Religious Particularism vs. Religious Universalism

Religious Particularism vs. Religious Universalism
Author: Zoran Matevski
Publisher: Ethics International Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2023-11-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1804411752

The process of globalization means that borders between societies are becoming less important, and socio-cultural developments in certain societies are increasingly influenced by events from other parts of the world. This creates two opposing social effects. On the one hand, there is a risk of clashes between different religions, which are present within a social community. On the other hand, these close contacts among different religions may diminish differences among them, and thus reduce tensions and conflicts. This book explores the conflict between particularism and universalism. Particularism emphasizes the importance of the characteristics of particular social groups; ethnic, cultural, religious, and regional. Unlike particularism, universalism emphasizes the importance of similarities among people and systems of values in individual societies. The authors in this collection address some of the important issues at the interface of particularism and universalism, including the role of religion as a mitigator of the influence of global processes; fundamentalism as a form of collective identity; and the idea of ecumenism and neo-ecumenism as myth or reality. An important collection for scholars and researchers in religion and faith, politics, and globalization.

Universalism and Particularism in Islam

Universalism and Particularism in Islam
Author: M. Alam
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 13
Release: 2018-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3668720142

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Religion, grade: A, National Islamic University (CSCRC), course: MPhil, language: English, abstract: I would like to discuss about historical continuity, global changes and symbolic connections. In the construction of modern Muslim identities there is a striking degree of historical structural continuity. In some cases, contemporary Islamic states and Islamic religious movements are simply the direct continuations of past ones. In the shaping of the modern Islamic world there have been two contradictory trends: the trend toward global integration, which favors universalistic Islam and the trend toward the consolidation of national states, which favors the particularization or localization of Islam.

To Re-Enchant the World

To Re-Enchant the World
Author: Richard Grigg
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2004-12-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781469104515

Since the seventeenth century, Western culture has been undergoing what historians and sociologists call secularization, the process via which religious institutions lose more and more of their power in society. Whereas Western society was once held together by the Christian Church, it is now held together by the rational procedures dictated by modern capitalism. But the rules of capitalism, whether ultimately helpful or harmful to our society’s development, are not values or spiritual principles. Instead, they are simply technical dicta about the most efficient means to an economic end. One visible aspect of the process of secularization is the weakening, and perhaps eventual withering away, of traditional religious institutions. This process is already fully visible in Western Europe, and is evident, on a more subterranean level, in American society as well. Secularization threatens to “disenchant” the world (Max Weber), to cut us off from the sense of the sacred and of Mystery. But the withering of the old religious institutions does not mean that religion and spirituality themselves will simply disappear. Rather, they can take on new forms, as is evident in the New Age movement in American society. Yet, there is a difficulty with New Age sorts of spiritualities when compared with the old-time religion: these new spiritualities tend to be very individualistic, if not idiosyncratic. Sociologists point out that our spiritual practices will never appear fully real to us unless they have inter-subjective validity, unless they are supported by a social “plausibility structure” (Peter Berger). That is, my view of the world has the aura of reality as long as most of the people around me acknowledge that view and reinforce it. But individualistic New Age pieties seem to have no such social reinforcement underpinning them. Hence the central argument of To Re-Enchant the World: the Unitarian Universalist community accomplishes the unique task of re-enchanting the world by bringing a host of individual spiritualities into a single community where all of them are affirmed and thus granted social plausibility. The U.U. community, then, is a particularly powerful site for the re-enchantment of the world: it puts us back in touch with the sacred and with what the book labels the Mysterious Depth of reality. While Unitarian Universalists can bring many different spiritual ways into the U.U. community, five are analyzed in depth in the book, namely, humanism, a focus on nature, engagement with the arts, commitment to social justice, and devotion to a Source/Creative Abyss of the universe. The book also considers rituals common to the U.U. community and the experience of sacred space, sacred time, and sacred word in that community. Finally, To Re-Enchant the World makes some predictions about the future of Unitarian Universalism and even touches on the delicate issue of U.U. proselytizing. The book as a whole attempts to present a philosophical analysis of Unitarian Universalism that draws upon the most important intellectual currents in contemporary Western culture. The book operates with the conviction that while other American religious denominations can have their “systematic theologies,” there is no reason why Unitarian Universalists cannot have philosophies of U.U. pluralism.

All the World

All the World
Author: Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD
Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2014-08-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1580237835

Why be Jewish? A fascinating dialogue across denominations of the High Holy Days and their message of Jewish purpose beyond mere survival. Almost forty contributors from three continents—men and women, scholars and poets, rabbis and theologians, representing all Jewish denominations and perspectives—examine the tension between Israel as a particular People called by God, and that very calling as intended for a universalist end, furthering God’s vision for all the world, not just for Jews alone. This balance of views arises naturally out of the prayers in the High Holy Day liturgy, coupled with insights from philosophy, literature, theology and ethics. This fifth volume in the Prayers of Awe series provides the relevant traditional prayers in the original Hebrew, alongside a new and annotated translation. It explores the question “Why be Jewish?” in a time when universalist commitment to our planet and its people has only grown in importance, even as particularist questions of Jewish continuity have become ever more urgent.