Religious And National Discourses

This book explores the recent trend toward the transformation of religious symbols and practices into culture in Western democracies. Analyses of three legal cases involving religion in the public sphere are used to illuminate this trend: a municipal council chamber; a town hall; and town board meetings. Each case involves a different national context—Canada, France and the United States—and each illustrates something interesting about the shape-shifting nature of religion, specifically its flexibility and dexterity in the face of the secular, the religious and the plural. Despite the differences in national contexts, in each instance religion is transformed into culture or heritage by the courts to justify or excuse its presence and to distance the state from the possibility that it is violating legal norms of distance from religion. The cultural practice or symbol is represented as a shared national value or activity. Transforming the ‘Other’ into ‘Us’ through reconstitution is also possible. Finally, anxiety about the ‘Other’ becomes part of the story of rendering religion as culture, resulting in the impugning of anyone who dares to question the putative shared culture. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of sociology of religion, religious studies, socio-legal studies, law and public policy, constitutional law, religion and politics, and cultural studies.

The editors of this volume have combined their expertise in discourse, contradiction, minority and diversity studies to suggest a change of perspective from categorisations into societal minorities and majorities towards an analysis of marginalising and centralising discourses. For this purpose, we have gathered interdisciplinary-minded authors from linguistics, literary and religious studies, political and historical sciences. Their contributions focus on contradictions of religious and national belonging as well as intersections of religion and nation in many different regions of the world from the 18th century until today. While illustrating the diversity and contradictions of religious and national belonging across time and space, the chapters of the book contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of questions of belonging and the associated constant renegotiations of power within these discursive processes.

Exploring faith-based organizations (FBOs) in current developmental discourses and practice, this book presents a selection of empirical in-depth case-studies of Christian FBOs and assesses the vital role credited to FBOs in current discourses on development. Examining the engagement of FBOs with contemporary politics of development, the contributions stress the agency of FBOs in diverse contexts of development policy, both local and global. It is emphasised that FBOs constitute boundary agents and developmental entrepreneurs: they move between different discursive fields such as national and international development discourses, theological discourses, and their specific religious constituencies. By combining influxes from these different contexts, FBOs generate unique perspectives on development: they express alternative views on development and stress particular approaches anchored in their theological social ethics. This book should be of interest to those researching FBOs and their interaction with international organizations, and to scholars working in the broader areas of religion and politics and politics and development.

Religious diversity is an ever present, and increasingly visible, reality in cities across the world. It is an issue of immediate concern to city leaders and members of religious communities but do we really know what ordinary members of the public, the people who live in the city, really think about it? Major news items, inter-religious violence and notorious public events often lead to negative views being expressed, especially among those who would not consider themselves to have a religious identity of their own. Martin Stringer explores the highly complex series of discourses around religion and religious diversity that are held by ordinary members of the city; discourses that are often contradictory in themselves and discourses that show that attitudes to religion vary considerably depending on context and wider local or national narratives. Drawing on examples from UK (particularly Birmingham, one of the UK's most diverse cities), Europe and the United States, Stringer offers some practical suggestions for ways in which discourses of religious diversity can be managed in the future. Students in the fields of religious studies, sociology, anthropology and urban studies; practitioners involved in inter-religious debates; and church and other faith leaders and politicians should all find this book an invaluable addition to ongoing debates.

This book analyses religious identity transformations through inter-religious relations. It aims to highlight the link between religious discourse and social cohesion, or the lack of such a link, and ultimately seeks to contribute to the dominant discourse on Muslim-Christian relations. The book is based on fieldwork in Indonesia and Tanzania, and is timely because of the growing tensions between Muslims and Christians in both countries. Its relevance lies in its fresh look at theories of religion and science. From its establishment as an academic discipline, the phenomenology of religion has dominated religious studies. Its theory of religion is 'realist' (religion is a reality 'in itself') and its view of science is objectivist (scientific knowledge is true if its representation of reality corresponds with reality itself). Based on Discourse Theory, the author argues that religion does not exist 'in itself'. Human practices and artifacts become religious because they are placed in a narrative context by the believers. By using discourse analysis as a research method, the author shows how religious identities in Tanzania and Indonesia are constructed, negotiated and manipulated in order to gain material or symbolic profit.

Since the 1970s, more and more religious stories have made their way to headline news: the Islamic Revolution in Iran, televangelism and its scandals, and the rise of the Evangelical New Right and its role in politics, to name but a few. Media treatment of religion can be seen as a kind of indicator of the broader role and status of religion on the contemporary scene. To better understand the relationship between religion and the news media, both in everyday practice and in the larger context of American public discourse, author Stewart P. Hoover gives a cultural-historical analysis in his book, Religion in the News. The resulting insights provide important clues as to the place of religion in American life, the role of the media in cultural discourse, and the prospects of institutional religion in the media age. This volume is highly recommended to media professionals, journalists, people in the religious community, and for classroom use in religious studies and media studies programs.

This book answers the question on how students and teachers talk about religion when the mandatory and nonconfessional school subject of Religious Education is on the schedule in the “world’s most secular country” To do this, it analyses discourses of religion as they occur in the classroom practice. It is based on findings from participant observation of Religious Education lessons in several upper secondary schools in Sweden. The book discusses different aspects of the role and function of nonconfessional integrative Religious Education in an increasingly pluralistic, multireligious, yet also secularized society, at a general level. It looks at the religious landscape, different perspectives on school subjects, various models and the development of Religious Education, and discourses of religion of a secularist, spiritual and nationalistic nature. Religious Education is a school subject that manoeuvres in the midst of a field that on the one hand concerns crucial knowledge in a pluralistic society, and on the other hand deals with highly contested questions in a society characterized by diversity and secularity. In the mandatory, integrative and non-confessional school subject of Religious Education in Sweden, all students are taught together regardless of religious or secular affiliation. The subject deals with major world religions, important non-religious worldviews and ethics, from a non-confessional perspective. Thus, in the classroom, individuals who identify with diverse religious and non-religious worldviews, with a different understanding of what religion could be and what it might mean to be religious, are brought together. The book examines questions raised in this pluralistic context: What discourses of religion become hegemonic in the classroom? How do these discourses affect the possibility of reaching the aim of Religious Education which concerns understanding and respect for different ways of thinking and living in a society characterized by diversity?

This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. Nationalist movements aimed at 'unification', based upon languages which vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom.