A General Theory of Secularization

A General Theory of Secularization PDF Author: David Martin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780061361791
Category : Secularization (Theology)
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description

A General Theory of Secularization

A General Theory of Secularization PDF Author: David Martin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780061361791
Category : Secularization (Theology)
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Cultivation of Conformity

The Cultivation of Conformity PDF Author: Pink Dandelion
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351728873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the inter-relationship between religious groups and wider society and examines the way religious groups change in relation to societal norms, potentially to the point of undergoing processes of ‘internal secularisation’ within secular and secularist cultures. Received sociological wisdom suggests that over time religious groups moderate their claims. This comes with the potential loss of new adherents, for theorists of secularisation suggest unique or universal, rather than moderate, truth claims appear attractive to would-be recruits. At the same time, religious groups need to appear equivalent, in terms of harmlessness, to state-sanctioned religious expression in order to secure rights. Thus, religious organisations face a perpetual conundrum. Using British Quakers as a case study as they moved from a counter-cultural group to an accepted and accepting part of twentieth- and twenty-first-century society, the author builds on models of religion and non-religion in terms of flows and explores the consequences of religious assimilation when the process of constructing both distinctive appeal and ‘harmlessness’ in pursuit of rights is played out in a secular culture. A major contribution to the sociology of religion, The Cultivation of Conformity presents a new theory of internal secularisation as the ultimate stage of the cultivation of conformity, and a model of the way sects and society inter-relate.

A Need for Religion: Insecurity and Religiosity in the Contemporary World

A Need for Religion: Insecurity and Religiosity in the Contemporary World PDF Author: Francesco Molteni
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004443274
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
In A Need for Religion: Insecurity and Religiosity in the Contemporary World Francesco Molteni tries to answer one of the broadest questions for scholars of religion: why is religiosity declining in developed countries? He does so by inspecting all the different nuances of the insecurity theory, which links the feeling of security typical of modern societies with the diminished need for religion as source of reassurance, support and predictability. In this respect, he notes that much of the evidence is far less clear than expected and that secularization processes are at an advanced stage only in a rather small group of worldwide countries.

Secularization

Secularization PDF Author: Steve Bruce
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191612189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
The decline in power, popularity and prestige of religion across the modern world is not a short-term or localized trend nor is it an accident. It is a consequence of subtle but powerful features of modernization. Renowned sociologist, Steve Bruce, elaborates the secularization paradigm and defends it against a wide variety of recent attempts at rebuttal and refutation. Using the best available statistical and qualitative evidence Bruce considers the implications for the

Secularization and Cultural Criticism

Secularization and Cultural Criticism PDF Author: Vincent P. Pecora
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226653129
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
'Secularization and Cultural Criticism' examines the responses of a wide range of thinkers to illustrate exactly why the problem of secularisation in the study of society and culture should matter once again.

A Secular Age

A Secular Age PDF Author: Charles Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674986911
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 889

Get Book Here

Book Description
The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

How the West Really Lost God

How the West Really Lost God PDF Author: Mary Eberstadt
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 1599473798
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers an influential new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshaling an impressive array of research, from fascinating historical data on family decline in pre-Revolutionary France to contemporary popular culture both in the United States and Europe, Eberstadt shows the reverse is also true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself. Drawing on sociology, history, demography, theology, literature, and many other sources, Eberstadt shows that family decline and religious decline have gone hand in hand in the Western world in a way that has not been understood before—that they are, as she puts it in a striking new image summarizing the book’s thesis, “the double helix of society, each dependent on the strength of the other for successful reproduction.” In sobering final chapters, Eberstadt then lays out the enormous ramifications of the mutual demise of family and faith in the West. While it is fashionable in some circles to applaud the decline of both religion and the nuclear family, there are, as Eberstadt reveals, enormous social, economic, civic, and other costs attendant on both declines. Her conclusion considers this compelling question: whether the economic and demographic crisis now roiling Europe and spreading to America will have the unintentional result of reviving the family as the most viable alternative to the failed welfare state—fallout that could also lay the groundwork for a religious revival as well. How the West Really Lost God is a startlingly original account of how secularization happens and a sweeping brief about why everyone should care. A book written for agnostics as well as believers, atheists as well as “none of the above,” it will permanently change the way every reader understands the two institutions that have hitherto undergirded Western civilization as we know it—family and faith—and the fundamental nature of the relationship between those two pillars of history.

A Secular Age Beyond the West

A Secular Age Beyond the West PDF Author: Mirjam Künkler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110841771X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book compares secularity in societies not shaped by Western Christianity, particularly in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

How (Not) to Be Secular

How (Not) to Be Secular PDF Author: James K. A. Smith
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802867618
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on.

The Future of Christianity

The Future of Christianity PDF Author: David Martin
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9781409406693
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Future of Christianity offers a mature assessment of themes preoccupying David Martin over some fifty years, and acts as a complement to his earlier volume, On Secularization. Particular themes of focus include the dialectic of Christianity and secularization, the relation of Christianity to multiple enlightenments and modes of modernity, the enigmas of East Germany and Eastern Europe, and the rise of the transnational religious voluntary association, including Pentecostalism, as that feeds into vast religious changes in the developing world.