Between Relativism and Fundamentalism

Between Relativism and Fundamentalism PDF Author: Peter L. Berger
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802863876
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Our contemporary culture is dominated by two extremes relativism and fundamentalism. Neither is desirable: relativism claims that all questions of truth are irrelevant, whereas fundamentalism insists on sole possession of absolute truth. Internationally renowned sociologist of religion Peter Berger has gathered a group of scholars to consider how, from out of different traditions, one can define a middle position between both extremes. / After an extensive introductory overview by Berger, three essays ( sociological descriptions ) give an objective picture of how relativism and fundamentalism play out in today s world. In the second part ( theological directions ) authors from several different Christian traditions and one conservative Jewish tradition flesh out a normative middle ground that is neither relativist they affirm specific truth claims nor fundamentalist their affirmations include tolerance of the claims of others.

Between Relativism and Fundamentalism

Between Relativism and Fundamentalism PDF Author: Peter L. Berger
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802863876
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
Our contemporary culture is dominated by two extremes relativism and fundamentalism. Neither is desirable: relativism claims that all questions of truth are irrelevant, whereas fundamentalism insists on sole possession of absolute truth. Internationally renowned sociologist of religion Peter Berger has gathered a group of scholars to consider how, from out of different traditions, one can define a middle position between both extremes. / After an extensive introductory overview by Berger, three essays ( sociological descriptions ) give an objective picture of how relativism and fundamentalism play out in today s world. In the second part ( theological directions ) authors from several different Christian traditions and one conservative Jewish tradition flesh out a normative middle ground that is neither relativist they affirm specific truth claims nor fundamentalist their affirmations include tolerance of the claims of others.

Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism

Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism PDF Author: Nancey Murphy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0567014495
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
American Protestant Christianity is often described as a two-party system divided into liberals and conservatives. This book clarifies differences between the intellectual positions of these two groups by advancing the thesis that the philosophy of the modern period is largely responsible for the polarity of Protestant Christian thought. A second thesis is that the modern philosophical positions driving the division between liberals and conservatives have themselves been called into question. It therefore becomes opportune to ask how theology ought to be done in a postmodern era, and to envision a rapprochement between theologians of the left and right. A concluding chapter speculates specifically on the era now dawning and the likelihood that the compulsion to separate the spectrum into two distinct camps will be precluded by the coexistence of a wide range of theological positions from left to right. Nancey C. Murphy is Associate Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, and the author of Reasoning and Rhetoric in Religion, also published by Trinity Press. Her book Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning earned the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence.

"Fundamentalism" and the Word of God

Author: J. I. Packer
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467421243
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This modern classic by the author of Knowing God provides a comprehensive statement of the doctrine of Scripture from an evangelical perspective. J. I. Packer explores the meaning of the word "fundamentalism" and offers a clear and well-reasoned argument for the authority of the Bible and its proper role in the Christian life.

Fundamentalism vs Relativism in a Modern Society

Fundamentalism vs Relativism in a Modern Society PDF Author: Julien Appler
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668305072
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2015 in the subject Sociology - Religion, grade: 1,7, University of Heidelberg (IUED), course: Übersetzen als kulturwissenschaftliches Handeln I, language: English, abstract: At first glance we seem to know what fundamentalism really means. We hear it on the radio, watch it on TV and read about it in the newspaper. Fundamentalism is nowadays often connected to Islam or religion in general, often to terrorism. Nonetheless, the question remains: where does this word come from and what exactly does it mean? Relativism is another big word often connected to philosophy and great thinkers of the past like Nietzsche. The problem with relativism is the same as with fundamentalism. It seems that there is no real answer to what fundamentalism or relativism actually refers. Therefore, both of them are divided into several subcategories, and because of that, it is not possible to throw light on every little detail. For an example, one can visit the German Wikipedia entry about ‘Fundamentalismus’ (English: fundamentalism). The authors of that entry started a discussion about how it should be written to make absolutely clear that it gets the true sense of fundamentalism. Even the English Wikipedia entry is not to everyone’s satisfaction and lacks improvement. On the other hand, relativism at first sounds easy to understand, but it is hard to grasp. Mainly because it is rarely used and for that reason, there are fewer sources for definitions than for fundamentalism. In the modern times we are living in now, both of these movements, one could almost say, developed rapidly. This is another reason for setting those two words in direct comparison, but the outcome also depends on the sources available.

Disagreeing Virtuously

Disagreeing Virtuously PDF Author: Olli-Pekka Vainio
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467447161
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Disagreement is inevitable, particularly in our current context, marked by the close coexistence of conflicting values and perspectives in politics, religion, and ethics. How can we deal with disagreement ethically and constructively in our pluralistic world? In Disagreeing Virtuously Olli-Pekka Vainio presents a valuable interdisciplinary approach to that question, drawing on insights from intellectual history, the cognitive sciences, philosophy of religion, and virtue theory. After mapping the current discussion on disagreement among various disciplines, Vainio offers fresh ways to understand the complicated nature of human disagreement and recommends ways to manage our interpersonal and intercommunal conflicts in ethically sustainable ways.

Judge and be Judged

Judge and be Judged PDF Author: Eric Bain-Selbo
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739108611
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Judge and Be Judged offers insights into moral life and moral judgment that aim to help in understanding our society's tendency toward either fundamentalism or relativism. Framing his argument with an exegesis of Jesus' teaching "Judge not, that you be not judged," Eric Bain-Selbo provides some helpful conceptual tools for thinking about that predicament, and finding a way past it. By examining the social function of shame, the possibility of cross-cultural understanding, and obstacles to moral judgment in the college classroom, this book charts a path that helps us to avoid both fundamentalism and relativism."--BOOK JACKET

Religion and Knowledge

Religion and Knowledge PDF Author: Mathew Guest
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317068041
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Religions have always been associated with particular forms of knowledge, often knowledge accorded special significance and sometimes knowledge at odds with prevailing understandings of truth and authority in wider society. New religious movements emerge on the basis of reformulated, often controversial, understandings of how the world works and where ultimate meaning can be found. Governments have risen and fallen on the basis of such differences and global conflict has raged around competing claims about the origins and content of religious truth. Such concerns give rise to recurrent questions, faced by academics, governments and the general public. How do we treat statements made by religious groups and on what basis are they made? What authorities lie behind religious claims to truth? How can competing claims about knowledge be resolved? Are there instances when it is appropriate to police religious knowledge claims or restrict their public expression? This book addresses the relationship between religion and knowledge from a sociological perspective, taking both religion and knowledge as phenomena located within ever changing social contexts. It builds on historical foundations, but offers a distinctive focus on the changing status of religious phenomena at the turn of the twenty-first century. Including critical engagement with live debates about intelligent design and the ’new atheism’, this collection of essays brings recent research on religious movements into conversation with debates about socialisation, reflexivity and the changing capacity of social institutions to shape human identities. Contributors examine religion as an institutional context for the production of knowledge, as a form of knowledge to be transmitted or conveyed and as a social field in which controversies about knowledge emerge.

Critical Muslim 3

Critical Muslim 3 PDF Author: Ziauddin Sardar
Publisher: Hurst
ISBN: 1849043809
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
AbdelWahab El-Affendi on Islamophobia and Orientalism in the age of liberal paranoia, Arun Kundnani on English Defense League and the rise of the far right in Europe, Vinay Lal on Hindus who love Hitler, Gordon Steffey on Christian fundamentalism, Fanar Haddad on the sectarian schisms in the Arab world, Gary McFarlane on Tottenham Riots, Farouk Peru on self loathing Muslims, Claire Chambers on 'Four Lions', Peter Clark on Bernard Lewis and Peter Moray on Irshad Manji. Plus a short story by Suhel Ahmed, six poems by St?phane Chaumet, Anita Sethi's dangerous bus ride through Iran, Ten Top Techs for Muslim and Ziauddin Sardar on his pet hate: the beards of Islam.

Passing Over and Returning

Passing Over and Returning PDF Author: Paul O. Ingram
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1620328135
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
"In Passing Over and Returning Paul O. Ingram describes his particular dialogue with the world's religions, illustrated by his experience of passing over into Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism, Judaism, and Islam, and by his return to his home as a Lutheran Christian. While religious diversity is not new, neither are the questions posed by religious diversity. What is new is that more and more people are actively engaged with the world's religions because more and more people are willing to be informed by insights found in religious traditions other than their own. This is particularly true among progressive Christians. But openness does not necessarily mean rejecting one's own tradition, even though persons sometimes convert to another tradition or combine their original religious identity with the identity of another tradition. Whether one returns to the home of one's own faith tradition after passing over, or assumes a dual religious identity, or converts to another tradition, all persons engaged in interreligious dialogue undergo processes of creative transformation."

The Present and Future of Evangelical Mission

The Present and Future of Evangelical Mission PDF Author: Narry F. Santos
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666730963
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Crisis is an invitation to both prophetic evaluation and new imagination. In this volume, Canadian missiologists and practitioners consider the past and how the past might enable the church to move forward in Christian mission—in the academy, agency, assembly, and the agora. How can the Canadian church welcome different voices from the periphery? What must be done to empower the next generation? How can we respond in light of the injustices done to our Indigenous brothers and sisters? Where does reconciliation fit into the picture? How might we navigate between secularization and fundamentalisms? How ought we move together in mission and in unity across denominational difference? How can we equip laypeople to live their callings faithfully in the agora? How can work in the marketplace be ministry? And lastly, how is the Spirit at work in our contexts in this day and age? These questions (among others) onboard us into the ongoing conversation about the state of evangelical mission in Canada, and each of these essays adeptly lead us into the beginnings of answers to these questions. These essays address how the past informs our future, and how we might answer the prophetic call with both hope and renewed vigor to participate in the mission of God.