This anthology draws bold comparisons between secularist strategies to contain, privatize, and discipline religion and the treatment of racialized subjects by the American state. Specializing in history, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, and political theory, contributors expose secularism's prohibitive practices in all facets of American society and suggest opportunities for change.

This article intends to analyse the Hobbesian version of the Christian dogma of the Trinity as it is observed in the corresponding sections of Leviathan , De Cive and Heresy , and alluded to in other texts (controversy with Bramhall). It shall be important to specify: (a) As a starting point, the exact place of such concept within the general problem expressed by the difference between "political theology" and "theologico-political problem" (C. Altini); (b) The main items of the philosopher's (...) Trinitarian exposition as well as his intention while writing it, according to the "secularist", "theistic" and "Divine Omnipotence" interpretations. (J. Overhoff, A. Martinich, P. Springborg, L. Foisneau, F. Lessay, G. Wright); (c) His relationship with the contemporary orthodox currents (Trinitarian) and heterodox currents (antitrinitarian), as well as with the elements from ancient antitrinitarian heresies (subordinationism, modalism, sabellianism). (shrink)

This book uses the writings of Syed Alam Khundmiri to look at issues such as: Islamic traditionalism in the context of meodernization; Islamic theology and politics; and Western and Indian notions of secularism.

_A scholarly and deeply sensitive study that explores how religion and secularism are tightly interwoven in the major works of modernist literature_ Matthew Mutter provides a broad survey of modernist literature, examining key works against a background of philosophy, theology, intellectual and social history, while tracing the relationship of modernism’s secular imagination to the religious cultures that both preceded and shaped it. Mutter’s provocative study demonstrates how, despite their explicit desire to purify secular life of its religious residues, (...) Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, and other literary modernists consistently found themselves entangled in the religious legacies they disavowed. (shrink)

I argue that there is no “roaring reality of rampant secularism” with “technological application as its chief agent,” as claimed by John Caiazza (2005). Two phenomena, techno‐religion and a spirituality of technology, suggest a different picture of reality: Technology may be an alternative spirituality rather than an ally of a secularism that makes “nutcrackers of the soul” out of people who should be “dancers” (Nietzsche). An analysis of secularism and its manifold causes indicates that secularism is (...) a fruit of both science and religion. The secular is a companion of religion rather than its enemy. Hence, I recommend a heuristic instead of an ontological use of the concept of secularism. In a technological age, religion is changing rather than being displaced. These changes are illustrated by the increase of private religiosity, megachurches, and cyber‐spirituality. Energized by the tension between finitude and creativity, technology shares in the marks of spirituality (Philip Hefner) and in the potential for good and evil. In this situation, fundamentalism and dogmatism in religion, science, and technology are a greater threat than secularism. (shrink)

Everyone can agree that modern Westerners live in a secular age. That the process of "disenchantment" which led to this age constituted an epistemic loss, that it was not just a rejection of false beliefs but a real alteration in the way the world is experienced, has been shown by previous scholarship, notably that of Charles Taylor. This paper makes the case that this disenchantment was not only a latent possibility from the earliest interactions of Christianity with pre-Christian Roman society, (...) but developed from theological and political developments unique to Western Christendom. In so doing, it builds on the work of Taylor as well as that of Michael Allen Gillespie, who has written about the theological origins of modernity. It also provides a brief illustration of a recurrence, within the secular epistemic frame, of the same distinct features Christianity demonstrated in Rome which first made that frame possible. (shrink)

Despite many arduous attempts to reconcile the separation between theology and science, the common ground where these two areas of intellectual inquiry could converge has not been fully identified yet. The purpose of this paper is to use evolutionary theology as the new and unique framework in which science and theology are indeed brought into coherent alignment. The major step in this effort is to acknowledge that theology can no longer dialogue with science but must assume (...) science and its method as its conceptual foundation. This approach successfully does away with any tensions that may arise between the two disciplines and establishes a firm ground on which neither of them will turn into ideology. Moreover, it enables the dialogue with contemporary scientific atheism on solid grounds and the restoration of the credibility of theology in the secularist culture of the day. (shrink)

Pantheism, Panpsychism, and secularism? To any historian of ideas still under the die-hard spell of the Enlightenment narrative, this would appear as an unlikely connection.1 If ever the theory of...

The religious crisis experienced by the present mankind is neither the first nor the last in its history. But it looks more sharp, more general, and above all - deeper, because it reaches the very roots of religion, God. This crisis is present in the West, where freedom is predominantly dominated and dominated, and where man can develop as it is profitable, as well as in the East, where for decades the communist regime led a persistent and fierce ideological war, (...) trying to eliminate everything that concerned God. It seemed that the fall of the Marxist-Communist system would lead to a violent manifestation of a religious sensation here, responding to the demands of the human spirit. Unfortunately, such hopes were not fulfilled. The atmosphere of a certain freedom soon changed the first signs of enthusiastic religious interest in religious chaos, and finally, as could be foreseen, left a free space for the crazy pursuit of well-being and all the benefits that the Western civilization was embracing. This was the result of a pathetic, even tragic financial situation, which was the consequence of the management of the communist regime and the inevitable legacy of Marxist despotism, which required the complete rejection of religion and its absence in human life. (shrink)

In order to avoid both religious intolerance and religious indifference, we need to develop a positive notion of an open laicity or secularity that permits us to respect our religiously plural as well as secular contemporary situation. Open laicity or secularity is the practical and political consequence of a Protestant theology and spirituality. It represents a critical answer to the disaster of secularism and laicism. Most of the difficulties in the discussion between traditionalist Christians (Orthodox, Catholic, or Evangelical!) (...) and modern, critical Christians (Protestant, Catholic, and maybe some Orthodox too!) come from a confusion between the danger of secularism and laicism, that this article criticizes very deeply, and the positive reality of a secular world, grounded in the very biblical and theological understanding of a created world, in which God has given to all human beings the task to behave in a rational, responsible, creative, and respectful way. (shrink)

In this article I analyse some of the reasons for a recent, resurgent interest in religion and theology by political philosophers and relate this interest to an inherent instability in modernity itself. In the first part I describe the landscape of current political philosophy with a particular emphasis on radical philosophers. In the second part I describe how the liberal distinction between religion and politics generates a theological instability due to the effective disappearance of the social embodiment of religion (...) within modernity. In the third part I draw some conclusions regarding the challenges the new post-secular condition presents to theology. (shrink)

Truth in the Making represents a sophisticated effort to map the complex relations between human knowledge and creative power, as reflected across more than half a millennium of philosophical enquiry. Showing the intimacy of this problematic to the work of Nicholas of Cusa, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, Vico and David Lachterman, the book reveals how questions about creation apparently diluted by secularism in fact retain much of their potency today. If science could counterfeit or synthesize nature precisely from (...) its smallest nuts and bolts, as Descartes and Hobbes implied and as modern science increasingly suggests, would it create an identical world to that we live in now Robert C. Miner offers a precise genealogy of modern thought on truth and creation: from medieval theology's identification of human creativity with divine initiative to the radical Leibnizian contention that human ideas are 'not little copies of God's', and may at once exceed mimesis and produce things new, unpredictable and unseen. He considers how the theological importance given to creation interacts historically with the secularisation and instrumentalisation of modes of discovery and method, and asks how knowledge is understood between different disciplines, from the allegorical discipline of poetry to the constructible field of mathematics. The book is an eloquent reminder of the ways in which theology continues to fling a wild card at philosophical understandings of reality, countering theories of metaphysical equivalence of the 'real' and 'artificial' with theologies in which human making is always fallible, and strives only for approximate participation in divine truth. As a strenuous and informative breakdown of leading theories of knowledge, Truth in the Making shows the continuing influence of theological questions upon philosophical, scientific and aesthetic disciplines, whilst raising topical questions about the ultimate nature of our reality and our freedom to modify and define it. (shrink)

Review of: Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology.

Indian Secularism is different from the understanding of Secularism in the West. In India the concept of secularism is understood not as a separation of State and Religion but the recognition, protection and support of all religions by the State without any discrimination. Though Hinduism is the religion of about 80% Indians it is not a State religion. In the recent past some Hindu fundamentalist groups are trying to destroy the pluralist culture and multi-religious ethos of India (...) by using political power to make India mono-cultural and mono-religious. It is a threat to Indian Secularism. It is to be resisted by all right thinking Indian citizens. The present text is the Statement of the Indian Theological Association from its Annual Seminar conducted in 2009. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Pope Benedict XVI on the Apostles' Creed “Who Are You to Tell Believers What to Believe?” What Judaism, Christendom, and Islam Have in Common: Theism Divine Command Theories Abraham and Isaac The Story of Abraham in the Qur'an The Story of Jephtha Adherents of Divine Command Theory Command Ethics or Divine Command Ethics? An Assessment of Divine Command Ethics Kierkegaard and Mill Kohlberg and Moral Education Religious and Secular Ethics Worship Kant's Struggle with Moral Autonomy (...) and Free Speech Kant's Legacy in Nineteenth‐Century German Theology Schleiermacher as the Father of Modern Hermeneutics Armstrong's Plea for Liberal Interpretation A New Way to Look at the “Sacredness” of Scripture? Classic Books and Sacred Books Violating the Integrity of the Text Is Hermeneutics the Only Way to Modernize Traditions? Is Islam “Secularization‐Resistant”? Two Kinds of Reformers: Liberal Islam and Secular Islam. (shrink)

I take up the challenge posed by John Caiazza (2005) to face down the religiously vacuous ethics of techno‐secularism. Techno‐secularism is not enough for human fulfillment let alone human flowering. Yet, communities of faith based on the Bible have a positive responsibility to employ science and technology toward divinely appointed ends. We should study God's world through science and press technology into the service of transforming our world and our selves in light of our vision of God's promised (...) new creation. This warrants invocation of the concept of the human being as the created co‐creator developed in the theology of Philip Hefner. (shrink)

"Many in elite circles yield to the temptation to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is a bigot or a religious fundamentalist. Reason and science, they confidently believe, are on their side. With this book, I aim to expose the emptiness of that belief." --From the introductionAssaults on religious liberty and traditional morality are growing fiercer. Here, at last, is the counterattack.Showcasing the talents that have made him one of America's most acclaimed and influential thinkers, Robert P. George explodes (...) the myth that the secular elite represents the voice of reason. In fact, George shows, it is on the elite side of the cultural divide where the prevailing views frequently are nothing but articles of faith. Conscience and Its Enemies reveals the bankruptcy of these too often smugly held orthodoxies while presenting powerfully reasoned arguments for classical virtues.In defending what James Madison called the "sacred rights of conscience"--rights for which government shows frightening contempt--George grapples with today's most controversial issues: abortion and infanticide, same-sex marriage, genetic manipulation, euthanasia and assisted suicide, religion in politics, judicial activism, and more. His brilliantly argued essays rely not on theological claims or religious authority but on established scientific facts and a philosophical tradition that extends back to Plato and Aristotle.Conscience and Its Enemies elevates our national debates. It sets forth powerful arguments that secular liberals are unaccustomed to hearing--and that embattled defenders of traditional morality so often fail to marshal. It also lays out the principles and arguments for rebuilding a moral order. (shrink)

Both the sociological as well as biblical-theological concepts of secularism may make use of the phenomenological discussions of implicit horizonal knowledge as informing explicit forms of knowing. If secularism may mean the erosion of faith by way of appropriation of fundamental beliefs about oneself or the world, the deep secularism may mean an appropriation of beliefs which make faith itself appear reprehensible. But perhaps the deepest form of secularism is the existence of scientific, reductionist naturalism; this (...) may take the forms eliminativism or of identity theory. This ‘secularism’ is such that it makes knowing itself impossible. Its basic move is to reduce the transcendental conditions of the manifestation, description, or display of the world to physical causes. Its most startling thesis is that first-person experience itself is an illusion and this illusion is the source of the major lies and beliefs that are most harmful for the culture, e.g. religious faith and belief in immortality. Unfortunately for deep secularism, as scientistic reductionistic materialist naturalism, it self-destructs. (shrink)

In _Poetry and Apocalypse_, Franke seeks to find the premises for dialogue between cultures, especially religious fundamentalisms—including Islamic fundamentalism—and modern Western secularism. He argues that in order to be genuinely open, dialogue needs to accept possibilities such as religious apocalypse in ways that can be best understood through the experience of poetry. Franke reads Christian epic and prophetic tradition as a secularization of religious revelation that preserves an understanding of the essentially apocalyptic character of truth and its disclosure in (...) history. The usually neglected negative theology that undergirds this apocalyptic tradition provides the key to a radically new view of apocalypse as at once religious and poetic. (shrink)

In recent years, the intellectual tide has moved strongly against the kind of secular thinking that characterized Gellner’s work. Whether couched in terms of postcolonialism, multiculturalism, genealogy, global understanding, political theology, or the revival of normative, metaphysical and openly religious perspectives, today’s postsecular and even anti-secular mood in social theory seems to consign Gellner’s project to the dustbin of history: a stern but doomed attempt to shore up western liberal rationalism. Under some revisionary lights, it has even become pointless (...) to distinguish flexible secular thinking which still retains some firm ‘bottom lines’ from what is routinely portrayed as rampant ideological secularism. Unconvinced by key assumptions and motivations on this terrain, I reactivate Gellner’s essential concerns and propositions around secularity and secularism, feeding these into the current debates. Whilst Gellner’s stringent, unrivalled exposure of intellectual cant continues to be hugely valuable, and his sense of the utter historicity of social life and thought indispensable, Gellner’s critical positivism could not, by his own admission, produce a coherent cultural politics. (shrink)

Nowadays, it is frequently seen that theology education is criticized over secularism or piety concerns. In fact, it has recently been observed that those who have opposed the existence of the theology faculties within the university system for religious reasons have tried to make their voices heard on different platforms, especially on social media. The discussions conducted on different platforms mostly run without a scientific basis. The aim of this study is to determine the views of (...) class='Hi'>theology faculty students with regard to the studying on campus and to contribute to the structure of the evaluations on higher religious education-university dilemma on a scientific basis. Metaphor technique was used for data collection. Data were collected in April 2019 using open-ended questions from 228 sophomore, junior, or senior students at Faculty of Theology in Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University. Content analysis and chi-square technique were used in the data analysis. The research revealed that the majority of students (%73, 2) produced positive metaphors for studying theology on campus. Students mostly explain the positive experience of studying on campus through the possibility of growing up as a well-equipped theologian, recognizing real-life, and representing religion. It was also determined that the students who completed the associate degree and continued theology faculty highlighted the positive aspects of theology education on campus.Summary: While higher education throughout history has been undertaken by madrasas in the East and monastic schools in the West, it has been represented by the modern university in the last two centuries. The madrasas and monastic schools were religious institutions in terms of aims, epistemological and pedagogical understanding, institutional structures, and the lifestyle they produced. The aim of these institutions, which are subordinate to religious authority, was to educate the man on behalf of God while giving this education in accordance with the religion. The university, which replaces madrasas and monastic schools, was not different from the tradition of madrasas and monastic schools when it was first established. The first universities and colleges that were accepted as the ancestors of the well-established universities in the West were schools established for religious purposes. Indeed, many of the western universities established in the past for religious purposes continue their administrative and financial ties with the church. On the other hand, after enlightenment, education has ceased to be a business of religious institutions, and national states have established modern universities to train people suitable for their own needs. The modern university that is positivist and rationalist reveals information to educate people and to perfect society in the name of the state and the economy, not for the God. Research shows that both universities that maintain their ties with the church and state universities participate in the secularization process deeply. Nevertheless, religion continues to exist in different forms at universities, which is much more intense at universities that continue their connection with the church. In addition to the theology and religious studies programs, religion finds a place in the modern university campus through accredited student organizations, campus priests and preachers, social organizations, etc.When Darülfünun (Dār al-Fünūn) the first example of a modern university was established in Turkey in 1900, theology faculty became one of the three faculties. However, whether a modern university is a suitable place for higher religious education has been a controversial issue. In 1915, theology faculty was removed from the university system, then re-established in the university again in 1924, and in 1933, theology education was terminated due to the discussions of modernization. In 1949, the theology faculty was reintroduced at the university; and after 1959, High Islamic Institutes were established under the Ministry of National Education. The inclusion of religious education in the university has been one of the issues that frequently occupy the agenda until 1982, when all higher religious education institutions were included in the university system. In these discussions, the interesting thing is that religious people insist on being included in the university system although various groups oppose in the name of secularism principle. Even more interesting is that there are still demands for higher religious education outside the university, although the number of theology faculties has increased in recent years. In order to make the madrasas to be function as an alternative or complement to theology faculty, they claim that the theology degree completion program or open theology program must be expanded. In fact, it has recently been observed that those who have opposed the existence of the theology faculties within the university system for religious reasons have tried to make their voices heard on different platforms, especially on social media. Those who make such claims, claim that the university is not a suitable place for religious education in terms of epistemology, pedagogy, and social life.This study aims to determine the views of theology faculty students with regarding to the studying on campus and to contribute to the structure of the evaluations on higher religious education-university dilemma on a scientific basis. Within this framework, three basic questions were investigated: (i) Do students highlight positive or negative aspects of theology education on campus? (ii) What kind of experiences are reflected on the positive or negative aspects of theology education on campus from the metaphors? (iii) Is there any difference among the metaphors of the students according to the gender and enrolling types to the faculty (university entrance exam or vertical transfer exam and non-exam enrolling system)? Metaphor technique was used for data collection. Data were collected in April 2019 using open-ended questions from 228 sophomore, junior, or senior students at Faculty of Theology in Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University. Content analysis and chi-square technique were used in the data analysis.The research revealed that the majority of students (%73, 2) produced positive metaphors for theology education on campus. Students mostly explain the positive experience depending on the possibility of growing up as a well-equipped theologian, experiencing real-life, and representing religion. Among the reasons of the negative metaphor producers, the degenerative effect of the campus environment, the exclusion, and the desire to study in a religious environment come to the fore. It was also determined that the students who completed the associate degree and continued theology faculty highlighted the positive aspects of theology education on campus. Consequently, results show strong student support for theology education at university.In our opinion, it is possible to interpret the recent debates on the inclusion of theology faculties within the university system through the general tendencies of religious people who encounter modernism. In this regard, the results provide important clues. Religious people who encounter modernism generally preferred one of the following three ways: ghetto closure, conflict with the modern, seeking a consensus-based way to continue to touch the life of modern people with the message of religion over time and space. While those who prefer ghettos and conflict reject everything that is modern, those who are accommodating seek ways to keep religion together with modern people and institutions despite some risks. Results show that most of the theology students consider the university as a place that offers opportunities for religious education despite the secular and sometimes challenging environment of the campus. This means that they have a strong self-confidence in the beauty that religion can bring to modern life and modern people. (shrink)

The concept of the postsecular is a challenge to systematic theological thought, as it points to some context where the opposition between the religious and the secular, or between theism and atheism, is weakened or even surpassed. In this perspective, the postsecular is not about the visibility of religion in the public sphere, but about the way in which we interpret ourselves in the world in order to find orientation and fulfillment. In a postsecular context, religious perspectives and secularist outlooks (...) are no longer opposed of necessity, but draw on a common religious and secular heritage. In this article, Richard Kearney’s Anatheism and Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Deconstruction of Christianity are presented as exemplifications of postsecular thought that may open up new perspectives to systematic theology. In different ways, Kearney and Nancy reflect on a transcendent dimension in our experience or in the world, which is beyond the secular. Yet they distinguish themselves due to a religious transcendence-oriented approach and a secularist world-oriented approach, which shows that the opposition between the religious and the secular may be weakened, but the demarcations between the two still have their impact. (shrink)

Post-secularism is the fundamental evidence of the end of modernity. Modernity, as sleeping reason in Francisco Goya's painting, realizes that, although it thought that it was awake, it was producing monsters. We try to analyze post-secular philosophy from the point of view of Russian religious thought. We believe that such philosophers as Vladimir Soloviev, Pavel Florensky, Sergey Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Georges Florovsky, and Semen Frank may be helpful for understanding and overcoming post-secular order. Their unique views on the relations (...) between religion and philosophy, science, and social life are apparently missing in the current Western debates. It seems to us that Russian religious philosophy becomes surprisingly up-to-date and attractive in the contemporary world. We hope that the present volume will be a significant step forward in the inclusion of the heritage of Russian religious philosophy in contemporary debates. (shrink)

This article discusses an anti-sovranist variant of political theology. Recent work on the sociology of modern constitutionalism has identified its source in the so-called Papal legal revolution that proclaimed the autonomy of the Church in relation to the Empire. The claim is that this legal revo-lution contributed to the “secularization” or de-sacralization of political power and established legali-ty as the principle of legitimacy. This paper critically discusses this genealogy of constitutionalism. It proposes an alternative route to modern secularism (...) and constitutionalism that passes through the reception of Averroistic doctrines in the philosophy of Dante. (shrink)

In pre-democratic – also pre-modern – times, religion had been at the centre of much of human life, filling the private as well as the public realm of people’s daily existence. However, with the change to democratic rule in major countries in the modern world (see, most influentially, Article 1 of the French Constitution after the French Revolution and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, influencing all other democracies in their wake), religion has for the most (...) part reflexively been sidelined from public life. Or has it? Does religion not still hold a special place in law in democratic societies, but now in reverse? Firstly, whereas matters of religious faith had throughout the greater part of human history been included in matters of politics, it is now as a matter of course of law excluded, purposely so. Religion is thus still a ‘special case’, a unique aspect of humanity when compared to all other matters, in law as much as in politics and other aspects of public life. Secondly, in the post-secular cultural climate dawning across the world, matters of faith (religion, spirituality) are no longer as stringently excluded from public life, which impacts directly on how religion is touched upon in law, sociology, philosophy, music and other academic disciplines too. Our dawning post-secular age is bringing something new. Two scholars, who have been doing foundational work in this regard, have done so fully in parallel, not taking cognisance of the mutualities in their academic contributions. Otto in Munich, Germany, has been combining his two areas of expertise, the Pentateuch in the Hebrew Bible and the sociologist Max Weber, to indicate the trajectory through history of democratic impulses from Ancient Near Eastern founding documents into the current era. Benson in Sydney, Australia, has on his part been drawing on his expertise in law as practised in Canada and taught in Europe, South Africa and Australia to indicate how, in inclusively liberal democracies, law cannot justifiably be used to exclude religion from the public domain, as has been the usual modern case. Drawing together these parallel contributions, Lombaard places these initiatives within the emerging post-secular climate, which augurs a different way of being religious or non-religious, publicly as much as privately, in democratic societies in our time. (shrink)

The “moral equivalence” objector—appealing only to certain moral considerations, e.g., wellbeing and consent—argues that no inherent moral significanceattaches to the distinction between intended means and foreseen side-effects: If an act of direct killing is wrong, then a morally comparable act of indirect killingis wrong as well; if an act of indirect killing is right, then so is a morally comparable act of direct killing. One secular version of double effect is vulnerable to the objection unless it can provide a principle (...) of justice which prohibits direct but justifies indirect killing. Both the secular version and the moral equivalence view depart (in different ways) from a theological interpretation of double effect as “delegated dominion.”. (shrink)

On the one hand, we find secularized approaches to theology stemming from the Death of God movement of the 1960s, particularly as pursued by North American religious thinkers such as Thomas J.J. Altizer, Mark C. Taylor, Charles Winquist, Carl Raschke, Robert Scharlemann, and others, who stress that the possibilities for theological discourse are fundamentally altered by the new conditions of our contemporary world. Our world today, in their view, is constituted wholly on a plane of immanence, to such an (...) extent that traditional appeals to faith in an other world become difficult to take as more than self-deception and willful blindness to our human reality. On the other hand, we hear the assertion of a new lease on life for theology and its traditional affirmation of divine transcendence over and against the putative arrogance of all claims of human autonomy. This claim is advanced particularly by theologians grouped under the banner of the so-called Radical Orthodoxy. Emanating from England, originally from the University of Cambridge in the 1980s and 1990s, this movement includes such theological thinkers as John Milbank, Graham Ward, Rowan Williams, and Catherine Pickstock. It has also explicitly styled itself “post-secularist.” I propose that both approaches are based on not very fully acknowledged and often explicitly denied premises in negative theology, which surprisingly emerges as key to fostering genuine possibilities for dialogue among apparently antagonistic theological approaches. (shrink)

Amarnath Amarasingham, ed., Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. xv + 253 pp. ISBN 978-9-0041-8557-9, hardback £81.00/€139.00/$190.00. Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines (religious studies, sociology of religion, sociology of science, philosophy and theology) in order to critically engage with so-called ‘new atheism’. The study is a collection of essays that not so much gives primacy to discrediting the limited scholarship of new (...) atheist literature (although there is plenty of powerful critique to be found in its pages) but demonstrates where we can place new atheism in relation to generally more informed and intellectually rigorous debates about religion and atheism. This review essay examines their powerful arguments and briefly introduces possible Bhaskarian, Hegelian and Darwinian-Marxian contributions to the case against new atheism. (shrink)

This new volume gives discursive shape to several key facets of the relationship among politics, theology and religious thought. Powerfully relevant to a wealth of further academic disciplines including history, law and the humanities, it sharpens the contours of our understanding in a live and evolving field. It charts the mechanisms by which, contrary to the avowed secularism of many of today's polities, theology and religion have often, and sometimes profoundly, shaped political discourse. By augmenting this broader (...) analysis with a selection of authoritative papers focusing on the prominent sub-field of political theology, the anthology offsets a startling academic lacuna. Alongside focused analysis of subjects such as conscience, secularism and religious tolerance, the discussion of political theology examines the tradition's critical moments, including developments during the post-World War I Weimar republic in Germany and the epistemological imprint the theory has left behind in works by political thinkers influenced by the three major monotheistic traditions. (shrink)

Violence may be productively understood as a secularized theological concept. Doing so challenges claims that secularism is necessary to prevent religious violence, and it also challenges claims for a Christian triumphalist alternative. William Cavanaugh’s embrace of such a triumphalism is called into question when his genealogical method is interrogated in light of the Foucaultian genealogical project.

In the context of the main principles, modernity has affected the relationship of individuals with society in two ways; either by promoting a comprehensive individualization or by paradoxically surrendering individual freedoms to new relations due to the many risks it carries. In the modernization process, religion has been affected not only in the context of traditional and everyday patterns; but also, it has been significantly influenced in terms of its dimensions corresponding to the public space. This study examined the relationship (...) between religion and modernization in the sample of Theology Faculty at Sivas Cumhuriyet University which is an organized and official field of religion. The aim of the research is to understand and explain the aspects of modernization in theology faculties that look at individual identity through some concepts such as religion and world designs, pluralism, perspectives on lifestyles, attitudes towards gender, and consumption. In line with these goals, the article problematizes the relations between the attitudes and behaviors of the participants due to modernization and the religious theory of orthodox Islam, political secularism, globalization, and socioeconomic and cultural environments. Within a qualitative method, the research was planned as a "single event" study. With the help of semi-structured interview questions, the data obtained from a sample group consisting of male and female students from different classes by techniques such as "problem-centered interview", "narrative", "participated observation" were theoretically analyzed from interactionist, ethnomethodological, and phenomenological perspectives. Considering its sources, theology in Turkey was shaped under the intense influence of Jacobin and elitist political secularism during the first three quarters of the Republic. In the last quarter of its century-old history, it can be said that a conservative, Islamist secularism was effective there. In this context, the status accorded to religion by the political institution in its authoritarian structure in Turkey, on the one hand, makes sense in terms of the shape and direction of religion and society relations, on the other hand, it gives an idea about the general situation of theology as an official educational institution and the contents of the roles and functions expected from it. For this reason, it is understood that the future of theology in Turkey will be shaped depending on the politics, religion, human, and society paradigms of the political bureaucracy for now, whether in terms of human resources and public visibility or within the scope of the relations of institutional religion with society. All these are related to the social realities as well as the central position and character of politics in the society in Turkey. Besides, these realities strongly show the close relationship of theology with Turkish modernization. For this reason, in this study, political secularism has been seen as an important component of religion and modernization relations in theology. However, this relationship is not with a one-sided point of view that secularism affects theology; from the perspective that theology also affects the direction and forms of modernization and secularization in Turkey, it is discussed in a mutual way. As a matter of fact, as it can be seen, while theology was functionalized for the construction of the nation-state and a secular society paradigm in most of the history of the republic, it also produced an alternative, Islamic secularization related to a postmodern ethics by approaching the ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic designs of religion and world of environmental movements in more modern periods. Today, theology students, like every student, are faced with fluidizing all the artificial and natural boundaries of modernity and their traditional environments outside their own borders, and at the same time being a member of a wider world without borders. These developments, which clearly point to a change in attitude and attitude towards the secular field, are not only for theology students to reach new values in religion and world relations; it has also been important in the context of their entering into very important conflicts and tensions in the context of their individual identities. Finally, when it was associated with “orthodox Islam”, it was seen that this new socialization environment and the tension created by these created a series of alienation in theology in the context of gender, lifestyles, leisure activities, and consumption. (shrink)

Using Althaus-Reid’s Indecent Theology as a methodology, this article contributes to reflections on the contextuality and physical dimension of Dutch theology: its relation to the Protestant white bodies of its practitioners and its support of and contributions to colonial power and colonial racializing discourse. We do this in a context of a ‘return to decency’ in political discourse in which ‘our’ Calvinist roots are evoked to construct a ‘shared’ past. Using two case studies, we analyse how the in/decent (...) is constructed in the Netherlands. As secularism is more ‘vanilla’ and Calvinism more indecent than is usually assumed, engagement with indecent texts and untidy roots of Calvinism is needed to re-member both the violent character of Calvinist hermeneutics, as well as its potential for indecent readings. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that atheism is different from secularism. Secularism is based on a faux elimination of theology which effectively preserves that theology in the guise of overcoming it. To achieve atheism (a term that I draw from the work of Maria Aristodemou), I argue that one needs to directly confront the theological element in order to come to terms with it. In this essay I look at how two political theological thinkers, Nietzsche and (...) Benjamin, accomplish this. Nie-tzsche accomplishes atheism via his thesis of the “death of God,” a death that is not always literal but which creates a space for human life that is not determined by theological terms. Benjamin does the same thing with his idea that God vacates divine powers of judgment and determination in order to allow an atheistic space where human beings can engage in their own self-determination (even as the notion of God remains to challenge any would be human spokespersons for that role). I ultimately argue that atheism and anarchism are related concepts based not just on a rejection of certain forms of theology and all forms of archism, but also in terms of the way they allow a posi-tive and undetermined human response. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A DIFFERENT METHOD; A DIFFERENT CASE: THE THEOLOGICAL PROGRAM OF JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER WILLIAM M. WILSON University of Virginia, OharlottesvUZe, Virginia, WRITERS COVERING the work of Julian Hartt or Austin Farrer-the :llew that there ar~generally find that the hest introduction is a straightforward acknowledgement that what is to come is unique. Basil Mitchell, for instance, has said that no matter how one catalogues contemporary theologians, a footnote (...) will be needed, reading " and then of course there is Austin Farrer." 1 Likewise, David Kelsey has said that Hartt's work "is not identi:firuble as a variant on any of the options on the present scene." 2 Those already aicquainted with Hartt and Farrer will no dorurbt agree with the sense o[ these assessments; but if they have heen carefol students they will demand, nev,ertheless, a slight qualification : Hartt,and Farrer.are unique as a party of two. Farrer is a " variant " on Hartt; Hartt belongs down in the footnote aibout Farrer. But from the claim that these two are unique it does not follow that their wo:vk is something akin to those bold " new theologies " fashioned from the innocent's quest for a faith untouched hy either the hands of tradition or the perplexities of our time. Farrer's: anchorage in tradition is obvious throughout his writing and clearly stated in the preiface to his first 1 ' Austin Marsden Farrer,' A Oelebmtion of Fa,ith, ed. Leslie Houlden (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), pp.13-14. 2" Christian Sense Making: Hartt's 'Theological Method and Imagination,"' The J owrna,Z of ReUgion Vol. 58 (4), October 1978, p. 428. 599 600 WILLIAM M. WILSON work. There he said that he was " possessed hy the Thomistic vision" and w:as incapable of "thinking it wrong."3 As to novelty, he had this to say:. •. it is indeed absurd to propose new grounds for belief in the existence of God. The belief has stood for more than ~.ooo years if we are to speak of the essentials of transcendental theism. If belief has been reasona9le it has had a reason, and our only business must be to draw this out and restate it.4 It is.fair to say, to 1be sure, that Farrer "drew out" and "restated " that reason in a. way unlike that of any other contemporary Thomist. There are some who would deny him even the label.5 And it is in this sense that Mitchell's statement about him must remain: If " transcendental," " Neo-," and " traditional " Thomist are three current categories, Farrer is a footnote to them. Hartt, unlike Farrer, has ne,ver labeled himself, hut none of his readers can miss his hostility to any pretense to novelty, even to those which have become our standard fare. The good ship theology (has taken) on a radioactive cargo, its company attracted by the dynamic and dazzle of it all. Relevance~ Historicism, several varieties of analysis, Secularism-what a promising manifest! 6 The " spirit of the age " is not to illuminate the gospel, according to Hartt, rather it is the gospel which illuminates the spirit of the age.7 s Finite and Infinite: A Philosophical Essay, Ibid., p. 1. 11 But see note 5 above. JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER 603 I. The Uniqueness of Hartt and Farrer In a recent encydopedia entry, David Kelsey arranges a useful chart of contemporary theology according to the answers given to " the array o:f decisions theologians must make in the course of doing theology." 12 According to Kelsey, theologians must decide the subject matter o:f theology, the importance o:f cultural context, the 1wudience, the significance of the theologian 's vantage point, the goals o:f theology and the best means o:f accomplishing them. For our purposes o:f identifying Hartt and Farrer, however, we need concentrate only on the first and the last-the question o:f subject matter and the question o:f the hest means £or attaining theological ends. The latter (being the last question the theologian must face) best :identifies the overall mind o:f the theologian at work. Thus, against the standard answers given here, I shall try... (shrink)

This article proposes that the foundations of Hegel’s contribution to social criticism are compatible with, and enriched by, his meta-theology. His social critique is grounded in his belief that normative ideas – and especially the idea of freedom – are necessarily experiential and historical. Often regarded as a recipe for an authoritarian reconciliation with the status quo, Hegel’s philosophy has been dismissed by some unsympathetic commentators from the left as inimical to the task of social criticism. Much of the (...) reason for this has been the opinion that his systematic approach to philosophy is one underpinned by either a highly unorthodox theism or, more commonly, pantheism. Even scholars who wish to defend Hegel as a social critic have tended to abandon or at least massively downplay his meta-theology. In this article, I argue that it is precisely the emphasis on his original theo-metaphysics that offers a powerful and relevant contribution to social criticism. Hegel then becomes an important contributor, from the tradition of social criticism, to the growing trend in academia and wider society of rethinking the relationship between the religious and the secular, known as post-secularism. The proposition at the centre of his system – that human history and society are necessary moments in the process of divine self-understanding – is not new. But the specifics of Hegel’s concept of God that I am proposing – and, moreover, their implications for his political thought – are new. I propose that Hegel was neither a theist nor a pantheist but, rather, a dialectical panentheist. According to panentheism, God is neither straightforwardly transcendent to nature and history nor immanently identifiable with nature and history, but rather is dynamically and dialectically immanent in the ongoing processes of self-transcendence that are nature and history. If such an interpretation of Hegel’s system is valid then the proposition that his political thought is an exercise in dialectical panentheistic theology is one that is worth making and defending because it has important things to say about his social critique. (shrink)

In the 1980s and 1990s, the theoretical energy in the study of religion came from postmodern theory and its appropriation by scholars who worked in, or at the margins of, the subfield called “philosophy of religion.” Today, philosophy of religion—at least in departments of religion and religious studies—threatens to kill itself with its own jargon; the theoretical energy in the study of religion comes from young scholars working in American religious history (such as John Modern, author of Secularism in (...) Antebellum America) and a coterie of thinkers associated with the journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR), notably Russell McCutcheon and Timothy Fitzgerald. These thinkers and others argue in various ways that the academic study of religion is rightly constrained by its academic context, and therefore requires the bracketing of all discourse from the study of religion (whether in the discipline of history of religions, or that of theology) that assumes a natural human. (shrink)

Populism in politics and policy orientations in law have thrown the jurisdiction of the academy and the disciplines of interpretation into disarray. Critique flounders in abstraction and negativity, law loses itself in particularity. Administering Interpretation brings together philosophers, humanists, and jurists from both continental and Anglophone jurisdictions to reassess the status and trajectory of interpretative theory as applied in the art of law. Tracking the thread of philosophical influences upon the community of legal interpretation, the essays move from the translation (...) and wake of Derrida to the work of Agamben, from deconstruction to oikononmia. Sharing roots in the philological excavation of the political theology of modern law, contributors assess the failure of secularism and the continuing theological borrowings of juridical interpretation. The book brings contemporary critique to bear upon the interpretative apparatuses of exclusion, the law of spectacular sovereignty, and the bodies that lie in its wake. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt, in a sense the initiator of Political Theology, proposed that all important political concepts are reinterpretations of or parallels to theological concepts. This insight is in this contribution described and applied to current political thought, for which it is valuable as modern democracies emerge from the secularism of modernism to a more fully self-aware post-secularism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 311-315 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity. By Aloysius Pieris, S. J. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996. Aloysius Pieris, Jesuit priest and Buddhist scholar, is well known in theological and interreligious dialogue circles in Asia, and this is the third collection of essays of his to (...) be published in the Faith Meets Faith Series of Orbis Books. The eighteen essays which make up this book, all previously published elsewhere, are conveniently put together in three sections, under the following headings: 1) Women and Religion: Buddhist and Christian Appropriation of Feminist Criticism; 2) issues in Theology, Religion and Society; and 3) questions of Spirituality and Human Liberation. To merely summarize the content of the essays and offer a third-party critique would do injustice to the book, and could even mislead one who peruses such a summary into thinking one thereby "knows" what the book or Pieris is about. Such a hasty conclusion would deprive a would-be reader of the powerful experience that awaits in wrestling with Pieris through each essay of this volume. Judith Berling puts it well in her blurb at the back, pointing out that the author "uses poetry, evocative symbolism, and humor to offer a theological call to action in a voice that is liberationist, Asian, and feminist." Indeed, this volume invites one to a way of seeing that can also transform one's way of being in this world marked by increasing violence, poverty, and a systemic kind of oppression dehumanizing to both the perpetrators as well as the victims.The title of the present volume, Fire and Water, alludes to a dynamic dipolarity, masterfully sketched for the reader by Paul Knitter in his foreword, which underlies the author's vision of reality and vivifies much of his writing. The masculine and the feminine, the (Buddhist) gnostic and the (Christian) agapeic, the metacosmic (transcendent) [End Page 311] and the cosmic (immanent), the prophetic and the mystical, are different ways of naming this dipolarity. The way to ultimate liberation is in the effective embrace of both poles in complementarity and mutual interplay, whereas taking one pole in preference over the other results in a warped vision or mode of being, in imbalance, or even in abuse.In this review I would like to simply echo some key themes that will jump at one perusing the essays, reiterating that the very act of reading them can of itself be a transformative experience for an open-minded, open-hearted, and open-handed reader.The thrust of the six essays comprising the first section can perhaps be summed up in the thesis as formulated by the author himself: "Religion cannot survive in the future without appropriating the feminist critique, just as feminism cannot achieve its liberative goal without the aid of a religion so critiqued" (p. 62). Behind this statement is Pieris' emphatically critical stance, on the one hand, against all forms of patriarchal religion, whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or other, which has justified, lent a hand in, or continued to perpetrate the physical, psychological, and especially religious abuse of women, and on the other hand, against secularist (or anti-religious) kinds of feminist theory that take off on what he enumerates as "five false starts" (pp. 50-51), which only result in unnecessary dichotomies that truncate the understanding of the goal of liberation, and consequently of the human as such.Pieris offers a vision of liberation centered on what he terms the humanum. This refers to the point of ultimate perfection to which the human, that is, "whatever pertains to men and women as self-conscious, other-oriented, and dreaming components of the cosmos," has the capacity to carry the cosmos. In this context, the human is no other than "this self-transcendent capacity immanent in the cosmos, this power to unfold within itself the Other, which is ever present from the first moment of evolution." To be human is inherently to be endowed... (shrink)

Atheism -- Myth -- Ambivalence -- History -- Kairâos -- Ethics -- Idols -- On secularism, transcendence and death.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 214-217 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating a Shin Buddhist Theology in a Religiously Plural World Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating a Shin Buddhist Theology in a Religiously Plural World. Edited by Dennis Hirota. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. 257 pp. One of the lessons I learned (...) from Martin Luther is about "vocation." Basically, one's "vocation" is to express love and compassion toward all through engagement with the structures of existence that hinder justice through whatever social or occupational role (one's "calling") one occupies. In Luther's theology, there is no privileged ecclesiastical institution, no privileged theological class, and in his better moments, no privileged doctrinal system that mediates God's grace—meaning God's love and compassion. Instead, grace meets us where we are in the midst of whatever our "calling" might be; our "vocation" is to serve others in community through our callings: teacher, pastor, parent, physician, farmer, clerk, politician, or any other honest occupations by which persons make their way in the world. Luther's ideas of vocation—part of his doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers"—functioned as part of his critique of received medieval Christian tradition; it remains a defining theological principle of Protestant thought that Paul Tillich called the "Protestant principle."Being critical of Christian tradition is still widely practiced in mainline Protestant circles, even though Protestantism since Luther has produced absolutized forms of Luther's original critique of Christian tradition. My own Lutheran tradition is as guilty of this sort of idolatry as other Christian traditions. But the best of Protestant thought and practice has always generated critical attitudes in many theologians. So each generation of mainline Protestant theological reflection since Luther rejects, even as it builds upon, the work of previous generations, sometimes even retrieving elements of earlier tradition that their predecessors had rejected—as Luther retrieved Pauline-Augustinian notions of grace as a means of critiquing the sale of indulgences and the entire sacramental system of medieval Catholicism. [End Page 214]So as a Lutheran who believes that the process of personal and corporate self-criticism is an expression of faith, and that every attempt to absolutize any given form of tradition or religious practice is idolatry and constitutes nonfaith, I am always interested in learning how other religious traditions encourage personal and corporate self-criticism. As a Lutheran who happens to be a historian of religions engaged in interreligious dialogue, especially with Buddhists, and who has also thought and written about Pure Land Buddhism, I am especially intrigued when I encounter self-criticism similar to the Protestant principle at work in a form of Buddhism I deeply admire.Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhismis a collection of essays that evolved from a 1989 symposium planned by Dennis Hirota and sponsored by the Institute for Buddhist Studies that was held in Berkeley on campuses affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union. The focus of the conference—and of this volume—was constructive criticism of Jodo Shinshu Buddhist tradition. The essayists—three Buddhists and two Christians—share the conference's two convictions: (1) Pure Land Buddhism has a significant contribution to make to life in the contemporary world, and (2) Pure Land teachings and practices in the forms in which they are commonly communicated appear alien to contemporary persons both East and West. The structure of this collection flows from these convictions: first, three Pure Land authors (Dennis Hirota, John S. Yokota, and Musashi Tachikawa) offer three distinct proposals for deconstructing and reconstructing Pure Land Buddhism so that practitioners can more adequately reflect on contemporary intellectual and social circumstances as the context for faithful practice in a global context of religious and secularism pluralism, followed by critical comments on the Pure Land Buddhist proposals by two Christian theologians (Gordon D. Kaufman and John B. Cobb Jr.), and concluding with reconsiderations of their original proposals by the three Pure Land... (shrink)

Atheology is the intellectual effort to understand atheism, defend the reasonableness of unbelief, and support nonbelievers in their encounters with religion. This book presents a historical overview of the development of atheology from ancient thought to the present day. It offers in-depth examinations of four distinctive schools of atheological thought: rationalist atheology, scientific atheology, moral atheology, and civic atheology. John R. Shook shows how a familiarity with atheology's complex histories, forms, and strategies illuminates the contentious features of today's atheist and (...) secularist movements, which are just as capable of contesting each other as opposing religion. The result is a book that provides a disciplined and philosophically rigorous examination of atheism's intellectual strategies for reasoning with theology. Systematic Atheology is an important contribution to the philosophy of religion, religious studies, secular studies, and the sociology and psychology of nonreligion. (shrink)

Jacques Ellul, by far the most significant author in the serious discussions on the interface between religion and technology, is apparently not known to the science‐and‐religion field. The reason is the imprecise use of the terminology. In scientific formulation the relationship can be summarized as technology /religion:: science/theology. The first pair are robust three‐dimensional templates of most human experience; the second pair are linear, abstract concerns of a minority of citizens. In the parallel community—now well developed throughout academia—of science, (...) technology, and society, where the technology/religion matters have been discussed more than the science/religion pair, John Caiazza's point that “techno‐secularism is the real problem” has been front and center for some decades. Among the theologians most aware of this, Raimundo Panikkar, Langdon Gilkey, and Huston Smith, Smith is the one who has taken the case much further than Caiazza, recognizing the danger of the real theological challenge from the religion of scientism and actively working against it. I write from a unique background among those involved in this debate—that of being deeply embedded simultaneously both in the modern science and technology establishment and in the reform of the religious enterprise for fifty years. I make the case that matters are worse than even Smith posits. He shows that scientism as a fundamentalist modern secularism serves the exact function of the theology behind the practiced religion of America and the West, that is, technology. An unexpected ray of hope has appeared in the sudden emergence of whole‐person healing (also known as complementary and alternative medicine), which is used regularly by well over half the population. This reintroduction of the spiritual dimension into this key technology of health will certainly be a major turning point. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 214-217 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating a Shin Buddhist Theology in a Religiously Plural World Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating a Shin Buddhist Theology in a Religiously Plural World. Edited by Dennis Hirota. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. 257 pp. One of the lessons I learned (...) from Martin Luther is about "vocation." Basically, one's "vocation" is to express love and compassion toward all through engagement with the structures of existence that hinder justice through whatever social or occupational role (one's "calling") one occupies. In Luther's theology, there is no privileged ecclesiastical institution, no privileged theological class, and in his better moments, no privileged doctrinal system that mediates God's grace—meaning God's love and compassion. Instead, grace meets us where we are in the midst of whatever our "calling" might be; our "vocation" is to serve others in community through our callings: teacher, pastor, parent, physician, farmer, clerk, politician, or any other honest occupations by which persons make their way in the world. Luther's ideas of vocation—part of his doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers"—functioned as part of his critique of received medieval Christian tradition; it remains a defining theological principle of Protestant thought that Paul Tillich called the "Protestant principle."Being critical of Christian tradition is still widely practiced in mainline Protestant circles, even though Protestantism since Luther has produced absolutized forms of Luther's original critique of Christian tradition. My own Lutheran tradition is as guilty of this sort of idolatry as other Christian traditions. But the best of Protestant thought and practice has always generated critical attitudes in many theologians. So each generation of mainline Protestant theological reflection since Luther rejects, even as it builds upon, the work of previous generations, sometimes even retrieving elements of earlier tradition that their predecessors had rejected—as Luther retrieved Pauline-Augustinian notions of grace as a means of critiquing the sale of indulgences and the entire sacramental system of medieval Catholicism. [End Page 214]So as a Lutheran who believes that the process of personal and corporate self-criticism is an expression of faith, and that every attempt to absolutize any given form of tradition or religious practice is idolatry and constitutes nonfaith, I am always interested in learning how other religious traditions encourage personal and corporate self-criticism. As a Lutheran who happens to be a historian of religions engaged in interreligious dialogue, especially with Buddhists, and who has also thought and written about Pure Land Buddhism, I am especially intrigued when I encounter self-criticism similar to the Protestant principle at work in a form of Buddhism I deeply admire.Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhismis a collection of essays that evolved from a 1989 symposium planned by Dennis Hirota and sponsored by the Institute for Buddhist Studies that was held in Berkeley on campuses affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union. The focus of the conference—and of this volume—was constructive criticism of Jodo Shinshu Buddhist tradition. The essayists—three Buddhists and two Christians—share the conference's two convictions: (1) Pure Land Buddhism has a significant contribution to make to life in the contemporary world, and (2) Pure Land teachings and practices in the forms in which they are commonly communicated appear alien to contemporary persons both East and West. The structure of this collection flows from these convictions: first, three Pure Land authors (Dennis Hirota, John S. Yokota, and Musashi Tachikawa) offer three distinct proposals for deconstructing and reconstructing Pure Land Buddhism so that practitioners can more adequately reflect on contemporary intellectual and social circumstances as the context for faithful practice in a global context of religious and secularism pluralism, followed by critical comments on the Pure Land Buddhist proposals by two Christian theologians (Gordon D. Kaufman and John B. Cobb Jr.), and concluding with reconsiderations of their original proposals by the three Pure Land... (shrink)

I suggest that in Kant’s conception of autonomy, we have a faithful variant of a perennial philosophical conception of divinity, distinctively re-configured by Kant’s own preoccupations and system, but still recognisably oriented around some philosophical conceptions of the divine, which have their origins in deep classical wells, with dreams and memories of thought-thinking-itself, and joyously diffusing itself, generating plenitude and harmony. If this is correct, then we might find that the most interesting dialogue in the realm of ‘public theology’ (...) is not necessarily between Christianity and secularism, but between Christianity and a latent pagan religious philosophy, that draws upon a perennial strand of Platonism in Western philosophy. (shrink)