Religion In A Secular Age

The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minorities The plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt with Coptic Orthodox Christians and Bahais—religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim country—Saba Mahmood shows how modern secular governance has exacerbated religious tensions and inequalities rather than reduced them. Tracing the historical career of secular legal concepts in the colonial and postcolonial Middle East, she explores how contradictions at the very heart of political secularism have aggravated and amplified existing forms of Islamic hierarchy, bringing minority relations in Egypt to a new historical impasse. Through a close examination of Egyptian court cases and constitutional debates about minority rights, conflicts around family law, and controversies over freedom of expression, Mahmood invites us to reflect on the entwined histories of secularism in the Middle East and Europe. A provocative work of scholarship, Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges us to rethink the promise and limits of the secular ideal of religious equality.

Religion for a Secular Age provides a transnational history of modern Vedānta through a comparative study of two of its most important exponents, Friedrich Max Muller (1823–1900) and Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902). This book explains why Vedānta's appeal spanned the ostensibly very different contexts of colonial India and Victorian Britain and America, and how this ancient form of thought was translated by Muller and Vivekananda into a modern form of philosophy or religion. These religiously-committed men attempted to reconcile religion with modernity by appealing to Advaita (literally, 'non-dualistic') Vedānta's monistic interpretation of reality. The 'scientific' study of religion allegedly demonstrated the evolutionary superiority of Vedānta and the possibility of religion's survival in 'the light of modern science'. They believed Vedānta could also provide the religious basis for moral engagement in this world, even as the hold of orthodox Christianity and traditional Hinduism appeared to be weakening. Vedānta thus served as a way of articulating a form of religion suitable for a secular age – religion which has embraced modern forms of thought while breaking away from creeds, scriptures and institutions to thrive in the spheres of public debate of London, Calcutta and New York.

This book compares secularity in societies not shaped by Western Christianity, particularly in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

“What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?” This apparently simple question opens into the massive, provocative, and complex A Secular Age, where Charles Taylor positions secularism as a defining feature of the modern world, not the mere absence of religion, and casts light on the experience of transcendence that scientistic explanations of the world tend to neglect. In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, a prominent and varied group of scholars chart the conversations in which A Secular Age intervenes and address wider questions of secularism and secularity. The distinguished contributors include Robert Bellah, José Casanova, Nilüfer Göle, William E. Connolly, Wendy Brown, Simon During, Colin Jager, Jon Butler, Jonathan Sheehan, Akeel Bilgrami, John Milbank, and Saba Mahmood. Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age succeeds in conveying to readers the complexity of secularism while serving as an invaluable guide to a landmark book.

Religion is often viewed as a universally ancient element of the human inheritance, but in the Western Himalayas the community of Himachal Pradesh discovered its religion only after India became an independent secular state. Based on extensive ethnographic and archival work, Becoming Religious in a Secular Age tells the story of this discovery and how it transformed a community’s relations to its past and to its members, as well as to those outside the community. And, as Mark Elmore demonstrates, Himachali religion offers a unique opportunity to reimagine relations between religion and secularity. Elmore shows that modern secularity is not so much the eradication of religion as the very condition for its development. Showing us that to become a modern, ethical subject is to become religious, this book creatively augments our understanding of both religion and modernity.

Uses premodern theology and postmodern theory to show the endurance of religious and political commitments through the practice of hope.

How can one explain the resurgence of religion, even in a western context of rationality and scientific endeavour? Jonathan Benthall explains precisely why societies are not bound to embrace western liberal rationality as an evolutionary inevitability.