Secular Modernity Research Articles

Landasan Filosofis Integrasi Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Agama

This article aims to examine and formulate a model for integrating religious knowledge with general science, focusing on the ontological, epistemological, and axiological foundations. In the context of modern secularism, which has led to the separation of religion and scientific knowledge, this research seeks to restore spiritual values within scientific inquiry and integrate the two disciplines to create knowledge that is not value-free. The research method used by the author is a qualitative approach with a type of library research with data collection methods by conducting documentation studies by examining primary and secondary sources in the form of books and scientific articles. The results of this study concluded that the integration of science is an effort to combine religious science and general science by incorporating religious values into it and looking for similarities between the two. Integration is done to make science not free of moral values and create good human beings who are in accordance with the two functions of human creation, namely as khalifah and good servants of Allah. The philosophical bases of science integration include ontological, epistemological and axiological bases. From the ontological basis, the relationship between the highest reality, namely God, and the lowest reality, namely creatures, has a close and inseparable relationship. Epistemologically, the source of general and religious knowledge comes from one source, namely God, who then provides means or tools of knowledge in the form of reason and the five senses, as a tool for obtaining knowledge and Islamic epistemology recognizes the means of knowledge in the form of intuition to achieve metaphysical-immaterial knowledge, where this method of intuition is in the form of inspiration and revelation. And axiologically, the integration of general science and religious science gives birth to science that is not value-free, so that it can make the development of science consistent with moral values in accordance with religion and the Qur'an, which gives birth to benefits in the world and the hereafter in the form of material, intellectual and spiritual enjoyment in humans who are a unity between body and spirit.

The potential of indigenous religious ecologies for environmental conservation in contemporary Ghana: the Akan as a study case

ABSTRACT With ethnographic data from the Dormaa-Akan, this article examines the conservation features of Akan indigenous religious ecology and discusses how they have oriented indigenous Akan communities towards living by the resources of the nonhuman world while conserving it. Considering the degradation of the nonhuman world in contemporary Ghana, particularly the land and its resources, the article argues that irrespective of the modern secularity of contemporary Ghana, indigenous religious ecologies hold the potential for environmental conservation efforts, when properly integrated into secular environmental policies. The article also explored some potential ways in which indigenous religious ecologies can contribute to conservation efforts in Ghana.

Pengertian Islam Dan Sains Menurut Sayyed Nasr

Syed Nashr is one of the leading intellectuals in the discourse on the relationship between science and religion, especially in the Islamic world. Examining Nashr's thought is a relevant and significant effort to better understand one important aspect of scientific development in the Islamic world in particular, and science in general in the West. This research uses a qualitative descriptive research method by comparing books, journals, articles and others which reveal the meaning of science and religion and the relationship between the two according to Syed Nashr as one of the Muslim scientists who is aggressive towards science. From the analysis carried out by Syed Nashr, it is revealed that modern Western science is experiencing a spiritual crisis and is experiencing disease infection by secular modern thinking, therefore science needs an infusion or injection of Islamic values ​​with a divine dimension in religious revelation so that science and religion there can be a balance between the worldly and the spiritual and all of this must be based on the phrase ''Laa ilaa hailla Allah'' For the purpose of Nasr providing these thoughts to explore Nasr's thoughts regarding the definition of religion and science, as well as how these two disciplines can complement each other and be harmonious in the pursuit of truth.

Assimilationism, Sexual Nationalism, and the Backlash Against Gender and Sexuality

Fifteen years ago my co-authors and I wrote an article discussing the politics of sexual nationalism in the Netherlands (Mepschen at al., 2010). We argued that gay and lesbian emancipation had come to center almost solely on the political idea of the “integration” of alleged sexual and religious others into the Dutch moral community. We pointed out that the Dutch case was exemplary of wider European developments. In various European countries we have witnessed complex transformations in the relationship between the nation and the question of sexual democracy (Fassin, 2012). Lesbian and gay rights and discourses have been weaponized to frame Western Europe as the “avatar of both freedom and modernity” (Butler 2008, 2) and depict its Muslim citizens and others with a migration background as backwards and homophobic. In the words of the queer theorist Jasbir Puar (2007), who coined the term ‘homonationalism,’ gay rights have been recast as an “optic, and an operative technology” in the production and disciplining of Muslim Others (See also Rahman 2014.) Cases of homophobia among Muslim and migrant citizens are highlighted, treated as archetypal, and cast within Orientalist narratives that underwrite the superiority of European secular modernity. Homophobia is increasingly represented as peripheral to Western European culture (Mepschen 2017). As I see it, we still live in the same historical moment: the notion of sexual nationalism is more relevant than ever. But at the same time, things are changing. Before we get to that, a short overview of what has been discussed in the last fifteen years.

The future never dies: a relational approach to secular and religious entanglements of posthuman utopia

ABSTRACT The article explores the cybernetic utopian ideals of transhumanism and posthumanism, focusing particularly on the concept of the singularity, which incorporates both scientific and religious dimensions. This investigation subsequently leads to an in-depth examination of temporal concepts within the broader discourse surrounding the disenchantment thesis in secular modernity. Drawing on the framework of multiple temporalities proposed by Lorenz Trein and Helge Jordheim, the article suggests a perspective that enables an understanding of diverse interpretations of history and the future as a dynamic interplay that transcends the binary opposition between (secular) science and religion.

A Quixotic Avatar in Post-Francoist Spain: Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote and the Sense of Belief in the Secular Modern World

A Quixotic Avatar in Post-Francoist Spain: Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote and the Sense of Belief in the Secular Modern World

The Evolutionary Masks of Love: Continuities between Judeo-Christian Religious Love and Modern Secular Love

The aim of this paper is to establish a series of links between some of the main religious formulas that arise in Judaism and Christianism and the romantic and confluent love characteristic of modern societies. To carry it out, firstly, we analyze love in historical Judaism, reflecting on the Ahavah formula, the predominant formula in this religious context. Secondly, to study the Christian drift of love, we first analyze how the emergence of this new religious faith (Christianism) provokes a change in the Jewish way of understanding it (love). Subsequently, we analyze some of the three main formulas in which love materializes in Christianism: Agape, Caritas, and Amor Sui. Regarding modern love, we first carry out a contextualization focused on the processes of secularization and individualization, and their impact on it. Afterwards, we present the main features that define both romantic and confluent love, and finally, we analyze the Judeo-Christian characters inherited for such types of love. The methodology used focused on a literature review and theoretical reflection based on this review. The research carried out allows us to establish sociological continuities between Judeo-Christian religious love and modern secular love in the terms used throughout the paper.

Materializing the public sphere in American religious history

AbstractThis article reviews scholarship in American religious history around the concept of the public sphere. Considering that the public sphere was readily aligned with the productions of the printing press, ‘materializing’ surveys works that have relied upon, expanded, and critiqued print's centraility to early American religious public culture. Recent attention to materiality has also encouraged greater attention to contingencies, locality of circulation, and specificity of audiences in our studies of public texts that would trouble technological determinisms that readily aligned Protestant ascendance, secular modernity, and print publishing with democratization. The essay concludes with new questions regarding print culture, calls for greater multimedia approaches to our study of media objects, and posits the importance of critically evaluating what we count as public or private in our historical narratives about religious communities.

The Death of God as Source of the Creativity of Humans

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. Th is difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation.

Reproducing Memories and Portrayal of the Concept of Virginity in Turkey through Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence

The Museum of Innocence (2009) delves into love and everyday objects of love to explain the country's cultural emissions and political issues due to cultural contradiction with few characters in the novel. The novel is planned as a love story but is written in a decidedly unorthodox narrative style. The narrative is focused on the lovers' connection and revolves around Kemal's alterations due to his love for Fusun. He brings the supernatural close to the material, combining them most unexpectedly. Pamuk's construction of the actual museum in the memory of Fusun was discussed. Pamuk spoke about the memories of Fusun in Kemal's story narration with the portrayal of cultural indifference in Turkey. Further, this paper brings out the clash between fundamental traditional Islam and modern secularism by portraying the westernisation lifestyle of Istanbul's bourgeois society. The research paper concentrated on women's status and depicted the concept of virginity.

Robert Jenson and the Dogmatic Location of Culture

Abstract: This article takes up Robert Jenson's theology of culture. According to Jenson, the church is a heavenly culture of its own alongside various worldly cultures. The church, therefore, presents a rival agenda for human social life conformed to a distinct Christian ethics and polity. Jenson's brand of ecumenical ecclesiology has also been leveraged against the challenge of modern secularity. However, this article contends that Jenson's ecumenical vision overinflates the doctrine of the church by assigning culture to it. Jenson's ecclesiology risks the particularity of the various cultures, languages, and contexts in which the gospel is proclaimed. To redistribute the contents of ecumenical ecclesiology—and its theology of culture—into the doctrine of creation, this article culminates with an examination of Martin Luther's theology and that of the Lutheran Confessions.

The Necessity of Getting Christian Ecclesiology Right

The authors present very well documented evidence from the Founders that the American political order is founded primarily on the Christian natural theological and natural law tradition and not primarily on a modern secularism. However, the Founders’ failure to consider the importance of the Church in safeguarding, teaching, and sustaining this tradition might very well be the shortcoming of the Founding that the authors do not address. Orestes Brownson (whom the authors use for their argument) helps to demonstrate the inadequacy of Protestantism to pass on the tradition which is so essential to the success of the American political order. This is contrasted with the Church’s principled ability to pass on the tradition.

Immigration, poetry, and translation between Syria and Germany: Adel Karasholi

AbstractThe work of Syrian‐German poet Adel Karasholi exemplifies key vectors of literature in the context of migration, in particular the tension between nostalgia and assimilation. Karasholi's case is distinctive insofar as he lived between two dictatorships, Syria and the German Democratic Republic, and his poetry testifies to processes of ideological accommodation, integration into GDR literary networks, and identity‐political hybridization. A Brechtian aesthetic of engagement and a Marxist discourse of progress coexist with the problematics of immigration and cultural difference. In the early 1990s, Karasholi began to invoke previously rejected orientalist and mystic‐religious tropes as he entered the multicultural public sphere of unified Germany, but in his translations of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (2004) he reverted to the secular modernization sensibility of his GDR years. One of these translations (“In Jerusalem”) is examined closely to reveal Karasholi's strategic choices and subtle differences from the Darwish original.

Melupakan Great Chain of Being Intelektual Muslim Dalam Tegangan Antara Sekularisme dan Skizofrenia Kultural

The integration of (post)modern Western thought by some Indonesian Muslim intellectuals needs to be critiqued regarding, first, the modern historical bias as progress, which leads to the appropriation of the latest thoughts into Islamic thinking as a sign of progress and openness. Second, the forgetting of the Great Chain of Being, resulting in the adaptation and revision of Islamic thought through the dynamics of Western (post)modern thought born from different historical contexts. Third, the tendency to graft secularism as a historical inevitability in the Islamic world, as well as the cultural schizophrenia among educated Muslims when integrating secular (post)modern knowledge into Islamic teachings and its hierarchical structure of reality.

TELAAH KITAB RASAIL AL-NUR OLEH SAID NURSI

This paper discusses Said Nursi’s Qur’anic interpretation, Risalah al-Nur and its historical background and foundational role in Islamic intellectual history and its religious tradition under the repressive secular modern Turkish Republic administration. It looks into the cultural impact of its moral-spiritual teaching and its historical significance in developing and fulfilling the fundamental role of Qur’anic revelation in delivering and justifying the principal of ethics and morality, and its cosmological values in guiding the formation of higher ethical-legal and civilizational framework. The study is based on library research using historical and qualitative approaches and documentation technique. The finding shows that the Risalah al-Nur has set forth through empirical and scientific method, the conclusive truth of the Qur’an and hadith paradigm, by way of similitude and comparison, which provide basic proof of the postulates of its inimitability and miraculousness, that was vital in strengthening the belief of tawhid and in reinforcing the religious and spiritual consciousness of the people. In the context of its interpretation and historical significance, the discourse presented in the Risalah al-Nur emphatically upheld the teaching of the Qur’an and hadith and contextualize its transcendental ideals, philosophy and values to modern life.

A Critique of the Turkish Education System During the Early Republic Period (1923-1943) Based on Syed Ahmet Arvasi’s Idea

States established as nation-states in the 19th and 20th centuries have used education to defend their principles of existence and legitimacy. In this context, the Republic of Turkey, founded on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, has made great efforts to transform its people into a modern nation-state. The most important tool of the state in this effort has undoubtedly been education. Since the basis of the republican ideology is secularism, the basic building block in education has also been secularism. The education system has been the most important part of secular modernization and the construction of a new national identity. New and secular values that form the national identity have been transferred and transmitted to new generations through education. In this context, education policies have been under the influence of the new regime for a long time since the founding of the republic. This study has drawn from Syed Ahmed Arvasi’s ideas in analyzing the historical development of education in Turkey, and identified that problems such as moral corruption, anarchy, lack of national consciousness, and lack of personality in today's society are closely associated with the secular education policies of the Republican period. In moving forward, the study supports Arvasi’s idea of educating the younger generation according to the principles of Turkish-Islamic culture. Future studies may explore further the viability of Arvasi’s ideas and how they can be implemented in the formal system of education in Turkey

Liturgical Animals in a Secular Age: On Charles Taylor and James K. A. Smith

Charles Taylor and James K. A. Smith occupy unique terrain among the many genealogists, cartographers, and mission-oriented Christian interpreters of secular modernity. By putting a methodological premium on philosophical(-theological) anthropology and on articulating the conditions—rather than simply the content—of belief in the West today, they approach and elucidate a well-trodden scholarly landscape in new ways. Taylor’s A Secular Age is a monumental, sui generis existential and phenomenological history of the West’s ever-evolving social imaginary, a history whose methodology and anthropological presuppositions merit extensive analysis (undertaken in part 1). In his Cultural Liturgies trilogy, James Smith takes queues from Taylor’s approach and proposes a highly congruous and complementary anthropology to which “liturgy” is the key. His work offers a lexical and hermeneutical toolkit for filling in explanatory gaps in Taylor’s narrative of Latin Christendom’s “secularization”; for further investigation into any particular feature, idea, or practice in said narrative; and for exegeting the numerous ritual and liturgical practices constitutive of every human life, including one’s own (part 2). Despite similar “diagnoses” of secular modernity’s malaise, the two thinkers offer meaningfully disparate remedial “prescriptions.” Part 3 articulates these differences, as they are important for theologians who are discerning the form Christian mission might take in secular modernity. Part 4 considers an apparent asymmetry between Smith’s diagnosis of contemporary Western Christianity’s ills and the correlate prescriptions he suggests the church adopt, as well as issues endemic to Taylor and Smith’s aims to reincarnate the modern, excarnated self. Taylor articulates the otherwise inarticulate and Smith unveils the pedagogical potency of the otherwise ordinary; when read together—especially with Smith as a constructively critical supplement to Taylor—their categories and analyses capacitate a more holistic understanding of what exactly it means to be—and to be the church—in a secular age.

사회적 마음챙김

Mindfulness is having such a profound impact on contemporary world that it has been described as “The Mindfulness Revolution.” While mindfulness is known to be based on Buddhist teachings and practices, it has also been used in secular modern psychology and psychotherapy in non-religious and post-religious ways, and there is even an emergence of trans-religious mindfulness that crosses religious boundaries. In this article, I will examine the recent development of ‘Christian mindfulness’ and explore how Christianity’s ‘personal dimension’ of ‘heartfulness’ and its ‘liberative dimension’ of ‘social spirituality’ can contribute to the formation of the ‘social mindfulness’ called for in times of suffering.

Chaplaincy – On the Trail of Spirituality

In the health-related and practical-theological debate, it is increasingly recognized that the core task of healthcare chaplaincy is spiritual care. There is a focus on the fundamental importance and necessity of spiritual accompaniment. However, concepts relating to this are only described in outline. Concepts that develop healthcare chaplaincy more precisely and present specific methods for the concrete “how” of spiritual care are still rare. This article outlines a basic dimension for chaplaincy and a methodology that is committed to the spiritual reality of people in secular modernity, beyond the internal religious culture.

Ecstasies of Uplift

Abstract “Religion is the decoration of life,” declares Peter Sloterdijk in his newly translated Making the Heavens Speak: Religion as Poetry (MHS), arguing that much of our understanding of the spiritual life is distorted and exceptionally narrow. With refreshing and renewed vision, this text points out the ways in which the heavenly skies have been a source of divine inspiration and cipher for theopoetic illuminations. We have failed to grasp how modern secularization, ironically, was a blessing in disguise for religion since it helped to unscrew any religious authorities from the burden of needing to associate with or justify their existence through some national, political, or identity-based associations and cultural traditions. Either as a stroke of good fortune or just a contingent set of circumstances, Sloterdijk argues that religion has benefited from secularization—in becoming “useless,” religious practices have been liberated or “emancipated” from the burden of being politicized, nationalized, or mythologized.