scholarly journals Researching Religion in Public Institutions: Context, Object, and Methods

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 110-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mar Griera ◽  
Julia Martínez-Ariño
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
New Challenges

The increasing vitality and variety of religious identities in Europe give rise to new claims and demands by religious minorities. This generates new challenges for the articulation of the religious and the secular in European democracies, which become especially salient in public institutions such as hospitals, prisons, and schools. This special issue focuses on public institutions with the aim to examine how state and religion encounter one another in contemporary Western societies. We take public institutions as privileged observatories for understanding the changing place of religion but also as laboratories in which new arrangements are experimented. The articles analyse the presence, regulation, and negotiation of religion and religious diversity in public institutions across Europe combining innovative empirical enquiries with theoretical and methodological reflections.

Secularism and Multiculturalism in India: Some Reflections

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochana Bajpai
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Hindu Nationalism ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

What role does secularism have in the governance of religious diversity in an age marked by the assertion of religio-cultural identities across the world? India, with its long history of religious pluralism, a state ideology of secularism, and the ascendancy of Hindu nationalism, is a key site for examining the disposition of secularism towards religious identities and diversity. Secularism and multiculturalism are often seen as opposed in political debates involving religious minorities, notably the well-known French headscarf case. Several scholars have suggested that religious traditions offer better resources for toleration than modern secularism (for India, see, for example, Madan 1998: 316; Nandy 1998:336–7). Others, more sympathetic to secularism, have also suggested that it may be deficient in the normative resources required for the accommodation of religious practices, particularly in the case of minorities (Mahajan, this volume; Modood 2010).

scholarly journals FROM EXCLUSIVISM TO PLURALISM: A REFLECTION ON EUROPEAN RELIGIOUS MINORITIES

2018 ◽  
pp. 139-158
Author(s):  
Mariana Rosca
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Management Policies

This paper reviews the religious diversity theory in the writings of Hick, Legenhausen and Netland, among others. It distinguishes two main approaches to religious diversity, pluralism and exclusivism, and examines their negative and positive application in the current situation of new minorities’ management policies. Drawing on current praxis the negative consequences of religious minorities’ disintegration processes are identified. The paper argues for the need to develop further actions that could effectively accommodate minority´s religious identities, in order to build a common and shared framework, with a certain degree of flexibility to be able to adapt to future social and cultural changes.

Tolerance and Accommodation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori G. Beaman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter problematizes the notions and language of tolerance and accommodation in relation to religious diversity, and traces their genealogy both as legal solutions and as discursive frameworks within which religious diversity is increasingly understood in the public sphere. The problem they pose is that they create a hierarchy of privilege that preserves hegemonic power relations by religious majorities over religious minorities. Tolerance in this context might be imagined as the broadly stated value that we must deal with diversity and those who are different from us by tolerating them. Accommodation might be seen as the implementation of this value—that in order to demonstrate our commitment to tolerance we must accommodate the ‘demands’ of minority groups and those individuals who position themselves or align themselves with minorities.

scholarly journals Laws and Emerging Technologies

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Esther Salmerón-Manzano
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
The World ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
The Way

New technologies and so-called communication and information technologies are transforming our society, the way in which we relate to each other, and the way we understand the world. By a wider extension, they are also influencing the world of law. That is why technologies will have a huge impact on society in the coming years and will bring new challenges and legal challenges to the legal sector worldwide. On the other hand, the new communications era also brings many new legal issues such as those derived from e-commerce and payment services, intellectual property, or the problems derived from the use of new technologies by young people. This will undoubtedly affect the development, evolution, and understanding of law. This Special Issue has become this window into the new challenges of law in relation to new technologies.

scholarly journals EU Law’s Half-Hearted Protection of Religious Minorities Minority Specific Rights and Freedom of Religion for All

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 830
Author(s):  
Kristin Henrard
Keyword(s):  
Case Law ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

This article begins with some reflections on the definition of religious minorities, their needs and rights and how this relates to the discussion about the need for minority specific rights in addition to general fundamental rights as rights for all human beings irrespective of particular identity features. Secondly, an overall account of the ambiguous relationship between religious minorities and fundamental rights is presented. The third and most extensive section zooms in on the EU and religious minorities, starting with an account of the EU’s general approach towards minorities and then turning to the protection of fundamental rights of religious minorities in/through the EU legal order. First, the EU’s engagement with minority specific rights and the extent to which these norms have been attentive to religious themes will be discussed. Second, the CJEU’s case law concerning freedom of religion and the prohibition of dis-crimination as general human rights is analysed. The conclusion then turns to the overall perspective and discusses whether the EU’s protection of religious minorities’ fundamental rights can be considered ‘half-hearted’ and, if so, to what extent. This in turn allows us to return to the overall focus of the Special Issue, namely the relationship between the freedom of religion for all and special rights for religious minorities.

Conflict, Secularism, and Toleration

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Uday S. Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Identities

This chapter is organized around a contrast between two views relating to religious diversity and toleration and the differing logics implicit in them. The first is that of M. K. Gandhi, in which religious diversity and toleration was taken to be a given feature of the fluid historical, social, and normative texture of India. It therefore did not take toleration as requiring a special intervention. In contrast, the second takes diversity as given, which necessarily tends toward conflict, and hence toward anarchy and ultimately death. The first takes religious identities and diversity as given; the second is reliant on the functioning of the state, because it has to mediate between the contending claims of identity.

7. Hard questions and new conflicts

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-123
Author(s):  
Andrew Copson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
The West ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Political Religion ◽  
Practice Education ◽  
Secular State

Secularism has always been controversial. But today both the official secularism of constitutional republics and the secular ethic of liberal democracies are also being rocked by rapid social changes, resurgent religious identities and nationalisms, increasing migration, and many other factors. Secularism is an idea under siege by its opponents at the same time as conflicts within secularism pit its different aspects against each other in new tensions. ‘Hard questions and new conflicts’ considers secularism in practice, education as a feature of secularism, blasphemy and criticism of religions, religious expression in a secular state, religious diversity in the West, and resurgent political religion.

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