Questioning Secularism

Questioning Secularism
Author: Hussein Ali Agrama
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2012-11-02
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0226010686

What, exactly, is secularism? What has the West's long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In this work, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.

The Post-secular in Question

The Post-secular in Question
Author: Philip Gorski
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2012-03-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814738729

"This collection of original essays by leading academics represents an interdisciplinary intervention in the continuing and ever-transforming discussion of the role of religion and secularism in today's world. Foregrounding the most urgent and compelling questions raised by the place of religion in the social sciences, past and present, The Post-Secular in Question restores religion to a more central place in social scientific thinking about the world, helping to move scholarship 'beyond unbelief.'"--book jacket.

Secularism in Question

Secularism in Question
Author: Ethan B. Katz
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2015-07-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0812247272

Secularism in Question examines how twentieth-century revivals of religion prompt a reconsideration of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism in the modern era. Scholars of Jewish history, religion, philosophy, and literature illustrate how the categories of "religious" and "secular" have frequently proven far more permeable than fixed.

The Refugee Crisis and Religion

The Refugee Crisis and Religion
Author: Luca Mavelli
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1783488964

This volume gathers together expertise from academics and practitioners in order to investigate the interconnections and interactions between religion, migration and the refugee regime.

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age
Author: Michael Warner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2013-03-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674072413

ÒWhat does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?Ó This apparently simple question opens into the massive, provocative, and complex A Secular Age, where Charles Taylor positions secularism as a defining feature of the modern world, not the mere absence of religion, and casts light on the experience of transcendence that scientistic explanations of the world tend to neglect. In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, a prominent and varied group of scholars chart the conversations in which A Secular Age intervenes and address wider questions of secularism and secularity. The distinguished contributors include Robert Bellah, JosŽ Casanova, NilŸfer Gšle, William E. Connolly, Wendy Brown, Simon During, Colin Jager, Jon Butler, Jonathan Sheehan, Akeel Bilgrami, John Milbank, and Saba Mahmood. Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age succeeds in conveying to readers the complexity of secularism while serving as an invaluable guide to a landmark book.

Secularism in Antebellum America

Secularism in Antebellum America
Author: John Lardas Modern
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2011-11-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0226533255

Ghosts. Railroads. Sing Sing. Sex machines. These are just a few of the phenomena that appear in John Lardas Modern’s pioneering account of religion and society in nineteenth-century America. This book uncovers surprising connections between secular ideology and the rise of technologies that opened up new ways of being religious. Exploring the eruptions of religion in New York’s penny presses, the budding fields of anthropology and phrenology, and Moby-Dick, Modern challenges the strict separation between the religious and the secular that remains integral to discussions about religion today. Modern frames his study around the dread, wonder, paranoia, and manic confidence of being haunted, arguing that experiences and explanations of enchantment fueled secularism’s emergence. The awareness of spectral energies coincided with attempts to tame the unruly fruits of secularism—in the cultivation of a spiritual self among Unitarians, for instance, or in John Murray Spear’s erotic longings for a perpetual motion machine. Combining rigorous theoretical inquiry with beguiling historical arcana, Modern unsettles long-held views of religion and the methods of narrating its past.

Living the Secular Life

Living the Secular Life
Author: Phil Zuckerman
Publisher: Penguin Books
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0143127934

A sociology professor examines the demographic shift that has led more Americans than ever before to embrace a nonreligious life and highlights the inspirational stories and beliefs that empower modern-day secular culture.

Postsecular Feminisms

Postsecular Feminisms
Author: Nandini Deo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2018-07-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1350038083

Postsecular Feminisms explores the contested relationship between feminism and secularism through a series of case studies, featuring perspectives from the global North and South. It offers insights beyond those of the Abrahamic traditions, and includes multiple examples from South Asia. By decentering the European experience, Postsecular Feminisms shows how secularism and feminism have been constituted in North America, South Asia, and Anglophone West Africa. The book asks: can postsecular feminism offer a way to think about religion and gender so as to support women in all the variety of their lived experiences? The contributors show that postsecular feminism is a variety of feminism that is not necessarily either secularist or anti-secular. Rather it is feminism informed by a history of secularist bias within liberal feminism. Postsecular Feminisms explores both the potentials and pitfalls of postsecular feminisms, with some authors arguing that a contextually grounded praxis is possible, while others make a strong case against postsecular feminism as theory and practice.

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations
Author: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2009-01-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400828015

Conflicts involving religion have returned to the forefront of international relations. And yet political scientists and policymakers have continued to assume that religion has long been privatized in the West. This secularist assumption ignores the contestation surrounding the category of the "secular" in international politics. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations shows why this thinking is flawed, and provides a powerful alternative. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd argues that secularist divisions between religion and politics are not fixed, as commonly assumed, but socially and historically constructed. Examining the philosophical and historical legacy of the secularist traditions that shape European and American approaches to global politics, she shows why this matters for contemporary international relations, and in particular for two critical relationships: the United States and Iran, and the European Union and Turkey. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations develops a new approach to religion and international relations that challenges realist, liberal, and constructivist assumptions that religion has been excluded from politics in the West. The first book to consider secularism as a form of political authority in its own right, it describes two forms of secularism and their far-reaching global consequences.