Religion, Nationalism, and the Politics of Secularism

2015 ◽  
pp. 99-123
Author(s):  
Scott Hibbard
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Religion And Nationalism ◽  
Exclusive Or ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
Point Of Departure

This chapter examines the relationship between religion, nationalism, and the state and advocates a truly neutral conception of secularism. The point of departure is an analysis of the recurring debate over the proper role of religion in public life. Particular attention is given to the relationship between religion and nationalism, the secularization thesis, and the reasons religion remains an important part of modern politics. The chapter then turns toward the “politics of secularism,” and the tension between liberal (or ecumenical) secularism in theory and its practice. At issue is whether the secular tradition is invariably exclusive, or whether secularism as implemented has simply failed to live up to its ecumenical promise. The closing section examines this question in light of the justpeace tradition, and offers an endorsement for a re-conceptualized vision of secularism that is genuinely defined by neutrality in matters of religion and belief.

scholarly journals Key Theoretical Issues in the Interaction of Law and Religion: A Guide for the Perplexed

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2011
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Access Point ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
Theoretical Issues

There is perhaps no more important access point into the key issues of modern political and legal theory than the questions raised by the interaction of law and religion in contemporary constitutional democracies. Of course, much classical political and moral theory was forged on the issue of the relationship between religious difference and state authority. John Locke’s work was directly influenced by this issue, writing as he did about the just configuration of state authority and moral difference in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War. Yet debates about the appropriate role of religion in public life and the challenges posed by religious difference also cut an important figure, in a variety of ways, in the writings of Hobbes, Rousseau, Spinoza, Hegel, and much of the work that we now view as being at the centre of the development of modern political philosophy.

scholarly journals ISLAM, STATE AND SECULARISM; ANALYSIS ON THE SUBSTANTIVE POLITICAL PARADIGM IN INDONESIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamad Latief ◽  
Mifedwil Jandra
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Preference ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Pluralistic Society ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The One ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship

This research aims at analyzing political secularism in Indonesia and most specifically dealing with the recurrent polemic upon the relationship between Islam and State. The research initially seeks to describe the political situation of the country where the formalistic and substantives debate, especially on their distinctive approach to stipulate the proper role of religion on the country’s politic, could be witnessed. The description, however, will deal more on the latter political paradigm which is increasingly grasping an impressive preference from numbers of political individuals and institutions particularly when they come to discuss Islamic tenets and their application within the context of a pluralistic society like Indonesia. Using normative and socio-historical approaches, the paper argues that this political preference, despite its convincing successes in Islamizing the country’s politic, still suffers from numbers of defects that finally raise our apprehension. These defects summarily provide proofs to the questioned commitment of the substantive to the Islamic political values as a whole; the one which reveals an agreed separation of the state and religion; the one of secularism.Keywords; Formalistic, Substantive, Secularism, Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, Partai Amanat Nasional. AbstractThis research aims at analyzing political secularism in Indonesia and most specifically dealing with the recurrent polemic upon the relationship between Islam and State. The research initially seeks to describe the political situation of the country where the formalistic and substantives debate, especially on their distinctive approach to stipulate the proper role of religion on the country’s politic, could be witnessed. The description, however, will deal more on the latter political paradigm which is increasingly grasping an impressive preference from numbers of political individuals and institutions particularly when they come to discuss Islamic tenets and their application within the context of a pluralistic society like Indonesia. Using normative and socio-historical approaches, the paper argues that this political preference, despite its convincing successes in Islamizing the country’s politic, still suffers from numbers of defects that finally raise our apprehension. These defects summarily provide proofs to the questioned commitment of the substantive to the Islamic political values as a whole; the one which reveals an agreed separation of the state and religion; the one of secularism.Keywords; Formalistic, Substantive, Secularism, Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, Partai Amanat Nasional.

Litigating Religions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McCrudden
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Schools ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Religious Dress ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

Religions are a problem for human rights, and human rights are a problem for religions. And both are problems for courts. This essay presents an interpretation of how religion and human rights interrelate in the legal context, and how this relationship might be reconceived to make this relationship somewhat less fraught. It examines how the resurgent role of religion in public life gives rise to tensions with key aspects of human rights doctrine, including freedom of religion and anti-discrimination law, and how these tensions cannot be considered as simply transitional. The context for the discussion is the increasingly troubled area of human rights litigation involving religious arguments, such as wearing religious dress at work, conscientious objections by marriage registrars, admission of children to religious schools, prohibitions on same-sex marriage, and access to abortion. This essay examines doctrinal developments in these areas, where standoffs between organized religions and human rights advocates in the courts have been common. The essay argues that, if we wish to establish a better dialogue between the contending views, we must first identify a set of recurring problems identifiable in such litigation. But to address these recurring problems requires more than simply identifying these problems and requires changes both in human rights theory and in religious understandings of human rights. The essay argues that, by paying close attention to developments in human rights litigation, we can make theoretical progress.

Frederick Douglass

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. H. Dilbeck
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
The Political ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
Just Society ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

From his enslavement to freedom, Frederick Douglass was one of America's most extraordinary champions of liberty and equality. Throughout his long life, Douglass was also a man of profound religious conviction. In this concise and original biography, D. H. Dilbeck offers a provocative interpretation of Douglass's life through the lens of his faith. In an era when the role of religion in public life is as contentious as ever, Dilbeck provides essential new perspective on Douglass's place in American history. Douglass came to faith as a teenager among African American Methodists in Baltimore. For the rest of his life, he adhered to a distinctly prophetic Christianity. Imitating the ancient Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ, Douglass boldly condemned evil and oppression, especially when committed by the powerful. Dilbeck shows how Douglass's prophetic Christianity provided purpose and unity to his wide-ranging work as an author, editor, orator, and reformer. As "America's Prophet," Douglass exposed his nation’s moral failures and hypocrisies in the hopes of creating a more just society. He admonished his fellow Americans to truly abide by the political and religious ideals they professed to hold most dear. Two hundred years after his birth, Douglass's prophetic voice remains as timely as ever.

Religious Peacebuilding

2015 ◽  
pp. 2-32
Author(s):  
Atalia Omer
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

The emphasis of the field of religious peacebuilding on the potentially constructive role of religion in transforming conflicts should not preclude considering how the field might, and even should, also challenge religious traditions and political ideologies. Exploration of religious traditions’ peace-promoting resources and the very field of religious peacebuilding are largely grounded in Scott Appleby’s The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. However, Appleby’s insight is misapplied if a preoccupation with theological retrieval impedes an examination of how interpretations of events from multiple perspectives may challenge and transform religious and political systems. Cultivating religious peacebuilding as a rigorous academic enterprise will entail questioning the field’s reliance on secularist presumptions about religion, which facilitate complicity with religion’s contribution to injustices. It also requires reconsidering the presumed unidirectionality of religion and historical change and connecting the field to broader conversations about religion in public life.

Politics and Beatitude

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Positive Relation ◽  
Shared Commitment ◽  
Theological Language ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

The limits and secularity of political life have been signature themes of modern Augustinianism, often couched in non-theological language of realism and the role of religion in public life. In dialogue with Gilbert Meilaender, this article inverts and theologizes that interest by asking how Augustinian pilgrims might characterize the positive relation of political history to saving history and the ways in which political action in time might teach us something about the nature of salvation that comes to us from beyond history. This relation of continuity and discontinuity eludes dogmatic formulation, but the goal of the present article is to see where a shared Augustinianism and a shared commitment to aspects of the liberal political tradition might find illuminating disagreement.

scholarly journals Freedom, Responsibility, and Religion in Public Life: From Luther to Levinas and Arendt

Open Theology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 428-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Welz
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
The Voice

Abstract While Luther affirmed the believer’s freedom in relation to the world, he described the human being as unfree in relation to God from whom we receive everything and without whom we can achieve nothing good. This article reconsiders the relation between autonomy and heteronomy in the context of a phenomenology of listening: if faith comes from listening (ex auditu) and auditus is not a human capacity, but rather the effect of God’s Word that operates within the human being, how is our (un)freedom to be understood? Further, if a human being’s self-relation is expressed by the ‘voice’ of conscience, which can be ignored only at the cost of losing the unity with oneself, how is responsibility to be conceptualized when the call comes both from ‘within’ and from ‘without’? Finally, what are the implications of this view of the person for the role of religion in public life and the ways in which religious conflicts can be resolved? In an anachronistic thought experiment, Luther is brought into a posthumous dialogue with those that he excluded from the discussion: the Jews. In particular, his view concerning the justmentioned questions is contrasted with insights by Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt.

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