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This article studies different forms of martyrdom in secular contexts, tracing their roots back to Western European Christian traditions. The article argues that distinct trajectories of martyrdom have emerged: (a) the more passive martyr, who refuses to acknowledge sovereign power and dies for a transcendent truth, and (b) the more assertive martyr, who sacrifices their life fighting for God and the sovereign. In secular contexts, this assertive martyr fights for secular ideals such as 'freedom' or 'nation' and represents the symbolic body of the sovereign. The historical distinction between divine truth and state falsehood has been turned into differentiations between democratic rule and threats like terrorism. To further study this transition, this article studies discourses following the deaths of Pim Fortuyn and Jaques Hamel, as both were strongly labeled as martyrs. This results in the final part of the article that examines the cult of commemoration surrounding soldiers in the US and the Netherlands. It argues that the assertive martyr has reached its fully secularized form in these contexts. The transcendent imagery of state sovereignty is evident in the sacrificial discourses around fallen soldiers. At this point of death, the state's power is reinforced as a transcendent norm and reveals itself in those who 'sacrifice' their lives for the freedom of many. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines narratives of coping strategies and worldviews adopted by Jewish Israeli atheists (JIA) during times of emotional turmoil. Through qualitative interviews with 30 participants, we demonstrate how they navigate between rational disbelief in God, Jewish identity, and their need for comfort. While valuing rational thinking, they find it insufficient for emotional solace. To cope, they create alternative ‘just-world’ cosmologies, use coded prayers, and draw on Jewish rituals, both revisiting and personalizing them. While the study of atheism often poses a binary logic that pits religious believers against atheists, religion against science and belief against doubt, our study reveals that for JIA these boundaries are far blurrier. Thus, this study contributes to the growing body of literature on lived atheism, highlighting the nuanced and often contradictory ways in which atheists engage with religious and spiritual concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to the comparative analysis of the phenomenon of secularism in the works of the Russian philosopher and theologian Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the English theologian John Milbank. The specifics of the concept of “secularism”, its relation to the tradition of russian religious philosophy are revealed. The multidimensional nature of this relationship is emphasized: Russian thought is described both as a reaction to modern secularism and as its direct continuation. Although at the moment researchers have not reached consensus on determining the nature of the connection between Russian religious philosophy and secularism, the very fact of this connection seems to be beyond doubt. Resorting to Milbank’s theory, the author reveals the internal contradictions of secular reason: on the one hand, it is assumed to be autonomous and having the possibilities of real political action, on the other hand, it is described as constructed and derived. It is noted that this contradiction is due to the genealogy of secularism, which roots lie in the nominalist theology focused on univocal concepts. This aspect plays a crucial role in the construction of the paradigm of “autonomy of political reason”, which determines the course of development of the modern era. Bulgakov’s thought confirms Milbank’s thesis: secularized sciences, such as sociology and economics, always have a hidden theological and metaphysical basis underlying the unity of their construction. Further analysis focuses on the criticism of economic theory carried out by Milbank and Bulgakov: it is revealed that Hegel, being involved in the genealogy of the “autonomy of political reason”, determined the course of development of such modern ideologies as liberalism and Marxism. Based on the results obtained, the author, referring to the theses of Bulgakov and Milbank, suggests the possibility of developing an alternative model of modernity based on analogical, teleological and sophiological approaches.

In this paper I focus on designations of 'our culture and heritage' that defend practices and symbols of religious majorities. I consider the entanglement of nationalist narratives, secularity and the 'us' in the claims of social actors and public discussions about culture and heritage. What is understood as being religious and what is culture/heritage is dependent on the social actors involved, their position in society and the interpretive frameworks available to them. I consider the following questions: How are culture and heritage used in legal and public discourse to justify the continued presence of such symbols and practices in Christian majority countries in the West? What are the religious histories implicated in this process? Who is imagined to be included when crosses and prayers are staked out as 'our culture and heritage'? What is the relationship between culture and heritage and national imaginaries? Ultimately, as religious majorities see their numbers dwindle and power relations shift, the attempt to imbricate religious practices and beliefs in public spaces and rituals is quite possibly a translation of the religious to the secular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing the battle over Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple's enormous treasure, the paper documents the litigious journey of the concept of sacred possession and heritage. It shows how the evolving and complex logic of secular governance in India provides the legal categories that animate this contestation over the deity's wealth. While the enormous treasure trove housed in the six chambers of the temple's basement 'belongs' to the idol (murthi) Lord Sree Padmanabhaswamy, the royal family of Travancore has held the right for over the last two hundred and seventy years to control the wealth as the Lord's servants (dasa). Though the dispute over what is arguably the world's largest temple gold and valuables collection began in 2007, it gained widespread media attention in 2009 when a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed. Since then, the royal family, temple management, and other stakeholders have been embroiled in the struggle for possession and control of the temple's wealth. The paper explores how legal frames of Anglo-Hindu law in their postcolonial avatars, material patrimony (gold and land), and notions of immaterial heritage (shebaitship) animated and framed this contestation. To this end, the paper maps the legal trajectory of the dispute and the public debates over the ownership and control of the astounding wealth of Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple. Further, it decodes the legal reasoning behind the courts' arguments and delves into ontological questions surrounding religious freedom and secularity. The discussion illustrates how notions of immaterial heritage anchored in ideas of kingship as well as kinship emerged as clinching evidence in the management and access to this sacred wealth. Finally, the analyses offer insights into the governance of sacred materiality through religio-legal categories in a postcolonial nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature and practice of Christianity is a major, if not the primary, topic in Kierkegaard's authorship. What it means to live a Christian life is a persistent topic in many of his major works, and yet, he spends most of his authorship criticizing traditional ways of practicing Christianity. While his critique of institutionalized Christianity and merciless unmasking of the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed Christians is rather clear, namely that they are not actually Christian, it is more difficult to get a clear idea of Kierkegaard's alternative. What is a true and sincere Christian life for Kierkegaard? The argument of this article is that Kierkegaard's famous existential approach to Christianity amounts to a secularization of Christianity and as such can be seen as a critical development of and not a rejection of the Enlightenment critique of religion. The article uses Kant as an advocate of the Enlightenment critique of religion that Kierkegaard inherits and develops critically, and after having examined Kierkegaard's existential dialectics, an outline of Kant's transcendental approach is, presented against which Kierkegaard's existential alternative is examined in more detail. Kierkegaard's existential approach is radical with its insistence on "that single individual" and on the existential challenges of human freedom that Kant banned from his analysis of both morality and faith. While Kant presents us with the transcendental possibility of faith, Kierkegaard is concerned with the existential reality of faith. It is argued that Kierkegaard's existential analysis of faith helps us to find the connection between radical individual choice and the rational morality that is not always evident in Enlightenment—and especially Kantian—accounts of morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A scientific worldview is taken to be a dominant factor of European secularity but peculiarly absent in Africa. Taking cues from the multiple secularities and global religious history approaches, the article uses global entanglements as a critical analytical tool to investigate the formation of our present, shared conditions, without essentializing cultural European/African differences. The core question is: Why, how and under which circumstances do people adapt global regimes of secularity, in this case particularly: global debates on religion and science? The article analyzes three lecture-transcripts, delivered by the West African intellectual John Augustus Abayomi Cole and printed in the West African newspaper Lagos Standard. In the context of Christian intellectuals in late nineteenth century West Africa, these lectures discussed African religion as congruent with science. This argument was possible through Abayomi Cole's adaptation of esotericism, specifically its claim to true religion and science. Thereby, Abayomi Cole tried to negotiate independence from European missionary oversight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of nineteenth-century Buganda opens up a number of assumptions within scholarship about religion, secularity, and politics in African history. Although much scholarship focuses on European colonizers introduced alien categories such as religion and imposed distinctions between religion and politics, this paper foregrounds a different set of historical transformations in what is now Uganda – transformations that ultimately increased rather than diminished connections between the exercise of political power and markedly religious convictions. Along the way, it locates some of the most important pieces of this story in 'the precolonial'. This allows the paper to trace the emergence of the category of religion, as well as analyze the sense in which it is meaningful to think of precolonial Buganda as secular at a particular moment. In so doing, the paper puts an African story in dialogue with wider conversations on the secular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secular Ghanaian state frames and governs 'African Traditional Religion' ('ATR') in three main ways. As culture and heritage, aspects of 'ATR' are integrated into public performances and national narratives, displaying the African identity of the Ghanaian nation. As providers of traditional forms of therapy, traditional shrines are administered as health facilities and supervised by the Ministry of Health. As religion, 'ATR' is counted as one of the country's religions. This article discusses these framings and their social dynamics drawing on framing theories and secularity studies. Devising secular framings and eclectically appropriating traditional religious presences, the Ghanaian state seeks to govern 'ATR' and integrate it into its nation-building politics. Traditional religious actors have reappropriated these framings, carving out spaces of their own. The relations between 'ATR' and the Ghanaian state are subject to constant negotiations that impact both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reconstructs aspects of the secularizing project of the British colonial administration in Uganda by exploring how state regulatory practices in the field of Western school education set the conditions for two forms of religious difference: first, relations between Muslims as members of a religious minority and the Christian majority, and second, dynamics among Muslims that transpired not only in leadership competition but also in controversies over education and proper religious practice. Focusing on the intersections between a state regulatory regime and the activities of Muslims who claimed religious and political leadership on behalf of other Muslims in the areas of Buganda and Bugisu, the article argues that these Muslim intellectuals mediated and contributed to the colonial administration's production of Muslims as a religious minority. As articulators of Islam, they (re)formulated and debated the forms and purpose of Muslim education and partly novel understandings of proper religious practice, and what it means to be a modern, pious Muslim in the new colonial order. Their political aspirations were hampered, not only as a direct consequence of the colonial administration's production of systematic inequalities between Christians and Muslims, but also as a result of the dynamics of intra-Muslim plurality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raising timely and urgent questions about the forms, scope and boundaries of religious authority and practice, this article offers novel ways for the study of secularities and secularisms in contemporary African societies. In recent scholarly debates on secularity, Africa has been marginal. Part of the reason, it was suggested was that African ways of being in, and knowing, the world lay outside the religious-secular divide. We contest such positions. Secularism was clearly part of modernists colonial ideologies that called for the eradication of African beliefs described as backward and irrational. We find that the colonial encounter had a powerful historical impact, essentializing and othering African societies as marked by holistic indigenous cultures rather than differentiated religions. We suggest that the complex interplay of different African and European cultures has simultaneously shaped the social construction and historical development of multiple secularities. We propose that the concept of multiple secularities provides creative avenues to rethink religion, political authority and belonging. We consider secularities as contested arrangements of religious and other spheres whose dynamics include processes of de-differentiation and de-secularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Angolan independence, proclaimed in 1975, instituted a one-party, socialist-oriented revolutionary regime that vowed to create a nation of workers under a secular state with freedom of worship. However, such a framework existed only on paper. A generation gap opposed Protestant, mission-educated leaders to younger agnostic and atheist militants trained in socialist countries. The government acted to circumscribe the public space of churches and enforce compliance with the heavily contested new order, but also promoted certain denominations as a tool to build hegemony. Further complications arise from African religious practices not being deemed religion but tradition, pointing both to superstition and obscurantism on the one hand, and to the cultural corpus of nation-building on the other. This paper posits that the study of secularity in Angola does not fit into the usual theoretical dichotomy but must take into account the intersections and interplay of tradition with both religion and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article offers a critique of the dominant secular/sexual paradigm in the Netherlands by focusing on everyday experiences of sexuality among Turkish-Dutch women. A secular approach towards sexuality rests on the fictive duality of a sexually liberated, progressive majority Dutch and a conservative cultural ‘Other’. This paper argues that despite scholarly work challenging the secular/framework within which minoritised women’s sexuality is problematised, cultural stereotypes continue to persist in Dutch populist discourse and everyday life. Based on life story interviews conducted with eight women, it illustrates the specific ways in which normative expectations are imposed on minoritised women based on perceived religious or cultural differences. These expectations constitute a ‘script’ that is imbued with cultural stereotypes. Dissonant moments emerge when my interlocutors fail to conform to the ‘script’. In contrast, when their choices validate these expectations, they are interpreted as a reflection of their ‘cultural background’ instead of being seen as instances of agentic behaviour. These processes further reify dichotomies in the form of sexually liberated and oppressed as the choices these women make are never seen as individual expressions of sexuality unless they openly contest these expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secularity was first substantiated as a cultural practice constitutive of modernity in late-nineteenth-century fiction. The so-called Modern Breakthrough in Danish literature, taking place between 1871 and into the 1880s, is a prime case of a cultural radical movement that translated the modern criticism of religion into a literary and political program. Today, the Danish writer J. P. Jacobsen's novel Niels Lyhne (1880) remains a classic of the atheistic literature of the period. Its portrayal of the psychological struggles involved in the transition from a tradition of faith to a modern secular society suggest it to be a core document of atheistic identity formation. To contemporaries, however, the psychology of the protagonist Niels Lyhne seemed fundamentally implausible, and his atheism overtly dramatic. By contextualising the literary work in its wider and highly contested narrative culture, this article discusses how narrative scripts first substantiated the modern religious vs secular distinction. In documenting the changing plausibility structures by which Jacobsen's novel could become prescriptive of the emotional norms of a secular mind, the article explores how literary works shape cultural and emotional realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 2018 survey of twenty-first-century American Judaism entitled The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Judaism Today, Jack Wertheimer references a 2015 Pew Research study that presupposes the secular-religion binary as the analytical metric for its determination that both the American public and American Jews are becoming less religious. Nonetheless, Wertheimer's use of this analytical frame prohibits him from making sense of many details of the twenty-first-century American Jewish life that he seeks to describe. Indeed, any survey of the contemporary American Jewish scene is remiss if it does not discuss the rise of orthodox Jewish feminism, current trends towards substantial denominational change, and/or the emergence of a "post-ethnic" Judaism. Even so, recent historical-ethnographic accounts have outpaced analytical challenges to the secular-religion binary. Contemporary historians and ethnographers find themselves forced to choose between an analytically deficient model and a default rejection of analytical tools altogether. Arguably, the roots of the current impasse are derived from the influence of what scholars refer to as the secularization thesis. Therefore, to overcome this impasse, ethnographers and historians of American Judaism need access to a more refined categorical lens. In this essay, I argue that they may find the analytical support they need by turning away from the secularization thesis and turning toward far more complex accounts of the relationship between Judaism and modernity provided by the canon of modern Jewish thought. Such a turn yields an analytical category we may refer to as the "new secularity" which, when applied to studies in Jewish life in America (and potentially elsewhere) sheds light on communal realities that the secular-religious account misses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figure of Luis Adaro Ruiz-Falcó (1914-2006) covers countless facets. Engineer, businessman, historian, he was a notable public figure in the second half of the 20th Century in Asturias. In 1959 he joined Opus Dei, being the first person to be a member of this Institution in Gijón (Asturias). The present work, together with some general biographical elements, gives an account of its religious facet, in order, in this context, to show the impact that the secular spirituality of Opus Dei had on the various kinds of initiatives that carried out throughout his long life.

This article studies different forms of martyrdom in secular contexts, tracing their roots back to Western European Christian traditions. The article argues that distinct trajectories of martyrdom have emerged: (a) the more passive martyr, who refuses to acknowledge sovereign power and dies for a transcendent truth, and (b) the more assertive martyr, who sacrifices their life fighting for God and the sovereign. In secular contexts, this assertive martyr fights for secular ideals such as ‘freedom’ or ‘nation’ and represents the symbolic body of the sovereign. The historical distinction between divine truth and state falsehood has been turned into differentiations between democratic rule and threats like terrorism. To further study this transition, this article studies discourses following the deaths of Pim Fortuyn and Jaques Hamel, as both were strongly labeled as martyrs. This results in the final part of the article that examines the cult of commemoration surrounding soldiers in the US and the Netherlands. It argues that the assertive martyr has reached its fully secularized form in these contexts. The transcendent imagery of state sovereignty is evident in the sacrificial discourses around fallen soldiers. At this point of death, the state’s power is reinforced as a transcendent norm and reveals itself in those who ‘sacrifice’ their lives for the freedom of many.

Prior research into the socialization of religious values between religious parents and their children indicates that, in homogeneous religious family groups, there are similarities between the religious values of religious parents and those of their children. Research further shows that, in religious-secular heterogeneous family groups, there is a significant distance between the religious parent and their teenagers in terms of religious values. The purpose of this study is to explore the transmission of religious values in homogeneous Modern-Orthodox family groups and in heterogeneous Modern-Orthodox-secular family groups in Israel. Results of the study show that religious distance in values is not dependent on the family type (homogeneous/heterogeneous). However, it appears that, when the transmitter of religious values is a religious parent in both homogeneous and heterogeneous religious and religious-secular family groups, there is a distance in the socialization of religious values between religious parent and their children. Moreover, the study proposes that the effect sizes are smaller in the parent-child religious distance of values in homogeneous Modern-Orthodox family groups in comparison to the parent child religious distance of values in heterogeneous Modern-Orthodox- secular family groups. This study provides support for recent research, suggesting that the transmission of religiosity from parents to their children might function as a mechanism of secularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secularism has been defined from a progressive jurisprudential development in Colombia, France and the United States, three countries that define and regulate secularism in a different way. Accordingly, the priority of the jurisprudence of the Colombian Constitutional Court has focused on defining the concept of secularism and the scope of the religious neutrality of the State that was originally closely linked to the Catholic Church. France, for its part, is the example of how secularism is a major challenge for the State, which seeks to adapt its rules to the realities and social and cultural conflicts that French multicultural society is experiencing. As for the United States, secularism is concretized in a very “religious” pragmatism, since, invoking God, with any type of confessional filiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synesis is the property of Synesis and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There is currently no secularity scale with strong psychometric properties that would allow for the examination of the secularization process experienced by Muslims. Thus, the purpose of this article is to develop a psychometrically sound and quick-to-apply scale that can be used to measure the degree of secularity among Muslims. For exploratory factor analysis (EFA), an inventory with 65 items was applied to 1,573 university students, and it yielded a two-factor structure with an internal reliability of 0.975 for Daily Life factor and 0.952 for Faith and Prayer factor. After EFA, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed with 4,391 individuals, and a structure that can be deemed very solid was found. The measurement invariance was also examined, and it was discovered that the scale can be used for various populations. In addition, the scale has convergent validity, a high test-retest result, and discriminant validity. The 25-item Secularity Scale has a new theoretical approach – which is not only based on faith and prayer but also daily life activities – and sound psychometric properties. Examining how secularity manifests itself in Muslim societies might be useful in describing, predicting, and explaining how individuals act in a variety of contexts. The scale might also help to avoid the use of approach utilized in Christian-centred secularity debates in the case of Muslim-majority societies.

The nature and practice of Christianity is a major, if not the primary, topic in Kierkegaard’s authorship. What it means to live a Christian life is a persistent topic in many of his major works, and yet, he spends most of his authorship criticizing traditional ways of practicing Christianity. While his critique of institutionalized Christianity and merciless unmasking of the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed Christians is rather clear, namely that they are not actually Christian, it is more difficult to get a clear idea of Kierkegaard’s alternative. What is a true and sincere Christian life for Kierkegaard? The argument of this article is that Kierkegaard’s famous existential approach to Christianity amounts to a secularization of Christianity and as such can be seen as a critical development of and not a rejection of the Enlightenment critique of religion. The article uses Kant as an advocate of the Enlightenment critique of religion that Kierkegaard inherits and develops critically, and after having examined Kierkegaard’s existential dialectics, an outline of Kant’s transcendental approach is, presented against which Kierkegaard’s existential alternative is examined in more detail. Kierkegaard’s existential approach is radical with its insistence on “that single individual” and on the existential challenges of human freedom that Kant banned from his analysis of both morality and faith. While Kant presents us with the transcendental possibility of faith, Kierkegaard is concerned with the existential reality of faith. It is argued that Kierkegaard’s existential analysis of faith helps us to find the connection between radical individual choice and the rational morality that is not always evident in Enlightenment—and especially Kantian—accounts of morality.

The relationship between secularity and religion/religiosity is a main topic of practical theol­ogy and ecclesiastical pastoral care. However, several research papers on religious studies show that the thesis that with disappearing institutionalized religiosity, plural and differentiated forms of religiosity increase is not convincing. In fact, the development shows that where people do not experience religion, it becomes irrelevant to them. This fact is an urgent question for the Church: With and from which basic attitude can and will she be able to encounter religious and secular people in such ways that the Christian gospel of human emancipation and redemption can become a reality in their lives? The Church can real­ize such a fundamental attitude in reference to the biblical Exodus and by generating a pastoral exodus.

Prior research into the socialization of religious values between religious parents and their children indicates that, in homogeneous religious family groups, there are similarities between the religious values of religious parents and those of their children. Research further shows that, in religious-secular heterogeneous family groups, there is a significant distance between the religious parent and their teenagers in terms of religious values. The purpose of this study is to explore the transmission of religious values in homogeneous Modern-Orthodox family groups and in heterogeneous Modern-Orthodox-secular family groups in Israel. Results of the study show that religious distance in values is not dependent on the family type (homogeneous/heterogeneous). However, it appears that, when the transmitter of religious values is a religious parent in both homogeneous and heterogeneous religious and religious-secular family groups, there is a distance in the socialization of religious values between religious parent and their children. Moreover, the study proposes that the effect sizes are smaller in the parent-child religious distance of values in homogeneous Modern-Orthodox family groups in comparison to the parent child religious distance of values in heterogeneous Modern-Orthodox-secular family groups. This study provides support for recent research, suggesting that the transmission of religiosity from parents to their children might function as a mechanism of secularization.

Throughout history, the social construction of femininity and masculinity has been different. Women are “emotional, passive, inactive, etc.” while male is identified with being “logical, active, etc.” is identified with being. Of these two different identifications, the first side corresponds to the field of religiosity and the second side corresponds to the field of secularism. Therefore, religious, moral and cultural factors have been greater in the construction of femininity than in the construction of masculinity. As such, assumptions have been made that women are or could be more "religious" because of their “emotional” nature, while assumptions have been made that men are or could be more “secular” because of their mentality. In this context, while the discourse of "female religiosity" dominated the literature, the discourse of “female secularization” remained weak. So much so that, although modernization and secularization are mostly discussed in terms of women and their bodies, the discourse of “female religiosity (women are more religious than men)” is dominant. Secularization research and discussions mostly describe the religiosity and secularism aspects of society with findings obtained through various variables without analyzing gender. However, it is understood from the direct and indirect studies on the relationship between secularization and gender that the discussion styles of secularization and gender relationship can be evaluated in two categories. The first can be expressed as “gender-oriented modernization and secularization” discussions, and the second can be expressed as “gender-oriented modernization and secularization” discussions. While how women or men are positioned is not usually discussed in discussions focused on modernization and secularization, the aim has been to talk about whether the traditional understanding of gender, shaped by religion, has weakened and whether views outside the heteronormative sexuality order compatible with binary gender have increased. It is thought that it will be important to look at the concepts of modernization, secularization and religion from a gender perspective. In this context, when we look at the modernization and secularization debates from a gender perspective, we see that the manifestations of Turkish modernization on behalf of women and men are mostly examined. In this study, from the perspective of critical gender research, it is claimed that the fields of religiosity and secularism are gendered rather than a natural reality, and an attempt is made to substantiate the claim. According to the study, the concept of patriarchy plays an important role in the different association of religiosity and secularism with men and women. Coding religiosity as feminine and secularism as masculine stems from the patriarchal view. This necessitates the reconsideration of modernization and secularization theories in terms of gender. This gendering of the fields of religiosity and secularity is an important factor in legitimizing a kind of gender discrimination. Today, the “secularized language of religion” is generally secularized in favor of men, and when it comes to women, the “patriarchal and traditional language of religion” is mostly wanted to be maintained. This requires rethinking whether secularization theories have a sexist aspect or not. Of course, the similarities and differences between women’s modernization and secularization or men’s modernization and secularization can continue to be identified by researching. However, this necessitates not neglecting to examine whether there are patriarchal sexist aspects in the determinations on the level of “gender, religiosity and secularity” to date. Since those who interpret religion in the traditional historical line are generally men with patriarchal thoughts who monopolize religion, it can be said that while religion or religiosity is used as a braking mechanism for women, it does not generally serve a similar function for men, and is sometimes even used as a “walking stick” in secularization processes. But today, “educated, combative, religious women with a high zest for life” criticize them, expose the mechanism that works against them, and put the pieces in place by examining the distortions. Therefore, the concepts of religiosity and secularism need to continue to be examined again and again from the perspective of men and women, by getting rid of the prejudice of considering men as “naturally secular” and women as “naturally religious”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Jasbir Puar has demonstrated that the targeted debilitation of entire racialized populations embodies a contemporary illustration of colonialism’s machine. For Puar, colonizing states exist as biopolitical assemblages of control, the technologies of which instrumentalize a spectrum of debilities and capacities in the service of neoliberal colonialism, which requires maiming populations who are preconditioned for injury to secure sovereign power. This paper stages a conversation with Jasbir Puar to ask what additional insights might be gained about the relationship between colonialism and debility if critical disability scholarship went beyond a Foucauldian biopolitical analysis of the management of life, death, and debility when theorizing colonial violence. This paper thus reads across postcolonial and anti-colonial thought as well as Indigenous theories of trauma to encourage critical disability studies to expand the horizon of its reading practices when engaging these questions. These approaches, I maintain, provide critical insights into sovereign power that biopolitics cannot, including critical attention to non-secular configurations of settler colonial debility that biopolitical theory misses. I aim to show that a locus of Canada’s colonial sovereignty resides in targeted attacks, or “dis-membering,” forms of Indigenous non-secular transcendent self-consciousness—that is, the sanctioned maiming of Indigenous heterogeneous agencies in the service of neocolonial economic designs. In this sense, theories of metaphysics and violence must also be accounted for when attending to debility, colonialism, and sovereign power.

In the first part of this paper, a "Habermas-way" diagnosis is made: uncertainty as the climate of an interconnected world without a common basis, the crisis of successful "Enlightened Reason", including its techno-scientific expression, and critical reason. In the second part, it discusses the paradoxical outcome of modernity and its unfulfilled promises, as well as the crisis of modern reason which, despite the postmodern reaction, addresses the search for the foundation of discourse ethics and the problem of presuppositions, demonstrably valid norms, the importance of language, communicative action and parliamentarism. The third section presents three final reflections, including the need to continue the struggle for emancipation, the complexity of putting this diagnosis into practice, and the criticism that Habermas has received for ignoring cultural differences and reducing communication to a linguistic exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the material approach to religion can productively be extended to the domain of the secular, so as to grasp its material dimension. It investigates the Dutch field of sexual health to examine the ways in which the male condom was employed to underscore an image of religion as an obstacle to open conversations about sexual matters. It analyzes how the condom was deployed during sex education classes to evoke discussions about sexuality, but also to demonstrate the organizations' alleged comfortability with discussing these objects. I argue that, in my fieldwork, the condom materialized secularity because it was key to the introduction of what my interlocutors called "an open attitude" towards sexuality: an open appreciation of sexuality that implicitly references religion as the antithesis of a good sex education class. In doing so, the stereotypical representation of religion as prudish and constrained is reproduced and cultivated through sex education classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the current state of the church-public dialogue. The reasons for decline in public trust in the Russian Orthodox Church, fixed on the basis of sociological data, are revealed. Methodological remarks of sociological dimension of the religiosity of the population are given. The authors make an assumption about the incorrect interpretation of the concept of “secular”, dictated by the previous experience of state-confessional relations in the Soviet era. The problem of interpreting the concept of “secular” in the legal, religious studies and confessional planes as problematizing the foundations of the church-public dialogue is investigated. It emphasizes the inadmissibility of interpreting the concept of “secularism” as the complete elimination of religious institutions from public life, as well as the need to build a dialogue on equal terms. Based on the content analysis of the digital space, three main risk-trends for reducing trust in the Church on the part of secular society are identified — the growth of protest anti-religiousness, the growth of “protest” religiosity and the growth of “alternative” religiosity. For each risk trend, its causes and features are analyzed, and an analytical forecast of possible scenarios for its development is made. Particular attention is paid to those trends that can potentially lead to destabilization of social relations and have the most destructive consequences. Concrete practical ways are proposed to overcome the existing contradictions both on the part of the Church and on the part of society. The need to spread education in the field of religion, sustained in a neutral key, is affirmed, the destructive nature of the interpretation of the role of the Church in society as a translator of ethics and morality is emphasized.

In the context of the distinction between normative and descriptive approaches to the relationship between science and religion, this article discusses the recent work of the sociologist Elaine Ecklund. It reviews four of her published outputs, summarising her data concerning the views of religious people and professional scientists, including their positions on the relationship between science and religion and on cognate issues, and discusses her attempt to show the relevance of these data in a particular formational context. It seeks to evaluate and extend her work from a multidisciplinary perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that a combined lens of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion provides scholarship with new methodological and theoretical insights for phenomenological religious education. These insights demonstrate the analytic value of understanding religion in terms of its affective and aesthetic dimensions, which offer renewed explanatory power for the variety of religious experiences individuals and communities undergo. In particular, these insights allow educators and students to explore what drives religious practices in everyday life without resorting to essentialist, reductionist or universalist accounts. It is suggested that reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education has the potential to make a vital contribution to developing new sensibilities of the 'secular' and the 'religious', especially in contemporary multi-religious societies. Finally, it is argued that the innovations offered by reframed phenomenological approaches provide a promising theoretical and methodological platform in religious education for engaging with the affective and aesthetic dimensions of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of HiSTOReLo: Revista de Historia Regional y Local is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Centro Editorial Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Economicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study presents the process of the translation, adaptation, and psychometric evaluation of the Dimensions of Secularity (DoS) Scale for use in Brazil. This will enable the inclusion of measures on secularity in future Brazilian studies. The psychometric properties of the Brazilian version of the scale were verified in a sample of 952 participants. The data obtained show that the scale presented good psychometric functioning indexes and adequate internal consistency indexes for the five-factor, 22-item model. Correlations of the DoS Scale with other constructs were also evaluated to seek evidence of discriminant and convergent validity. The Brazilian version of the DoS Scale is a measure that can be used to assess the degrees of atheism and agnosticism and the philosophical dimensions of secularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'religion/secular' frame should be retired as a way of characterizing contemporary northern European cultures. The concepts of 'secularity' and 'religion' are both falsifying and question begging. They invisibly and unhelpfully predetermine the conversation about who and where we are now. Further, they are terms which increasingly lack salience in these cultures. If we seek to locate and articulate, in order to reflectively engage, the horizons within which contemporary northern Europeans generally live, the goods that orient people's lives, the ideas and values that move and motivate them, we need to talk not about 'religion' and the lack of it, but about the idea of the human. Within the concept of the human is nested today the sense of orientation, meaning, goodness and importance that notions of 'religion' used to express. This is the conceptual territory on which arguments about 'what really matters' are now conducted. If one wishes to have salience in contemporary culture, one needs to speak to this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Academic Journal of Philosophy / Felsefi Düşün is the property of Pinhan Yayincilik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In his 2018 survey of twenty-first-century American Judaism entitled The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Judaism Today, Jack Wertheimer references a 2015 Pew Research study that presupposes the secular-religion binary as the analytical metric for its determination that both the American public and American Jews are becoming less religious. Nonetheless, Wertheimer’s use of this analytical frame prohibits him from making sense of many details of the twenty-first-century American Jewish life that he seeks to describe. Indeed, any survey of the contemporary American Jewish scene is remiss if it does not discuss the rise of orthodox Jewish feminism, current trends towards substantial denominational change, and/or the emergence of a “post-ethnic” Judaism. Even so, recent historical-ethnographic accounts have outpaced analytical challenges to the secular-religion binary. Contemporary historians and ethnographers find themselves forced to choose between an analytically deficient model and a default rejection of analytical tools altogether. Arguably, the roots of the current impasse are derived from the influence of what scholars refer to as the secularization thesis. Therefore, to overcome this impasse, ethnographers and historians of American Judaism need access to a more refined categorical lens. In this essay, I argue that they may find the analytical support they need by turning away from the secularization thesis and turning toward far more complex accounts of the relationship between Judaism and modernity provided by the canon of modern Jewish thought. Such a turn yields an analytical category we may refer to as the “new secularity” which, when applied to studies in Jewish life in America (and potentially elsewhere) sheds light on communal realities that the secular-religious account misses.

This article, divided into two parts, explores the ramifications of Eaton's India in the Persianate Age for salient topics in Sikh historiography. The first part defines Eaton's arguments and expands on facets of the Persianate dispensation, drawing out relevant features of his biography and previous works. Secularity and universality as well as the approaches adopted to break from reified notions of religious community are underscored. The second part focuses on violence, militancy, and millenarianism in moments of crisis in early Sikh history. The article develops the dialectic of social levels and, in doing so, invokes Clio, the muse of historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically discusses the pioneering formulation of secularity and secularism in the Arab-Islamicate world(s) found in Butrus al-Bustani's The Clarion of Syria (1860–1861). This discussion is conceptually based on the distinction between 'secularity' as an analytical concept, and 'secularism' as a normative and ideological concept. Here, secularity is understood to refer to (structural) distinctions, whether practical or theoretical or cognitive, between the religious and the non-religious. Secularism refers to the ideological promotion of such a differentiation and distinction between religion and, in particular, politics or the state. This paper provides a conceptual analysis of secularity, secularism, and secularization, highlighting the differences between them, as well as the epistemological and methodological requirements for drawing a distinction between them in modern and contemporary Arab thought. It also reflects on the linguistic and historical context, looking at the concepts of secularity and secularism in Arab thought prior to al-Bustani's The Clarion of Syria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers what concept of accommodation is necessary to identify and address discrimination, disadvantages and disparities in such a way that the plurality of religious people with their beliefs, values and practices may be justly accommodated in healthcare. It evaluates threats to the possibility of such accommodation pertaining by considering what beliefs and practices might increase the risk of unjust discrimination against and disadvantage for religious people, whether as individuals or as groups; and the risk of disparities between the care provided to religious people. The claim is that there is an important cluster of risks that are political in kind and emergent within philosophical bioethics. While not amounting (yet) to a trend, they are sufficiently threatening to a just civic life for patients and healthcare staff as to warrant scrutiny. After an Introductory Section 1, Section 2 evaluates a criticism of 'accommodation' and the apparently additional health‐related requirements that those of religious faith demand, when compared with other people. It does so by comparing Lori Beaman's idea of agonism with that of a distinct and somewhat complementary approach in Jonathan Chaplin's political philosophy, before examining the role of established religion in setting the conditions for the accommodation of religion and belief in healthcare. Section 3 examines risks to such accommodation by engaging critically with three health‐related instantiations of political philosophy that differ radically from both Beaman and Chaplin. A concluding Section 4 focusses on appropriate modes of communicating about religious and other beliefs in healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jacques Berlinerblau, author of Secularism: The Basics , responds to his nine critics in this edition of the Journal of Secular Studies. He focuses on definitional issues and what he calls the POMOFOCO school and its critique of secularism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article surveys one small but important debate taking place in Christian music theology regarding the arts and divine revelation. Jeremy Begbie's theology through the arts allows for music's revelatory testimony within the context of Scripture, doctrine and Christian history. David Brown and Gavin Hopps' notion of the extravagance of music argues for music's ability to break down doctrinal and scriptural limitations, where being open to the divine mystery through spiritual musical experience can replace the need for religious revelation through Scripture or the Church. I conclude that both camps start with theological concepts that shape the outcome of their arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]