Process Of Secularization Research Articles

Reconceptualizing Secularization and Secularism: The Value-Inversion Theory

This article aims to define a new way of understanding the secularization process, especially in non-Western societies. It conceptualizes secularization as a value inversion process, in which the substantive values that underpin social practices, laws, or institutions are displaced by those that serve instrumental ends. The article defines the historical mechanisms by which value inversion takes place and demonstrates the value of the theory in the case of the Middle East and North Africa. Value-inversion theory complements the two predominant contemporary approaches to understanding secularism, the rationalization method and the genealogical method, synthesizing elements of both approaches.

Masking or Unmasking the Evil? Polish Opinion-Forming Weeklies vis-à-vis the Crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in Poland

Almost twenty years have passed since the end of John Paul II’s pontificate. The Roman Catholic Church in Poland faces a serious crisis, stimulated not only by secularisation processes, which are characteristic for Western Europe, but also by a whole series of adverse events that unfolded at the end of the year 2020; they resembled a disaster marathon and had a considerable potential to attract media attention. A wide spectrum of Polish opinion-forming weeklies, ranging from left-liberal to ultra-conservative and far-right ones, as well as those associated with the Polish Episcopate, published accounts of the situation within the Catholic Church. In this manner, press discourse shaped the public perception of Catholicism in Poland. An analysis of the periodicals’ content disclosed a strong polarisation of opinions and a variety of interpretations. Differences between the particular weeklies were identified at the level of agenda-setting and prioritisation, framing, persuasion techniques employed, and additional contexts that were evoked, including the legal, moral, historical, philosophical, and religious ones.

Patriotism as a Political Religion: Its History, Its Ambiguities, and the Case of Hungary

The article discusses patriotism as a “political religion”, an ambiguous phenomenon that is both a substitute for former religious traditions and something that remains profoundly analogous with them. Special emphasis is laid on the origins of such political religions in the modern era and the role of the state in their emergence, which somewhat relativizes Böckenförde’s famous thesis on the rise of the state as a “process of secularization”. The article also follows the spread of religious patriotism in nineteenth-century Europe and how it contributed to the project of nation-building in different environments. This larger context helps to better explain such cases as that of Hungary, which has produced a variety of patriotic narratives, symbols, and rituals from its beginnings to the present day, raising doubts about the overarching validity of the secularization thesis. Methodologically, this approach involves the analysis of historical and contemporary texts, visual representations, and liturgical practices, while the conclusion suggests that, although the concept of “political religion” remains controversial, the enduring force of patriotism is better explained by the interaction of politics and religion than by a purely secular outlook.

Secularisation: its impact on Catholic schools – perspective from France

Because it has experienced a process of secularisation for more than three centuries, France can be considered as a laboratory of the relevance of faith in a society for which it is no longer the cultural matrix. By showing how the central question of secularisation is in fact that of the relationship between faith and culture, this article proposes to consider Catholic schools as places where a new way for the Catholic Church to support humanity in its growth, at a personal and community level, is being elaborated.

Toward a sociological hermeneutics of narrative secularization: secular stories in the Spanish case of religious transformation (1960–2019)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to present a dimension of the study of religious transformation that can help us to continue the debate on secularization from an approach of sociological history: narrativity. After the presentation of the conceptual and methodological bases that support this study, I explore a specific case of secularization: Spanish society between 1960 and 2019. The acceleration of the secularization process in the second half of the century was particularly condensed in the gestation of a whole series of narratives, which led to the formation of an ‘epistemic secular regime’. This article will reflect on the particularities of three specific historical moments: the late 1960s, the period immediately after Franco’s death (from 1975 until the end of the 1980s), and the beginning of the twenty-first century. My research concludes by confirming the importance of narrative secularization to understand this process from a socio-historical perspective and proposes the study of the narrative dimension as a line of explanation for the particular acceleration and extension of secularization in other European societies.

Navigating fullness and exile in the low countries : constructing contemporary Paganism in- and outside of a secular frame

What do the experiences of contemporary Pagans operating in a supposedly secular environment mean for our understanding of the lived experience of not only religion, but also secularity? How can processes of secularization be understood as tools for self-understanding and self-legitimatization, rather than top-down concepts that precludes the need for further study of religion in contexts that are considered as largely having moved past the transcendent? This article examines the narratives of practitioners who use various elements of secularization discourses to construct their beliefs and self-understanding. Rather than simply considering contemporary Paganism as a response to processes of secularization, this article approaches secularization from the perspective of practicing Pagans in a more inductive way. It utilizes semi-structured interviews carried out among Dutch Pagans to make inferences about the impact of broader processes of religious change on the self-understanding of these practitioners.

Religiosity and Secularisation of Polish Youth in the 21st Century. Quantitative Research Analysis

In this article, we analyse the religiosity and secularisation processes of secondary school youth on several selected levels: religious affiliation, changes in religiosity, belief in a personal God, compulsory and non-compulsory religious practices, i.e. personal prayer. These analyses are based on the results of a sociological survey as part of the research project ‘Religious education of Polish youth – current state, opportunities and challenges’, conducted in November and December 2022 and January 2023. The study involved 1,672 male and female students from secondary schools across Poland. The results of the study confirm the increasingly dynamic secularisation processes.

Семирационалистические тенденции в католической теологии первой половины XIX века

At the onset of the 19th century, a demand for a renewal of thinking forms in Western Christian theology emerged with great clarity. This was primarily due to the intensification of emancipation and secularisation processes in society and the humanities, and the emergence of major, highly influential systems of philosophy that directly addressed questions of religious knowledge and doctrine. This challenge has been especially problematic and painful for Catholicism, whose conservative epistemology attaches great importance to the continuity of Church teaching and tradition. This article highlights the context and some striking episodes of this transitional situation on the example of attempts to adapt elements of Kantian criticism and other emerging philosophical-rationalist paradigms and categories to Catholic thought made by the important German-speaking dogmatists of the time, Georg Hermes and Anton Günther. The author explains why their ideas and schools formed around them (Hermesianism and Güntherianism) were attributed to the Semirationalism and officially declared heterodox, and demonstrates their ideological and epistemic affinity. Particular attention in the article is paid to the critical method of “positive doubt” and the principles of empirical-psychological epistemology, addressed to the data of human consciousness. Special section is devoted to a detailed analytical demonstration of the application of these approaches within the framework of the philosophical-dogmatic reflection of the properties of God in the main works of Hermes. The author concludes that in spite of controversy and failure at a particular historical stage, the speculative and methodological insights of Hermesianism and Güntherianism had a constructive for their time apologetic significance and somehow endured reception in Catholicism, contributing to the formation of the modern Gestalt of theology as a scientific discipline.

Старообрядческая книжная культура в романе П. И. Мельникова-Печерского «В лесах» (к 140-летию со дня смерти писателя)

The article examines the peculiarities of P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky’s perception of the Volga Old Believers’ book tradition. In particular, it establishes the sources of the formation of the writer’s ideas about the role of bookishness in the daily life of “dissenters.” The author of “In the Woods” acquired a deep acquaintance with church literature during the performance of his official duties and numerous business trips. The article clarifies curious details of Melnikov’s description of the reading culture of the Old Believers, as well as the main ways of spreading bookishness among the “zealots of ancient piety.” The writer demonstrated his own view on factors that determined the popularity of a particular work among “dissenters.” The article examines Melnikov-Pechersky’s perception of the significance of the monasteries in the preservation of the Old Russian Cyrillic heritage, as well as the role of the scribes in the organization of the religious and everyday life of the Old Believers communities. The author analyzes the influence of the spread of the civil press and secular education on the processes of gradual secularization of the Old Believers community. Summing up the results, it can be concluded that Melnikov had very ambiguous attitude to the book traditions of the “old time lovers.” Thus, the author points to the extreme fanaticism of some polemical Old Believers’ writings, which destructively affect the consciousness of their readers, calling for moving away from progress and hating everything around them.

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

The article analyzes the metamorphoses of religious faith in contemporary society and especially the influence of the process of globalization and secularization on religion. The specific hypothesis of the study is related to the fact that at the global level, one aspect of the recent religious changes is the scale taken by the religious movements, aiming at both the revival of tradition and the global and local manifestation of new religious movements. The main purpose of the research is to study religious movements that are conceived as responses to globalization. It gives us the opportunity to analyze the New Age movement and the discourse of spirituality in the universalist way. Based on the purpose, the following objectives were developed: identifying the role of religion in contemporary society; description of the paradox of modernity with the emergence of new religious movements; projecting religious mutations on today’s multicultural society. The main study methods used are the method of direct observation, the method of content analysis and the method of social documentation. By means of these methods it was identified about the cultural manifestations of religious and spiritual metamorphoses as basic elements of the global society through which cultural identity and religious identity are affirmed. This research results in several findings: the crisis of traditional values leads to the permanent search for new cultural and religious models, the differentiation of contemporary society in multicultural and multi-religious terms has created individual variants of perception of conceptions about life, group identity leads to the change of personal identity.

Islamic Conservatism in the Intellectual Discourse of Modern Indonesia

The paper analyzes the features of development and the main vectors of transformation of the political ideology of Muslim conservatism in modern Indonesia. It is shown that the activity of right-wing Muslim intellectuals contributes to the formation and development of a unique discourse in modern Indonesian political culture. The author analyzes the contribution of the intellectuals of the conservative segment of the Ummah to the functioning of the rightist ideology. It is assumed that Muslim intellectuals actively use religious arguments for political mobilization. The article shows the role of ideological contradictions in the pluralistic Indonesian society, which influence significantly the strategies of conservative Muslim intellectuals as participants in the political imagination. It is assumed that the political model of Muslim conservatism in modern Indonesia is based on the development and reproduction of several narratives, including 1) the activity of Muslim conservative intellectuals resulting from the processes of political modernization and secularization contributes to the re-Islamization of Indonesian society, 2) an important component of the modern political imagination is Shariatization based on rejection secular Indonesian nationalism and the ideology of pancasila as one of its derivatives, 3) the Muslim call and the ideas of Islamization occupy a special place in the political imagination of the conservative segment of the Indonesian ummah, whose representatives insist on the need to both protect and promote Islam. In general, the presented article shows that Muslim conservatives and traditionalists in modern Indonesia generate alternative political concepts based on the rejection of modernization and secularization, consistent criticism and condemnation of their results, which are defined as negative and destructive for Indonesia as a country with a Muslim majority.

La Iglesia católica en el México decimonónico : entre tradición y cambio

During the nineteenth century in Mexico, the form of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the State was a matter of public discussion. Since the Mexican Independence and until the Reform, there were multiple attempts to define the role of the ecclesiastical institution in the new nation. In the mid-century, the Church reshape itself as an answer to the process of secularization in Mexico and a great part of the Western world.

The Peter’s Stage of Secularization Process

The Peter’s Stage of Secularization Process

Atheism, anti-church, feminism and the Women’s Strike. Group case study: Gals 4 Gals (Dziewuchy Dziewuchom)

Poland has been entering a period of accelerated secularisation in recent years. The results of the CBOS survey indicate that this process is visible especially in the youngest cohorts of Poles. The Women’s Strike, which took place between 2016 and 2020, is described in the academic literature as one of the factors accelerating secularisation processes, mainly in the population of young women with feminist views. In 2021, we surveyed members of the Facebook group “Gals 4 Gals” (Dziewuchy Dziewuchom) to describe the diverse relationship between feminism and atheism and to verify our hypothesis that the Women’s Strike was an expression, rather than a cause, of respondents’ atheist attitudes. It was also important for our quantitative research to determine the attitudes of the group members surveyed towards issues such as the political activities of the Catholic Church, the operation of the moral principles of Catholicism, and perceived spiritual needs.

THE ALIENATED SUBJECT IN MODERN SCIENCE AS THE PROBLEM OF HUMANITY

Those above-mentioned condition in short are not taken it as a given but it is established by the long and pervasive process of secularization of science which is primariy chracterized as the alienated knowing subject in mainstream scientific endeavours. Such global calamities as injustice, poverty, wars, organized violence, terrorism, arms race, moral disorientation, alienation, abuse of human rights, global warming, and severe damage to nature and environmental sphere are the end-products of complex process of secularization of science. R.D. Laing says “we have destroyed the world in theory before we destroy it in practice

Schelerowska kategoria resentymentu w świetle sporów o sekularyzację Zachodu


 
 
 
 The aim of the article is to verify the category of ressentiment developed by Max Scheler in the light of disputes about the sources and causes of secularization. The category of ressentiment is one of the most important subjects of the author’s scientific reflection, being an expression of his particular interest in the functioning of the world of values. On the other hand, the processes of secularization, which have become visible in Western societies in recent decades, are understood here as the result of a decline in interest in religious issues and the disappearance of references to the broadly understood supernatural world. The key issues concern the extent to which the phenomenological conceptual apparatus developed by Scheler can serve today as an effective tool for a fuller understanding of the essence of contemporary disputes over the secularization of the West. Thus, it seems possible to assess the topicality of Scheler’s approach to the world of values as a timeless model and point of reference in research on the changing social reality.
 
 
 

Modernity, Its Crisis and Islamic Revivalism

Modernity is a global condition of an ongoing socio-cultural, economic, and political transformation of human experience, with tradition or religion having no significant role to play. It is the gradual decline of the role of religion in modernity through the implementation of the principles of secularism which has, according to Islamic revivalists, plunged the world into crisis or jahiliyya (unGodliness). Revivalists and sociologists such as Anthony Giddens (1991) call it the “crisis of modernity”. In response, many Islamic revivalist movements have emerged to address this condition. The Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979 gave a boost to many existing Islamic revivalist movements and inspired many to appear anew. The phenomenon of contemporary Islamic revivalism is a religious transformative response to the crisis of modernity—i.e., the inability of secularism and the process of secularization to fulfill the promise of delivering a model of perfect global order. Contemporary Islamic revivalism is not anti-modernity but against secularism and is thus an attempt to steer modernity out of its crisis through a comprehensive and robust process of Islamization—the widespread introduction of Islamic rituals, practices, socio-cultural and economic processes, and institutional developments to the pattern of modern everyday living—and transforming modernity from dar al-harb (abode of war) to dar al-Islam (abode of peace). The paper argues that contemporary Islamic revivalism is a complex heterogeneous global phenomenon seeking to steer modernity out of its prevailing crisis through finding in Islam the universal blueprint of life. It further argues that Islamic revivalism is not anti-modernity but is a religious based reaction against the negative consequences of modernity, particularly against secularism, and carving out a space for itself in modernity.

Citizenship Under Pressure: Mapping Debates Over Religious Freedom in the Second Decade in Quebec

In recent years and following a long process of secularization, social change, and immigration, Quebec is currently a diverse environment with rich dynamics around Quebecness, citizenship, identity politics, and reasonable accommodations. Following sensitive political events, Quebec saw many battles over secularism and religious pluralism. A series of debates were enmeshed with political debates about the true meaning of secularism and embroiled with fear of religion and immigrants. This ethnographic inquiry maps out the existing tendencies during different periods of repercussions and tensions around Quebec’s secularism. The article outlines key clustering patterns and ethico-religious hierarchies and their genesis while responding to the 2013 Charter of Values of Quebec, the debates on the 2014 attacks against Canadian soldiers by presumed ISIS members in Canada, and the 2019 secularism law, Bill 21, adopted by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government in June 2019. The fieldwork was conducted between May 2013 and June 2020 and is based on 44 events and interviews with major key participants (Catholics, Muslims, Secularists) in Montreal. The main findings show that the dynamics behind the incongruities within social groups appear to be generating overlapping alliances; while discourses of many groups seem to be unified in appearance, they are divided into many layers, which serves the purpose of opposing or supporting the government’s policies and legislation. Partnerships created in such conditions remain ephemeral, restrained with an allegiance to the same political tendency, and controlled by cultural or ideological homogeneity. Furthermore, there is more hate and violence when perpetrators believe that they benefit from anonymity.

Obchody Tysiąclecia Państwa Polskiego we Włocławku w 1966 r.

In 1966 the communist authorities of PRL (People’s Republic of Poland) organized a lot of events to celebrate one thousand years of existence of the Polish State. The main aim of the government was to deepen the process of secularization of the Polish society. In Włocławek the most important events took place in April and May. On 14th May the representatives of the Central Committee of PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party) came to the city to celebrate the memory of Julian Marchlewski – one of the leader of Polish communist movement, who was born in Włocławek in 1866. There were also great celebrations on 1st May (Labor Day) and on 22nd July (the celebration of the beginning of the period of communist rule in Poland – on 22nd July 1944 the Polish Committee of National Liberation published it’s manifesto). The efforts of the local authorities of PZPR did not get the expected results – the religion had still a profound influence on the citizens. In Włocławek thousandsof people took part in the ceremony organized by the Catholic Church to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland.

La religion dans l’œuvre de Ricœur. Dialogue avec Yasuhiko Sugimura

Yasuhiko Sugimura’s review of my book La Religion dans la philosophie (Hermann, 2021) for the present issue of Études Ricœuriennes / Ricoeur Studies affords me an opportunity to return to my intention in this work. I verify the heuristic hypothesis that the complex relationship that Ricoeur’s philosophy established with religion can be explained by a process of secularization [laïcisation] of Ricoeur’s religious convictions. In dialogue with the aforementioned review, I propose to reconsider certain aspects of my criticism of Ricoeur on the question of truth.