Religion and the Political Imagination

by Ira Katznelson (Editor), Gareth Stedman Jones (Editor)

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 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.

Genres: Religion

394 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2006

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful overview and interpretation of secularisation in certain nations/areas around the globe. It is important to understand one's own identity - religious and national, and work out whether they correspond to one another, or they are separate. If they are separate, often the case if one is not a Christian in a Western state, there may be periods of internal colonisation - particularly if the Western state desires its own form of secularisation that shrouds the extent of its tolerance. Tolerance of Catholic schools in the UK is a norm, and they are not tolerated but simply exist, but Muslim schools are seen as controversial, due to a Western view of how we should understand secularism.