Identity in a Secular Age

Identity in a Secular Age PDF Author: Fern Elsdon-Baker
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987694
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Although historians have suggested for some time that we move away from the assumption of a necessary clash between science and religion, the conflict narrative persists in contemporary discourse. But why? And how do we really know what people actually think about evolutionary science, let alone the many and varied ways in which it might relate to individual belief? In this multidisciplinary volume, experts in history and philosophy of science, oral history, sociology of religion, social psychology, and science communication and public engagement look beyond two warring systems of thought. They consider a far more complex, multifaceted, and distinctly more interesting picture of how differing groups along a spectrum of worldviews—including atheistic, agnostic, and faith groups—relate to and form the ongoing narrative of a necessary clash between evolution and faith. By ascribing agency to the public, from the nineteenth century to the present and across Canada and the United Kingdom, this volume offers a much more nuanced analysis of people’s perceptions about the relationship between evolutionary science, religion, and personal belief, one that better elucidates the complexities not only of that relationship but of actual lived experience.

Identity in a Secular Age

Identity in a Secular Age PDF Author: Fern Elsdon-Baker
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987694
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Although historians have suggested for some time that we move away from the assumption of a necessary clash between science and religion, the conflict narrative persists in contemporary discourse. But why? And how do we really know what people actually think about evolutionary science, let alone the many and varied ways in which it might relate to individual belief? In this multidisciplinary volume, experts in history and philosophy of science, oral history, sociology of religion, social psychology, and science communication and public engagement look beyond two warring systems of thought. They consider a far more complex, multifaceted, and distinctly more interesting picture of how differing groups along a spectrum of worldviews—including atheistic, agnostic, and faith groups—relate to and form the ongoing narrative of a necessary clash between evolution and faith. By ascribing agency to the public, from the nineteenth century to the present and across Canada and the United Kingdom, this volume offers a much more nuanced analysis of people’s perceptions about the relationship between evolutionary science, religion, and personal belief, one that better elucidates the complexities not only of that relationship but of actual lived experience.

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.

The Pastor in a Secular Age

The Pastor in a Secular Age PDF Author: Andrew Root
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 9780801098475
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Academy of Parish Clergy 2020 Top Ten Book for Parish Ministry In Faith Formation in a Secular Age, the first book in his Ministry in a Secular Age trilogy, Andrew Root offered an alternative take on the issue of youth drifting away from the church and articulated how faith can be formed in our secular age. In The Pastor in a Secular Age, Root explores how this secular age has impacted the identity and practice of the pastor, obscuring his or her core vocation: to call and assist others into the experience of ministry. Using examples of pastors throughout history--from Augustine and Jonathan Edwards to Martin Luther King Jr. and Nadia Bolz-Weber--Root shows how pastors have both perpetuated and responded to our secular age. Root turns to Old Testament texts and to the theology of Robert Jenson to explain how pastors can regain the important role of attending to people's experiences of divine action, offering a new vision for pastoral ministry today. This is the second book in Root's Ministry in a Secular Age series.

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

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

Religious Difference in a Secular Age

Religious Difference in a Secular Age PDF Author: Saba Mahmood
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691153280
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minorities The plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt with Coptic Orthodox Christians and Bahais—religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim country—Saba Mahmood shows how modern secular governance has exacerbated religious tensions and inequalities rather than reduced them. Tracing the historical career of secular legal concepts in the colonial and postcolonial Middle East, she explores how contradictions at the very heart of political secularism have aggravated and amplified existing forms of Islamic hierarchy, bringing minority relations in Egypt to a new historical impasse. Through a close examination of Egyptian court cases and constitutional debates about minority rights, conflicts around family law, and controversies over freedom of expression, Mahmood invites us to reflect on the entwined histories of secularism in the Middle East and Europe. A provocative work of scholarship, Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges us to rethink the promise and limits of the secular ideal of religious equality.

Sources of the Self

Sources of the Self PDF Author: Charles Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674257049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description
In this extensive inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles Taylor demonstrates just how rich and precious those resources are. The modern turn to subjectivity, with its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, has led—it seems to many—to mere subjectivism at the mildest and to sheer nihilism at the worst. Many critics believe that the modern order has no moral backbone and has proved corrosive to all that might foster human good. Taylor rejects this view. He argues that, properly understood, our modern notion of the self provides a framework that more than compensates for the abandonment of substantive notions of rationality. The major insight of Sources of the Self is that modern subjectivity, in all its epistemological, aesthetic, and political ramifications, has its roots in ideas of human good. After first arguing that contemporary philosophers have ignored how self and good connect, the author defines the modern identity by describing its genesis. His effort to uncover and map our moral sources leads to novel interpretations of most of the figures and movements in the modern tradition. Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of ordinary life, a value which has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth. In telling the story of a revolution whose proponents have been Augustine, Montaigne, Luther, and a host of others, Taylor’s goal is in part to make sure we do not lose sight of their goal and endanger all that has been achieved. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defense of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics.

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age PDF Author: Michael Warner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674048577
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
“What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?” 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, José Casanova, Nilüfer Göle, 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.

Leading Lutheran Higher Education in a Secular Age

Leading Lutheran Higher Education in a Secular Age PDF Author: Brian Beckstrom
Publisher: Fortress Academic
ISBN: 9781978706033
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Lutheran colleges and universities occupy a distinctive space in American higher education. In an age where the dividing line between sacred and secular has become blurred, Brian Beckstrom argues that their "rooted and open" approach, combined with adaptive theological leadership, could be the best hope for faith based higher education. To do so, he provides an overview of Lutheran higher education, its history, and identity, and combines surveys of students, faculty, and staff at Lutheran institutions with leadership theory and theological reflection. Leaders at Lutheran colleges and universities will find it to be helpful in understanding their mission, identity, and vocation in a secular age, and navigating the changing cultural environment that challenges the church and higher education alike.

There is a Crack in Everything—Education and Religion in a Secular Age

There is a Crack in Everything—Education and Religion in a Secular Age PDF Author: K. H. (Ina) ter Avest
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 303921277X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
There are two constants in academic and theological discourse throughout history, they are the debate around secularization and the dialogue concerning the intersection of religion and education. Each age has had its debate about modernizing forces that drive concerns of impending secularization. In this publication this theme is approached from perspectives of teachers, of students, of policy makers and situated in a politico-historical context. Aware of the fact that in today’s plural societies one sacred canopy is non-existent anymore, cracks of the sacred canopy/canopies are described, as well as ‘the light that gets in’, the possible and challenging ways out are roughly sketched.

Christ Actually

Christ Actually PDF Author: James Carroll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101609125
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A New York Times bestselling and widely admired Catholic writer explores how we can retrieve transcendent faith in modern times Critically acclaimed and bestselling author James Carroll has explored every aspect of Christianity, faith, and Jesus Christ except this central one: What can we believe about—and how can we believe in—Jesus in the twenty-first century in light of the Holocaust and other atrocities of the twentieth century and the drift from religion that followed? What Carroll has discovered through decades of writing and lecturing is that he is far from alone in clinging to a received memory of Jesus that separates him from his crucial identity as a Jew, and therefore as a human. Yet if Jesus was not taken as divine, he would be of no interest to us. What can that mean now? Paradoxically, the key is his permanent Jewishness. No Christian himself, Jesus actually transcends Christianity. Drawing on both a wide range of scholarship as well as his own acute searching as a believer, Carroll takes a fresh look at the most familiar narratives of all—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Far from another book about the “historical Jesus,” he takes the challenges of science and contemporary philosophy seriously. He retrieves the power of Jesus’ profound ordinariness, as an answer to his own last question—what is the future of Jesus Christ?—as the key to a renewal of faith.