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.
This paper analyses the issue of the internal secularisation of religion, which can occur on many different levels (privatization of religious life, change in the universe of meaning, the adaptation ...of religion to contemporary culture, lacking sensitivity to the "sacrum", the primacy of politics over religion). Three currently important manifestations of the internal secularisation of religion have been analysed. The first manifestation is the secularisation of the consciousness of believers, the second is the excessive institutionalisation and bureaucratisation of religion and the third is the domination of secular (auxiliary) functions over typically religious (essential) functions.
Comment on Steve Bruce Reddig, Melanie
Analyse & Kritik,
05/2017, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Abstract In his paper Bruce gives the impression that all proponents of the resacralisation thesis expect the comeback of religion in Western Europe. But this is not the case. The re-sacralisation ...thesis concentrates on religious developments beyond the West. Bruce rejects approaches that discuss the classical secularisation thesis with regard to worldwide developments. However, the examination of worldwide developments reveals that religion and modernity can be intertwined in multiple ways. All in all, Bruce’s argumentation could be extended to the discussion of factors that can explain the decline as well as the rise of religion in different regions of the world.Moreover, the way in which modern individuals believe and express their faith could be discussed.
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’.
The ideological role of English, beyond its instrumental value, is reported to be immense. British colonial rule deployed English as an ideological tool which facilitated colonial subjugation and ...religious conversion. Connections between English and evangelism have widened in the postcolonial and globalising world, leading to labelling English as a missionary language. Acknowledging the association of English with Christianity, scholars have called for examining relationships between English and other religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. The relationship of English with Islam is especially complex. While its global spread has encouraged Muslims to utilise it as an Islamic language, English has also been used by the post-9/11 West for moderating Islam. How have Muslim-majority societies responded to English in this complex ideological and geopolitical terrain? How do they manage English teaching in their secular and religious streams of education? This article examines how education policymakers in Bangladesh have dealt with the imperatives of secularisation for mainstream education and de-secularisation for religious education by localising English along the line of world Englishes. Taking the perspective of language as situated practice, I illustrate how the same English language textbooks are used for different ideological goals, with educational, social, and political implications.
Comment on Steve Bruce Reddig, Melanie
Analyse & Kritik,
05/2017, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In his paper Bruce gives the impression that all proponents of the resacralisation thesis expect the comeback of religion in Western Europe. But this is not the case. The re-sacralisation thesis ...concentrates on religious developments beyond the West. Bruce rejects approaches that discuss the classical secularisation thesis with regard to worldwide developments. However, the examination of worldwide developments reveals that religion and modernity can be intertwined in multiple ways. All in all, Bruce’s argumentation could be extended to the discussion of factors that can explain the decline as well as the rise of religion in different regions of the world.Moreover, the way in which modern individuals believe and express their faith could be discussed.
What are the main factors explaining the dynamics of secularisation and de-(re)secularisation? In this article we go beyond both traditional understandings of state-religion relations as mechanically ...determined by structural forces (i.e. modernisation) and more recent accounts, which posit that processes of secularisation and de-secularisation are largely influenced by 'civilization histories'. We maintain that these historical processes are instead the result of contingent political choices and reflect the struggle for survival of both secular and religious forces. More specifically, we argue that the quest for political legitimacy had an impact in determining actors' stances toward the role of religion in politics and society. We use the aforementioned theoretical framework to explain the secularisation, de-secularisation and finally re-secularisation processes in Tunisia from its independence to the latest Ennahda Congress held in May 2016.
Abortion is a highly contested issue and one where the fault lines are often drawn along religious lines. In the United States, the most famous and timely example, anti-abortion attitudes and ...activism are strongly identified with conservative Christian values. But what is the role of religion in abortion debates in a more secularised context? Does religion 'work' as a justification for opposing abortion rights in such contexts? We analyse debates in the Finnish parliament regarding two Citizen's Initiatives concerning abortion. Using discourse analysis and descriptive statistics of speech patterns and voting behaviour, we draw three conclusions from the parliamentary material: (1) religious discourse is rarely used; (2) it is not effective, and its use is considered inappropriate; and (3) voting patterns in abortion cases are better explained by instrumental than religious concerns. Although the Finnish political system is not particularly secularist, the secularisation of political culture means that religion is marginalised as a source for justifying politics. In other words, religion is a troublesome resource for political legitimation in the Finnish context.
Los conocimientos humanos han variado según las épocas y los lugares. Las religiones son más tradicionales y reacias a los cambios. Las ciencias han tenido otra evolución más rápida. El proceso ...secularizador ha llevado a un distanciamiento de la ciencia respecto de las religiones y un mayor o menor rechazo hacia ellas. Aquí se plantea si la oposición es inevitable o si puede haber un respeto mutuo que avance incluso a una armonía entre ambos campos del conocimiento humano. El análisis de las religiones más conocidas se complementa con la visión bahá’í de esas mismas creencias religiosas y de su relación con los conocimientos científicos.
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