviews of Bosniaks retain the amassing consequences on a significant contingent of identity categories. The whole process is being critically assessed through sociological analysis in this paper. Taking into account the Bosniak path through modernity, which begins in the late 19th century; secularization represented a serious Rubicon that needed to be bridged, and within the framework of new understandings of religiosity to build a necessary and adequate frame for the preservation of religious and ethnonational identity. On the example of Bosniak practice, which has found a middle ground between nominally irreconcilable secular laws and religious imperatives, a general conclusion can be drawn about the existence of a probable sociological model of harmonization of different antagonisms in the relationship between the state and religion that affirm ideas such as separation with cooperation, overlapping consensus or neutrality with respect, guaranteeing fundamental freedoms and human rights and within them; inter alia, the preservation of religious sovereignty, identity and practice, which opens the door to convergent perspectives in a global context.

Entanglement : an introduction (with Starbucks cups and stem cells) -- The rhetoric of new atheism -- The rhetoric of faithful science -- Christians and adversaries in the evolving Norton anthology of English literature : old-time religion and the new academic market -- The curious case of Pope Francis -- The seven deadly sins : summa theologica meets scientific American -- Psychedelic last rites

AbstractIn Central Asia, the Soviet state had destroyed most Islamic institutions by the late 1930s, which gradually alienated millions of Soviet Muslims from the basics of Islamic theology and key Islamic practices of virtue cultivation, including the five daily prayers (namaz), Islamic ethics of dressing (like covering certain parts of the body), and certain lifestyle prescriptions (such as the avoidance of alcohol, gambling, and premarital sex). As a result, mainstream Islam in Central Asia came to revolve around the main Islamic life-cycle rites (i.e., male circumcision, the marriage ceremony, and funeral prayer) and occasional practices of uttering blessings, reciting short Qur'anic verses for the souls of the deceased, and visiting shrines, among others. Although more than thirty years have passed since the fall of the USSR, this non-observant form of Islam remains widespread in the region. Inquiring into the conceptual and affective aspects of Soviet forced secularization in Central Asia, I make two interrelated interventions into secularism studies and the anthropology of Islam. First, I theorize Soviet secularism through attending to the modern state's aspiration to transcend and transform the particularities of lived traditions, which reveals significant overlaps between communist and liberal modes of statecraft and subject formation. Second, reflecting on a non-observant form of Islam in contemporary Kyrgyzstan, I ask: what remains of a tradition of virtue ethics when its modes of abstract reasoning and virtue cultivation have all but vanished?

This article empirically explores the interplay between the secular, post-Lutheran majority culture and Muslim immigrants in Sweden. It presents the ambiguous role of religion in the country's mainstream discourse, the othering of religion that is characteristic to this, and the expectations of Muslims to be strongly religious that follows as its consequence. Four results of a web-panel survey with Swedes of Muslim and Christian family background are then presented: (1) Both groups largely distance themselves from their own religious heritage - the Muslims do this in a more definite way; (2) the Muslim respondents have more secular values and identities than the Christians; (3) contrary expectations, Christian respondents show more affinity to their religious heritage than the Muslims do to theirs; and (4) the fusion between the groups is prominent. The article concludes that equating religious family heritage with religious identity is precipitous in the case of Swedish Muslims.

This paper presents elements of a work in progress on the question of multiculturalism in France. A central concept for elucidating this question is the republican principle of secularity (laïcité). After a brief presentation of this principle to get a sense of the grid of interpretation it provides, we will use this grid to analyse the use of statistics in political discourse in relation to multicultural issues. As we will see, this principle along with other constitutional dispositions, do not allow for official statistics to use categories related to ethnicity or race. This lack of data on ethnic minorities in France partly explains the "French exception" in its policy towards what is usually termed in France, cultural diversity. Since 2006, the term multiculturalism has been appropriated by government officials as well as the media to describe the traditional identity and diversity politics in France. We will see how the recurrent use of elements similar to ethnic statistics in speeches by ministers in recent governments are in fact introducing the very tools associated with communitarian multiculturalism.