The Secular Paradox

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The Secular Paradox
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Author : Joseph Blankholm
language : en
Publisher: NYU Press
Release Date : 2022-06-07
The Secular Paradox written by Joseph Blankholm and has been published by NYU Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-06-07 with Religion categories.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2023 A radically new way of understanding secularism which explains why being secular can seem so strangely religious For much of America’s rapidly growing secular population, religion is an inescapable source of skepticism and discomfort. It shows up in politics and in holidays, but also in common events like weddings and funerals. In The Secular Paradox, Joseph Blankholm argues that, despite their desire to avoid religion, nonbelievers often seem religious because Christianity influences the culture around them so deeply. Relying on several years of ethnographic research among secular activists and organized nonbelievers in the United States, the volume explores how very secular people are ambivalent toward belief, community, ritual, conversion, and tradition. As they try to embrace what they share, secular people encounter, again and again, that they are becoming too religious. And as they reject religion, they feel they have lost too much. Trying to strike the right balance, secular people alternate between the two sides of their ambiguous condition: absolutely not religious and part of a religion-like secular tradition. Blankholm relies heavily on the voices of women and people of color to understand what it means to live with the secular paradox. The struggles of secular misfits—the people who mis-fit normative secularism in the United States—show that becoming secular means rejecting parts of life that resemble Christianity and embracing a European tradition that emphasizes reason and avoids emotion. Women, people of color, and secular people who have left non-Christian religions work against the limits and contradictions of secularism to create new ways of being secular that are transforming the American religious landscape. They are pioneering the most interesting and important forms of secular “religiosity” in America today.
The Secular Paradox
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Author : Joseph Blankholm
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2022
The Secular Paradox written by Joseph Blankholm and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022 with RELIGION categories.
"Secular people are strangely ambiguous. They feel a tension between what they don't share and what they have in common-between avoiding religion and embracing something like it. An event as ordinary as a wedding can be uncomfortable if it feels too religious, and even for those who are indifferent to religion, a passing reference to God can be cringeworthy. And yet, religion is tough to avoid completely without living in its remainder. The Secular Paradox explains why. Relying on several years of ethnographic research among secular activists and organized nonbelievers in the United States, Blankholm shows how secular people are both absolutely not religious and part of a religion-like tradition, which includes beliefs and institutions, as well embodied practices. Recovering this tradition makes legible what secular people share with one another and explains why the secular movement in the United States remains predominately white and male. Humanistic Jews, Hispanic Freethinkers, Ex-Muslims, and black nonbelievers are secular misfits whose stories reveal the contours of the secular most clearly by proving to be more and less than what remains when Christianity is removed. The Secular Paradox offers a radically new way of understanding secularism and secular people by explaining the origins of their inherent contradiction and its awkward effects on their lives. This new understanding matters for anyone who has ever avoided something because it felt too religious, everyone who considers themselves secular, and all those who want to understand them better"--
Questioning Secularism
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Author : Hussein Ali Agrama
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2012-11-02
Questioning Secularism written by Hussein Ali Agrama and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-11-02 with Social Science categories.
The central question of the Arab Spring—what democracies should look like in the deeply religious countries of the Middle East—has developed into a vigorous debate over these nations’ secular identities. But what, exactly, is secularism? What has the West’s long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In Questioning Secularism, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart. Drawing on a precedent-setting case arising from the family law courts —the last courts in Egypt to use Shari‘a law—Agrama shows that secularism is a historical phenomenon that works through a series of paradoxes that it creates. Digging beneath the perceived differences between the West and Middle East, he highlights secularism’s dependence on the law and the problems that arise from it: the necessary involvement of state sovereign power in managing the private spiritual lives of citizens and the irreducible set of legal ambiguities such a relationship creates. Navigating a complex landscape between private and public domains, Questioning Secularism lays important groundwork for understanding the real meaning of secularism as it affects the real freedoms of a citizenry, an understanding of the utmost importance for so many countries that are now urgently facing new political possibilities.
The Secular Sacred
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Author : Markus Balkenhol
language : en
Publisher: Springer Nature
Release Date : 2020-09-01
The Secular Sacred written by Markus Balkenhol and has been published by Springer Nature this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-09-01 with Social Science categories.
How do religious emotions and national sentiment become entangled across the world? In exploring this theme, The Secular Sacred focuses on diverse topics such as the dynamic roles of Carnival in Brazil, the public contestation of ritual in Northern Nigeria, and the culturalization of secular tolerance in the Netherlands. The contributions focus on the ways in which sacrality and secularity mutually inform, enforce, and spill over into each other. The case studies offer a bottom-up, practice-oriented approach in which the authors are wary to use categories of religion and secular as neutral descriptive terms. The Secular Sacred will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, political scientists, and social psychologists, as well as students and scholars of cultural studies and semiotics. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Surprised By Paradox
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Author : Jen Pollock Michel
language : en
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Release Date : 2019-05-14
Surprised By Paradox written by Jen Pollock Michel and has been published by InterVarsity Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-05-14 with Religion categories.
In a world filled with ambiguity, we want faith to act like an orderly set of truth-claims to solve the problems that life throws at us. While there are certainties in Christian faith, at the heart of the Christian story is also paradox, and Jen Pollock Michel helps readers imagine a Christian faith open to mystery. Jesus invites us to abandon the polarities of either and or in order to embrace the difficult, wondrous dissonance of and.
Understanding Death As Life S Paradox
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Author : Brayton Polka
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Release Date : 2019-04-30
Understanding Death As Life S Paradox written by Brayton Polka and has been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-04-30 with Philosophy categories.
This book focuses on death as life’s paradox in order to test, to put on trial, what it means for us human beings to exist. No one of us chooses to be born. Yet, having been born, we must choose to have been born, to live, to exist. To exist is to choose to exist. To choose to exist is to live with our choices. This text argues that death is the limit of life, that we can live freely and lovingly, at once justly and compassionately, solely within the limit of death. It shows that we can develop a comprehensive conception of life, and also of death, solely insofar as we learn to overcome the dualistic opposition between philosophy and theology that continues today to falsify our understanding of not only the secular, but also the sacred.
Islam And The Secular State
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Author : Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
language : en
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Release Date : 2010-03-30
Islam And The Secular State written by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im and has been published by Harvard University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2010-03-30 with Law categories.
What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies.
Rethinking The Secular Origins Of The Novel
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Author : Kevin Seidel
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2021-03-25
Rethinking The Secular Origins Of The Novel written by Kevin Seidel and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-03-25 with Literary Criticism categories.
Challenging concepts of religion and secularism, this book shows the English novel rising with the English Bible, not after it.
A Need For Religion Insecurity And Religiosity In The Contemporary World
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Author : Francesco Molteni
language : en
Publisher: BRILL
Release Date : 2020-12-07
A Need For Religion Insecurity And Religiosity In The Contemporary World written by Francesco Molteni and has been published by BRILL this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-12-07 with Religion categories.
In A Need for Religion: Insecurity and Religiosity in the Contemporary World Francesco Molteni tries to answer one of the broadest questions for scholars of religion: why is religiosity declining in developed countries? He does so by inspecting all the different nuances of the insecurity theory, which links the feeling of security typical of modern societies with the diminished need for religion as source of reassurance, support and predictability. In this respect, he notes that much of the evidence is far less clear than expected and that secularization processes are at an advanced stage only in a rather small group of worldwide countries.
On Paradox
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Author : Elizabeth S. Anker
language : en
Publisher: Duke University Press
Release Date : 2022-10-28
On Paradox written by Elizabeth S. Anker and has been published by Duke University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-10-28 with Philosophy categories.
In On Paradox literary and legal scholar Elizabeth S. Anker contends that faith in the logic of paradox has been the cornerstone of left intellectualism since the second half of the twentieth century. She attributes the ubiquity of paradox in the humanities to its appeal as an incisive tool for exposing and dismantling hierarchies. Tracing the ascent of paradox in theories of modernity, in rights discourse, in the history of literary criticism and the linguistic turn, and in the transformation of the liberal arts in higher education, Anker suggests that paradox not only generates the very exclusions it critiques but also creates a disempowering haze of indecision. She shows that reasoning through paradox has become deeply problematic: it engrains a startling homogeneity of thought while undercutting the commitment to social justice that remains a guiding imperative of theory. Rather than calling for a wholesale abandonment of such reasoning, Anker argues for an expanded, diversified theory toolkit that can help theorists escape the seductions and traps of paradox.