Suchergebnisse

This symposium brings together three reflections on Lilla's The Stillborn God to which we are privileged to add Lilla's response. For all our differences, Tessitore, Hancock, and I share one overarching concern. None of us denies that modern political philosophy makes possible decent political regimes respecting human rights, freedom of conscience, and the rule of law. The question is whether in so doing, modern Enlighteners do not misinterpret the "theological-political problem" so as to undermine our capacity to consider the problem again at the moment in which clear thinking and sound policy are most needed. To the extent that Lilla takes sides on behalf of Hobbes's wisdom that keeps political science and political theology separate, the three commentators wonder whether Lilla is himself barred from a political philosophy that would quell the fires of religious fanaticism. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractDoes religion continue to spur violence even in contemporary times? This work aims to shed some light on the relationship between belonging to a given religion and violent behavior. Whereas religions often preach love and caring for others (meaning that among believers, a decrease in the level of violence may be registered), at the same time, it could be argued that a religious sense of belonging shapes self-identity and that in challenging situations this increases violence, especially towards foreigners. To test this hypothesis, we gathered data about yellow and red cards from the FIFA World Cup, obtaining a dataset of quasi-experimental data on violence, which we integrated with the Religious Characteristics of States Dataset Project. Via a quantitative analysis that employs different estimators, our results show that the more Christians there are in a country, the more violent its national team will be, whereas the more Buddhists there are, the less violent the team will be. No significant relationship is found with regard to Jews or Muslims. Finally, when investigating Christian confessions, Eastern Christians appear to show the most violent behavior.

The article aims to offer a contribution to a better understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the intertwining of national and religious identity at the individual level in (some) European former communist and socialist countries. It starts by retracing from a historical perspective the place religion occupied during the regimes, then paying attention to how, once politicized and ethnicized by the hand of a new class of ethnopolitical entrepreneurs, religion has become "the hallmark of nationhood." This excursus allows us to better contextualize both the theoretical argument and findings. The intertwining of national and religious identity is investigated from two main theoretical sources. The first is the debate within sociology and political science on the different ideas of nationhood, while the second consists of socio-psychological models of intergroup relations. The empirical investigation is based on survey data from the European values study (EVS, 2017). A comparative approach is used which includes four countries having Catholic large majorities (Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary) and, as a benchmark, Romania having an Orthodox majority. To test the hypotheses, a structural equation model is specified. The causal model seeks to unravel to what extent different conceptions of nationhood (ethno-religious vs. civil), together with national attachment, influence the intergenerational transmission of religious values and distrust of people of another religion/nationality. The research results are in line with the current European trends pointing in the direction of a stronger overlap between the religious and the national in tailoring collective identities.

Do Latin America's popular religions contribute to the formation of citizens and the development of civil society—the infrastructure of democracy—in ways that parallel the operation of the religious factor in the development of North American democracy as perceived by Tocqueville? Examining evidence prompting both negative and positive responses, this essay argues that Catholicism, Pentecostalism, and Afro-Brazilian Spiritism all contain tendencies that contribute to the development of pluralist democracy in the Latin American republics.

The 3rd international conference "Balkan and Baltic States in United Europe: History, Religion, and Culture" was held in the Lithuanian Institute of History (Vilnius) on 9–11 October 2017. This conference was one of the events to take place in preparation for the centenary of the independence of the Republic of Lithuania. On 16 February 1918, Lithuania became an independent state, and one of the main actors in this event was Patriarch of the Lithuanian national rebirth, Jonas Basanavičius (1851–1927). He was a historian, folklorist, ethnologist, medical doctor, and politician, who worked in Bulgaria for almost a quarter of a century. So, he is a historical and cultural symbol of the unity of the Baltic and Balkan states. This was one of the reasons for holding this conference in Lithuania.

The 3rd international conference "Balkan and Baltic States in United Europe: History, Religion, and Culture" was held in the Lithuanian Institute of History (Vilnius) on 9–11 October 2017. This conference was one of the events to take place in preparation for the centenary of the independence of the Republic of Lithuania. On 16 February 1918, Lithuania became an independent state, and one of the main actors in this event was Patriarch of the Lithuanian national rebirth, Jonas Basanavičius (1851–1927). He was a historian, folklorist, ethnologist, medical doctor, and politician, who worked in Bulgaria for almost a quarter of a century. So, he is a historical and cultural symbol of the unity of the Baltic and Balkan states. This was one of the reasons for holding this conference in Lithuania.

The concept of civil religion has caught major attention among scholars studying the junction of religion and politics (J.-J. Rousseau, E. Durkheim, R. Bellah). The notion focuses on the phenomenon of cultural contents sacralizing and ritualizing the ruling political institutions of a society, extending support to the integration of the political and social system at a cultural level. The notion of civil religion has recently been operationalized crossculturally, but light has not been shed upon its predictors. In this paper authoritarianism is tested as a predictor of civil religion cross-culturally. Four student samples of Bosnian, Serbian, Slovenian and US students were analyzed. Very strong, significant associations between authoritarianism, as operationalized by a modified Lane scale, and civil religion were found in all cases. Moreover, upon introducing femininity, anxiety and gender into the analysis, a strong, dominant and significant impact on the part of authoritarianism was still found when civil religion was observed crossculturally. When the same predictors were applied to explaining general religiosity, authoritarianism fell short of being a significant predictor in most of the environments observed. Such results suggest an especially close link between civil religion and authoritarianism. ; Pojam civilne religije privukao je veliku pozornost među naučnicima koji proučavaju vezu između religije i politike (Ž.-Ž Ruso [J.-J. Rousseau], E. Dirkem [E. Durkheim], R. Bela [R. Bellah]). Pojam civilne religije ukazuje na pojavu kulturnih sadržaja koji posvećuju ili ritualizuju vladajuće političke ustanove, ostvarujući funkciju podupiranja integracije političkog i društvenog sistema. Pojam civilne religije nedavno je operacionalizovan na međukulturnoj ravni, ali prediktori te pojave nisu osvetljeni. U ovom radu se testira autoritarnost kao prediktor civilne religije na međukulturnoj ravni. Četiri uzorka bosanskih, slovenačkih, srpskih i studenata iz SAD su predmet analize. U svim slučajevima je utvrđena je vrlo snažna, signifikantna povezanost civilne religije sa autoritarnošću, koja se posmatra modifikovanom Lejnovom skalom. Štaviše nakon unošenja feminilnosti, anksioznosti i pola u analizu, preovlađujući i signifikantan uticaj autoritarnosti još se uvek utvrđuje posmatrajući civilnu religiju na međukulturnom nivou. Regresioni model pojašanjavanja civilne religije, uz pomoć pomenutih nezavisnih varijabli, iskazuje vrednost R2 od .20 (slovenački uzorak) do .33 (američki uzorak), dok je srpski uzorak u tom pogledu i u pogledu visoke vrednosti Beta koeficijenta kod autoritarnosti bliži nalazima za američki uzorak. Autoritarnost posredstvom koeficijenta Beta u tom modelu iskazuje vrednosti od .35 do .54. Signifikantnost na ravni p<0.01 se iskazuje za feminilnost u slovenačkom uzorku i za anksizonost u srpskom uzorku. Marginalna signifikantnost koeficijenta Beta iskazuje se još u tri slučaja. Kad se isti prediktori primene na analizu opšte religioznosti, autoritarnost se u većini posmatranih sredina ne pojavljuje kao signifikantan prediktor. Takvi nalazi ukazuju na naročito blisku povezanost civilne religije i autoritarnosti.

Recensión de la obra: Díaz-Salazar [Martín], Rafael (2007) Democracia laica y religión pública. Madrid, Taurus, 206 pp. / Díaz-Salazar [Martín], Rafael (2008) España laica: Ciudadanía plural y convivencia nacional. Madrid, Espasa, 319 pp.

Abstract
This study approaches the history of epidemics in Mexico under Spanish invasion through the lens of religion and labor. In the aftermath of a particularly devastating epidemic from 1576 to 1581, colonial administrators in Mexico tried to exact previous levels of encomienda tribute from a greatly diminished population. Across the colony, Indigenous survivors protested having to pay "tribute for the dead" for those that they lost in the outbreak, and they demanded official recounts and new censuses of their communities. Underlying their protest were longstanding Mesoamerican practices and principles for the structure of collective labor, or tequitl in Nahuatl, including social norms dictating the proper relationship between religion, work, and the afterlife. The language of protest suggests that among the most serious violations of the "tribute for the dead" was that those who died in the epidemic were being compelled to work as spectral laborers for Spanish purposes. The resilient power of these practices and beliefs motivated and galvanized a groundswell of struggle against the encomienda system of labor extraction toward the end of the sixteenth century, bringing that system to its knees.

To examine the impact of religion on the Latino vote, we draw on data from a pre-election survey of 1,603 Latino registered voters conducted in October 2004. We advance the argument that religious identity is politically salient only among Latino evangelicals. Controlling for a host of voting determinants, we show that religious identity has an independent effect on the vote among Latino evangelicals. Furthermore, Latino evangelicals who identify with the Republican Party are found to be more-committed supporters of the incumbent president. The existence of a religion gap suggests that the Latino electorate may become much less cohesive as a voting bloc as religious affiliation becomes more pluralistic in the Latino community.