Modern, Stevie March 15, 2016: A 19 year-old American tourist is arrested in Jerusalem. Police authorities had found him asleep in a prohibited cave area, deep under the Muslim quarter of the Old City. A search finds his backpack loaded with rubble dug with a pickaxe, at a site where myth tells of lost religious treasure. The tourist claims no memory of his actions. Israeli media reports the story as a possible case of 'Jerusalem Syndrome' - a religiously themed (...) psychosis. The syndrome affects nearly 100 people each year out of millions of tourists who visit Jerusalem. (shrink)

Modern, Stevie At its annual general meeting in May this year, the Council of Australian Humanist Societies voted in support of volunteer ethics teachers entering public schools and teaching ethics programs to students as a secular alternative in religious education. The motion was put to the meeting by the NSW Society with the support of the Humanist Society of Victoria. The motion was opposed by the Queensland, Western Australian and South Australian Societies. Here is why the motion is a (...) grave mistake, and why Western Australia moved its own motion against it. (shrink)

The emergence of religious fundamentalism in a globalized, post-colonial world poses a significant challenge to the "End of History" narratives common in academic and non-academic literature alike. Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalismproposes that we must seek new explanations for this phenomenon that recasts the relationship between globalization, modernity and religion. One model through which this possible is that of a dialectical kaleidoscopic methodology - one that applies a variety of theoretical tools and takes (...) a truly multi-dimensional perspective. Through the overlapping and complementary approaches of Systems Theory, Field Theory, and Network Theory, this book redefined the concepts of globalization, modernity and religion itself by challenging the inherent misconceptions of ethnocentric biases. It also provides a thorough historical analysis of religious systems from antiquity to the present to show the integration of modern and archaic elements within the structure of religious fundamentalism. Interdisciplinary in nature, Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Geopolitics, History of Race and Ethnicity, Postcolonialism, Globalisation and Sociology of Religion. (shrink)

In the context of modern world religious processes, in recent years Ukraine has become a field of active attention from various non-traditional and up-to-date religious movements. According to the State Committee of Ukraine for Religious Affairs, as of January 1, 1995, there were registered 147 non-Christian communities, 52 communities of Orientalist orientation, 23 communities of the Russian Federation, etc., registered in Ukraine. And although in the confessional environment of Ukraine, the fate of such currents is negligible, but (...) their activities can not be ignored in state-church policy in solving the tasks of building a democratic society. (shrink)

This is an anthology of literary, religious, and philosophical texts from the entire Middle Ages and the early modern age that address already quite explicitly religious toleration and even tolerance.

A discussion of the intellectual impact which Modernity has had on Islamic religious consciousness.

The twelfth century, the first decade, has become an extremely serious test for those branches of science who consider researching religious conflicts as their competence - primarily for the sociology of religion and conflict science. The latter were forced to admit that the classical conflictological tradition on which they based their theoretical intelligence practically lost their heuristic opportunities. These industries were faced with the urgent need to develop new paradigms, with plural, viable and competing, capable of explaining and describing (...) not simply - using the statements of statements - "increasing the role of the religious factor in international events," but the growing impact of religious conflicts on social systems of different levels. Therefore, the subject of broad religious studies discussions are quite painful problems: how to deviate from stereotypes in the methodological analysis of modern processes of transformation of religion as a whole and global systems of interreligious relations; what theoretical and methodological means will enable new approaches to the knowledge of religious conflicts and, most importantly, the principles of governance; how to prevent a rapid obsolete and heuristic "deterioration" of the conceptual apparatus; how to slow down the pace with which knowledge loses its relevance, and so on. (shrink)

_Global Religious and Secular Dynamics_ integrates European theories of modern secularization and theories of global religious revival as interrelated dynamics. Casanova contrasts the internal European road of secularization with the external colonial road of global interreligious encounters and the globalization of the secular immanent frame with the expansion of global religious denominationalism.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the progressive growth and activity of various denominations, the controversial and turbulent processes of organizational development of religious and church life have become the object of close attention of sociologists and religious scholars. Statistical and sociological data have convincingly shown that the quantitative composition of religious communities and the number of existing denominations has increased ten times, that the religiosity of the Ukrainian population has become a mass phenomenon, and in the (...) public consciousness and public opinion there have been significant shifts in the credibility of the Church's religious values. As a result, an increasing number of scholars have firmly argued for the era of “religious revival” in Ukraine. (shrink)

Article in the theoretical and practical aspects considers the problem of the religious factor in social processes in the context of the social paradigm of the Catholic Church.

The present study deals with the encounter with modernity in two neighbouring religious spaces: Christian Orthodoxy and Islam. Relying on Eisenstadt’s theory about multiple modernities and on its further developments by Thomas Mergel and Kristina Stoeckl, Islamic and Christian-Orthodox dynamics in relation to the challenges of modernity are examined under two aspects: first, the decoupling between religion and culture as elaborated by Olivier Roy, and second, the development of modernist and fundamentalist currents as phenomena of modernity. (...) The study contributes to the sketching of the profile of Islamic and the Christian-Orthodox modernities, pointing both to some of the commonalities and the differences, and inquiring the nature of their distinctiveness. Further on, it contributes to the theoretic discussion on modernity and its various, contextually shaped forms, shedding new light on the relation between the trigger of social changes and their processual character.Contribution: Inside the Christian Orthodox and the Islamic religious space the decoupling between religion and culture and the development of modernist and fundamentalist currents are analysed as markers of the second modernity that arises from the encounter of the worlds mentioned with the challenges of the first modernity. (shrink)

Argues that during the late Imperial period, all three main religious strains in China embraced an ethic that everyone should engage in labor as a crucial component to their personal enlightenment and their duty to society. This is what brings together new Chan (Zen in Japanese) Buddhism; new religious Daoism; and new Confucianism. All three new religions had to overcome traditional elitist biases and moral concerns about working for individual material results. To overcome traditional assumptions and practices, as (...) well as to embrace the priority of working for one's livelihood, required the religious practitioners to resolve tensions within their own minds and often with precepts of earlier forms of their religious traditions. The final section of the book focuses on the changing social status of merchants, their enhanced self-confidence in their identity and profession, and their manifestation of the new work ethics in their mercantile activities, especially from 1500 to 1820. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a preliminary multidisciplinary research of the specificities of youth’s response to various descriptors. Using the semiotic, in-depth psychological, theological and mathematical analysis of the collected associative chains, the author compares the responses of youth representatives to religious and ethical terms with colloquial lexemes, as well as determines sensitivity to these terms and proclivity for their logical and sensory-emotional perception. Particularly, method of semantic multiplication allows identifying strong and weak descriptors of semiosis under consideration. (...) The author determines the trends that outline a number of structural and psychodynamic characteristics of psychic reality of modern Russian youth. The following conclusions were made in the course of this research: 1. Sensitivity (and corresponding awareness) to religious descriptors was demonstrated by less than half of the respondents, and a fifth of the entire sample of terms appeared to be unfamiliar to the respondents; 2. The analysis of ethical associative chains at the level of interpretation, indicated the existence of such a phenomenon as “indeterminate religiosity”, which implies a certain spiritual pursuit, which at the moment does not comply with the familiar to a respondent religions traditions; 3. The acquired data, on the one hand, correspond to the classic “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs”, while on the other hand, spiritual pursuit of respondents and simultaneously scarce character of “existential” associations may testify in favor of the dominance of “ethical-spiritual” paradigm in psychic reality of respondents (which also complies with the Maslow’s research of later period in the area of “existential needs” and “peak experiences”; 4. All of the aforementioned means that the key to interaction with modern youth (including didactical and educational) is the paradigm of ethical values, which can also be connected with a latent spiritual pursuit. (shrink)

This study is a pioneering exploration of how rabbis in the religious Zionist community in Israel constructed a body of Jewish law on war. It focuses on five leading rabbis in this camp and how they dealt with a number of key moral issues that the waging of modern war raised.

The authors of _The Modern Experience of the Religious_ explore the different ways in which religious experience is lived within the context of modernity, and how religious life responds to the challenges presented by our age.

A fascinating collection of essays by leading scholars in the field engage with the idea of religious pluralism mooted by John Hick to offer incisive insights on religious pluralism and related themes and to address practical aspects such as interreligious spirituality and worship in a multi-faith context.

Religious Discourse in Modern Japan explores the transportation of the Western concept of “religion” in in the modern era; the emergence of discourse on Shinto, philosophy, and Buddhism; and the evolution of the academic discipline of religious studies in Japan.

This article is concerned with thinking transformations of the secular, and does so in relation to two theoretical terrains, while empirically grounded in ethnographies of Christian and Islamic pious women in the Netherlands. A first theoretical terrain under consideration is that of how the relation between modernity and religion is elaborated, notably in secularization theories, and how these established frameworks are challenged by a different kind of articulation between modernity and religion that I observed in narratives and practices (...) of young Evangelical and Islamic women in the Netherlands. The article traces the contours of a `pious modern', showing how from a faith-centred perspective the modern can be incorporated and indeed produced. In this context, I argue that the way in which notions of modernization and secularization have been theoretically hinged on each other needs to be further revisited, and I propose to consider the `post-secular' as a new disarticulation between the modern and the secular. A second theoretical terrain concerns questions of agency and subjectivity. Here I trace how situating religious agency in its own grammar makes secular assumptions in social, critical and feminist theory visible, and generates different understandings not only of agency but also of notions such as autonomy, and the capacity to act and shape the world. (shrink)

There is a direct relationship between epistemology and one's attitude toward those with whom one disagrees. Those who think that the truth is difficult to ascertain can be expected, other things equal, to tend to tolerate (in the sense of sympathizing with) those with whom they disagree, as the blameless victims of an opaque reality. Those who think that the truth is easy to ascertain can be expected, other things equal, to tend to be intolerant (in the sense of being (...) unsympathetic) toward those with whom they disagree, who perversely refuse to acknowledge what should be clear to any well-intentioned inquirer. However, these tendencies toward tolerant or intolerant attitudes can be offset by other factors; and they do not, in any case, necessarily dictate whether one will favor tolerant or intolerant policies regarding those toward whom one feels tolerant or intolerant. The complex relationship between epistemology, tolerant or intolerant attitudes, and tolerant or intolerant policies is evident in the thought of prominent early-modern Protestant theologians who, under the pressure of rampant and violent religious disagreement, theorized tolerance. (shrink)

Early modernity is characterized by intensified and in-depth Christianization processes and the development of various models for religious subjectivity. Experiences of anxiety, despair and abandonment often play a central role in the religious literature and practices, notably in a protestant context in which there are intense debates on the place and value of such experiences in religious life. What is the relation between faith and despair? Can one distinguish spiritual despair from melancholia? What is the role (...) played by the doctrine of predestination in faith practices that include despair and desire? This book explores such questions through a reading of a variety of sources with the use of philosophical and psychoanalytical theories and perspectives: the life of Francis Spira, Luther, Calvin, Willem Teellinck, Gisbertus Voetius and Jean de Labadie. (shrink)

Abstract The primary purpose of this essay is to review Nidhal Guessoum's Islam's Quantum Question from a perspective outside Muslim tradition. Having outlined the main contours and contentions of the book, general issues are raised concerning the reconciliation of religious belief with the sciences. Comparisons are drawn between the resources available to Christian and Muslim cultures for achieving reconciliation, with particular reference to scriptural exegesis and natural theology. Speculative questions are then raised concerning possible differences between the Christian and (...) Islamic experience and whether these may shed any light on the facilitation in Europe of an enduring scientific movement. (shrink)

Europe is the community of nations which, in the favorable conditions of a small yet extremely diversified continent, took over and developed the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization transformed and enriched by Christianity. Philosophy, theology, liturgy, religion, national culture and tradition are still manifestations of this heritage. Europe is not merely a region or geographical location. It is an idea that expresses cultural and social ideals. The nature of Europeanness is not defined by race or place but by freedom and culture (...) in the broad sense. Latin Europe created a sphere of civilization. Though ridden by contrasts and differences, not merely an organic unity was established but also a unity of a spiritual kind by accentuating and merging of values all Europeans have in common. This was also made possible by Christianity whose ethos came to pervade a multiplicity of socio-cultural phenomena. (shrink)

After the demise of Christianity, Western society did not become secular, according to Emile Durkheim, but located foundations in a new religion he calls the “cult of the individual.” This religion holds the rational individual person as sacred, and corresponds to a multi-faceted, complex, and diverse society united around individual democratic rights and modern science. Different traditional religions can co-exist in the cult of the individual, but only if they accept a subordinate status in relation to it. Durkheim maintains, however, (...) that all religions construct authoritative regimes of truth and moral obligations, setting the stage for conflict. How then should modern democracies respond to challenges to their authority from traditional religions? This article argues that a Durkheimian response would be to assert the values of the cult of the individual, as this is the only way to maintain the integrity and viability of Western democratic society. (shrink)

The article explores the relationship between the dialogical way of existence of religion and social stability. The author argues that dialogue is becoming a way of existence of religion in societies with a high level of religious freedom. The author emphasizes constructive types of communication between religions, one of which is traditionally interreligious (interfaith) dialogue. The definition of religious dialogue as a broad communication phenomenon is considered, which, in particular, involves the interaction of not only religions with each (...) other (interreligious, interfaith dialogue), but also communication between religion and society (religious and social dialogue) on important issues of the present, and reactions to them. It is substantiated that the reluctance of a certain religious institution to engage in dialogue may be based on the theological position of the church caused by the phenomenon of «ambivalence of the sacred». Some ways to restore the dialogue of religions and overcome the conflict conditions of their interaction are proposed. In conclusion, it is noted that the «war of civilizations» launched by the Russian Federation in Ukraine brings the dialogue of religions to a new level, namely: requires a revision of certain theological theories, the formation of new theological visions; significantly actualizes the issues of justice, heroism, good and evil, the impossibility of violence, ethical problems and their reflection in theological thought; requires religions to take a civic stance, where it is no longer possible to speak of secularization in the sense of separation of religion from politics; sharpens and problematizes the attitude of religions to the national question as a result of the Russian Federation’s provoked terrorist methods of warfare, and thus the threat to humanity of genocide on a national basis; raises the issue of universal values, the humanistic paradigm and personal responsibility, which brings all religious systems too close together; meta-anthropologizes religion, absolutizes humanism as a value when a believer «goes beyond» mere existence to approach eternal truths, where the concept of «salvation» loses its narrowly individualistic characteristic. (shrink)

In this introduction to a cluster of three articles on eighteenth-century ethics written by Mark Larrimore, John Bowlin, and Mark Cladis, the author maintains that although the broad narrative tracing the emergence of a religiously neutral or naturalistic moral language in the eighteenth century is a familiar one, many central questions concerning this development remain unanswered and require further historical study. Against those who contend that historical study is antecedent to, but not part of, the proper substance of religious (...) ethics, the author argues that historical and normative studies are interdependent, each helping to define the questions central to the other. The introduction concludes with an overview of the three articles and suggests ways in which religious ethicists can, in the future, make a distinctive contribution to the history of ethics. (shrink)

In the article by S. Geraskov «Religious and philosophical component of modern Ukrainian martial arts » it is conducted the analysis of religious and philosophical component of Boyovy Spas representing modern Ukrainian martial arts. It is shown that religious and philosophical ideas in Boyovy Spas have been understood mainly in the light of new religious and philosophical movements of non-Ukrainian origin. The author concludes that today there is a tendency of active and accelerated myth making in (...) order to make modern Ukrainian martial arts older. (shrink)

This study investigates how a comparison between the Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx's controversial reading of Thomist philosophy and the Tibetan Buddhist Gendun Chopel's challenge to the standard Geluk teaching of Tsongkhapa's Madhyamaka philosophy might assist in rethinking conceptions of religious knowledge. Jason M. VonWachenfeldt shows how Gendun Chopel's Madhyamaka approach to the questions of knowledge in light of cultural conventionality and historical contingency can possibly better inform a Christian theological response to similar questions of modern society. Utilizing a wide (...) variety of methodical approaches to establish an imaginary dialogue between these two thinkers, this comparison remains embodied in the thought and praxis of actual individuals, and yet still firmly embedded within the conversations and trajectories of their broader religious traditions. The final chapter constructively combines and contrasts the insights of both thinkers regarding the knowability of ultimate truth in order to develop new possible approaches to epistemology that assist the contemporary believer in avoiding the problematic nihilism of a purely subjectivist epistemology-which is so rampant in the contemporary "postmodern" milieu-while still always maintaining and sharpening the practitioner's humility towards discourses on metaphysics through the critical eye of a deconstructive apophaticism. (shrink)

Neo-Confucian influence in early modern Japan was highly intellectual, indicating that Confucian ideals did not change the nature of Japanese norms of social lives. For early modern Japanese intellectuals, the conflict and contradiction between reality and ideals had always been a source of debate and inspiration. Within the theme of Neo-Confucian rites, the contradiction was highlighted owing to the fact that it included a guideline for authentic ancestral worship and religious policy. Once introduced within the Japanese circumstances of the (...) day, Confucian understanding on spirits and proper rites lead Japanese scholars to define what was legitimate worship in the format of state religion: it was necessary to authorize traditional Japanese worship toward domestic shrines. Within thepractical process of policy making, it must be noted that a keen interest toward local beliefs had emerged through the discussion. Arai Hakuseki (1657‐1725) reflects such political interest within his work ‘Kishinron’. In order to understand the impact of Japanese interpretation of Neo-Confucian ideals, it is essential to focus on the interrelationship between religious policy and interest toward local beliefs. (shrink)

Post-secularism is the fundamental evidence of the end of modernity. Modernity, as sleeping reason in Francisco Goya's painting, realizes that, although it thought that it was awake, it was producing monsters. We try to analyze post-secular philosophy from the point of view of Russian religious thought. We believe that such philosophers as Vladimir Soloviev, Pavel Florensky, Sergey Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Georges Florovsky, and Semen Frank may be helpful for understanding and overcoming post-secular order. Their unique views on (...) the relations between religion and philosophy, science, and social life are apparently missing in the current Western debates. It seems to us that Russian religious philosophy becomes surprisingly up-to-date and attractive in the contemporary world. We hope that the present volume will be a significant step forward in the inclusion of the heritage of Russian religious philosophy in contemporary debates. (shrink)

Violence may be productively understood as a secularized theological concept. Doing so challenges claims that secularism is necessary to prevent religious violence, and it also challenges claims for a Christian triumphalist alternative. William Cavanaugh’s embrace of such a triumphalism is called into question when his genealogical method is interrogated in light of the Foucaultian genealogical project.

As the title suggests, in this part of the essay I am going to discuss in brief the religious spirit of Confucianism.

It is the major argument of this essay that the roots of modern Jacobinism in their different manifestations are to be found in the transformation of the visions with strong Gnostic components and which sought to bring the Kingdom of God to earth and which were often promulgated in medieval and early modern European Christianity by different heterodox sects. The transformation of these visions as it took place above all in the Great Revolutions, in the English Civil War and especially (...) the American and French Revolutions and their aftermaths, entailed their transposition from relatively marginal sectors of society to the central political arena. From then on, these visions, especially in their various collectivistic, especially Jacobin, guises became a continual component of the modern political discourse and dynamics, in continual confrontation with more 'open' pluralistic visions. (shrink)

The view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict has increasingly lost favor among scholars who have sought more nuanced theoretical frameworks for evaluating the configurations of these two bodies of knowledge in modern life. This article situates, for the first time, the modern study of race into scholarly assessments on the relations between religion and science. I argue that the formation of the race concept in the minds of Western European and American scientists grew out of and remained (...) indebted to Christian intellectual history. Religion was not subtracted from nor stood in conflict with constructions of race developed across the modern life and health sciences. (shrink)

This paper is a historically based approach to the topic of contemporary political and religious status of Nigeria. Recently, the secular administration by Islamists has generated violence between Muslims and Christians. The latter view Islamism as a gradual Islamisation of the country. Modern Islamists plead for a re-introduction of shari’a and OIC membership. They reject the secular status of Nigeria, the Islamic banking and educational system, etc. The meaning and purpose of these are not different from hijrah, and mahdism (...) of early 20th century. The is- sue is about restoring the ousted Caliphal system, and about rejecting the Western system and secularism, which were introduced by imperialists. The spirit of Islamism is increasing, especially among the grass-roots, elite, and politicians. In these circumstances, the phe- nomenon has to be assessed in an interdisciplinary way. (shrink)

There is neither higher nor other authority than God's will which is the foundation upon which religious authority in Judaism rests, a will which reaches worldly expression in the Torah.