Abstract
Fear of the late modern world has been a major factor in the rise of authoritarianand violent religio-political movements. This article draws on Anthony Giddens andCharles Taylor’s conceptualisation of the self in the secular age, and applies this to twomodernist religious trends originating in the East in the later nineteenth century in thecontext of western global expansion. Endeavouring to rise to the challenge ofaccommodating Islam to modernity by adopting the tools of rationality and encouragingindependent inquiry, Islamic Modernism has become increasingly embattled. The Baha’ifaith, a movement that incorporates similar perspectives and also developed out of anIslamic context, proposes a theophanic transformation rather than renewal through reformof Islam. After a period of infusion of a progressive catalytic impulse into the Middle East,the Baha’i faith performed its own recalibration of modernism, enunciating apocalypticdenunciation of the modern world similar to that found in Muslim revivalist trends. Thearticle ends by making some suggestions for continuation of a progressive religiousapproach in late modernity.
Highlights
Fear and alienation has impacted on religious communities almost everywhere in the age of late modernity
Rather the major concern is to lay out the conditions of possibility whereby a progressive form of religion might operate in the late modern world
Giddens explores models that might compensate for this loss of trust and help the self to become better integrated into its surroundings by adopting various therapies or self-therapy
Summary
Fear and alienation has impacted on religious communities almost everywhere in the age of late modernity. Each faith community in various ways adopts reactive responses to these tendencies and more than a few see Religions 2015, 6 today’s world as a world receded from God Reactionary responses may be understandable; they represent a serious regression from religious orientations previously founded on progressive axioms. Baha’i faith, and asks how their respective negotiations with modernity have enabled them to shape up to the late modern world. In the discussion that follows the aim is not to demonstrate the superiority of one or other of the religious belief systems with respect to their equipment for addressing issues of modernity. Rather the major concern is to lay out the conditions of possibility whereby a progressive form of religion might operate in the late modern world
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