Religion & the Public Sphere

Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM) is a biannual, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the latest social scientific, historiographic, and ecclesiastic research on religious institutions and their practices. SHERM is dedicated to the critical and scholarly inquiry of historical and contemporary religious phenomena, both from within particular religious traditions and across cultural boundaries, so as to inform the broader socio-historical analysis of religion and its related fields of study.

In partnership with the FaithX Project, SHERM is a full, no-fee, open access academic journal, which means it publishes and publicly makes available your research without charging subscription dues or publishing fees. Whereas other open access journals still require authors to pay for making their publications available, SHERM believes in making high-quality scholarship accessible to the public while promoting the wide dissemination and visibility of your published article. Our goal is to increase the opportunity for erudite academicians to publish their work, gain a larger readership outside the confines of conventional journals, and receive citations from future researchers.

The United States has long grappled with the question of how to maintain an appropriate combination of religion and politics in the public sphere. The current electoral cycle is no different, as Presidential candidates attempt to negotiate both the political and religious landscapes. This essay introduces a special forum on rhetoric and religion in contemporary politics and touches on some recent instances of how religious differences have played out in the current political environment. Some of the issues discussed include the separation of church and state, Mitt Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Rick Santorum’s conception of the “war on religion,” and the controversy over contraceptives at religious institutions and Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on a Georgetown law student.

This article takes a critical look at Ghana’s rapidly evolving broadcasting scene and in particular at the expansion and popularity of religious broadcasting. Sketching the developments of the Ghanaian media landscape, it analyses the changing politics of representing religion in this field. The much-celebrated processes of media deregulation and democratization, and the new opportunities for ownership, production, and participation they entail, have led to a dominance of Pentecostalism in the public sphere. While this development has been analysed from the perspective of churches and pastors, this article explores the intertwinement of commercial media and Pentecostalism from the perspective of a number of private media owners and producers in Accra. Whether these media entrepreneurs are themselves Pentecostal or not, they all have to deal with, and commercially exploit, the power and attraction of Pentecostalism. Their experience that commercial success is hardly possible
without Pentecostalism makes clear that the influence of Pentecostalism in the Ghanaian public sphere reaches way beyond media-active pastors and born-again media practitioners, and invites us to rethink the relationship between media, business and religion.

Until 1993 there were conducted first excavations in what promised to be the site of one of the most important buildings of Petra, the stunning capital of the Nabataean kingdom. Its construction, whose initiation century BC, several changes, reconstructions and landslides along its more than five hundred years of operation. But despite this still unknown for certain functions for which it was designed and that, regardless of the construction elements, materials have been located just still less inscriptions that shed some light on a mystery that will try here exhibit various theories that enable closer to resolution.

RESUMO: Este ensaio expõe e discute o princípio normativo da soberania das esferas sociais, tomando, por base, a formulação original do princípio conforme articulada pelo estadista e teólogo Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). Em seguida, trata do problema da tensa relação entre a esfera do governo civil e as demais, principalmente na teoria auxiliar que legitima em alguns casos a intervenção do governo civil em relação a outras esferas. O argumento é ilustrado ao longo do ensaio com exemplos sobre a relação entre as esferas do governo civil, da igreja e da educação, embora outras possíveis aplicações sejam tam-bém mencionadas. O ensaio termina com uma avaliação crítica da teoria auxiliar do inter-vencionismo do governo civil, indicando as dificuldades apresentadas no contexto da crise do espaço público atual e do pluralismo de princípios. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: soberania de esferas; Abraham Kuyper; pluralismo de princípios; pluralismo social; teologia pública.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674729711

Convened following Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the Congress of Vienna is remembered as much for the pageantry of the royals and elites who gathered there as for the landmark diplomatic agreements they brokered. Historians have nevertheless generally dismissed these spectacular festivities as window dressing when compared with the serious, behind-the-scenes maneuverings of sovereigns and statesmen. Brian Vick finds this conventional view shortsighted, seeing these instead as two interconnected dimensions of politics. Examining them together yields a more complete picture of how one of the most important diplomatic summits in history managed to redraw the map of Europe and the international system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Congress of Vienna investigates the Vienna Congress within a broad framework of influence networks that included unofficial opinion-shapers of all kinds, both men and women: artists and composers, entrepreneurs and writers, hosts and attendees of fashionable salons. In addition to high-profile negotiation and diplomatic wrangling over the post-Napoleonic fates of Germany, Italy, and Poland, Vick brings into focus other understudied yet significant issues: the African slave trade, Jewish rights, and relations with Islamic powers such as the Ottoman Empire and Barbary Corsairs. Challenging the usual portrayal of a reactionary Congress obsessed with rolling back Napoleon’s liberal reforms, Vick demonstrates that the Congress’s promotion of limited constitutionalism, respect for religious and nationality rights, and humanitarian interventions was influenced as much by liberal currents as by conservative ones.

Multi-faith spaces display and influence the state of public religion at UK universities. In the past decade the vast majority of university managers have adopted multi-faith policies. In most cases these reflect a growing engagement with religious identity and practice. But in a few cases the creation of multi-faith spaces corresponded with clashes between students of different faiths, student protests and negative media coverage about campus relations. How could the same policy have such different results? My study of multi-faith spaces suggests that the difference can be found in how university managers approach religion on campus, illustrated by two different approaches to accommodating Islamic prayer.

Athanasios Stogiannidis, School Educative Formation, Religious Education and Public Sphere. Reflections on Dietrich Benner's Educational Theory (in greek). (Σχολική Παιδεία, Μάθημα των Θρησκευτικών και Δημόσιος Χώρος. Αναστοχαστική Ιχνηλασία στην Παιδαγωγική Θεωρία του Dietrich Benner. Θεσσαλονίκη: Ostracon, 2021).

Quote as:
Salvatore, Armando, Oliver Schmidtke and Hans-Jörg Trenz. 2013 “Introduction: Rethinking the Public Sphere Through Transnationalizing Processes: Europe and Beyond,” in Rethinking the Public Sphere Through Transnationalizing Processes: Europe and Beyond, ed. Armando Salvatore, Oliver Schmidtke and Hans-Jörg Trenz, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1-24.

Public sphere reloaded — reevaluating its claims in response to transnationalization. The public sphere has emerged as a key concept in recent social scientific debates on the performance of liberal democracy and the democratic self-constitution of society. Building on Habermas’ (1989 [1962]) seminal work on the transformation of the public sphere, this notion has been employed to conceptualize the social and communicative underpinnings of democratic politics in modern societies. Based on the separation between the public and the private, the public sphere provides a historically bound and culturally specific solution for the creation of social bonds beyond the family (Eder 2006). Specifically, the public sphere offers a bridge between the fragmentation of modern social life on the one hand and the concept of a solidarity-oriented and democratically organized society on the other. The key ingredient to this solution is theorized as rational public discourse that provides the communicative link between autonomous individuals as ‘citizens’, unifies them as ‘the people’, and integrates them into a mode of collective self-government (Eder 2003; 2006; Peters 1994; Somers 1995). Questions have been raised, however, about the generalizability of the public sphere model in terms of understanding how different societies construct social bonds and constitute themselves as democratic ‘publics’.

La historia de los musulmanes en Ceuta, con todos los avatares que esta ha sufrido a lo largo del tiempo, es la historia de la propia ciudad. En la Ciudad Autónoma de Ceuta hay que hablar de una presencia musulmana secular, que constituye uno de los grupos socio-culturales significativos en este enclave africano. En la actualidad este colectivo supone entre el 40 y el 45% de la población 1 , definiéndose a partir de su identidad múltiple como musulmán y como ceutí y reivindicando, una gran mayoría de ellos, su reconocimiento como una minoría nacional de pleno derecho.

Ces dernières années, nos sociétés ont été le théâtre d’un regain en vigueur (et en intolérance) des religions monothéistes, lequel s’est accompagné d’une mise en question de l’évidence de la sécularisation et de la pertinence de la laïcité, accusées d’oppresser les « sensibilités religieuses ». Et tandis que prolifèrent fake news, « théories du complot » et autres délires de conflits de portée civilisationnelle voire cosmique, la défiance de l’autorité des sciences s’accroit et instaure une certaine désespérance de l’idéal démocratique. Face à cette situation, il est utile de se ressourcer dans les écrits de John Dewey consacrés aux religions et au naturalisme. Si le philosophe américain a pu dire en 1930 qu’il n’a « jamais été capable d’attacher beaucoup d’importance à la religion en tant que problème philosophique», il s’y est souvent intéressé en tant que problème intellectuel, social et politique.
Le présent livre rassemble vingt-cinq de ses interventions sur les religions et le naturalisme, couvrant une période allant de 1893 à 1950. En offrant en français l’accès à un pan méconnu de l’œuvre du philosophe et intellec- tuel américain, ce recueil aimerait contribuer à un rafraichissement pragmatiste de la critique des religions ; Dewey le montrait, c’est au nom des exigences de l’idéal démocratique qu’il faut critiquer les religions surnaturalistes et promouvoir le naturalisme.

Recent court challenges to the constitutionality of teacher-led recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools have centered on the question whether the Pledge is to be understood as a religious or secular ritual, given its post-1954 addition of the phrase “under God.” After a brief discussion of Establishment Clause jurisprudence on this question, we argue that the category of civil religion usefully illuminates what is at stake in constitutional debates about the Pledge and in similar rituals. We develop four perspectives through which the Pledge of Allegiance in particular, and civil religion in general, can be understood to function: preservationist, pluralist, priestly, and prophetic. Thus the ongoing controversy surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance is best understood not as a dispute between “believers” and “atheists,” but on the contested meaning, significance, and propriety of civil religion in America itself. In the end, we suggest that even without the contested phrase, the Pledge would remain a potent ritual of civil religion, serving all four functions, and urge further serious study of the religious significance of the phenomenon of civil religion.

2014년 5월 퀴어문화축제가 신촌 광장에서 열렸다. 동시에 같은 장소에서 반동성애시위를 하는 개신교인들도 있었다. ‘종교의 공공성’이 화두인 가운데, 우리는 공적 영역에서 기독교의 공적 역할에 대한 바람과 희망을 제시하는 “광장에 선 기독교” 대신에 “광장에 선 호모포비아”를 목격할 수 있었다. 이들은 한국사회 공적 영역에서 의견을 제출하고 논쟁거리를 만듦으로써 공공성이 무엇인지를 새롭게 규정하려고 노력한다. 이들은 종교의 이름으로 말할 때도 있었지만, 때로는 세속의 언어, 즉 국민다수의 성도덕과 유사과학적 근거에 의해 대중을 설득하려고 했다. 또 한편으로는 이와 대조적으로 퀴어축복식을 열며 기독교 신의 이름으로 지지하고 연대하는 기독교인들도 있었다. 이들 모두 각기 나름의 이유를 가지고 광장에 나오고, 또 그럼으로써 광장을 만들어 나가는 공적 영역의 주요한 행위자들이다. 그러면서도 여기에서 우리는 단순한 이분법적 정교관계론의 문제가 아니라 양자 간의 특이한 현상적 차이를 발견한다. 도식적으로 말하자면, 공론장에서 종교적 언어로 말하고 종교적 의례를 행하면서도 세속주의에 배척되거나 함몰되지 않고 오히려 신성함을 경험하게 만드는 종교, 그리고 이와는 정반대로 공론장에서 세속을 신성하게 만들고자 세속의 언어를 사용하는 종교 간의 차이를 말이다. 이외에도 2008년 촛불집회, 제주강정마을, 밀양 등지의 소위 세속적 사안들에서, 광장에서, 공론의 장에서 우리는 종교인들—그것이 소위 보수든 진보든, 물론 대개 진보적 종교 분파—이 자신들의 종교적 가치와 정체성을 부분적으로 포기하지 않으면서도 그것들을 적절하게 사용함으로써 적극적으로 대화하고 개입하는 사회적 현상을 목격했다. 이러한 현상이 나타나는 오늘날의 사회를 하버마스는 ‘후기 세속사회(post secular society)’라고 명명했고, 카사노바는 ‘종교의 공적 재등장’이라고 보았다.
  그렇다면 한국이라는 세속사회는 과연 어떤 세속사회인가? 구체적으로 우리는 어떤 세속사회를 살고 있으며 우리가 경험하는 세속과 종교의 관계는 무엇인가? 주지하다시피 대부분의 종교사회학자들은 이미 종교가 모든 면에서 힘을 잃을 것이라는 고전적인 세속화론을 폐기했다(대표적으로 피터 버거). 대신에 학자들은 ‘탈세속화’로 설명하기도 하지만 그렇다고 섣부르게 전면적이고 전지구적인 보편이론으로서의 탈세속화론을 주장할 수도 없게 되었다.
  따라서 우리들은 우리가 종교가 의미론적 잠재력을 가지고 공적으로 재등장한다는 하버마스나 카사노바 등의 판단을 따르면서1, 마치 ‘다중적 근대성’과 마찬가지로 다양한 유형의 (후기)세속사회가 존재할 수 있다고 생각한다. 따라서 우리의 가장 큰 문제의식은 이것이다: 우리는 ‘어떤’ 후기 세속사회에 살고 있는가? 개신교는 어떤 (의미에서) 공적 종교인가? 이는 사실상 세속과 종교의 관계를 전면적으로 재검토해야 하는 매우 어려운 과제이다. 이 과제를 수행하기 위한 기초적 단계로서 본 연구는 종교가 공적 영역에 영향을 미치는 국가(정부), 정치공동체, 시민사회 중에서 카사노바를 따라 시민사회에 초점을 둔다(최현종, 2013: 107).2 

그리고 하버마스의 이론에서 관건인 종교와 세속 간의 (동기부여와 타당성 주장을 통한) ‘상호학습과정’의 경험적 성공가능성과 ‘공적의식의 변화’ 및 ‘정체성의 확장’을 공론장에 (상이한 방식으로) 개입하는 개신교의 동성애 찬/반운동집단을 통한 (상이한) 공공성 주장과 결부하여 설명할 것이다. 그러므로 연구질문은 다음과 같이 보다 구체화된다: 후기 세속사회 한국 개신교(보수와 진보)의 공적 형태는 어떠한 모습인가? 한국 개신교는 공론장을 어떻게 변화시키고 있는가? 

‘후기세속사회’(Habermas)의 ‘종교의 공적 재등장’(Casanova)은 이미 우리의 현실이다. 종교적인 것과 세속적인 것의 범주들은 (세속화의 기본적 가정과 달리) 상호침투하고 혼합되며, 그럼으로써 또한 새로운 범주를 창출한다. 하버마스나 카사노바에게 있어서 종교는 “회고하고 기억해 내는 이성(anamnestic reason)”과 “이야기하기(story telling)”로서 “의미론적 잠재력”과 “동기부여하는 힘”을 가지고 있다(Habermas, 2002: 133). 그리고 종교는 (본래 유동적인) 공/사의 경계를 재구획함으로써 공적 논쟁을 불러일으키고 정치를 활성화한다. 그러므로 종교의 탈사사화는 종교에 담긴 공적/사적인 측면들이 상호적으로 작용하며 국가와 교회, 정치와 종교 사이에서 공적인 것을 재정의하고 공적 영역의 경계를 넓힐 수 있다(Casanova 1994, 66).3 또한 우스노우도 기독교가 초월적 지평의 원천으로서 공공적(communal) 차원의 사회 교섭을 증가시키고 도덕적 헌신을 통해 시민사회의 이상을 실현시키는 데 핵심적으로 기여할 수 있다는 다소 낙관적 전망을 내놓았다(Wuthnow, 2004; 2014). 그렇다고해서 공론장에서 모든 세속적 범주들이 무화되고 재주술화되는 것은 아니다. 즉 여기에서 우리는 상호배타적 범주로서의 종교와 세속 간의 대립이나 단순히 ‘정교분리’ 담론에 입각한 ‘정치종교’를 논하는 것이 아니라 ‘공공성’을 놓고 벌어지는 다양한 대립과 상호학습, 또는 “협업”(Habermas, 2003: 109)의 양상들을 살펴야 하는 것이다. 어쩌면 우리 모두가 간과한 ‘공공성’에 대한 동상이몽을 성찰해야 하는 것이다. 

우리들은 ‘공공성’ 및 ‘공’과 ‘사’라는 개념이 공론장에서 행위자들 간에 정당성 투쟁을 위한 ‘판돈(stake)’이자(P. Bourdieu) 행위자들이 공유하고 ‘전략적인 도구’로 활용(A. Swidler)하는 ‘문화코드’(J. Alexander)로서 그들의 ‘지속적인 실천(ongoing practice)’이나 ‘퍼포먼스’를 통해 정당하고 의미있는 행위의 동기로서 인정되고 학습된 – 규범적인 효과를 갖는 - ‘문화적 구성물(cultural object)’이라고 본다. 

우리의 학문적 목표는 크게 두 가지이다. 하나는 이론적 목표로서 하버마스의 ‘후기 세속사회론’에서 핵심적인 종교-세속 간의 ‘학습과정(learning process)’ 이론을 경험사례를 통해 확인(corroborate)하고 ‘비판적인 재구성’을 제안하는 것이다. 다른 하나는 종교 행위자가 담론적 실천을 통해 공론장을 의미있는 정치적·사회적 실재의 영역으로 구성해내는 대강의 과정을 분석함으로써 한국의 후기세속사회적 특징과 한국개신교의 공적 성격(공공성 형식)을 포착하는 것이다.

Despite the prominent view that religion will eventually decrease in importance, an observation of the vibrancy of religion today has recently led Jürgen Habermas to acknowledge the need for its inclusion in the public sphere (2006). Given that it is a space that is commonly assumed to be ‘secular’ or non-religious (Taylor, 2011), it may mean potential tension between the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’, which may emerge within public discussions (Benson, 2010). Also, there have been debates among scholars about how religious voices can co-exist with others given that public discussions tend to be based on rational arguments and religious discourses are inclined towards having their own coded vernacular (Taylor, 2011).

Within the sociological study of religion, scholars have recently studied the ‘sacred’ as a common factor within religions and non-negotiable secular values (Lynch, 2012; Knott, 2013). From that, the concepts of the ‘religious sacred’ and the ‘secular sacred’ were viewed to have ‘potential mutualities’ and should be studied as separate categories (Knott, 2013). Similarly in Australia, sociological scholars of religion have suggested a possible commonality between the ‘secular’ and the ‘sacred’ (Frame, 2009; Seal, 2009; Tacey, 2009).

This paper reports on a project that aims to find out the ways in which religion, spirituality and the ‘secular sacred’ emerges in the Australian public sphere by observing how they are being discussed on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Q&A panel discussion program. It will adopt the theoretical framework of ‘conventional religion’, ‘common religion’ and ‘secular sacred’, which was applied in a recent research on British media’s representation of religion and spirituality (Knott et al., 2013).
This paper will present findings from a pilot study conducted on 10 Q&A episodes. Preliminary findings show that all episodes raised significant references to the categories of ‘conventional religion’ and ‘secular sacred’ even though eight of the programs were topically unreligious. Findings also show that the theoretical framework can be further enhanced through a study in the Australian context.

"‘Science and religion dialogue’ is gaining much more attention in the contemporary world, especially after the emergence of it as an academic field within theology in the 1960s. The field itself is anchored on the conviction that there are possibilities for mutual cooperation and engagement between science and religion. The literature developed on science-religion dialogue shows that the methodologies in the field are profoundly dependent on Christian theology, religious philosophy and the philosophy of science, along with the recent endeavors to incorporate insights from the feminist and post colonial studies of science. However, it seems that so far no attempt has been made to introduce ‘Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’ (SSK) into the field of science and religion dialogue as a valid source of methodological insights about the process of knowledge production in modern science.

The intention of this paper is to demonstrate that ‘Public Understanding of Science’ (PUS), an area of research that comes under Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, can be of immense contribution to the dialogue between science and religion."

Beginning in the seventeenth century, the Smārta intellectual community of South India entered into an unprecedented alliance with Śaṅkarācārya monastic institutions and their corresponding esoteric lineage, the Śrīvidyā school of Śākta tantrism. Among the prominent intellectuals of this period, Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita, grand-nephew of the renowned polymath
Appayya Dīkṣita, and a number of his associates began to cultivate devotional relationships with a particular lineage of Śaṅkarācārya ascetics. Through initiation under these preceptors, Nīlakaṇṭha and his colleagues cultivated a
sophisticated knowledge of Śrīvidyā ritual and theology, composing treatises on the subject, which to date have remained unexamined by scholarly literature. By examining two of these works in detail in the present essay—the Ambāstavavyākhyā of Ardhanārīśvara Dīkṣita and the Śaṅkarābhyudaya of Rājacūḍāmaṇi Dīkṣita —I argue that Śrīvidyā esotericism served as a vehicle through which Sanskrit intellectuals actively contested and transformed public
modes of sectarian affiliation and socio-religious community integration in the South Indian Smārta community. In particular, I demonstrate that this intellectual community reinvented the legacy of two icons of Sanskrit cultural history—Śaṅkarācārya and Kālidāsa—whom they recast as paradigms of both
Sanskritic aesthetic virtue and esoteric Śākta devotionalism.

This study is embedded in Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere and its transformation in the twenty-first century. This study aims to show that the public sphere is a concept that is relevant in today’s society. With the developments in the media plane particularly in the present century, the concept shows that it can transcend its traditional limits and can be understood in another context.

This study mainly utilizes the method of textual analysis and exposition in further understanding the evolution, decline and transformation of the public sphere. The first chapter contains the usual introductory part. It serves as the preface to the main discussion of the study. The second chapter is a discussion of the evolution and rise of the public sphere theory in the eighteenth-century particularly in European societies. These historical underpinnings serve as the basis of the theory. The third chapter is a discussion of the decline of the public sphere brought about by socio-political changes in the nineteenth-century. This chapter shows that the public sphere has disintegrated mainly due to the citizens’ loss of critical attitude and the manipulation that occurred in the public sphere’s medium. The fourth chapter dwells with the new configurations of the public sphere in the twenty-first century brought about by the rise of different information technologies.  Lastly, the fifth chapter contains the summary and conclusion of the study.

This study concludes that with the rise of different information technologies in the present century particularly with the rise of the Internet, the concept of the public sphere has not only revived but it has also been transformed as well.

The study implies that the developments in the media plane can benefit the society but only through the efforts of the society as a whole as well as with the help of citizens who continuously engage in fruitful dialogue and meaningful debate.

Keywords: Bourgeois, Bourgeois Constitutional State, Literary Public Sphere, Political Public Sphere, Press, Public Sphere, Rational - Critical Debate, Representative publicity, Refeudalization

Could democracy have a 'secret' history? Most of us are familiar with a history of democracy that emphasises the keystone moments in the story of Western civilization: the achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the more recent development of the British parliament, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, and the gradual global spread of democracy since the end of the Cold War. The central argument of this book is that there is much more to the history of democracy than this standard history admits. There is a whole secret history, too big, complex and insufficiently 'Western' in character to be included in common accounts.

In exploring The Secret History of Democracy, the contributors establish that democracy was developing in the Middle East, India and China before classical Athens, clung on during the 'Dark Ages' in Islam, Iceland and Venice, was often part of tribal life in Africa, North America and Australia, and has developed in unexpected ways through the grassroots activism of Muslims, feminists and technophiles.


"This exciting book surely enlivens and enriches our debate on democracy and its future by digging afresh oft-forgotten, yet most enlightening democratic experiences found in human history. "
- Takashi Inoguchi, Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo and President of the University of Niigata Prefecture, Japan

"The thought-provoking essays gathered in The Secret History of Democracy provide convincing evidence that democratic mechanisms have been invented many times and in many places, including times and places neglected in common accounts. This collection is a sobering reminder that democratic practices have often been succeeded by something else. But one also takes away a sense of the dynamic character of democratic history and the endless diversity of practices with some reasonable claim to embody democratic principles. As growing numbers wonder about what sorts of political institutions make sense in the face of the enormous problems confronting the twenty-first century, this demonstration of the long human history of political creativity gives some reason for hope."
-John Markoff, Professor, University of Pittsburgh, USA

"A fascinating, thought-provoking and well-informed survey of little-known "roots of democracy" and "proto-democratic" systems and movements across the globe , from ancient and "primitive" to modern societies. An eye-opener that forces us to differentiate more carefully and to rethink the history of democracy."
- Kurt Raaflaub, Emeritus Professor, Brown University, USA

Cette étude met en lumière à la fois la rapide diversification du paysage religieux fribourgeois et la pérennité de l'attachement de la majorité de la population aux Eglises établies. Outre un panorama des groupes religieux présents dans le canton et de leur importance numérique, l'étude analyse les transformations ainsi que les relations des groupes religieux entre eux et avec la société fribourgeoise.

Just as there are different types of and reasons for proselytization, there are corresponding arguments against proseytization. I offer here an analysis of four distinct types (i.e., arguments against proselytization) and assess the adequacy of each.

By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the owner of the copyright thereof (unless to the extent explicitly otherwise stated) and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.

For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world.

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.

Scholars researching and writing on the roles of pastor-caregivers in predominantly black congregations have done so using models originally designed to examine the roles of pastor-caregivers in predominantly white churches. This study offers a revised model based on the historical development and present reality of black churches that more closely matches the historical and present roles of the black pastor, who can trace his or her roots back to African spiritual traditions.

This study contends that the CBCP has shifted its character from one which manifested its politicized power and influence over people to one that has changed its manner of powerdispensation and influence which is somewhat more latent and less political. In supporting this thesis, this paper further analyzes the dynamics of the Conference's formal and de facto leadership, and delves into the structure, power-relations, and ideological shifts that resulted from the different political contours it traversed. as regards the year particularly identified, this study seeks to provide evidence that the CBCP's shift in attitude towards politics and power-dispensation then, is textually demonstrable and open to political analysis or theorizing.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

This article aims to explore emerging trends for the Sunni religious elite and the Islamic legal tradition in the new context of the Arab Uprisings by focusing on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably the most prominent of these ʿulamāʾ alive today. The article will follow al-Qaradawi’s articulation, transmission and reconstruction of the Islamic legal tradition in his own discourse as he has attempted to negotiate the politically fraught contexts of the Arab Uprisings while also maintaining his horizontal commitments to a diverse base of supporters be they the wider Arab Muslim public, the Muslim Brotherhood or indeed the Qatari royal family. The article will focus on al-Qaradawi’s highly publicised interventions and fatwas in relation to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria from the perspective of Islamic studies, and also draw on personal interviews with al-Qaradawi, his personal staff, as well as supplementary media. In so doing, the article will elucidate al-Qaradawi and his colleagues’ attempts, ranging from the highly creative to the markedly conservative, to respond to unfolding events through the legal tradition and play an increasingly active role in the public sphere while their own status simultaneously becomes ever more vulnerable and unstable.

In South Africa, previous analyses of religious nationalism turn on the apartheid regime and its close ties to the Dutch Reformed Church. Since the fall of apartheid, democracy and pluralism have been emphasized as the discourse of the new South Africa, which aims to accommodate all of South Africa’s many religious traditions. Together with decades of neoliberal economic policy, the outcome is that in South Africa private individuals and organizations make claims on public spaces as rate-payers and property-owners, in the process revealing normative assumptions about proper and improper religions. Drawing attention to two instances of the manipulation of animal bodies in public spaces, the chapter reveals the close connections between religion, animal sacrifice, racial hierarchy and conflicts over the use of and access to public spaces. The public practice of animal sacrifice reveals the existence of a sensory politics enacted by marginalized groups through which entrenched normativities about proper and improper bodies, substances and religions are contested in the name of a future nation to come.

Since the times of the Enlightenment, traditional control of religion in vital spheres of the social order began to crumble under the secular challenge of politics, culture, science, economy, judiciary, philosophy, and education.  Ethics and theology were probably the last strongholds until they eventually succumbed as well under the influence of the now secularized academia.  This happened at a time when society was restless with exciting medical discoveries which brought with them the age-old questions of just distribution, legitimate use of technology and justified manipulation of nature.  The debate on contraception was among the test cases of novel technology with ethical substance, and dissent against church teaching caused an exodus of scholar to join the burgeoning field of bioethics.  Even though theologians made important seminal contributions in the early days of bioethics, it was philosophy that bioethics eventually fell back on because of the troubles facing theology.  Principlism soon became the dominant philosophical model to be applied in policymaking and at the bedside.  However, the consensus achieved by this ethic looked contrived and open to manipulation of the potent.  As discontents brewed, a plethora of competing models surged on the horizon, many of them sought to relocate ethics in the context of the situation or the character of the moral agent.  Unwittingly, this puts secular bioethics on the path toward ethical relativism, liberalism and nihilism.  Bioethics has become a secular creature which not only rejects religion but now questions the very possibility of reason itself.  Different speculations sought to provide the causes of the secularization of bioethics.  At root is an uncertainty about the place of religion in democracy, and of situating religious ethics in public ethics.  Secular bioethics’ inadequacy also calls for a reexamination of the possible contribution of religion and theology in terms of distinctively religious content, communities and methodologies.  Hence, a ray of hope appears on the horizon for religion to reinsert itself into the bioethical debate, which has become impoverished from its absence.

The Iglesia ni Cristo is one of the fastest-growing indigenous Christian churches in the world. They have an estimated membership of 2.25 million adherents in more than 100 countries. In recent years its civic engagements have expanded through bigger relief operations and charity dedicated to the poor and those affected by calamities. These initiatives are typically articulated in terms of unity, duty, and obedience to God. This paper gives attention to this expansion by spelling it out and explaining it in view of its newfound role in civil society. This is an important intervention in the literature. Studies on INC have mainly focused on its successes in the political and religious spheres. INC now repackages itself as a civic organisation that cares about public welfare. My argument is that this is how it manifests its new triumphalism in the Philippines, but with implications on its expanding presence in civil society.

I am still on the first stretch of this nomadic exploration, but I think I can begin to answer the question that is guiding this exploration—'how can the Natural-Indigenous Worldview support our understandings of the potential for an anarchist society (i.e. for social order without hierarchical domination)?' The key of Natural-Indigenous Worldview that opens the lock of an anarchist society, of a society without hierarchical domination, comes in the Natural-Indigenous Worldview's spiritual ecology. When we develop the four R's (responsibility, reciprocity, respect, relationships [Young 2015]) through relating to the world in a manner that is facilitated by the spiritual ecology that rises from the Natural-Indigenous Worldview and thus ascribes spirit to all things without regard for the Colonial Modernist Worldview's distinction between 'animate' and 'inanimate', we come to see the world as a single, living, conscious being. The illusion of a discrete distinction between self and other breaks down and we come to see the self (and other selves) as strands in the unified, conscious web of creation. We come to care for all of creation as we would care for our children, for our partners, for our parents and for our self. Transcending the illusion of discrete individuality we develop a lovingly reciprocal, responsible, respectful and relational orientation to the world that begets virtuous thought, feeling, behavior and being without recourse to hierarchical authority (to punishment and fear of punishment). Engaging with the world through the spiritual ecology that rises from the Natural-Indigenous Worldview allows the sprouts of human nature to grow to fruition without recourse to hierarchical domination (i.e. without recourse to attempts to 'help sprouts grow' by pulling on them and the death of the sprouts of human nature portended by such hierarchical folly [Meng Zi 2016, 2A2]).

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

In his extant letters and speeches, Emperor Constantine often referred to God. However, these references were seldom theological elaborations on the concept of God. Instead, they were usually limited to the use of certain ambiguous titles of God. Accordingly, this article examines the emperor’s concept of God with the help of the so-called title-theology. Arguably, Constantine’s understanding of God developed from inclusive “pagan” henotheism to a qualified Christian monotheism, yet so that it retained the promise of accommodating various views of God. Vagueness in theological matters served the purpose of establishing the widest possible religious consensus in the Roman Empire. At the same time, this calculated vagueness also enabled different interpretations of Constantine’s theological utterances and perhaps contributed indirectly to the Trinitarian controversies within the Christian church. A comparison between Constantine’s concepts of God and that of Nicaea shows both a significant agreement and the existence of different underlying incentives.

Предлагаем вашему вниманию второй выпуск журнала Tartaria Magna (Тартария Магна), в котором мы продолжаем тему противостояния и компромисса между "своим" и "чужим". В этом выпуске представлены исследования авторов, так или иначе касающиеся вопросов конструирования и разрушения социальных границ религиями. Второй выпуск Tartaria Magna носит название "Мир "своих" и "чужих": Духовные братья, священные враги" ( www.tartaria-magna.ru ). Как и круг поднимаемых проблем, исследовательская география выпуска традиционно широка - от Прибалтики до Тибета, от Закавказья до Забайкалья. В выпуске представлены исследования авторов из разных стран, занимающихся изучением различных народов и культур, но всех их объединяет высокий исследовательский уровень, проблематика номера и... журнал Tartaria Magna.

The Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi order is a transnational religious organization. Founded by Shaykh Nazim al- Haqqani (b. 1922), the order spread throughout the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, and then to Britain in the 1970s. In 1990, Nazim's student Shaykh Hisham Kabbani moved to the United States and established a branch of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order there. The past fifteen years have seen the emergence of this order as one of the most widespread and politically active Sufi organizations in America. In this paper I ask: Why and how is it that the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order effectively functions as a public religion in America? To answer this question, I will use José Casanova's theory of public religion to understand why and how the order has developed and maintained a public profile in the United States. I contend that the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order's public activity is rooted in: (1) the Naqshbandi order's history of public significance in Muslim societies; (2) the order's theological and practical appreciation of religious and cultural pluralism; (3) the order's transnational character; and (4) its adoption of certain elements of American civil religion. théorie de José Casanova au sujet de la religion du public à fin de comprendre pourquoi et comment l'ordre a développé et maintenu un profil public aux États-Unis. Je soutiens que l'activité publique de l'ordre Naqshbandi-Haqqani est ancré dans : 1) l'histoire d'une importance publique de l'ordre Naqshbandi dans les sociétés musulmanes ; 2) l'appréciation théologique et pratique de l'ordre envers le pluralisme religieux et culturel ; 3) le caractère transnational de l'ordre ; et 4) l'adoption de certains éléments de la religion civile américaine.

"Half a century ago Jürgen Habermas published his seminal work Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (1962–2012), in which he formalized his ideal-typical model of the public sphere.

The influence of the Habermasian paradigm in the following decades has been such that it has given rise to an autonomous interdisciplinary field of study, bringing together historians, literary scholars, political scientists, and philosophers.

For fifty years Habermas's theory has been the catalyst for the historiographical debate about public opinion and has been recognized as an interpretative paradigm of the development of Western modernity.

Despite the heralding of a post-Habermas era; despite the fact that some historians have mused over a possible – and in the minds of a few even desirable – total eclipse of the Habermasian doctrine; Habermas's model still boasts a significant scholarly vitality. Many answers that the German philosopher supplied have turned out to be inaccurate, but for historians the bigger questions that he posed remain relevant: how – and when – was the critical power of public discussion born? How are «the public» and «public spaces» defined? What is the relationship between public discourse and authority? What, ultimately, is the power of communication?

Inspired by the fundamental question of the relationship between power and communication, the current research paths explored by historians of the Ancien régime have consolidated the critical dialectic with this analytical paradigm, but at the same time have led in a direction that goes beyond the public sphere.

This volume combines empirical research on early modern Europe with the most recent theoretical approaches in the historiography of political communication. Leading North American and European scholars in the field engage critically with this fundamental concept of political modernity and present a new way of thinking about early modern politics."

Reviewed in American Historical Review; Cromhos; Francia; European History Quarterly; European Review of History; Historische Zeitschrift; Journal of Early Modern History; Renaissance Quarterly; Renaissance Studies; Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine; Revue Historique; Storicamente.