The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2011-03-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 023152725X

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does or should religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jürgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

The Power of Religious Publics

The Power of Religious Publics
Author: William H. Swatos Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1999-08-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0313371326

Currently, public religion is in a time of flux and the notion of the common good—once associated with the Protestant voice in America—is openly contested by new religious coalitions seeking to communicate their version of the truth and plant their stake in the public domain. This edited volume reflects on the changing tone and form of the public voice of religion, on its function in American society, and on its relationship to the private world of religion. It proposes that public religion, when exercised in a civil and accountable way, can be a responsible and prophetic voice in public life and enrich the American experiment in liberal democracy. The contributors—first-rate scholars including Martin Marty and Robert Belah—focus on public religion's influence on controversial issues such as multiculturalism, economic inequality, abortion, and homosexuality.

The Power Worshippers

The Power Worshippers
Author: Katherine Stewart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1635573459

The inspiration for the documentary God & Country For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power. For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals. The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.

Climate Politics and the Power of Religion

Climate Politics and the Power of Religion
Author: Evan Berry
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2022-05-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0253059070

How does our faith affect how we think about and respond to climate change? Climate Politics and the Power of Religion is an edited collection that explores the diverse ways that religion shapes climate politics at the local, national, and international levels. Drawing on case studies from across the globe, it stands at the intersection of religious studies, environment policy, and global politics. From small island nations confronting sea-level rise and intensifying tropical storms to high-elevation communities in the Andes and Himalayas wrestling with accelerating glacial melt, there is tremendous variation in the ways that societies draw on religion to understand and contend with climate change. Climate Politics and the Power of Religion offers 10 timely case studies that demonstrate how different communities render climate change within their own moral vocabularies and how such moral claims find purchase in activism and public debates about climate policy. Whether it be Hindutva policymakers in India, curanderos in Peru, or working-class people's concerns about the transgressions of petroleum extraction in Trinidad—religion affects how they all are making sense of and responding to this escalating global catastrophe.

Habermas and Religion

Habermas and Religion
Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2016-03-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0745674267

To the surprise of many readers, Jürgen Habermas has recentlymade religion a major theme of his work. Emphasizing bothreligion's prominence in the contemporary public sphere and itspotential contributions to critical thought, Habermas's engagementwith religion has been controversial and exciting, putting much ofhis own work in fresh perspective and engaging key themes inphilosophy, politics and social theory. Habermas argues that the once widely accepted hypothesis ofprogressive secularization fails to account for the multipletrajectories of modernization in the contemporary world. He callsattention to the contemporary significance of "postmetaphysical"thought and "postsecular" consciousness - even in Western societiesthat have embraced a rationalistic understanding of publicreason. Habermas and Religion presents a series of original andsustained engagements with Habermas's writing on religion in thepublic sphere, featuring new work and critical reflections fromleading philosophers, social and political theorists, andanthropologists. Contributors to the volume respond both toHabermas's ambitious and well-developed philosophical project andto his most recent work on religion. The book closes with anextended response from Habermas - itself a major statement from oneof today's most important thinkers.

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231156464

Eduardo Mendieta is professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. --

Religion, Power, Politics

Religion, Power, Politics
Author: Konrad Raiser
Publisher: World Council of Churches
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Church and state
ISBN: 9782825415993

The expectations that economic leaders and politicians have of religions and their leaders as guardians of the moral and ethical traditions of humanity, and of their ability to mediate in the current situations of conflict, requires religions, and not least Christian churches, to engage in critical self-reflection about their action in the public space. -- Konrad Raiser *** Religion pervades today's headlines, yet not always in a positive way. Is there a positive role for religion in the future? Focusing on the global picture and on all religions, not the least Christianity, in this book author Konrad Raiser closely probes the relationship between religion and politics in all its rich, promising, and sometimes deadly combinations. As a Christian theologian with decades of international and interreligious experience, Raiser's enlightening book wrestles with: the most contentious questions posed by the ambiguous status of religion in a post-secular world * the advent of a global economic order that leaves whole regions behind * the rise of fundamentalism in religious traditions * religion and violence * religiously-motivated terrorism. Anchored in fundamental considerations about how religion and politics relate to each other in both practice and in theory, Raiser searches for a positive cultural role for religion in today's emerging global culture and in the path to peace and justice.

The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion
Author: Peter Clarke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1063
Release: 2011-02-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191557528

The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion draws on the expertise of an international team of scholars providing both an entry point into the sociological study and understanding of religion and an in-depth survey into its changing forms and content in the contemporary world. The role and impact of religion and spirituality on the politics, culture, education and health in the modern world is rigorously discussed and debated. The study of the sociology of religion forges interdisciplinary links to explore aspects of continuity and change in the contemporary interface between society and religion. Using a combination of theoretical, methodological and content-led approaches, the fifty-seven contributors collectively emphasise the complex relationships between religion and aspects of life from scientific research to law, ecology to art, music to cognitive science, crime to institutional health care and more. The developing character of religion, irreligion and atheism and the impact of religious diversity on social cohesion are explored. An overview of current scholarship in the field is provided in each themed chapter with an emphasis on encouraging new thinking and reflection on familiar and emergent themes to stimulate further debate and scholarship. The resulting essay collection provides an invaluable resource for research and teaching in this diverse discipline.

The Myth of American Religious Freedom

The Myth of American Religious Freedom
Author: David Sehat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2011-01-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199793115

In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.

The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity

The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity
Author: Andrew Cain
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2016-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317019539

Late Antiquity witnessed a dramatic recalibration in the economy of power, and nowhere was this more pronounced than in the realm of religion. The transformations that occurred in this pivotal era moved the ancient world into the Middle Ages and forever changed the way that religion was practiced. The twenty eight studies in this volume explore this shift using evidence ranging from Latin poetic texts, to Syriac letter collections, to the iconography of Roman churches and Merowingian mortuary goods. They range in chronology from the late third through the early seventh centuries AD and apply varied theories and approaches. All converge around the notion that religion is fundamentally a discourse of power and that power in Late Antiquity was especially charged with the force of religion. The articles are divided into eight sections which examine the power of religion in literature, theurgical power over the divine, emperors and the deployment of religious power, limitations on the power of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the use of the cross as a symbol of power, Rome and its transformation as a center of power, the power of religion in the barbarian west, and religious power in the communities of the east. This kaleidoscope of perspectives creates a richly illuminating volume that add a new social and political dimension to current debates about religion in Late Antiquity.