Religion In Public Life Research Articles

The British Broadsheet Press and the Representation of “The Mosque” in the Aftermath of Post-7/7 Britain

The role of the mosque has become increasingly vital, particularly in contemporary societies such as Britain, where both the place and status of religion in public life are constantly discussed and debated. Indeed, in the contemporary period, the role of the mosque has several dimensions, ranging from a social space, educational and cultural exchange, and community cohesion centre to a knowledge hub. In this context, this paper suggests that a mosque should be seen as an independent religious institution, although these are influenced by and responsive to governments, elites, pressure groups, public bodies, etc. Using a thematic analysis of news items in The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph over a period of two years (8 July 2005–7 July 2007), it finds that in the aftermath of 7/7, the mosque as a religious place and an institution for British Muslims is largely seen as incompatible and a threat to secular British society and that it is linked with radicalisation and terrorism. According to Quranic texts and revelations, it is indeed a fact that mosques are open to all. This is logical since God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness are for all of mankind without any distinction, which is perhaps why the mosque has been the sacred house of God Himself. This study aims to reveal the development of visible hostility in some sections of the British media and political campaigns. Moreover, it intends to trace the determination and idea of the mosque as a religious place and an institution for British Muslims rather than only a place for worship. Finally, this study will argue the role of the mosque in promoting community cohesion and mutual understanding within the Muslim and other faith communities located in Britain.

Cathedrals in public: bridging the gap between public theology and cathedral studies

ABSTRACT This study demonstrates the value of the field of public theology for cathedral studies. Both of these fields are concerned with the continuing role of religion in public life in contemporary societies, and yet those writing within these fields often do not draw from the work of the other. Therefore, in this study I show some findings of my PhD thesis entitled ‘A critical evaluation of the public theology of Manchester Cathedral’. In this project, I conducted research in both of these fields by employing a publicness-ethnographic approach to collect and analyse data from participant observation, analysis of public data, and 14 semi-structured interviews with key actors at the cathedral. This study analyses three key findings from this research: public theologies of inclusion at the cathedral, the location of theology in the public work of the cathedral, and an understanding of cathedrals as hosts of subaltern counter-publics.

Fungsi Agama Dalam Perspektif Umat Islam di Indonesia

The role of religion in the lives of individuals to function as a value system that includes certain norms. Religion influential as motivation in encouraging individuals to perform an activity, due to actions undertaken against a background of religious beliefs assessed as having elements of chastity, and obedience. Religion in the lives of individuals also serves as 1) .Sumber Value In Keeping Decency 2). As Means To Overcome Frustration, 3). As Means To Satisfy Curiosity. Furthermore, with regard to the function of religion in public life. Society is the union of a group of individuals formed by a certain social order. The issue of religion would never be able to be separated from public life, because religion itself turned out to be necessary in social life. In practice, the function of religion in society, among others: 1). Educational function, 2). Rescuer, 3) As of Atonement, 4). As Social Control, 5). As fertilizer Sense of Solidarity. 6). Transformative function, 7). Creative function, 8). Sublimatif function, and 9). Sublimatif function. For further relates to the prosperity and happiness of human beings according to the teachings of Islam can be seen from all sides of which are 1) Social Kewajiban Human, 2). Humans as Pemakmur, and 3). Life Strategies as a winner.

Comparing language and religion in normative arguments about linguistic justice

AbstractMany of the most influential theorists of linguistic justice make arguments on the basis of comparisons between language and religion. They claim either that (1) language, by contrast with religion, cannot be separated from the state or that (2) unequal official linguistic recognition, just like unequal official religious recognition, is morally problematic. This article argues that careful attention to debates about liberalism and the place of religion in public life invites us to question the two above‐mentioned liberal assumptions about religion underlying many arguments concerning linguistic justice based on (dis)analogies between language and religion. The hope is that such critical scrutiny is likely to shed some light on normative questions of linguistic justice, more precisely on questions about the legitimacy of granting more recognition to certain languages, usually those of national native groups (as opposed to groups resulting from more or less recent immigration).

Orienting a Nation: The Turkish National Anthem Controversies

As Turkey’s ruling elite founded a nation from the collapsed Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, competitions for the Turkish national anthem’s lyrics and musical setting did not immediately yield clear winners. The original winning composition by Ali Rıfat Çağatay draws on Ottoman-era musical and literary conventions; however, the anthem was redacted six years after selection and replaced in 1930 by the current national anthem by Osman Zeki Üngör, a work iconic of European anthems yet infamous for its “broken” prosody. The anthem’s prosodic errors and enigmatic selection process have fueled national debates since its adoption. I argue that the Turkish ruling elite’s selection of a national anthem reflects the challenges of a broader nation-building project premised on rejecting a presumed Ottoman past and oriented towards the modernity associated with the imagined West. More broadly, I assert that understanding the anthem genre requires interrogating the Eurocentrism of non-European anthems that would seem to seek to emulate European exemplars. Exploring nearly a century of anthem controversies in Turkish media and film illuminates how prosodic errors have served as an innocuous proxy for politically sensitive topics, including tensions over religion in public life and governance as well as the Turkey-US relationship since the Cold War. On the other hand, the many-layered meanings within the anthem as well as its iconicity of the nation have enabled those acting in the name of the state to deploy the anthem as a tool of violent state coercion to discipline nonconforming subjects.

Habermas’ Concept of “Lebenswelt” and System and Its Implication for the Position of Religion in Public Life

The concept of “Lebenswelt” (the lifeworld) and the system are essential in Jürgen Habermas's thought. Habermas understands Lebenswelt as background knowledge that people take for granted naively. It becomes the horizon of their daily communication. He emphasizes the importance of coupling Lebenswelt and system. The uncoupling will make society get loss of meaning. Then we ask how he understands the position of religion in public life. How should we place religion as a part of Lebenswelt in making public law? To answer the question, we did the library research by exploring Habermas's works and his commentators. Then I conclude that Habermas offers accommodative participation to religion in public life through discourse. In the discourse, views inspired by religion can be put forward in the public sphere as far as they undergo a rationalization process. They should be openly discussed and tested instead of being taken for granted naively. Views inspired by religion will be accepted as long as they are rational. Discourse practice requires religious groups to be more mature and rational in formulating their ideas in the public sphere. Religious ideas are no longer positioned as closed and anti-criticism.

Revisiting Secularization in Light of Growing Diversity: The European Case

This article brings together two rather different trends in the religious life of twenty-first century Europe. On the one hand, secularization continues—faster in some places than others and with varying implications for the society in question. On the other, Europe—and especially western Europe—is becoming increasingly diverse, an equally inexorable development brought about by immigration. Is it possible to reconcile the two, keeping in mind that secularization erodes religious literacy, thus impeding constructive conversation about religion in public life, whereas the management of religious diversity demands this capacity on an almost daily basis? All too often the result is an ill-informed and ill-mannered debate. Can anything be done? Is it possible, in other words, to encourage a better conversation about religion in this part of the world? Understanding the religious dimensions of the current conflict in Ukraine raises similar—but distinctive—issues; they are central to the underlying discussion.

Editorial EAJPC 9.1

This editorial is an overview of this edition of the Journal of East Asian Popular Culture. It features a theme that has assumed prominence in East Asia’s cultural conversations during the latter half of 2022, namely the role of religion in public life. Five articles examine the engagement of religion with various examples of popular global culture. Two articles deal with popular portrayals of the recent colonial past in postwar Japan and Taiwan. The Book Reviews section features commentary on recently published works that relate to themes discussed in the research articles.

Religious accommodation, agonism, agnosticism in healthcare: A commentary on Joshua Hordern, 'Accommodating religion and belief in healthcare: Political threats, agonistic democracy and established religion'.

Religious accommodation, agonism, agnosticism in healthcare: A commentary on Joshua Hordern, 'Accommodating religion and belief in healthcare: Political threats, agonistic democracy and established religion'.

Greek National Prevention Program for Thalassemia and Other Hemoglobinopathies and Contemporary Bioethical Reflections. The Experience of Northern Greece

Hemoglobinopathies constitute the most frequent monogenic disorders worldwide and are caused by gene mutations that affect the synthesis of the normal hemoglobin chains or contribute to structural changes of the Hb molecule. In Greece hemoglobinopathies are the most frequent genetic diseases and the Greek National Prevention Program for Thalassemia and other Hemoglobinopathies is the most typical international example of a voluntary prevention screening program. During a 20-year study period, gene interactions in 437 pregnancies were related with risk of β-thal major, sickle cell disease and Hb Bart’s hydrops fetalis. 437 prenatal diagnoses were performed and (22.2%, N=97) fetuses were homozygotes or compound heterozygotes for clinically significant mutations. The couples were informed of all the currently available therapeutic approaches for β-TM or sickle cell disease. The decision for the termination or continuation of the pregnancy was left to parental choice and the termination of the pregnancy was generally accepted and 91 from 97 affected pregnancies were terminated. The “success” of a prevention program depends on the commitment and the will of the governments, the consolidation of strong educational campaigns, the continuing public education and health professional awareness, the existence of reliable laboratories. Greek National Bioethics & Techno ethics Committee gives a framework about the bioethical questions arising as well as the “Bio laws” in the Greek constitution. In our constitution the availability of prenatal diagnosis, the social bioethical framework as expressed by the National Bioethics committee, the contemporary role of religion in public life (Greek Orthodox Church less influential) and the existing legal frame of the termination of pregnancy in cases of severe hemoglobinopathies contributed to the success of the Prevention programme.

Unpacking the Determinants of Outrage and Recognition in Public Discourse: Insights Across Socio-Cultural Divides, Political Systems, and Media Types

The degree to which civility norms are upheld or violated is an important criterion in evaluating the democratic quality of public debates. We investigate civility across media types, political systems, and levels of socio-cultural division, offering a comparative perspective on how these factors shape levels of civility in public debates around a key question for societies around the world: What is the proper role of religion in public life? Capturing both positive and negative forms of civility (i.e., recognition and outrage) on multiple levels of analysis, we compile and analyze an original large-scale dataset of news items published during August 2015 until July 2016 in six democracies (Australia, Germany, Lebanon, Switzerland, Turkey, and the USA) across three types of media (printed newspapers, news websites, and political blogs). We find that mediated discourse was heavier on outrage in mixed political systems (Germany and Turkey) than in ‘purely’ majoritarian and consensus systems. Public debate in deeply divided countries contained more outrage but also more recognition compared to less divided countries, with newspapers and news websites mitigating outrage discourse compared to political blogs. Blogs also emerged as less nurturing of recognition than newspapers and news websites.

John Locke: The “Jocose Problem” and the Theoretical Foundation of Toleration

Two years after the publication of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he sought advice from his Irish friend, William Molyneux, concerning improvements for the second edition. This discussion resulted in the most substantial alterations of the Essay. Among these changes, Molyneux proposed a “Jocose Problem”—a 17th Century “brain-teaser”—concerning the ability of a formerly blind person to recognize the simple difference between the appearance of a cube and a sphere. Molyneux’s jocose riddle eventually awakened “the greatest philosophic interest” and became the “common center” of attention for 18th Century thinkers like Berkeley, Voltaire, and Diderot (Cassirer 1951, 108-9). The following is meant to reintroduce Molyneux’s Problem by suggesting its origin in the thought of Thomas Hobbes and its bearing on the role of religion in public life. After examining Molyneux’s Problem and its importance for understanding the Essay, I conclude with a brief comparison to Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration in order to stress its bearing on theoretical and practical considerations for a wide range of political scientists.

Charleston and Christchurch and the Politics of Postracial Forgiveness

This article explores the political work of forgiveness in a secular liberal West by examining the aftermath of two white supremacist violent events: the Charleston church attack in 2015 and the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019. The article examines how the exaltation of forgiveness over anger after such events is symptomatic of what David Theo Goldberg (2015) calls the “postracial” turn which denies the structural harm of racism and privileges social unity at a time when racism bears its most violent face. What can be ascertained in centring forgiveness, and therefore the unifying figure of the victim of white supremacist violence, is how the postracial conceals the persistence of race as the secular investment and regulation in the articulation of religion in public life.

What Isn’t Christian Nationalism? A Call for Conceptual and Empirical Splitting

In the years surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency, a burgeoning strand of literature has emphasized the role of Christian nationalism in American political conflict. The authors argue that this literature contains mutually reinforcing theoretical and empirical shortcomings. Theoretically, the concept of Christian nationalism is overextended and conflates multiple conceptualizations of religion in public life. Empirically, the standard scale used to measure Christian nationalism contains survey items that are too ambiguous to adequately inform (or constrain) interpretations of findings. The authors draw from cultural sociology and political science to highlight key questions current Christian nationalism scholarship does not adequately address. The authors present results from a latent class analysis to show how the same survey items allow other interpretations of how Americans think about religion, state, and public life. The authors conclude with a discussion of theoretical and empirical steps that may strengthen the contributions of this scholarship.

Freedom of Religion and the Accommodation of Religious Diversity: Multiculturalising Secularism

The classical liberal concern for freedom of religion today intersects with concerns of equality and respect for minorities, of what might be loosely termed ‘multiculturalism’. When these minorities were primarily understood in terms of ethno-racial identities, multiculturalism and freedom of religion were seen at that time as quite separate policy and legal fields. As ethno-religious identities have become central to multiculturalism (and to rejections of multiculturalism), specifically in Western Europe in relation to its growing Muslim settlements, not only have the two fields intersected, new approaches to religion and equality have emerged. We consider the relationship between freedom of religion and ethno-religious equality, or alternatively, religion as faith or conscience and religion as group identity. We argue that the normative challenges raised by multicultural equality and integration cannot be met by individualist understandings of religion and freedom, by the idea of state neutrality, nor by laicist understandings of citizenship and equality. Hence, a re-thinking of the place of religion in public life and of religion as a public good and a re-configuring of political secularism in the context of religious diversity is necessary. We explore a number of pro-diversity approaches that suggest what a respectful and inclusive egalitarian governance of religious diversity might look like, and consider what might be usefully learnt from other countries, as Europe struggles with a deeper diversity than it has known for a long time. The moderate secularism that has historically evolved in Western Europe is potentially accommodative of religious diversity, just as it came to be of Christian churches, but it has to be ‘multiculturalised’.

StateChurch: Bringing Religion to Public Higher Education

Religion undeniably impacts life in modern society in numerous ways. In the U.S., discussions about religion in public life often start at the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution as fundamental to the separation of church and state. Public higher education does not necessarily share established associations with any religion, but is not free from religious influence. Although Christian influences are undeniably present on public campuses, educators hesitate to discuss religion and spirituality due in part to a pedestrian understanding of the establishment clause and epistemologies that artificially equate secularism with intellectualism. This paper examines case studies conducted at five public U.S. institutions. Focus groups and interviews highlight what different public campuses are doing to address religious diversity, and how they are succeeding or failing to accommodate the needs of students. Findings indicate that executive leaders’ attitudes towards religious diversity on campus are essential for sustained interfaith efforts, but fell short without bottom-up buy-in. Faculty in particular served as key bottom-up leaders for interfaith motivation on campus with students often feeling most comfortable exploring different worldviews within the classroom. This study provides reasonable and responsible pathways toward helping locate religion within public education, and substantiating interfaith ideas as necessary for an informed and responsible global citizenry.

Experiential design and religious publicity at D.C.’s Museum of the Bible

ABSTRACTThis article examines the sensory dimension of religious publicity, focused on the case of an evangelical museum in the United States. Washington D.C.’s Museum of the Bible (MOTB) was envisioned and funded primarily by conservative Protestants, and is a revealing case of religion in public life because most of the creative labor of design was conceived and executed by secular firms who do not typically work for faith-based clients. The professional expertise of these firms, “experiential design,” informs a sea change in contemporary museology and the expansion of the experience economy in late modernity. Ultimately, I argue that MOTB’s engagement with experiential design indexes the power of entertainment in late modern life, as the sensory repertoire at play operates with largely unquestioned legitimacy and presumed efficacy. By mobilizing the cultural capital of design, an evangelical museum makes a claim for diverse audiences in a deeply public setting.

Don't Mention It: The Unacknowledged Tie between Religion and Labour Law

Don’t Mention It: The Unacknowledged Tie between Religion and Labour Law Thomas C Kohler1 Religion is the capacity to face life triumphantly2 Introduction The unacknowledged tie between religion and labour law? How can that even constitute a topic? Everyone knows that wherever one looks, whether in civil or in common law systems, labour law arose in the early twentieth century. In both systems, this body of law represents the product of substantial legal ingenuity and innovation.3 In the words of the great legal scholar and historian, Franz Wieacker, labour law constitutes ‘one of the few indisputable achievements of our jurists’ in the last century.4 It stands as a response to a set of unprecedented but interrelated developments: the industrial revolution and the appearance of large-scale industry that replaced largely intramoenial patterns of what we later would refer to as employment, and which drew huge masses of workers from agricultural to industrial work, as well as to the rise of class consciousness among the resulting vulnerable and legally-defenceless working class that found its powerful expression in a pioneering social movement, what we know in the United States as the labour movement. Even in the United States, the intellectual and moral foundations for this movement largely sprung from the socialists and Marxist thinkers and activists. The movement challenged a sort of Manchester-style capitalism to its core and, if it failed to fully transform the reigning economic and political systems, it did substantially modify them. Religion, to the extent that it played any role whatever, represented the forces of opposition to labour, acting as a powerful counter-revolutionary tool ready to blunt the claims of workers. In a remark of which Marx famously made much use, Heinrich Heine observed in 1840 that religion, ‘pours sweet, soporific drops into mankind’s bitter cup, spiritual opium, a few drops of love, hope and faith!’5 Benumbed by promises of a better future in another world, the illusory assurances comforted otherwise hopeless people, keeping them Studies • volume 108 • number 432 411 Don’t Mention It: The Unacknowledged Tie between Religion and Labour Law docilely at their tasks and, if not contented with, at least quietly accepting of, their fate. Religion not only explained why the order existed as it did, but religion also guaranteed that quietly suffering and obedient workers, as the meek, ‘would inherit the world’6 – some day. Well, that account more or less represents what I read, heard and absorbed as a student. It does not, however, quite square with reality. That reality, in turn, represents a story far too dense and complex to treat in any depth here. Instead, I propose briefly to address three themes. To begin, I will sketch the character of a few of the typically unacknowledged ties between religion and labour law. I will then turn to consider briefly why those ties so often go unrecognized and how that fact conceals or distorts our understandings of the topic. While I will argue that religion has played an important, if largely unappreciated role in the development of labour law, it goes without saying that religion, at least in the forms we typically have thought of it, has a greatly diminished role in society. Even in the United States, described in a quote attributed to G K Chesterton as ‘a nation with the soul of a church’7 , the role of religion in public life has declined rather precipitously over the past fifteen to twenty years. In 2015, a Pew Research Center survey found that twenty-three per cent of Americans reported no religious affiliation, a substantial increase from 2007, when sixteen per cent reported themselves without such ties. Among millennials, that survey reported that thirty-five per cent identified with no religion – the so-called ‘nones’.8 Although I have no firm answers, I want to reflect a bit on what these trends might mean for the legal ordering of the employment relationship. Religion and labour law: a sketch of a little appreciated relationship Writing in 1933, just two years before the passage of the landmark National Labor Relations Act, which remains the basic labour law of the US, the economist and labour...

Emil Durkheim on the role of religion in public life. Substantiation of the choice of elementary religion

The sociological theory of the religion of E. Durkheim, despite the past tense, remains an important source for the study. The understanding of the French sociologist of religion as the most important social institution providing social integration, led him to look for a sociological approach to the study of this social institution. In the works of E. Durkheim embodied the development of ideas about the collective consciousness, that is, collective beliefs and related moral relations, acting as a unifying force in society, as the “highest form of mental life”. An important distinction of E. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life from his contemporary totemism literature and primitive religion in general became its methodological approach. He consistently examines, criticizes and rejects competing theories of the origin of totemism, analyzes the development of a religious phenomenon in society, examining precisely its social aspects that are available for scientific analysis. In a religious rite, a person fixes his “confused social feelings” on these clear, concrete objects, from which the physical power and moral powers of society are distinguished. E. Durkheim saw the exceptional social appearance of religious facts. Thus, the sequence of short but intense periods of religious “collective excitement” alternates with much longer periods of diffuse secular individual economic activity, and that it was this division that gave rise to belief in two special worlds — the sacred and the secular — both within man and within nature. E. Durkheim’s famous hypothesis — that a deity is nothing more than a deified society — was confirmed by many arguments of its reasoning, but at the same time it does not have any anticlerical or antireligious ideology that would strongly contradict Durkheim’s understanding of the principle of scientific objectivity.

A Crisis of Faith, Scary Popes, and William Gladstone

William Gladstone presided as Prime Minister of Great Britain on four separate occasions between 1868 to 1894. Gladstone was preoccupied both personally and politically with religion, and his personal faith journey reflected the larger crisis of faith occurring in Britain in the nineteenth century as secularism and urbanization began to erode the place of faith in common life. Many scholars have referred to this period as the “Victorian Crisis of Faith.” This paper examines his personal diaries and extensive writings to understand his zest for religion, primarily regarding the supposed papal aggression of 1850 in Great Britain and his personal faith crises. The significance of this paper is that it highlights how both personally and politically this key leader was working to understand the role of religion in public life in nineteenth-century Great Britain.