The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere

Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023152725X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does or should religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jürgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

We Have a Religion

Author: Tisa Joy Wenger
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807832626
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Book Description
For Native Americans, religious freedom has been an elusive goal. From nineteenth-century bans on indigenous ceremonial practices to twenty-first-century legal battles over sacred lands, peyote use, and hunting practices, the U.S. government has often act

Create Your Own Religion

Author: Daniele Bolelli
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
ISBN: 1938875028
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Create Your Own Religion is a call to arms--an open invitation to question all the values, beliefs, and worldviews that humanity has so far held as sacred in order to find the answers we need to the very practical problems facing us. Writer, philosopher, and professor of comparative religion, Daniele Bolelli, leads the reader through three thousand years of mythology, misogyny, misinformation, and the flat-out lies about "revealed truth" that continue to muddle our ability to live a peaceful life, free of guilt and shame and the ultimate fear of death. "Our worldviews are in desperate need of some housecleaning," says Bolelli. "We enter the 21st century still carrying on our backs the prejudices and ways of thinking of countless past generations. What worked for them may or may not still be of use, so it is our job to make sure to save the tools that can help us and let go of the dead weight."

Reorganized Religion

Author: Bob Smietana
Publisher: Worthy Books
ISBN: 9781546001621
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"A superb examination of the future of Christian institutions.... A must-read for anyone invested in the fate of the American church." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) Uncover the ways the Christian church has changed in recent years--from the decline of the mainline denominations to the mega-churchification of American culture to the rise of the Nones and Exvaneglicals--and a hopeful reimagining of what the church might look like going forward. The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented spiritual, technological, demographic, political and social transformation-- moving from an older, mostly white, mostly Protestant, religion-friendly society to a younger diverse, multiethnic, pluralistic culture, where no one faith group will have the advantage. At the same time, millions of Americans are abandoning organized religion altogether in favor of disorganized disbelief. Reorganized Religion is an in-depth and critical look at why people are leaving American churches and what we lose as a society as it continues. But it also accepts the dismantling of what has come before and try to help readers reinvent the path forward. This book looks at the future of organized religion in America and outline the options facing churches and other faith groups. Will they retreat? Will they become irrelevant? Or will they find a new path forward? Written by veteran religion reporter Bob Smietana, Reorganized Religion is a journalistic look at the state of the American church and its future. It draws on polling data, interviews with experts, and reporting on how faith communities old and new are coping with the changing religious landscape, along with personal stories about how faith is lived in everyday life. It also profiles faith communities and leaders who are finding interesting ways to reimagine what church might look like in the future and discuss various ways we can reinvent this organization so it survives and thrives. The book also reflects the hope that perhaps people of faith can learn to become, if not friends with the larger culture, then at least better neighbors.

The Myth of Religious Violence

Author: William T Cavanaugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199736642
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
The idea that religion has a dangerous tendency to promote violence is part of the conventional wisdom of Western societies, and it underlies many of our institutions and policies, from limits on the public role of religion to efforts to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East. William T. Cavanaugh challenges this conventional wisdom by examining how the twin categories of religion and the secular are constructed. A growing body of scholarly work explores how the category 'religion' has been constructed in the modern West and in colonial contexts according to specific configurations of political power. Cavanaugh draws on this scholarship to examine how timeless and transcultural categories of 'religion and 'the secular' are used in arguments that religion causes violence. He argues three points: 1) There is no transhistorical and transcultural essence of religion. What counts as religious or secular in any given context is a function of political configurations of power; 2) Such a transhistorical and transcultural concept of religion as non-rational and prone to violence is one of the foundational legitimating myths of Western society; 3) This myth can be and is used to legitimate neo-colonial violence against non-Western others, particularly the Muslim world.

Religion and Mental Health

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mental health
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Book Description

South Asian Religions

Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136163239
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
The religious landscape of South Asia is complex and fascinating. While existing literature tends to focus on the majority religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, much less attention is given to Jainism, Sikhism, Islam or Christianity. While not nelecting the majority traditions, this valuable resource also explores the important role which the minority traditions play in the religious life of the subcontinent, covering popular as well as elite expressions of religious faith. By examining the realities of religious life, and the ways in which the traditions are practised on the ground, this book provides an illuminating introduction to religion in South Asia.

A Trinitarian Theology of Religions

Author: Gerald Robert McDermott
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019975182X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
How are Christians to think of non-Christian religions? How are they to relate to people who do not share their faith? Two senior scholars survey the field of theology of religions from an evangelical perspective, and propose fresh approaches to long-debated questions such as salvation, revelation, the relationship between culture and religion, conversion, and social action.

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom

Author: Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400890330
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground. Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains. A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution. Featuring a new preface by the author, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society.

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions of the World

Author: Jon Stewart
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192564935
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel treats the religions of the world under the rubric "the determinate religion." This is a part of his corpus that has traditionally been neglected since scholars have struggled to understand what philosophical work it is supposed to do. In Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions of the World, Jon Stewart argues that Hegel's rich analyses of Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Egyptian and Greek polytheism, and the Roman religion are not simply irrelevant historical material, as is often thought. Instead, they play a central role in Hegel's argument for what he regards as the truth of Christianity. Hegel believes that the different conceptions of the gods in the world religions are reflections of individual peoples at specific periods in history. These conceptions might at first glance appear random and chaotic, but there is, Hegel claims, a discernible logic in them. Simultaneously, a theory of mythology, history, and philosophical anthropology, Hegel's account of the world religions goes far beyond the field of philosophy of religion. The controversial issues surrounding his treatment of the non-European religions are still very much with us today and make his account of religion an issue of continued topicality in the academic landscape of the twenty-first century.