Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Content -- Prologue -- Chapter 1 The Presence of Theology in Culture: Theological Aspects of Immaterial Culture -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Culture and Theology as Webs of Meaning -- 1.3 Theology and Ethics as Lebensführung -- 1.4 Ethics and Culture as a Process of Humanization -- 1.5 Secularized Redemption -- 1.6 Final Remarks -- Chapter 2 The Spirituality of the Secular State: Reflections about Reconciliation in Politics -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Secular State and Christian Tradition: A Process of Forgetting -- 2.3 Forgiveness, the Madness of the Impossible -- 2.4 Irreparable Guilt -- 2.5 Christian Tradition and the Laicization of Forgiveness -- 2.6 Conclusion -- Chapter 3 Secularization and Meaning: A Discussion of Memory and Eschatology -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Memory: Lived Theological Remembrance -- 3.3 History as the Time of Salvation and the "Religion of Historians" -- 3.4 Memory and Eschatology: Interpreting the Past, Living the Present from the Perspective of the Future -- 3.5 Secularized Memory -- 3.6 Concluding Remarks -- Chapter 4 Tolerance and Love: Is Modern Reason a Source of Intolerance? -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Historical Considerations -- 4.3 Tolerance and the State -- 4.4 Tolerance in the Context of Moral Conflicts -- 4.5 Tolerance and Christian Theology -- 4.6 Conclusion -- Chapter 5 The Kingdom of God as Inspiration for the Secular State on the Basis of Martin Luther's Conception of Politics -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 The Denial of the Religious Dimension as a Problem -- 5.3 The Kingdom of God on Earth in the Form of the State -- 5.4 Distinctions between Secular Government and Church in Luther -- 5.5 Temporal Rule and Clericalization of the Laity -- 5.6 Conclusion -- Chapter 6 God Rules the Kingdom of the World Through Human Reason: Relations and Distinctions between Faith and Politics -- 6.1 Introduction.

The current study examines individuals who were raised in a certain religion and at some stage of their life left it. Currently, they define their religious affiliation as 'no religion'. A battery of explanatory variables (country-specific ones, personal attributes and marriage variables) was employed to test for the determinants of this decision. It was found that the tendency of individuals to leave their religion is strongly correlated with the degree of strictness of their country and with their spouse's religious characteristics. Moreover, personal socio-demographic features seem to be less relevant. -- Religion ; convert-out ; church attendance ; prayer ; parental religiosity ; Europe

The current study examines individuals who were raised in a certain religion and at some stage of their life left it. Currently, they define their religious affiliation as 'no religion'. A battery of explanatory variables (country-specific ones, personal attributes and marriage variables) was employed to test for the determinants of this decision. It was found that the tendency of individuals to leave their religion is strongly correlated with the degree of strictness of their country and with their spouse's religious characteristics. Moreover, personal socio-demographic features seem to be less relevant.

In an epoch in which religion has explicitly and sometimes violently returned to the forefront of the global public scene, the process of secularization that has fundamentally marked Western and particularly European societies demands attention and analysis. This book, written from a sociological perspective, takes up that challenge. The author distinguishes three levels of secularization. Societal secularization which is a typical consequence of the processes of modernity, and of programmes of laicisation promoted by political parties. Individual secularization that is manifested in the decli

The decline in power, popularity, and prestige of religion across the modern world is not a short-term or localised trend nor is it an accident. It is a consequence of subtle but powerful features of modernisation. This book elaborates the secularisation paradigm and defends it against a wide variety of recent attempts at rebuttal and refutation. Using the best available statistical and qualitative evidence, the book considers the implications for the role of religion in modern society in the twenty-first century.

The question-title of this article contains two implicit assumptions that I find thoroughly embarrassing. The first is that secularization is some inevitable process gradually" reaching out to the far corners of the Western world. The second is that Scotland is, frankly, a backwater; secularization has reached almost everywhere else, and now is about to reach this last bastion of the old order. Very soon the fate of old-style religion will be sealed, and secularization will have achieved its final victory somewhere in the wild mountains of the Scottish Highlands.

What is the relationship between security and secularization in International Relations? The widespread acceptance of secularism as the paradigmatic framework that underlies the study of world politics has left this question largely unexplored. Yet, the recent challenges to the secularization thesis and the growing attention that is being devoted to questions of religion and secularism in international politics increasingly suggest the importance of undertaking this investigation. This article takes up this task in three main steps. First, it will explore how the limits of a widely accepted but nonetheless problematic account of the emergence of the modern Westphalian nation-state contribute to a dominant underlying assumption in security studies that implicitly associates security with secularization. Second, it will articulate a competing genealogy of security and secularization which suggests that rather than solving the problem of religious insecurity, secularization makes the question of fear and the politics of exceptionalism central to the state-centric project of modernity and its related vision of security. Finally, the article will examine how these elements inform and, most of all, constrain attempts to move beyond the traditional state-centric framework of security. The focus will be on three such attempts: human security, the securitization theory and Ken Booth's critical theory of security.

RECENT EVENTS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD HAVE FUELED THE ILLUSION THAT ALL SECULARIZING EFFORTS ARE DOOMED TO FAILURE, WHICH IS AT VARIANCE WITH BOTH THE FACTS OF HISTORY AND WITH PRESENT REALITIES. IT IS OBVIOUSLY TRUE THAT MUSLIM SOCIETIES HAVE ENCOUNTERED OBSTACLES IN THEIR SECULARIZING EFFORTS, AND SOMETIMES HAVE EVEN BEEN FORCED TO SHIFT THEIR COURSE. SECULARIZATION HAS ALSO KNOWN ITS DISCONTINUITIES AND CAESURAE, SUCH AS ENDED WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ISLAMIC REGIME IN IRAN, AND THERE WILL PROBABLY BE OTHERS IN THE FUTURE. BUT THE GENERAL FACT REMAINS. THOUGH SPORADIC REVERSALS MAY TAKE PLACE AT THE SURFACE, THE PROCESS OF SECULARIZATION CONTINUES ITS NORMAL COURSE. CONTEMPORARY MODELS, EVEN MANY OF THOSE THAT EXPLICITLY PROCLAIM THEMSELVES ISLAMIC, ARE STRIKING EXAMPLES OF THIS DEEP-SEATED PROCESS.

Conceptions of the nature and process of secularization have ranged in scope of reference from those encompassing all aspects of social change to those limited to alterations in the religious order of human societies. General theories of social change in modern sociology remain schematic. Indeed, until recent years, concern with this once central problem has been peripheral to the main trend in sociological research and theory construction. Howard Becker, whose conception of the process of secularization was intended to encompass all aspects of social change, remained, until his death, one on the very few American sociologists devoted to this once classical problem.

The article shows how the three basic socio-structural features of modernity (inclusion of a whole population into the national centre, top-down differentiation and widespread individualization) throw some light on the secularization–desecularization debate – as this is shaped by the writings of Bryan Wilson, Steve Bruce, David Martin and Charles Taylor.

The paper explains the process of transition to democracy of a Zapotec community in the deep highlands of Oaxaca, in Southern México. That transition go hand to hand with profound religious changes. The paper shows how that political transition took place because a strong process of secularization and religious pluralism that modified all the socioeconomics structures of the Zapotec people. The paper shows the transition from a political regimen ruled by Shamans, a theocracy, to a gerontocracy, a regimen ruled by an Elder's Council. And more lately, the transition from gerontocracy to the formation of a direct democracy, a regimen ruled by a People's Assembly, integrated by all the citizens of the Zapotec community.

Migration is viewed as a natural social phenomenon. Reasons for migration and responses to migration may vary. Much research in recent times has been done on migration. This contribution approaches migration from a theological perspective and tries to emphasize the way Christian communities should view the entry of migrants into a community. The way the church should respond to migrants entering a community is discussed by way of three possible perceptions of migrants, either perceived as a threat, an asset or an opportunity. Migration may result in the continuation or discontinuation of beliefs by the migrant. The discontinuation of religion may be expressed as syncretism or secularization. Christian communities ought not to perceive the presence of the migrant as an entity needing assistance or object of conversion. Christian communities should also see migration as an opportunity for indigenous Christian communities to reflect on their own identity and attitude towards expressing inclusivity.