Secular Phenomenon Research Articles

População em situação de rua: Expressão (im)pertinente da “questão social”

Resumo Ensaio teórico-reflexivo que discute o fenômeno da População em Situação de Rua (PSR) como expressão da “questão social”. A PSR é um fenômeno secular, enquanto expressão das desigualdades sociais, que outrora apresentava-se e era nomeado de outras formas. Nas últimas décadas, diante dos efeitos das condições estruturantes da sociedade moderna e do modo de produção capitalista, além do agravamento das crises econômicas, reestruturação produtiva, financeirização e precarização da vida, a PSR tem se expandido no mundo. Salienta-se a importância de resgatar o debate acerca da “questão social”, especialmente entre os psicólogos envolvidos com esse campo, como modo de afirmar a dimensão estrutural do fenômeno em situação de rua, além de distanciar-se das visões que o individualizam e o despolitizam.

Miracles, Temporality, and Unfulfillment in A Diagram for Fire

Miracles, Temporality, and Unfulfillment in A Diagram for Fire Bruno Reinhardt Jon Bialecki, Vineyard Movement, charismatic, Pentecostalism, Gilles Deleuze, Holy Spirit, necromancy, exorcism, Bruno Reinhardt Miracles are one of the most widely acknowledged indexes of "religion" in secular scholarship and common sense. Yet, their theoretical role remains paradoxically residual, as if miracles were good to recognize but not to account for religious lifeworlds. The fundamental pressures imposed by the miraculous upon secular knowledges justify such opaqueness. By following empathetically miraculous veridiction, scholars can be led astray from basic epistemological principles such as neutrality and critical reflexivity, becoming theologians. A possible solution has been to circumvent miracles by sticking to their human co-participants, proposing theories of recognition that bracket their existence while focusing on their institutional, sociocultural, historical, ethical, or cognitive conditions of receptivity or construction. From this angle, the ultimate object of study of disciplines like the anthropology of religion or religious studies would not be miracles, but the media whereby miraculous truth is relayed, from social structures, symbolic systems, and semiotic ideologies to culturally embodied schema and the nervous system. Scholars might also import miracles into social theory through analogy and substitution. A classic example is Max Weber's secularized notion of charisma, borrowed from Pauline Christianity through theologian Rudolf Sohm and converted into a type of legitimate authority. What Weber calls pure charisma is explicitly residual, existing "only in the process of originating."1 Pure charisma nevertheless introduces a strategic dose of freedom and unexpectedness into Weber's otherwise bleak theory of modern rationalization, becoming a deterrent for determinism. Carl Schmitt's political theology performs similar work through the analogy between miracles and sovereignty: it selects a particular property of miracles—their extra-normative givenness— [End Page 456] and imports it to political philosophy as a critique of liberal democracy. 2 A more recent example of such procedure is Hent de Vries's argument about the "structural resemblances" between miracles and special effects, which—like the arguments of Weber and Schmitt—establishes parallels between religious and secular phenomena (leadership, sovereignty, mediation) and oscillates between analogy and substitution.3 Miracles for these authors operate primarily as tools for reading secular modernity otherwise, often against its self-image. Is it possible to propose a theoretical approach to religion that does not dilute the originary force of the miraculous through either constructivism or analogical thinking? Moreover, can we do that while still recognizing the otherness of social theory vis-à-vis theology or religious experience? Jon Bialecki's A Diagram for Fire faces bravely these major ethical and theoretical challenges through a rich ethnographic engagement with the evangelical Charismatic Vineyard Church. Bialecki's initial research problem was how to account for the dazzling plurality as well as the inchoate family resemblances he encountered in the field under the umbrella "Vineyard Church." How to recognize such inner difference without reifying the Vineyard in terms of stable doctrines, identities, or centralized organization, which ultimately do not empirically exist? This initial problematic expands in the book two ways: it scales up to wider objects that share similar qualities, such as "actually existing Christianity" and "religion" itself, and it scales down ethnographically from the Vineyard movement (they avoid denomination) to particular churches at different locations, small meetings, practices, and experiences. The resulting argument has a fractal design, which oscillates recursively between what we conventionally understand as "micro" and "macro" levels of analysis while showing these terms' inappropriateness. Such design reflects Bialecki's attempt to avoid both nominalism and essentialism. If there is a religious atom or lowest common denominator in the book, it is not substantial, but an iterable pattern of differentiation traceable across various scales, a "type of recurrent event" (xviii), which is best accessed through what Vineyard members call miracles. This spreadable but aggregating, elusive but affective force is diagrammatic: "a diagram for fire." According to Bialecki, diagrams are "abstract maps of how forces play out that point as much toward [End Page 457] the different potentials in outcomes as they do toward a similarity in relations or constitution" (69). Such focus on a set of fundamental relations reminded me of classic structural analysis, with the exception that the stuff of diagrams is...

Lebensform and “socio-cultural background”

Abstract:The main part of the philosophical activity of Charles Taylor may be characterized as philosophical anthropology. This philosophical anthropology is above all an attempt to overcome what he calls the epistemological construal i. e. a set of false anthropological beliefs spread in the modern western philosophy like: disengaged subject, the punctual self and social atomism. His critique of the anthropological beliefs draws, among other thinkers, heavily on Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on language and his social nature in Philosophical Investigations. To the disengaged subject and punctual self Taylor opposes the embodied subject, a human agent that is impossible to define without his language depending entirely on the “form of life”, an inescapable social context in which he is embedded. Thus Taylor emphasizes the basic connection between the self and the community, which is being falsely compromised by social atomism. This emphasis on the community, on the essential role of the link between individual and his social environment rank him among so called communitarians, the critics of the predominant individualistic liberal way of thinking. In his more recent works, especially A Secular Age Taylor reflects on the phenomenon of secularization of the modern West. Here the notion, inspired partially by Wittgenstein, of “background” – an implicit framework for the beliefs of an agent – plays an important role. The following text will show more in detail the most important Wittgensteinian inspirations in the philosophical reflection of Charles Taylor considering modern western culture.

Sekularyzacja religii w twórczości Rainera Marii Rilkego i Gianniego Vattima

Głównym celem artykułu jest analiza fenomenu sekularyzacji w pismach Rainera Marii Rilkego i Gianniego Vattima oraz prezentacja etyki miłosierdzia, zbudowanej na fundamencie religii w wersji słabej, pozbawionej wymiaru nadnaturalnego. Wielu naukowców przyznaje, że w ostatnich latach nastąpiło załamanie paradygmatu sekularyzacji. Okazało się, że nowoczesność i współczesna rewolucja technologiczna nie muszą koniecznie prowadzić do nieuchronnej śmierci religii. Coraz częściej mówi się dzisiaj o desekularyzacji i powrocie religii w zmienionej formie. Najgłębsze znaczenie sekularyzacji dotyczy nie tyle słabnącej obecności religii w domenie publicznej, ile reinterpretacji prawd i symboli religijnych oraz narodzin nowej formy religii o charakterze immanentnym i czystohumanistycznym. Bardzo złożony fenomen sekularyzacji i desekularyzacji wymaga obecnie szeroko zakrojonych badań interdyscyplinarnych.

Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust

There is, in principle, a fundamental difference between Nazi racial antisemitism and the traditional anti-Judaism of Christianity. The church’s official view has been that conversion transforms a Jew into a Christian, whereas the Nazi view was that a Jewish convert to Christianity remained a Jew. Nevertheless, the distinction between racial and religious antisemitism has often been less clear-cut than is often claimed by those who claim that Christian churches bear no responsibility for the Holocaust. That is not to say that it is illusory, just that it has often been less clear-cut than is often claimed. During the Holocaust and the decades that preceded it, Christian clergy often stressed the same themes as the Nazis, notably with respect to the Jews being “parasitic” capitalists exploiting Christians, as well as communists seeking to overthrow the governments and traditional Christian values of Europe (Passelecq and Suchecky 1997, pp. 123–36). We shall see that these clerics often also spoke of Jews in racial, as well as religious terms. Conversely, the Nazis often exploited traditional Christian themes, such as the diabolical nature of the Jew, the image of the Jew as “Christ-killer,” and the contrast between “carnal” (materialistic) Judaism and spiritual Christianity. In other words, the Nazis effectively exploited two millennia of Christian demonization of the Jew. Most scholars who have studied the role of the Christian churches during the Holocaust are well aware of most of these facts (Barnett 1992; Bergen 1996; Ericksen and Heschel 1999a; Kertzer 2001). Yet many comparative studies of religion and violence ignore the role played by Christian churches during the Holocaust—apparently on the assumption that the most horrific mass murder in human history was a purely secular phenomenon. In fact, some prominent scholars, including the best-selling authors Karen Armstrong and—incredibly—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, go so far as to attribute the Shoah to the demise of religious values in Europe (Armstrong 2014; Sacks 2015)! This article is an attempt to correct these mistaken assumptions.

Kontexty obnovení žánru laické katolické liturgiky v českých zemích v polovině 19. století

The article demonstrates a broader context of the renewal of lay catholic liturgics in the Bohemian lands in the first half of the 19 th century. This is divided into two parts. (1) The first section is based on a contribution by Jan Horský and develops the theme of qthe five phenomena of transformationq in the long 19 th century (1789–1914) with respect to general and Czech Church history. The phenomena of secularization, rechristianization, spiritualization, disenchantment of the world and racionalization are addressed here. The Roman Catholic Church searched for answers to this phenomena also by means of handbooks which were supposed to introduce laypersons to the basics of liturgics and successive Themis in an understandable way. (2) The second section discovers theological connections of the publishing of liturgics handbooks within the sensus fidei concept. It distinguishes between the individual aspect (sensus fidei fidelis) and the ecclesial aspect (sensus fidei fidelium). The acceptance and great popularity of liturgics can be interpreted as a manifestation of sensus fidei.

The Influence of the Religious Phenomenon in the Contemporary Society

Social influence of the religious phenomenon, is a complex phenomenon, especially in contemporary society, which takes account of certain indicators such as: context of religious freedom, religious language or religious speech, religious affiliation, religious practice; attitudes of religious groups or religious institutions on society and on social security; the impact of specific religious groups, secret societies, mysteries on the population firms. In order to be objective and to have the right attitude towards certain aspects that define contemporary society issues on the globalization, integration, secularism, atheism indifference, pluralism, it is first necessary that these issues be carefully studied, known and understood in the context of contemporary society. The phenomenon of secularization, globalization, religious indifference, not social issues but social phenomena, specific ways of expression of contemporary society.

Sekularyzacja jako megatrend społeczno-kulturowy

Secularization as Sociocultural MegatrendThe article deals with the widely discussed issue of the phenomena of secularization and desecularization under conditions of diffusion of religious pluralism. New forms and functions of “returning” religiousness in modern multicultural societies are addressed. Author studies above questions from the perspective of sociology of religion and makes an attempt to critically discuss crucial standpoints in the domain.

Neįvykęs pokalbis: Del Noce’ė ir Vattimo apie ateizmą, sekuliarizaciją ir nihilizmą

[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba]
 Straipsnyje siekiama suprobleminti Roberto Esposito pasiūlytą Augusto Del Noce’ės ir Gianni Vattimo požiūrių į sekuliarizaciją ir nihilizmą analizę ir pateikti alternatyvią jų santykio interpretaciją. Tuo tikslu lyginami Del Noce’ės ir Vattimo modernybės ir ateizmo apmąstymai ir jais paremtos skirtingos sekuliarizacijos bei nihilizmo fenomenų interpretacijos. Teigiama, kad Esposito neadekvačiai įvertina tarp Del Noce’ės ir Vattimo filosofijų kylantį prieštaravimą. Del Noce’ės moderniojo ateizmo interpretacija turėtų būti vertinama ne kaip „ištirpstanti“ Vattimo silpnajame mąstyme, o kaip svarbus šiuolaikinės italų filosofijos idėjinio pliuralumo tyrinėjant sekuliarizacijos ir nihilizmo fenomenus ženklas.

City with or without God? Features of post-secularism in religious landscape of post-communist Prague

ABSTRACTThe religious climate caused significant changes over the last few decades which led to intense debates about post-secularism in Western Europe. However, there is particularly a distinct lack of analyses of the features of post-secularism in post-communist cities. The paper draws on the case study of Prague where the religious landscape is in many ways unique in a European context because of its highly secularized society. Nevertheless, Prague also experienced a revival of religious life, which has found expression in the religious landscape (not only) through the emergence of new sacral structures, pluralization of religion and post-secular rapprochement in religious institutions. The paper examines the convergent and contradictory processes shaping the religious and non-religious landscape in Prague and therefore opens the discussion about post-secularism in post-communist context. The results point to the importance of historical, social, and urban development for the new geographies of religion. New areas of research should also draw attention on the new religious movements and alternative spirituality which helps to explain the relationship between sacred and secular phenomena in current European society and space and the re-definition of the minority role of religion in the secular society.

Education and religious participation: city-level evidence from Germany\u2019s secularization period 1890\u20131930

Why did substantial parts of Europe abandon the institutionalized churches around 1900? Empirical studies using modern data mostly contradict the traditional view that education was a leading source of the seismic social phenomenon of secularization. We construct a unique panel dataset of advanced-school enrollment and Protestant church attendance in German cities between 1890 and 1930. Our cross-sectional estimates replicate a positive association. By contrast, in panel models where fixed effects account for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, education—but not income or urbanization—is negatively related to church attendance. In panel models with lagged explanatory variables, educational expansion precedes reduced church attendance, while the reverse is not true. Dynamic panel models with lagged dependent variables and instrumental-variable models using variation in school supply confirm the results. The pattern of results across school types is most consistent with a mechanism of increased critical thinking in general rather than specific knowledge of natural sciences.

Problem sekularyzacji w teologii protestanckiej i katolickiej

Based on the views of selected evangelical (F. Gogarten, D. Bonhoeffer) and Catholic (H. Fries, J.B. Metz) theologians, the author analyzes the phenomenon of secularization. He points to its double face, distinguishing the secularisation that is a consequence of the Christian faith, which recognizes the autonomy of history and culture against the Church, from secularism as an ideology rejecting the transcendent dimension of reality and absolutizing atheism. The article also formulates postulates for the Christian faith, which must preserve the critical-prophetic function against secularization, and by knowing of the phenomena of the finality of the world and human beings, oppose the intra-world absolutism.

Мусульманское общество между фундаментализмом и либерализмом: проблема гражданского общества

The author examines the issue of civil society in the Muslim world in general and in Russia in particular. It received a special significance after the Cold War, when liberal democracy and the concept of civil society were proclaimed as universal models, able to explain features of the modernization process. Research and practical realization of this process in non-Western societies is strongly influenced by the identification of the institution of civil society with the Western post-Christian civilization, with liberal political culture. However, historical experience shows that civil society cannot be transferred from a different social environment, it must grow on its own culture. This totalizing universalistic thinking and the functionalist-evolutionist modernization approaches are not conducive to finding an answer to the question of the existence of civil society in non-Western societies. It needs a civilizational approach, a historical analysis of cultural contexts of occurring processes of modernization, establishing a market economy, democratic political regimes and civil society. The contemporary postmodern discourse supposes civilizational multiplicity of political modernity and political modernization process. The key in these circumstances is a question about the peculiarities of the coexistence in the modern world societies at different stages of social development. In particular, it is necessary to take into account the possible coexistence of several pre secular cultures (Islamic, Confucian) and liberal democracy as post secular phenomenon.

We Will roc You!

This paper analyses developments of the new cultural policy of the Russian government and the role of the Russian Orthodox Church (roc) in the implementation of this cultural policy. This question is embedded into a broader research problem of the status of the roc in today’s Russian society, and its relation to the phenomena of secularization and post-secularization. This paper argues that although the roc has no clear-cut cultural policy and is under the influence of the government, it recently made significant steps towards embracing a hegemonic vision of Orthodox cultural policy with the help of a series of legal litigations about secular cultural products. Wagner’s Tannhäuser opera production in Novosibirsk and the scandal initiated by the roc is under scrutiny as a case study in this paper.

Ovjere sekularizacije – aktualnost Mardešićevih istraživanja

Scientific verification of secularization in this paper is taken as a general research framework investigating socio-cultural changes relevant in religiology, especially its consequences for Christianity and also within Christianity itself. The way secularization is here considered seems to be adequate for taking into account the polyvalency and complexity of some processes of secularization concerning its hermeneutical validity in due to further analyses and explanations of state and role Christianity and religions take in contemporary societies and in nowadays world. At the same time there is also endeavour to actualize some relevant Željko Mardešić’s researches, concerning both the phenomenon of secularization and some of comparable contemporary socio-cultural processes.

Secularities, Diversities and Pluralities: Understanding the Challenges of Religious Diversity in Latin America

Latin America is experiencing today the greatest religious diversity in its entire history. However, it must also be noted that a large number of the growing religious minorities may be classified into types of Christianity with conservative overtones. In this paper we will suggest that the literature streams on multiple secularities in contemporary (Western) societies and religious diversity in Latin America do offer insightful perspectives yet fail to adequately convey the challenges raised by the religious across contemporary Latin America. Addressing Latin America’s historical background, we will distinguish conceptually and empirically among different degrees of secularities<em>, </em>diversities<em> </em>and<em> </em>pluralities<em> </em>and will construct with these distinctions a descriptive-normative model that can guide future analyses of secular and religious phenomena in Latin America. It is only through a comprehensive understanding of diversities, pluralities and secularities that the debates on those human rights crucial for social inclusion—from sexual and reproductive rights to gender and religious equality—can be fruitfully conducted in and beyond Latin America.

Η εμπειρική μελέτη της θρησκευτικής αυθεντίας

No abstract

Relationships between Religion and Two Forms of Homonegativity in Europe--A Multilevel Analysis of Effects of Believing, Belonging and Religious Practice.

This paper examines relationships between religion and two forms of homonegativity across 43 European countries using a bivariate response binary logistic multilevel model. The model analyzes effects of religious believing, belonging and practice on two response variables: a) a moral rejection of homosexuality as a practice and b) intolerance toward homosexuals as a group. The findings indicate that both forms of homonegativity are prevalent in Europe. Traditional doctrinal religious believing (belief in a personal God) is positively related to a moral rejection of homosexuality but to a much lesser extent associated with intolerance toward homosexuals as a group. Members of religious denominations are more likely than non-members to reject homosexuality as morally wrong and to reject homosexuals as neighbors. The analysis found significant differences between denominations that are likely context-dependent. Attendance at religious services is positively related to homonegativity in a majority of countries. The findings vary considerably across countries: Religion is more strongly related to homonegativity in Western than in Eastern Europe. In the post-soviet countries homonegativity appears to be largely a secular phenomenon. National contexts of high religiosity, high perceived government corruption, high income inequality and shortcomings in the implementation of gay rights in the countries’ legislations are statistically related to higher levels of both moralistic homonegativity and intolerance toward homosexuals as a group.

Vertical oscillations of fluid and stellar discs

A satellite galaxy or dark matter subhalo that passes through a stellar disk may excite coherent oscillations in the disk perpendicular to its plane. We determine the properties of these modes for various self-gravitating plane symmetric systems (Spitzer sheets) using the matrix method of Kalnajs. In particular, we find an infinite series of modes for the case of a barotropic fluid. In general, for a collisionless system, there is a double series of modes, which include normal modes and/or Landau-damped oscillations depending on the phase space distribution function of the stars. Even Landau-damped oscillations may decay slowly enough to persist for several hundred Myr. We discuss the implications of these results for the recently discovered vertical perturbations in the kinematics of solar neighborhood stars and for broader questions surrounding secular phenomena such as spiral structure in disk galaxies.

Estado de Derecho y pluralismo religioso

<p>El fenómeno de la secularización coincide en nuestras sociedades occidentales con una presencia pública cada vez más fuerte del fenómeno religioso. La dimensión social del ejercicio del derecho de libertad religiosa en sociedades cada vez más plurales constituye un verdadero test de autenticidad para las democracias contemporáneas y para sus ordenamientos jurídicos. La protección y promoción del pluralismo religioso por parte de los poderes públicos es uno de los principales retos a que han de enfrentarse los ordenamientos de nuestros Estados, considerados democráticos y de derecho, en cuanto garantes de la libertad y la igualdad de sus ciudadanos, así como de la justicia de sus relaciones</p>