Dynamics of Religion by Christoph Bochinger Jörg Rüpke

Author:Christoph Bochinger, Jörg Rüpke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Exploring the Post-Secular

David Westerberg: Who benefits from the idea of the post-secular? A critical investigation of the fashionable concept of “post-secularity”

The term “post-secular” was popularized by Jürgen Habermas and generally refers to some form of resurgence of religion, as well as the more or less inevitable place of religion in politics. By critically examining several theorists and academic debates, this study looks at how different meanings are ascribed to “post-secular” and the interests at stake. “Post-secularity” varies from being about “secular sociological naturalism”, to doing “political theology”, to being about “living in the presence of God”. Since many of these writers tend to ignore (the problem of) defining religion all together, this study shows how superficial and inherently flawed the concept is, incorporating many of the theoretical problems within Religious Studies. The proponents of “post-secularity” uncritically reinforce essentialist ideas of “believers” and “non-believers”, as well as naturalizing “religion” and “the secular”, thereby masking any socio-political interests in using and redrawing the boundaries of these categories

Mari Miyamoto: Reconstructing religious spheres: religion and democracy in re-Buddhisizing societies in the Himalayas

The presentation aims to describe the recent transitions of value systems and religious practices in re-Buddhisizing societies in the Himalayas. While Bhutan is widely known as a Mahayana Buddhist society under the supervision of the central monastery of the Drukpa-Kagyu school in Bhutan, the religious sphere of Bhutan in fact has been constructed also by rich and plural religious actors and indigenous rituals. However, under the recent secularization of the political system, including the disfranchisement of “religious personalities” under the government’s democratization policy, Buddhist monasteries and monks are now trying to reconstruct the religious sphere as a unified entity through the integration of alternative religious practices into Buddhism. In this presentation, I aim to examine how people interpret new religious orders and reconstruct their value systems and religious spheres through their everyday practices in rural Bhutan.

Marta Zając: Dynamics of tradition

“In the latter half of the twentieth century England was (…) the home of a distinctly non-metaphysical culture”, Aidan Nichols OP rightly remarks; still, one should also consider what historian Joseph Peirce names “a Christian literary revival which (…) represented an (…) intellectual response to the prevailing agnosticism of the age”. The paper confronts the problem thus suggested, namely, the undercurrent of religious thinking in the mainstream of secular culture. First, it takes into account a contrast between true religion and philosophical religion that J.H. Newman makes, together with G.K. Chesterton’s claim that “logic is not health” and the parallel he draws between the rationalist and the madman, to refer finally to Ronald Knox’s disapproval of Victorian “synthetic religion”. After recalling the views of these most notable English converts, I discuss their problematic (if not impossible) relation to current post-secular thinking.

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