Religious forms in secularized society: Three Catholic groups in comparison

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-528
Author(s):  
Daniela Turco
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Secular Age

Despite the evidence of a progressive disenchantment, the religious sphere maintains a strong grip on current societies though undertaking some transformations. Pluralism, individualism and privatization are three features we cannot ignore if we choose to study religion in the contemporary world and, more broadly, if we choose to study modernity. The aim of this article is to illustrate some features of the different forms of religiosity in the secular age (Taylor, 2007). We have focused on modern Catholicism, with particular reference to religious experience in the Catholic lay group. The stories of Catholic militants show that the motivation behind their choice is the crucial factor to analyze their religious experience and worldview. In this sense, we will try to reflect on some indicators that can help us to understand the resources and limits of the contemporary Catholic pluralism and the aspects of the ‘modern desire for God’ (Abbruzzese, 2010).

Secolarizzazione ed "Exclusive humanism" in Charles Taylor

2009 ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Leonardo Allodi
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Biological Reductionism

- The aim of this essay is to examine the theory of secularisation process developed by Charles Taylor in his work, "A Secular Age". With this work an ambitious project is pursued: to offer a new point of view by which to construct a different image of secularisation. Taylor wants to understand the new socio-cultural conditions in which the moral and spiritual search of believers and non-believers develops. The process of modernisation of Western societies, in fact, has not only produced conceptions that are hostile to religion (jacobinism, marxism, anarchism) and conditions which have often made many of the old religious practices impossible, but have also led to creative adaptations of religious experience to the changed sociological conditions. The history of secularisation therefore demonstrates the "improbability" that autonomous religious aspiration has disappeared. Even in the framework of a secular society, religion represents an "anthropological universal". Taylor's theory of secularisation presents a notable affinity with all those theories which refute any form of sociological or biological reductionism, assuming the original nature of the religious phenomenon.Keywords: exclusive humanism, secularization, neutralization, religion, modernity

scholarly journals SABOREAR A FÉ EM MEIO À PLURALIDADE OS CAMINHOS DA TEOLOGIA EM MEIO AO DIÁLOGO INTER-RELIGIOSO

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (99) ◽  
pp. 221
Author(s):  
Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Present Text

O presente texto procura pensar o estatuto da teologia cristã no atual contexto de modernidade, secularização e pluralismo religioso. Após fazer uma breve análise do percurso do pluralismo religioso na história do cristianismo, desde suas origens, o texto propõe a centralidade da experiência religiosa e da espiritualidade como caminho fecundo para que a teologia possa reelaborar-se a si mesma em atitude de abertura e diálogo com as outras formas de crer e as outras tradições que formam o tecido religioso do mundo contemporâneo.ABSTRACT: The present text seeks to reflect upon the statute of Christian theology in the following actual contexts: modernity, secularization, and religious pluralism. After briefly analyzing the itinerary of religious pluralism in the history of Christianity since its origins, the text proposes the centrality of the religious experience and spirituality as the fertile path by which theology may re-elaborate itself with an attitude of openness and dialogue with other forms of believing and other traditions that are woven into the religious fabric of the contemporary world.

scholarly journals From Homo Economicus to Homo Eudaimonicus: Anthropological and Axiological Transformations of the Concept of Happiness in A Secular Age

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
U. I Lushch-Purii
Keyword(s):  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Common Value ◽  
Secular Ethics ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Contemporary Interpretation ◽  
First Time

Purpose. The paper is aimed to explicate a recently emerging anthropological model of homo eudaimonicus from its secular framework perspective. Theoretical basis. Secularity is considered in three aspects with reference to Taylor’s and Habermas’ ideas: as a common public sphere, as a phenomenological experience of living in a Secular Age, and as a background for happiness to become a major common value among other secular values in the Age of Authenticity. The modifications of happiness interpretation are traced from Early Modernity till nowadays. The preconditions of the contemporary appeal to Aristotle’s eudaimonic theory of happiness are elucidated. The main characteristics of homo economicus anthropological model and reasons for its collapse in the contemporary world are analyzed. Specificities of the contemporary interpretations of eudaimonia are described with reference to the works of MacIntyre, Haybron, Hamilton, Kekes, Melnick, and others. A moral foundation and a behavioral strategy of homo eudaimonicus model are expounded and the role of this model in the life of a contemporary individual person and society is revealed. Originality. For the first time in the Ukrainian philosophical discourse, it is shown how secular ethics enables the rise of a new homo eudaimonicus model within a sphere of secularity; and it is argued that homo eudaimonicus is the result of overcoming the values crisis. It is revealed how homo eudaimonicus along with being descriptive becomes also a normative model of a new effective behavior strategy of a contemporary person facing the current social, economic, political, and environmental challenges. Conclusions. According to the contemporary interpretation, happiness as eudaimonia is a combination of the good life and the meaningful life; it is a human flourishing in this world (saeculum) through the accomplishment of a person’s life plan in the sphere of secularity. Homo eudaimonicus manifests the overcoming of values crisis and the rediscovery of purpose and meaning, this time on the secular basis. Homo eudaimonicus implies the realization of a person’s project of a happy and fulfilling life through moral behavior and socially useful activities.

scholarly journals Nostalgia and the ‘New Visibility’ of Religion

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Christopher Deacy
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Way

This article examines the role that religion plays in a sample of the lives and career journeys of eight academic staff or alumni at a British university. Using the ‘Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy’ podcast as source material, the aim is to look at the intersection between traditional and implicit conceptualisations of religion, that arise in the course of interviews that the author has undertaken, with a view to shedding light on what this says about the role that religion plays when people reminisce about their past, how this relates to contemporary religious experience for them, and whether this might be identified as an example of the ‘new visibility’ of religion. It will conclude that the way we understand the location and parameters of religion in the contemporary world needs to be re-orientated and re-framed, in the light of the presence of those less formal and structured forms of religion, which often overlap with formal religious practices, but are often articulated without reference to it.

scholarly journals Secularist Humanism, Law and Religion in Ian McEwan’s The Children Act

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 468
Author(s):  
Camil Ungureanu
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Children's Rights ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
Scientific Rationality ◽  
Authority Structure ◽  
Quest For Meaning ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Legal Rationality

Ian McEwan’s The Children Act focuses on a real-life conflict between religion and children’s rights in a pluralist society. By drawing on Charles Taylor’s work on religion in the “secular age”, I argue that McEwan’s narrative is ultimately built on secularist assumptions that devalue religious experience. McEwan’s approach aims to build a bridge between literary imagination and scientific rationality: religion is, from this perspective, reducible to a “fable” and an authority structure incongruous with legal rationality and the quest for meaning in the modern-secular society. In The Children Act, art substitutes religion and its aspiration to transcendence: music in particular is a universal idiom that can overcome barriers of communication and provides “ecstatic” experiences in a godless world.

scholarly journals Diversity and Interpretation. Toward a Pluralist Realist Description of Religious Experience

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 848
Author(s):  
Carlos Miguel Gómez Rincón
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Understanding

This paper attempts to offer a pluralist realist account of the diversity of religious experience. In the first part, I show that an influential trend in contemporary philosophy of religious experience and religious pluralism is based on the mediational image of knowledge and a problematic notion of interpretation, which generates irresoluble problems. I then attempt a redescription based on an extension of Heidegger’s theory of understanding as pre-theorical engagement with the world, which allows for the conciliation of the diversity of religious experience with its claimed epistemic force. To develop this argument, finally, I present the experience of diversity proper of the contemporary world as a type of spiritual experience in which the traits of a pre-theoretical religious understanding can be found. As a result, the paper suggests a move from epistemology to spirituality for a better understanding of religious experience.

scholarly journals The Types, Interpretations and Functions of Myth

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (27) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Michał Mazurkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Interesting Fact ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual

In this article, the author analyses the phenomenon of myth—a significant element of culture—by presenting miscellaneous types of myths that have accompanied human beings from the dawn of time to the present, interpreting them from the point of view of (for example) philosophy or psychoanalysis, the functions of myths, and their ways of influencing human beings in the contemporary world. Myths are complex cultural phenomena, difficult to assess unambiguously. One of the main reasons is the fact that they are not only holy tales having some religious background; we can also talk about secular myths, for example in art or in sport. As far as our contemporary world—brazenly hi-tech and filled with the spirit of logos—is concerned, it is an interesting fact that myths do not surface but remain hidden, as it were; they are in many cases a subconscious way of seeing things. It depends on the individual whether he or she somehow notices those wisdoms existing somewhere under the mask of the world, industrialized and permeated by unemotional technology as it is. Without a shadow of a doubt, myths fulfil many important functions—they are a wonderful source of wisdom, teach people humility, and give hope and strength in difficult periods. Undoubtedly, they are not—as some people would probably prefer—mere relics of a distant past. The forms of myths may, however, evolve. Looking closely into this phenomenon, one can notice that myths may occur (in different realms of life) in somewhat changed, modernized forms. The author of this article has based his analysis on numerous works of a group of illustrious researchers who specialize in exploring the phenomenon of myth, e.g., among others: Bronisław Malinowski (a Polish anthropologist, one of the most important anthropologists of the 20th century), Mircea Eliade (a Romanian historian of religion, one of the leading interpreters of religious experience), and Sigmund Freud (an Austrian neurologist, founder of the discipline of psychoanalysis).

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