Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves?

Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves? PDF Author: Anna Fedele
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429853181
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves? is the first volume to address the gendered intersections of religion, spirituality and the secular through an ethnographic approach. The book examines how ‘spirituality’ has emerged as a relatively ‘silent’ category with which people often signal that they are looking for a way to navigate between the categories of the religious and the secular, and considers how this is related to gendered ways of being and relating. Using a lived religion approach the contributors analyse the intersections between spirituality, religion and secularism in different geographical areas, ranging from the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy to Canada, the United States and Mexico. The chapters explore the spiritual experiences of women and their struggle for a more gender equal way of approaching the divine, as well as the experience of men and of those who challenge binary sexual identities advocating for a queer spirituality. This volume will be of interest to anthropologists and sociologists as well as scholars in other disciplines who seek to understand the role of spirituality in creating the complex gendered dynamics of modern societies.

Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves?

Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves? PDF Author: Anna Fedele
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429853181
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Get Book Here

Book Description
Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves? is the first volume to address the gendered intersections of religion, spirituality and the secular through an ethnographic approach. The book examines how ‘spirituality’ has emerged as a relatively ‘silent’ category with which people often signal that they are looking for a way to navigate between the categories of the religious and the secular, and considers how this is related to gendered ways of being and relating. Using a lived religion approach the contributors analyse the intersections between spirituality, religion and secularism in different geographical areas, ranging from the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy to Canada, the United States and Mexico. The chapters explore the spiritual experiences of women and their struggle for a more gender equal way of approaching the divine, as well as the experience of men and of those who challenge binary sexual identities advocating for a queer spirituality. This volume will be of interest to anthropologists and sociologists as well as scholars in other disciplines who seek to understand the role of spirituality in creating the complex gendered dynamics of modern societies.

A Secular Age

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

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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 (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

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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.

Recognizing the Non-religious

Recognizing the Non-religious PDF Author: Lois Lee
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191056650
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In recent years, the extent to which contemporary societies are secular has come under scrutiny. At the same time, many countries, especially in Europe, have increasingly large nonaffiliate, 'subjectively secular' populations, whilst nonreligious cultural movements like the New Atheism and the Sunday Assembly have come to prominence. Making sense of secularity, irreligion, and the relationship between them has therefore emerged as a crucial task for those seeking to understand contemporary societies and the nature of modern life. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in southeast England, Recognizing the Non-religious develops a new vocabulary, theory and methodology for thinking about the secular. It distinguishes between separate and incommensurable aspects of so-called secularity as insubstantial—involving merely the absence of religion—and substantial—involving beliefs, ritual practice, and identities that are alternative to religious ones. Recognizing the cultural forms that present themselves as non-religious therefore opens up new, more egalitarian and more theoretically coherent ways of thinking about people who are 'not religious'. It is also argued that recognizing the nonreligious allows us to reimagine the secular itself in new and productive ways. This book is part of a fast-growing area of research that builds upon and contributes to theoretical debates concerning secularization, 'desecularization', religious change, postsecularity and postcolonial approaches to religion and secularism. As well as presenting new research, this book gathers insights from the wider studies of nonreligion, atheism, and secularism in order to consolidate a theoretical framework, conceptual foundation and agenda for future research.

Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality

Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality PDF Author: Anna Fedele
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415659477
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Contemporary distinctions between religion and spirituality can often be traced to rebellion against hierarchical institutions with biases towards women and minorities that constrain individual freedom. This opposition is carefully addressed in this volume, with greater attention paid to gender and power in the context of contemporary spirituality and how these relate to the distinction between religion and spirituality.

Living the Secular Life

Living the Secular Life PDF Author: Phil Zuckerman
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0143127934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
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.

Embodying Religion, Gender and Sexuality

Embodying Religion, Gender and Sexuality PDF Author: Sarah-Jane Page
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100029143X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Taking the notion of embodiment as a starting point, this volume maps the interconnecting relationships between religion, gender and sexuality. The chapters highlight how the body – its location, the narratives that surround it, its movement and negotiations – is central to understanding these multifaceted relationships. The contributors recognise the ways in which gender and sexuality are crucial to how we embody religion and encourage a more complex and nuanced understanding of embodied religion. The material is organised according to three central themes: (1) the relationship between the religious and the secular; (2) power, regulation and resistance; and (3) the symbolism of gendered bodies. Cutting across a range of disciplinary perspectives, Embodying Religion, Gender and Sexuality will be relevant to students of sociology, anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, theology and religious studies.

Seculosity

Seculosity PDF Author: David Zahl
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506449441
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough--what religions call "righteous." To fill the void left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday activities--from eating and parenting to dating and voting--for the identity, purpose, and meaning once provided on Sunday morning. In our striving, we are chasing a sense of enoughness. But it remains ever out of reach, and the effort and anxiety are burning us out. Seculosity takes a thoughtful yet entertaining tour of American "performancism" and its cousins, highlighting both their ingenuity and mercilessness, all while challenging the conventional narrative of religious decline. Zahl unmasks the competing pieties around which so much of our lives revolve, and he does so in a way that's at points playful, personal, and incisive. Ultimately he brings us to a fresh appreciation for the grace of God in all its countercultural wonder.

Islam in a Post-Secular Society

Islam in a Post-Secular Society PDF Author: Dustin Byrd
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004328556
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Islam in the Post-Secular Society: Religion, Secularity and the Antagonism of Recalcitrant Faith critically examines the unique challenges facing Muslims in Europe and North America. From the philosophical perspective of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory, this book attempts not only to diagnose the current problems stemming from a marginalization of Islam in the secular West, but also to offer a proposal for a Habermasian discourse between the religious and the secular. By highlighting historical examples of Islamic and western rapprochement, and rejecting the ‘clash of civilization’ thesis, the author attempts to find a ‘common language’ between the religious and the secular, which can serve as a vehicle for a future reconciliation.

Becoming Atheist

Becoming Atheist PDF Author: Callum G. Brown
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474224555
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
The Western World is becoming atheist. In the space of three generations churchgoing and religious belief have become alien to millions. We are in the midst of one of humankind's great cultural changes. How has this happened? Becoming Atheist explores how people of the sixties' generation have come to live their lives as if there is no God. It tells the life narratives of those from Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Canada who came from Christian, Jewish and other backgrounds to be without faith. Based on interviews with 85 people born in 18 countries, Callum Brown shows how gender, ethnicity and childhood shape how individuals lose religion. This book moves from statistical and broad cultural analysis to use frank, humorous and sometimes harrowing personal testimony. Becoming Atheist exposes people's role in renegotiating their own identities, and fashioning a secular and humanist culture for the Western world.