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Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. At Play in the Sacred Grove -- 2. The Noisome Bog -- 3. The Definitional Daisy Chain -- 4. The Problem with Supernatural -- 5. An Operational Definition of Religion -- 6. The Value of Values -- 7. Assumptions, Beliefs, and Facts -- 8. Exploring Explanation: Why Do People Die? -- 9. Clerical Orders -- 10. What Kind of Shaman Would You Want? -- 11. Community and Conflict -- 12. On the Other Side of the Forest -- 13. The Incorporeal Dimension -- 14. Divining the Divine -- 15. Into the Land of Moriah -- 16. A Myth Is As Good -- 17. Wondrous Portals -- 18. When Worldviews Collide -- 19. The Modern Hosts of Heaven -- References -- About the Book and Author -- Index

Mit dem gewachsenen Interesse für die Geistesgeschichte Nachkriegsdeutschlands und der Bundesrepublik hat auch der Name Joachim Ritter in den letzten Jahren verstärkt Beachtung gefunden. Zwischen 1946 und 1968 lehrte er Philosophie an der Universität Münster und beeinflusste als akademischer Lehrer durch sein Collegium Philosophicum eine ganze Reihe von namhaften Hochschullehrern und Intellektuellen. Diese Studie rekonstruiert zum einen die Entwicklung dieses Kreises. Insbesondere untersucht sie, wie Joachim Ritters Philosophie, sein Verständnis der modernen Welt und seine eigene intellektuelle Entwicklung in den Nachkriegsjahren bei seinen akademischen Schülern wirksam wurden, namentlich bei Hermann Lübbe und Odo Marquard, Robert Spaemann und Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt zum anderen den religionstheoretischen und -politischen Überlegungen dieser Autoren, die sich, obwohl jeweils entscheidend von Ritter beeinflusst, doch deutlich voneinander abheben. Zur Erschließung dieser unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auf Moderne und Religion im Kontext der jungen Bundesrepublik – zwischen Fortschritt und Verfall – werden Bezüge zu Autoren wie Carl Schmitt und Hans Blumenberg aufgegriffen und nachgelassene Aufzeichnungen Joachim Ritters ausgewertet. Durch ihre offenen Anschlusspunkte ebenso wie durch ihre inhaltlichen Ambivalenzen, die zudem im zeitlichen Verlauf nicht unverändert blieben, erweist sich rückblickend die Fruchtbarkeit, mit der Ritters Philosophie die Auseinandersetzung mit der eigenen Gegenwart anzuregen vermochte, als sein maßgebliches Erbe.

This article deals with the concept of »political religion«, a term often used to connote certain features of totalitarianism. The aim here is twofold. First, to summarize certain features within this discourse for critical analysis, via an initial naming of it as an ideologeme, a concept developed by Fredric Jameson. Second, the article attempts to show how the ideologeme of the politico-religious narrative or discourse can and has been used in a critical-theoretical agenda by exemplifying its use in the early work of Slavoj Žižek. I argue that certain features of the ideologeme open up for hermeneutical critical work on politi- cal ideologies through a confrontation with the growing and many-faceted discourse on political theology.

The inner affinity of money and religion has been a central issue of the `classical' theories of money, in particular of Georg Simmel and Karl Marx. The paper argues that the conceptualizations of money in current economic sociology and mainstream economic theory are deficient, and that a more promising approach can be developed by referring to those classical authors, whose thinking was not yet dominated by the institutionalized academic division of labour between sociology and economics of today. It is shown, how the concept of money as `Vermögen' (Simmel) or as `capital' (Marx) can be combined with current constructivist theories of economic `myths' and `visions', thus opening a new perspective for sociological analysis of entrepreneurship, innovation, economic growth and social change.

Striking as the role of religion has been in the modern political history of Libya, it illustrates ambiguities in political identity that are, in fact, common throughout the Muslim Arab world. The tensions between the concepts of political legitimacy bequeathed by the historical Islamic empires and Western-inspired notions of ethnic nationalism and state patriotism have created dilemmas for rulers and the ruled in the Muslim Arab world since the beginning of the twentieth century. The Libyan governments' reliance on Islamic formulas to inspire political loyalty reflects the weakness of both Arab and Libyan nationalist traditions in the country. Qadhdhafi's revolutionary ideology constitutes an effort to transcend the dilemmas of Libyan national identity, but it has not proved persuasive to most of his compatriots.

Der Band befasst sich mit einem zentralen und hochaktuellen Thema gegenwärtiger politischer Ethik: dem Verhältnis von politischen und kirchlichen Institutionen im Rahmen der Europäischen Union. Ziel ist, die gegenwärtigen Formen, Grenzen und Möglichkeiten der institutionellen Einbindung der Religionen, Kirchen und Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften in die EU darzustellen. In Anbetracht der aktuellen Debatte um den Verfassungsvertrag wird der religionspolitische Beitrag für die Weiterentwicklung der EU und die Zukunft Europas thematisiert. Diese Fragestellung ist auch deshalb von entscheidender Bedeutung, weil die europäischen Institutionen eine aktive Beteiligung der Bürger und Bürgerinnen der Mitgliedstaaten – die sich gerade auch über kirchliche, religiöse wie zivilgesellschaftliche Vereinigungen vollzieht – für ihr Funktionieren voraussetzt. Eine solch aktive Teilnahme am Integrationsprozess kann auch wesentlich zur Bildung einer neuen, vielleicht überhaupt ersten, genuinen europäischen Identität beitragen, die als Grundlage für das Funktionieren des komplexen Regelwerks der EU heute mehr denn je notwendig ist. Michael H. Weninger übt seit Jahren die Funktion des politischen Beraters des Präsidenten der Europäischen Kommission für eben diesen Dialog aus

This study, based on the author's fieldwork among rural Tamil villagers in South India, focuses on the ways in which people in this society interact with the supernatural beings who play such a large role in their personal and corpoate lives. Isabelle Navokov looks at a spectrum of ritualized contexts in which the boundaries between the natural and spiritual worls are penetrated and communication takes place. Throughout, Nabokov's meticulous analysis sheds new light on this hiterto almost unknown domain - and entire range of fascinating phenomena basic to South Indian religion as it is really

Introductory essay : developing an overview as context and future / John Atherton -- Economic theory and happiness / Ian Steedman -- Happiness, welfare and capabilities / Carl-Henric Grenholm -- Happiness through thrift : the contribution of business to human wellbeing / Peter Heslam -- Happiness, work and Christian theology / Peter Sedgwick -- Happiness isn't working, but it should be / Malcolm Brown -- Challenging inequality in a post-scarcity era : christian contributions to egalitarian trends / John Atherton -- Fair trade and human wellbeing / Michael Northcott -- Religion and happiness : perspectives from the psychology of religion, positive psychology and empirical theology / Leslie Francis -- Ethnographic insights into happiness / Jonathan Miles-Watson -- Institutions, organisations and wellbeing / Tony Berry -- Religion, family form and the question of happiness / Adrian Thatcher -- Mental health, spirituality and religion / Peter Gilbert -- The "one in the morning" knock : exploring the connections between faith, participation and wellbeing / Christopher Baker -- Crime, wellbeing and society : reflections on social, 'anti-social' and 'restorative' capital / Christopher Jones -- Supporting offenders : a faith based initiative / Charlotte Lorimer -- Human happiness as a common good : clarifying the issues / Patrick Riordan -- Being well in creation / John Rodwell -- The "virtuous circle" : religion and the practices of happiness / Elaine Graham -- Well being or resilience? blurred encounters between theory and practice / John Reader

Walter Olson


The result of today's Supreme Court opinion in Groff v. DeJoy is to load private, not just public, employers with new practical burdens in the name of accommodating employees' religious beliefs. The Court does so by nimbly reinterpreting, as opposed to overturning, the longstanding standard set forth in TWA v. Hardison (1977), which interpreted Title VII as requiring accommodation of this sort by employers only when the costs were "de minimis." Whatever the standard appropriate for government workplaces, there are high stakes in imposing a standard on private workplaces. Today's decision leaves private employment relations in America less free.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a concurrence joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Congress has consistently passed up the opportunity to adopt a standard more burdensome to employers than Hardison, even though it has not hesitated to revisit and correct many other high court decisions on Title VII workplace discrimination that it saw as mistaken. We may hope that the Court's newly announced standard, which shifts focus from the question of whether burdens are "de minimis" to that of whether they are "substantial," will in practice not amount to a drastic change.
Sotomayor makes a further point worth noting in her concurrence. It has been known to happen that a private employer's compelled acceptance of religious accommodation requests will adversely affect the interests of co‐​workers. While Title VII will not allow these interests to enter into the balance when based on mere animus or prejudice toward a religion, it is legitimate for an employer to weigh other sorts of harm to co‐​workers when they work to impair the management of the workplace. If a workplace divided by differential treatment based on religion or any other identity is a less efficient and unified workplace, it will often be legitimate for employers to say no to that differential treatment.

There is increased interest in faith-based social service provision in recent years, both in the United States and across Europe. While faith-based organizations provide welcome and needed services, there are several potential problems of social inclusion which involve gender, including decreased availability of social services when faith-based organizations are expected to compensate for cuts in government spending, potential for religious discrimination in employment, and potential for religious discrimination against recipients.