Religion and the Political ImaginationIra Katznelson, Gareth Stedman Jones The theory of secularisation became a virtually unchallenged truth of twentieth-century social science. First sketched out by Enlightenment philosophers, then transformed into an irreversible global process by nineteenth-century thinkers, the theory was given substance by the precipitate drop in religious practice across Western Europe in the 1960s. However, the re-emergence of acute conflicts at the interface between religion and politics has confounded such assumptions. It is clear that these ideas must be rethought. Yet, as this distinguished, international team of scholars reveal, not everything contained in the idea of secularisation was false. Analyses of developments since 1500 reveal a wide spectrum of historical processes: partial secularisation in some spheres has been accompanied by sacralisation in others. Utilising new approaches derived from history, philosophy, politics and anthropology, the essays collected in Religion and the Political Imagination offer new ways of thinking about the urgency of religious issues in the contemporary world. |
Contents
| 1 | |
1 Secularisation religion and the roots of innovation in the political sphere | 23 |
2 Regarding toleration and liberalism considerations from the AngloJewish experience | 46 |
3 The Enlightenment the late eighteenthcentury revolutions and their aftermath the secularising implications of Protestantism? | 70 |
4 In the lands of the Ottomans religion and politics | 90 |
5 The Russian Orthodox Church and secularisation | 112 |
6 The American experience of secularisation | 132 |
7 French Catholic political thought from the deconfessionalisation of the state to the recognition of religious freedom | 150 |
10 The disciplining of the religious conscience in nineteenthcentury British politics | 214 |
11 Colonial secularism and Islamism in North India a relationship of creativity | 235 |
12 The 1960s | 254 |
13 Gendering secularisation locating women in the transformation of British Christianity in the 1960s | 275 |
14 Does constitutionalisation lead to secularisation? | 295 |
15 Europes uneasy marriage of secularism and Christianity since 1945 and the challenge of contemporary religious pluralism | 314 |
16 On thick and thin religion some critical reflections on secularisation theory | 336 |
| 356 | |
Other editions - View all
Religion and the Political Imagination Ira Katznelson,Gareth Stedman Jones No preview available - 2010 |
Religion and the Political Imagination Ira Katznelson,Gareth Stedman Jones No preview available - 2010 |
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