Suchergebnisse

In this apologetic work the author compares the "ideal types" of secular ideology (understood as superstition; Russian: sueverie) with religious ones (as trust [Rus1 sian: doverie] in God), showing the competitive and conflictive nature of their interaction. The article demonstrates the ideological and moral bankruptcy of the secular worldview, the apophatic, negative pathos of its pseudo1freedom from duties and relationships, and, as a result, from the meaning and true value of human life. The purpose of the article is to criticize the "theol1 ogy of political correctness," i.e. attempts to soften adherence to Biblical principles of moral evaluation of the atheistic way of life, as well to criticize the false "spirituality" of the New Age movement that seeks to return the civilized consumer to the pagan deification of human instincts. The separation of Church and State, bought with the lives of thousands of Protestants, is one of the major achievements of modern times. The solution to the problem of the moral degradation of society lies not in the reduction of the space of freedom, as in medieval Catholic Europe, but in the following of the moral precepts of the gospel by the Church, although not in the short1 term political order1even with a religious tinge1and in the continued fulfillment of the Great Commission.

I am greatly indebted to Professor Marc Galanter and Professor John T. Flint for their detailed and thoughtful reviews of India as a Secular State. One of the important objects of the book was to stimulate precisely this kind of serious discussion of problems, problems of both scholarly analysis and public policy. The two reviews are useful in sharpening certain of the issues, and I am grateful for this opportunity to comment on them.

Abstract
My article offers commentary about Jacques Berlinerblau's new book Secularism: The Basics.