This article offers a new solution to a theoretical problem facing scholars attempting to interpret religion and secularisation in light of biological evolution. Some scholars argue that the ...diversity of religious beliefs and rituals in contemporary societies is compatible with secularisation or even facilitates it by weakening the plausibility structures of any one religion. Other scholars argue that religious diversity is not evidence of a decrease in interest in religion but rather shows the ingenuity of religious entrepreneurs. Here we extend the former school of thought by outlining a theory of the vestigilisation of religion. We describe three key characteristics of vestigial structures (increasing variability, decreasing costliness and the appearance of novel functions) and identify shifts in these characteristics in some religious traits. We argue that this supports the idea that religious diversity is a predictable effect of secularisation.
This article compares the development of primary education in Ireland and Norway, from its establishment in the nineteenth century until present time. The aim of the article is to discuss how and to ...what degree nation-state formation after independence in Ireland (1922) and Norway (1905) created fundamental and persistent structures for the development of primary schooling, as well as the role that religion and nation-building played in this. Previous research on the development of Irish and Norwegian schooling and official documents and reports makes up the research material. The article demonstrates that, despite institutional secularisation around the world from the nineteenth century onwards, religious and national peculiarities in the establishment of primary education in Ireland and Norway continue to characterise, and to some extent explain, the differences in Irish and Norwegian education today.
This article deals with the paradoxical relationship between the nineteenth-century Evangelical Revival and secularization. It is argued here that the revival and its worldview played a role in ...increasing pluralism and choice in the nineteenth century – a process often related to secularization. The Evangelical movement both attempted to oppose modernity and rationalism and emphasized religious freedom, voluntarism, and individualism. It therefore induced and popularized self-reflection, doubt, and deconversion. It also favoured religious democracy in opposition to a state-imposed religious monopoly (at least in northern Europe). Furthermore, by dividing people into believers and nonbelievers, it emphasized religious polarization. This contributed to an undermining of established religious structures, fragmenting and pluralizing the religious landscape and giving people the option to abstain completely from religious commitment. The Swedish confessional (inner mission) revivalist denomination Evangeliska Fosterlands-Stiftelsen (EFS – approx. the Swedish Evangelical Mission Society), founded in 1856, is used as a case. The popular literature they published and distributed manifested an evangelical worldview. In this article four themes, based on the popular literature, are used to study empirically the changing role of religion in relation to nineteenth-century revivalism: ‘the dualistic worldview’; ‘conversion’; ‘activism’; and ‘self-reflection’.
In recent years religion has come to occupy an increasingly central place in both popular and scholarly debates concerning citizenship in Québec. In order to understand and begin to contend with the ...challenges that religion poses for citizenship both conceptually and practically, it is necessary to engage with discourses and practices of secularisation in their historical specificity. To facilitate this, this article proceeds on two fronts. First, it distinguishes between what it refers to as three moments of secularisation in the history of Québec, arguing that we are presently witnessing a distinct third moment of secularisation. Second, the article offers an alternative approach to questions of citizenship and religion that is not grounded in the notion of secularisation as a singular transhistorical process. Such a perspective provides an opening for rethinking the possible forms of mediation between citizenship and religion.
This essay analyzes the work of Paolo Prodi (1932-2016), which is characterised by a constant reflection on secularisation. As a democratic Catholic, he explored the relationship between the Roman ...Church and the modern world starting from the Council of Trent and from the dual figure of the pope as a temporal ruler and spiritual guide. His original contribution concerned the conflict between law and conscience: a problem that led him to design a triptych of books on the foundations of the western world. He was influenced not only by Verfassungsgeschichte (German constitutional history), but also by Harold Berman. If for Weber the modern world was born from the Reformation, for Berman it was the 'Gregorian revolution' that changed the fate of Latin Europe. For Prodi, too, the medieval conflict between canon and civil law introduced a peculiar structure in Europe that would last until the triumph of the nation states and the so-called 'political religions'. In his three books (the first dedicated to the oath, the second to justice, the last to economics), Prodi placed at the centre of his analysis the notion of forum; the history of moral theology and casuistry and the relationship between penitence and justice.
Rising numbers of 'religious nones' across many former Christian liberal democracies have brought about increasing academic research to understand this growing population. Questions remain, however, ...about the mechanisms involved in processes of secularisationr and the growth of non-religion. This article draws on a qualitative study of non-believing older adults in England, reflecting on their practices of child-rearing and socialisation in the second half of the twentieth century, a period identified as crucial to secularisation processes in the UK and elsewhere. Discussions around the importance of 'choice' for children in relation to religion are central to participants' narratives, yet it is shown how freedom of choice is more complex in reality. It also reveals how notions of 'choice' and 'freedom' in relation to religion can reflect certain social structures, such as gender, and could sit in tension with respondents' own wishes and desires.
This study is a preliminary investigation of early career teachers (ECT) working in Catholic schools in a large regional Australian diocese. The key aim of the study is to better understand the ...factors influencing early career teachers, who begin their teaching careers in Catholic schools, and to apprehend their early experiences as teachers to cater for their continuous formation needs. Key findings identify the openness of ECTs to faith-based experiences and the challenges faced in teaching in a Catholic school. Recommendations for early career teacher support and formation are provided considering the findings of this study
Contrary to the popular imagination of Kerala as a secular, rational left bastion, the state is witnessing Sangh Parivar’s active presence in the domain of temples and everyday culture. This study ...attempts to examine the anxiety of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its sympathisers about the ‘true’ knowledge on temple culture, and their efforts to teach everyday Brahmanical rituals and other forms of worship such as srividya and kuladevathas. I argue that Sangh Parivar is interested in heterogeneous worship practices in Kerala as part of their ideological expansion. Their obsession for the didactics of temple culture is a response to the modern secularisation process and ambition to educate the Other Backward Classes and Dalits in Brahmanical knowledge, for they are not traditionally inclined to the Brahmanical temples. Finally, the study aims to document the ethnographic details of Sangh Parivar activities in the world of worship and temple culture.
Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature holds that the concept of evil is central to the psychology of secularism. Drawing on notions of secularization as a ...phenomenon of ambivalence or dualism in which religion continues to exist alongside secularity in exerting influence on modern French thought, author Scott M. Powers enlists psychoanalytic theory on mourning and sublimation, the philosophical concept of the sublime, Charles Taylor’s theory of religious and secular “cross-pressures," and William James’s psychology of conversion to account for the survival of religious themes in Baudelaire, Zola, Huysmans, and Céline. For Powers, Baudelaire’s prose poems, Zola’s experimental novels, and Huysmans’s and Céline’s early narratives attempt to account for evil by redefining the traditionally religious concept along secular lines. However, when unmitigated by the mechanisms of irony and sublimation, secular confrontation with the dark and seemingly absurd dimension of man leads modern writers such as Huysmans and Céline, paradoxically, to embrace a religious or quasi-religious understanding of good and evil. In the end, Powers finds that how authors cope with the reality of suffering and human wickedness has a direct bearing on the ability to sustain a secular vision.
This article employs ethnographic material from Sweden and Estonia to examine the relationship between religion and the love of nature in Northern Europe - a region known for its widespread ...secularisation. We propose that the existential depth that is often ascribed to nature experiences in this part of the world points to a facet of the secularisation process, indicating that love of nature among today's Northern Europeans is deeply entangled with the processes of modernisation. The article provides a historical analysis of how this phenomenon arose and explores ways of approaching it that move beyond the religious-secular dichotomy. It concludes by construing love of nature as belonging to an 'existential field' in the Northern European cultural landscape.
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