Religious Politics and Secular States
Title | Religious Politics and Secular States PDF eBook |
Author | Scott W. Hibbard |
Publisher | JHU Press |
Total Pages | 326 |
Release | 2010-10-15 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0801899206 |
2011 Winner of the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize of the International Political Science Association This comparative analysis probes why conservative renderings of religious tradition in the United States, India, and Egypt remain so influential in the politics of these three ostensibly secular societies. The United States, Egypt, and India were quintessential models of secular modernity in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1980s and 1990s, conservative Islamists challenged the Egyptian government, India witnessed a surge in Hindu nationalism, and the Christian right in the United States rose to dominate the Republican Party and large swaths of the public discourse. Using a nuanced theoretical framework that emphasizes the interaction of religion and politics, Scott W. Hibbard argues that three interrelated issues led to this state of affairs. First, as an essential part of the construction of collective identities, religion serves as a basis for social solidarity and political mobilization. Second, in providing a moral framework, religion's traditional elements make it relevant to modern political life. Third, and most significant, in manipulating religion for political gain, political elites undermined the secular consensus of the modern state that had been in place since the end of World War II. Together, these factors sparked a new era of right-wing religious populism in the three nations. Although much has been written about the resurgence of religious politics, scholars have paid less attention to the role of state actors in promoting new visions of religion and society. Religious Politics and Secular States fills this gap by situating this trend within long-standing debates over the proper role of religion in public life.
Secular States, Religious Politics
Title | Secular States, Religious Politics PDF eBook |
Author | Sumantra Bose |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 393 |
Release | 2018-05-03 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1108472036 |
Presents a comparative study of two major attempts to build secular states - India and Turkey - in the non-Western world
Freedom of Religion and the Secular State
Title | Freedom of Religion and the Secular State PDF eBook |
Author | Russell Blackford |
Publisher | John Wiley & Sons |
Total Pages | 219 |
Release | 2012-02-07 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0470674032 |
Exploring the relationship between religion and the state Focusing on the intersection of religion, law, and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, Blackford considers the concept of the secular state, revising and updating enlightenment views for the present day. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State offers a comprehensive analysis, with a global focus, of the subject of religious freedom from a legal as well as historical and philosophical viewpoint. It makes an original contribution to current debates about freedom of religion, and addresses a whole range of hot-button issues that involve the relationship between religion and the state, including the teaching of evolution in schools, what to do about the burqa, and so on.
Secular States and Religious Diversity
Title | Secular States and Religious Diversity PDF eBook |
Author | Bruce J. Berman |
Publisher | UBC Press |
Total Pages | 349 |
Release | 2013-10-25 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0774825154 |
Nation-states have seen the rise of religious pluralism within their borders, brought about by global migration and the challenge of radical religious movements. This book explores the meaning of secularism and religious freedom in these new contexts. The contributors chart the impact of globalization, the varying forms of secularism in Western states, and the different kinds of relations between states and religious institutions in the historical traditions and contemporary politics of Islamic, Indic, and Chinese societies. They also examine the limitations and dilemmas of governmental responses to unprecedented diversity, and grapple with the question of how secular states deal (and should deal) with such pluralism.
Secularism
Title | Secularism PDF eBook |
Author | Andrew Copson |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 164 |
Release | 2017 |
Genre | RELIGION |
ISBN | 0198809131 |
What is secularism? -- Secularism in Western societies -- Secularism diversifies -- The case for Secularism -- The case against Secularism -- Conceptions of Secularism -- Hard questions and new conflicts -- Afterword: the future of Secularism
Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion
Title | Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion PDF eBook |
Author | Ahmet T. Kuru |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 335 |
Release | 2009-04-27 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 052151780X |
Comparing policy in America, France, and Turkey, this book analyzes the impact of ideological struggles on public policies toward religion.
The Politics of Secularism
Title | The Politics of Secularism PDF eBook |
Author | Murat Akan |
Publisher | Columbia University Press |
Total Pages | 435 |
Release | 2017-09-05 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0231543808 |
Discussions of modernity—or alternative and multiple modernities—often hinge on the question of secularism, especially how it travels outside its original European context. Too often, attempts to answer this question either imagine a universal model derived from the history of Western Europe, which neglects the experience of much of the world, or emphasize a local, non-European context that limits the potential for comparison. In The Politics of Secularism, Murat Akan reframes the question of secularism, exploring its presence both outside and inside Europe and offering a rich empirical account of how it moves across borders and through time. Akan uses France and Turkey to analyze political actors' comparative discussions of secularism, struggles for power, and historical contextual constraints at potential moments of institutional change. France and Turkey are critical sites of secularism: France exemplifies European political modernity, and Turkey has long been the model of secularism in a Muslim-majority country. Akan analyzes prominent debates in both countries on topics such as the visibility of the headscarf and other religious symbols, religion courses in the public school curriculum, and state salaries for clerics and imams. Akan lays out the institutional struggles between three distinct political currents—anti-clericalism, liberalism, and what he terms state-civil religionism—detailing the nuances of how political movements articulate the boundary between the secular and the religious. Disputing the prevalent idea that diversity is a new challenge to secularism and focusing on comparison itself as part of the politics of secularism, this book makes a major contribution to understanding secular politics and its limits.