Exploring the Postsecular


Book Description

This book examines contemporary relations between religion, politics and urban societies from a theoretical perspective. Special attention is paid to those authors (e.g. Habermas, Taylor) who analyze new global constellations in terms of a shift from the secular to the postsecular.




Post-Secular Society


Book Description

Post-Secular Society argues for several characteristics of the secular: the experience of living in a secular age and the experience of living without religion as a normal condition. Religion in the West is often seen as marked by both innovation and disarray. In spite of differing approaches and perspectives of secularization, rational choice and de-secularization, many scholars agree that the West is experiencing a general "resurgence" of religion across most Western societies. Post-Secular Society discusses the changes in religion related to globalization and New Age forms of popular religion. The contributors review religion that is rooted in the globalized political economy and the relationship of post-secularism to popular consumer culture. Also reviewed is innovative discourse as a religious belief system, theories of the post-secular, religious, and spiritual well-being, and healing practices in Finland and environmentalism. This paperback edition includes a new preface by Peter Nynas.




The Post-secular in Question


Book Description

"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.




Religion in the Era of Postsecularism


Book Description

Exploring the viability of new perspectives on secularisation and the idea of postsecularism, this book reflects on their relevance when considered in the context of different societies within and outside the West. The topic of secularisation has been recently reconsidered by prominent theorists, such as Jürgen Habermas, Talal Asad, Charles Taylor, and José Casanova. Offering a comparative critique of postsecularism, the contributors extend the discourse on postsecularism to include non-Western experiences, providing comprehensive perspectives on the role of religion in the public sphere and considering the validity of the concept of postsecularism. Drawn from a variety of disciplines, the contributors articulate a coherent analysis of the role of religion in the public sphere from a perspective that engages in the envisaged dialogue. This insightful book will be important for those researching secularism and postsecularism, especially from a non-Western perspective, and it will also be of interest to scholars working on politics and religion in general, political philosophy, and African studies.




Europe's Encounter with Islam


Book Description

In the last few years, the Muslim presence in Europe has been increasingly perceived as ‘problematic’. Events such as the French ban on headscarves in public schools, the publication of the so-called ‘Danish cartoons’, and the speech of Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg have hit the front pages of newspapers the world over, and prompted a number of scholarly debates on Muslims’ capacity to comply with the seemingly neutral and pluralistic rules of European secularity. Luca Mavelli argues that this perspective has prevented an in-depth reflection on the limits of Europe’s secular tradition and its role in Europe’s conflictual encounter with Islam. Through an original reading of Michel Foucault’s spiritual notion of knowledge and an engagement with key thinkers, from Thomas Aquinas to Jurgën Habermas, Mavelli articulates a contending genealogy of European secularity. While not denying the latter’s achievements in terms of pluralism and autonomy, he suggests that Europe’s secular tradition has also contributed to forms of isolation, which translate into Europe’s incapacity to perceive its encounter with Islam as an opportunity rather than a threat. Drawing on this theoretical perspective, Mavelli offers a contending account of some of the most important recent controversies surrounding Islam in Europe and investigates the ‘postsecular’ as a normative model to engage with the tensions at the heart of European secularity. Finally, he advances the possibility of a Europe willing to reconsider its established secular narratives which may identify in the encounter with Islam an opportunity to flourish and cultivate its democratic qualities and postnational commitments. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion and international relations, social and political theory, and Islam in Europe.




The Postsecular Sacred


Book Description

In The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change, David Tacey presents a unique psychological study of the postsecular, adding a Jungian perspective to a debate shaped by sociology, philosophy and religious studies. In this interdisciplinary exploration, Tacey looks at the unexpected return of the sacred in Western societies, and how the sacred is changing our understanding of humanity and culture. Beginning with Jung’s belief that the psyche has never been secular, Tacey examines the new desire for spiritual experience and presents a logic of the unconscious to explain it. Tacey argues that what has fuelled the postsecular momentum is the awareness that something is missing, and the idea that this could be buried in the unconscious is dawning on sociologists and philosophers. While the instinct to connect to something greater is returning, Tacey shows that this need not imply that we are regressing to superstitions that science has rejected. The book explores indigenous spirituality in the context of the need to reanimate the world, not by going back to the past but by being inspired by it. There are chapters on ecopsychology and quantum physics, and, using Australia as a case study, the book also examines the resistance of secular societies to becoming postsecular. Approaching postsecularism through a Jungian perspective, Tacey argues that we should understand God in a manner that accords with the time, not go back to archaic, rejected images of divinity. The sacred is returning in an age of terrorism, and this is not without significance in terms of the ‘explosive’ impact of spirituality in our time. Innovative and relevant to the world we live in, this will be of great interest to academics and scholars of Jungian studies, anthropology, indigenous studies, philosophy, religious studies and sociology due to its transdisciplinary scope. It would also be a useful resource for analytical psychologists, Jungian analysts and psychotherapists.




Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective


Book Description

The book argues that religion is a system of significant meanings that have an impact on other systems and spheres of social life, including cultural memory. The editors call for a postsecular turn in memory studies which would provide a more reflective and meaningful approach to the constant interplay between the religious and the secular. This opens up new perspectives on the intersection of memory and religion and helps memory scholars become more aware of the religious roots of the language they are using in their studies of memory. By drawing on examples from different parts of the world, the contributors to this volume explain how the interactions between the religious and the secular produce new memory forms and content in the heterogenous societies of the present-day world. These analyzed cases demonstrate that religion has a significant impact on cultural memory, family memory and the contemporary politics of history in secularized societies. At the same time, politics, grassroots movements and different secular agents and processes have so much influence on the formation of memory by religious actors that even religious, ecclesiastic and confessional memories are affected by the secular. This volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, religious studies and history.




Postsecular Cities


Book Description

This book reflects the wide-spread belief that the twenty-first century is evolving in a significantly different way to the twentieth, which witnessed the advance of human rationality and technological progress, including urbanisation, and called into question the public and cultural significance of religion. In this century, by contrast, religion, faith communities and spiritual values have returned to the centre of public life, especially public policy, governance, and social identity. Rapidly diversifying urban locations are the best places to witness the emergence of new spaces in which religions and spiritual traditions are creating both new alliances but also bifurcations with secular sectors. Postsecular Cities examines how the built environment reflects these trends. Recognizing that the 'turn to the postsecular' is a contested and multifaceted trend, the authors offer a vigorous, open but structured dialogue between theory and practice, but even more excitingly, between the disciplines of human geography and theology. Both disciplines reflect on this powerful but enigmatic force shaping our urban humanity. This unique volume offers the first insight into these interdisciplinary and challenging debates.




Postsecular Feminisms


Book Description

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.




Postsecular History


Book Description

This book explores how contemporary approaches to the meaning of time and history follow patterns that are simultaneously political and theological. Even after postsecular critiques of Christianity, religion, and secularity, many influential ways of dividing time and history continue to be formed by providential narratives that mediate between experience and expectation in movements from promise to fulfilment. In response to persistent theological influences within ostensibly secular ways of understanding time and history, Postsecular History revisits and revises the concept of periodization by tracing powerful efforts to divide time into past, present, and future, and by critiquing historical partitions between the Reformation and Enlightenment. Developing a postsecular critique of theopolitical periodization in six chapters, Postsecular History questions how relations of possession, novelty, freedom, and instrumentality implied in the prefix ‘post’ are reproduced in postsecular discourses and the field of political theology.