Secular Language Research Articles

Unsettling extractivism: Indigeneity, race, and disruptive emplacements

AbstractDrawing inspiration from new work across the fields of political ecology, plantation and abolition studies, critical Indigenous studies, and racial capitalism, this Introduction to a special issue of The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology locates extraction within an account of property as a system of racialized exploitation. Aware of the risks of a cosmopolitics that romanticizes non‐Western value systems as largely untouched by extractivism, in this Introduction and in the articles themselves, we center the question of how Indigenous communities and others navigate extractivism in places and landscapes that have been deeply impacted and partly transformed by resource mining, agrarian monoculture, and deforestation. In voicing demands not subordinated by a materialist and secular language of resource exploitation, these accounts invite a less deterministic account of “our” late capitalist present. We contend that just as extraction is not monolithic, neither are its refusals, resistances, and alternatives.

Jürgen Habermas’s Translation of the Human Being as Created in the Image of God: Perspectives from Joseph Ratzinger and Alasdair MacIntyre

This paper considers Habermas’s translation proviso, which requires religious concepts to be translated into secular language when in the public sphere. Translation, for Habermas, protects the state from religious interference and elicits essential aspects of pre-rational thought—that is, religious and metaphysical thought, which post-metaphysics cannot generate for itself, e.g., social solidarity. The task undertaken by Habermas’s translation proviso is illustrated through his own work of translation: that of the translation of the biblical image of humanity as created in the image of God into the identical dignity of each human being. To provide context to and to highlight the difficulties involved in Habermas’s translation proviso, consideration is given to the thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI and Alasdair MacIntyre on these themes. What is demonstrated is that Habermas’s translation is, in essence, assimilation and re-appropriation. In practice, it manifests itself as the truncation of Christian metaphysics, in which the divine Logos is replaced by or collapsed into the logos of intersubjective human language. The relational image of humanity as a creature distinct from the Creator, in which human reason is analogous to divine reason, is erased, leaving autonomous human beings, from which human reason emerges out of the discursive communication of the logos of intersubjective human language. The conclusion is that the translation proviso fails in its objective. An alternative to Habermas’s translation proviso, the presupposition proviso, is presented as a more apt approach to addressing the underlying issues involved: facilitating human flourishing in an orderly, free, and just society.

Human Rights and Views of the Catholic Church under Habermas Discourse Theory


 
 
 This article aims to explain the views of the Catholic Church on human rights and put them into dialogue with the concept of human rights based on discourse theory as put forward by Jürgen Habermas. In the view of the Catholic Church, the ethical basis for the concept of human rights is the biblical view of human beings as being made in the image of God, which later became the forerunner to the birth of the concept of human dignity and the ethical basis for human rights. This article shows that the discourse theory rejects this theological model of justification for human rights. The criticism of the discourse theory as it relates to an absolute paradigm is that the absolute paradigm requires metaphysical premises. However, in a modern society characterized by a pluralism of worldviews and philosophical and religious beliefs, such metaphysical claims are no longer acceptable. Through the lens of discourse theory, the foundation of the notion of human rights cannot be based on the pre-political basis of religious values. This discourse theory grounding model is based on the conditions of contemporary post-metaphysical society, characterized by a plurality of comprehensive doctrines. However, Habermas emphasizes the role of religion in the public sphere in promoting human rights. He advocates for the reinvention of public reason by encouraging religious people to translate sacred terms into secular language when entering formal political spaces. According to Habermas’ theories, democratic decision-making must allow citizens the right to use religious terms in public debate. Furthermore, this article shows that discourse theory creates a roadmap for human rights by allowing religion, law, and politics to coexist. Only if we adhere to the principles of discourse theory can we guarantee the fair and just participation of both secular and religious members in a democratic constitutional state.
 Keywords: Human Rights, Catholic Church, Religion, Habermas’s Discourse Theory
 
 

The International Discourse on Ecumenical Diaconia as a Chance to Strengthen the Specific Profile and Potential of Churches as Actors of Eco-Social Transformation—A German Perspective

There has always been a conviction in the ecumenical movement that social service is part of the essence of what it means to be the church. The strengthening of social and political witness of churches through church-related agencies and networks in the context of the beginning development discourse from the 1960s until the 1990s, however, led to a scenario in which the secular language of development and political action received much attention. In 2014 at the Malawi consultation, the World Council of Churches (WCC) and Action of Churches Together (ACT Alliance) reviewed their working relationships and explored better collaboration between agencies and churches, stating that the specific nature of churches as entities with an added value and particular profile in the area of social and political service would be strengthened. From this consultation, a mandate was given by the WCC Central Committee to develop a study document on the understanding and core components of the concept of “ecumenical diaconia”, which then was made available to the 11th Assembly of the WCC in Karlsruhe, 2022. This article introduces the context, major content, and key convictions of this study document and related discussions in Karlsruhe. It answers the question: what is the significance of the global ecumenical fellowship of churches in focusing on a common language of diaconia and a more explicit church-related terminology to describe and strengthen the social services of churches and their engagement in diaconia and social witness? It is recognized that this article is predominantly written from a German context and perspective in its construction of the international discourse on ecumenical diaconia.

Framing Blasphemy as a crime: the curious similarities between the secular left and the organization of Islamic cooperation

ABSTRACT The tensions between free speech and religious sensitivities are an ongoing source of political conflict, both within western democracies and within the UN human rights system where rivalling states compete to define the limits of freedom of expression. Examining the debate on free speech and its limits in the context of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in 2015 and the Danish cartoon affair in 2005, this article analyzes the discursive similarities between secular critics of religious satire and Muslim-majority states in the UN. In both cases, censorship is justified on the basis of combating racism, hate speech, intolerance and related human rights violations. Instead of applying theological doctrines and religious language, the article shows how the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is gradually adopting secular and leftist mainstream human rights language in its quest to instal new international censorship norms.

From the “Man of Jerusalem” to the Beit El Yeshiva: Late Nineteenth Century Rabbinic Leadership in the Jewish Community of Tripoli

Abstract This article details a polemic among the rabbinical leadership of the Jewish community of Tripoli, Libya, in the late nineteenth century. At stake was an initiative of the community’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Eliyahu Bechor Hazzan, to change the traditional educational system to include secular topics and foreign language. The communal rabbis who opposed the idea wrote the rabbinical leadership of Jerusalem, requesting support in overturning Rabbi Hazzan’s proposal. This study details the issues at stake in this aspect of the infiltration of modernism into Jewish communities in Muslim countries and presents the letter written to the rabbinic authorities of the land of Israel that led Rabbi Hazzan to abandon his initiative and, later, to resign from his leadership post.

Religion at Work in Bioethics and Biopolicy: Christian Bioethicists, Secular Language, Suspicious Orthodoxy.

The proper role, if any, for religion-based arguments is a live and sometimes heated issue within the field of bioethics. The issue attracts heat primarily because bioethical analyses influence the outcomes of controversial court cases and help shape legislation in sensitive biopolicy areas. A problem for religious bioethicists who seek to influence biopolicy is that there is now widespread academic and public acceptance, at least within liberal democracies, that the state should not base its policies on any particular religion's metaphysical claims or esoteric moral system. In response, bioethicists motivated by religious concerns have adopted two identifiable strategies. Sometimes they rely on slippery-slope arguments that, sometimes at least, have empirically testable premises. A more questionable response is the manipulation and misuse of secular-sounding moral language, such as references to "human dignity," and the plights of groups of people labeled "vulnerable."

Religious language in the postsecular public sphere: A falsificationist model

In this article, I examine the relation of religious language and public debate within the context of postsecularism and defend a falsificationist model. I argue that the postsecular public sphere ought to problematize four characteristics of modern thinking; the exclusion of truth and religious language, the asymmetry between religious and secular language, the essentialization of the secular and the religious and, lastly, the exclusivity and exhaustiveness of the secular and religious as categories. Based on these four problematizations, I defend a falsificationist model for the admission of religious language in the public sphere and argue that we ought to allow citizens the right to use the language of their choice in the public sphere, provided that they also provide in their preferred language ‘conditions of falsifiability’, that is, those circumstances upon which the speaking party would accept their argumentation as void.

Apologetic and educational tasks of Orthodox theology in regards to F. M. Dostoevsky’s spiritual insights (on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the writer’s birth)

The article attempts to define the most important tasks of modern Orthodox theology by analyzing the spiritual insights of the great Russian writer and philosopher F. M. Dostoevsky. The thinker wrote about the need to educate the Russian people in a Christian spirit in order for them to fulfill their worldwide mission. Russian university theology today is being formed in the conditions of worldview, ideological and religious pluralism. Differentiation of theological science and education on the basis of confessions is optimal in the current situation according to the author of the article. For Orthodox theology, the theoretical and methodological foundation should be, first of all, Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, the richest experience of Eastern Christianity transmitted to Ancient Rus by Byzantium, patristic works and the works of a great many brilliant Orthodox theologians. Also, the spiritual and intellectual achievements of Russian religious philosophers, who, not without mistakes, strove to transfer the richest heritage of Orthodox thought into the secular language should be included. The analysis of Dostoevsky’s literary works, diaries, and notebooks, one of the most distinctive representatives of Russian metaphysics, determined the conclusion of the author of the article that for modern Orthodox theology, the most important tasks are apologetic and enlightenment. They are aimed at protecting the Christian faith from the multitude of myths that developed during the period of apostasy. In addition, these tasks are meant to cultivate knowledge about Orthodoxy and other traditional religions for Russia, both among young people and the older generations.

Sufi Symbol as Gap, Metaphor as Clue

Abstract This article introduces an approach to analyzing the way in which figurative language interfaces with cognitive, cultural, and spiritual experience in the symbols employed by the Sufis to express their love of God. It relies on the Cognitive Linguistic Approach to reveal the relationship between the Sufis’ thoughts about God, secular language of love, and the idea of divine love. Through a case study analysis of the symbols of love in Ibn ʿArabī’s poetry, the two chief undertakings here are: first, to argue that thoughts and feelings of human love inspired the Sufis to express their ideas about their experience of divine love through secular symbols that create gaps of indeterminacy in their poems, and second, to explain, using Conceptual Metaphor Theory, how these gaps can be closed through mappings of the Sufi symbols, as parts of the target domain of divine love, onto the source domain of secular love.

Traces of the Post Secular: Early Catholic Social Thought, the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists and the Pursuit of the Common Good

ABSTRACT This paper will consider how early Catholic social encyclicals, while motivated by religious beliefs, often deployed secular language to describe and promote their view of social justice. A view that included a religiously motived critique of industrial capitalism and an ethical concern for the rights of workers. While these encyclicals view of justice was not acceptable to all members of society, they were expressed in language which was comprehensible to most members of the public. The article will explore how labor activists, such as the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, understood and applied themes from these encyclicals, notably in their efforts to collaborate with non-Catholics in the formation of secular unions. It will advance the view that such collaboration may be understood as a precursor to some contemporary recommendations concerning post-secular dialogue and co-operation in the interests of justice. Particularly as formulated by Jurgen Habermas and Cardinal Blasé Cupich.

RELIGIOUS ATTENDANCE AND SLEEP DISTURBANCE IN OLDER MEXICAN AMERICANS

Although numerous studies have shown that religious involvement is associated with better health across the life course, researchers have virtually ignored possible links between religious involvement and sleep-related outcomes. Building on previous work, we tested whether religious attendance was inversely associated with sleep disturbance among older Mexican Americans. We also assessed whether depressive symptoms could mediate or explain any of the inverse association between religious attendance and sleep disturbance. Relevant hypotheses were tested using ordinary least squares regression and conditional process mediation analysis of cross-sectional data collected from the original cohort of the Hispanic Established Population for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (H-EPESE). The baseline H-EPESE (1993-1994) included a probability sample of 3,050 Mexican Americans ages 65 and older. Due to missing data on our focal variables, our final analytic sample included 2,323 respondents. Regression models show that religious attendance is inversely associated with depressive symptoms and sleep disturbance, even with adjustments for smoking, drinking, body mass, chronic disease, mobility, marital status, living arrangements, family engagement, secular group participation, social support, age, gender, immigrant status, language proficiency, education, household income, and religious affiliation. Mediation analyses also indicate that depressive symptoms fully mediate the association between religious attendance and sleep disturbance. These findings contribute to previous work by showing that regular religious attendance may protect against sleep disturbance by promoting mental health in an understudied population of older Mexican Americans. The importance of religious involvement is supported by the fact that secular group participation was unrelated to sleep disturbance.

Religinės argumentacijos (ne)galimybė formaliojoje viešojoje erdvėje

[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English] This article focuses on the debate between Jurgen Habermas and Charles Taylor on the place of religious argumentation in the formal public sphere. Habermas’s position, which arises from his critique of John Rawls’s position and is also its continuation, is based on the principle of common reason. In order to use their arguments in the public sphere, religious people must translate them into secular language, which is supposedly understood by every rational person. Taylor opposes this position by stating that the division between religious and secular arguments is not well enough reasoned. The aim of this article is to find out whether the views of Hebarmas, as well as the core presuppositions that they are based on, can stand their ground and whether they are capable of reflecting the current geopolitical and sociocultural situation and help in understanding it. This is done by using the points made by Taylor and other authors who support his views and trying to find a satisfactory alternative solution.

From Socialist Realism to Orthodox Christianity: “Blockade Temples” in Saint Petersburg

The article, based on the analysis of architectural and memorial complexes dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad in Saint Petersburg, investigates the processes of formation and transformation of historical memory of this event in the urban space. The secular language of the artistic representation of the blockade created during the years of the USSR was instrumentalized by agents of the politics of history on the eve of perestroika and reinterpreted through the categories of Orthodox Christianity in contemporary Russia. Following the cultural transformations that took place during perestroika, I identify new actors of the politics of history: organizations of blockade survivors, Russian nationalists, and the Russian Orthodox Church. They were the driving force behind many memorials and commemorative signs dedicated to the Blockade of Leningrad in and around Saint Petersburg in the 1990s and early 2000s. The construction of Russian Orthodox churches dedicated to the memory of the blockade, like the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Malaia Okhta and the Church of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land in Victory Park, testify to the emergence of a new language of historical commemoration in the post-Soviet Saint Petersburg. It also indicates the inclusion of the blockade in the category of events significant to the historical narrative of the Russian Orthodox Church. Using the example of the Russian Orthodox Church’s policy regarding commemoration of the blockade in the 1990s, I outline the reasons why a formerly marginal agent of the politics of history not only was able to mark its presence in the city’s cultural space, but also began to claim the place of the most influential interpreter of the past in contemporary Russia. The study is based on visual analyses of several memorials dedicated to the Blockade of Leningrad, the circumstances of the creation of monuments and other commemorative markers, their location in the city, and the discursive significance attached to memorials by the city’s community. The article is written at the intersection of research in history of memory and cultural studies. Article in English DOI: 10.25285/2078-1938-2018-10-3-79-105

John Donne’s and George Herbert’s Employment of Secular Language and Images in Their Religious Poetry

Recent studies in Herbert and Donne show that most critics focus on the study of theological or biblical aspects of Herbert’s and Donne’s poetry. This argument is more accurate as far as Herbert is concerned because he inspires the reader’s mind as he approaches spiritual life by means of pure simplicity of language and thought. But when it comes to Donne, this argument becomes less accurate, or needs a bit more investigation. Before he decides to write religious poetry, Donne wrote many secular poems mainly about love, yet secular images do not disappear completely in his religious poetry, but rather create a very controversial poet who struggles between his secular and religious character. However, Herbert uses many images, devices, and metaphors of popular love poetry. Herbert’s intermingling of secular love images with his serious divine theme does not affect his religious voice in his religious poetry. Rather, this excellent technique of intermingling helps express Herbert’s divine themes very effectively. The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of secular love images and devices in the religious poetry of Herbert and Donne. This should help us to decide whose poetry reveals a more religious view of life and more faith than the other.

“All Our Theories Are Going to Be Carried Away by History”: Alexander Mitscherlich and American Psychoanalysis

Alexander Mitscherlich succeeded in his life project of returning psychoanalysis to post-Nazi central Europe—and securing for it far greater cultural prestige than it ever had in Sigmund Freud's own day—by advancing an idiosyncratic version of psychoanalysis as a secular moral-political language. Mitscherlich was also an effective public intellectual, serving as “the conscience of the nation,” a “gentle repentance-preacher.” Precisely what worked so well in the West German context was, however, anathema in America. This article explores the reasons for the depoliticized version of psychoanalysis ascendant in the postwar United States; the counterintuitive combination of factors shaping Mitscherlich's distinctive theorizing; and the many ironies in his delayed-reaction American reception in the 1990s and early 2000s, including in the unlikely realms of the turn-of-the-millennium “men's rights movement” (in its complex relation to second-wave feminism) and in post–Cold War international diplomacy, especially in sites of interethnic conflict.

Taking Religion Seriously? Habermas on Religious Translation and Cooperative Learning in Post-secular Society

This article evaluates Jürgen Habermas's attempt to reopen political liberalism to religion. In trying to “take religion seriously,” Habermas goes further than John Rawls and other liberal theorists by affirming that religious traditions articulate truths on which democratic societies continue to depend for their civic and moral health. “Post-secular” societies, in his view, should learn from religion by translating its “moral intuitions” into universal secular language. Although Habermas in this way appears friendlier to religion than Rawls, unlike Rawls he also calls for the “modernization of religious consciousness.” This theological transformation not only reveals the foundationalist presuppositions of liberalism, but also points to a highly attenuated conception of learning from religion. Taking religion seriously will require us to be open to its insights not only when they agree with, but especially when they challenge, our secular presuppositions. This dimension of religion is at risk of getting “lost in translation” in the Habermasian paradigm.

L’éloquence de la chaire à l’époque romantique : le cas de Lacordaire et de Lamennais

This paper considers French ecclesiastical rhetoric in the Romantic era, focusing on Lacordaire’s and Lamennais’ contrasting views on the role of eloquence in religious discourse. It argues that Lacordaire, despite employing secular language in his Conferences remains a classicist religious orator, whereas Lammenais expresses his deep distrust of the spoken word and condemns eloquence, turning to letters and political discourse. The comparison of the two concepts can be seen as an exemplification of the transition from litterature-discours to litterature-texte, a general phenomenon in the French Romantic literature as described by Alain Vaillant.

Integrative Medicine in the Hospital: Secular or Religious?

This article argues that many forms of “integrative” medicine (IM) offered in modern hospitals are both secular and religious. Practices such as yoga, t’ai chi, acupuncture, mindfulness meditation, biofeedback, chiropractic, homeopathy, aromatherapy, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, and Healing Touch are premised on metaphysical assumptions about spiritual energy that are deeply informed by religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism, and Western metaphysical spirituality. In the hospital setting, religious, spiritual, and secular language, goals, and techniques often bleed into one another—not accidentally, but through calculated marketing and rhetorical maneuvering. The case of “energy medicine” illustrates tactics that IM promoters use to gain entrance to the hospital by relabeling metaphysics as medicine. Intentionally blurring the boundaries between medical and religious therapies creates biomedical ethical and legal dilemmas through a lack of informed consent.

An Inquiry into Habermas’ Institutional Translation Proviso

The task of this paper is to argue against the opponents of Habermas’ institutional translation proviso. The opponents argue against Habermas on the grounds that 1) religious utterances are like cultural differences, ethnic differences and philosophical differences, 2) there are numerous cultures with their distinct religious potential truth contents that are not scientifically demonstrable. The latter argument is based on Occult/Paranormal experiences which are realities of life, hence should be allowed into the public sphere. However, this paper argues that religious utterances as Habermas articulates them are not equiparable to cultural, ethnic and philosophical differences and also that, Occult/Paranormal experiences are restricted to few adepts in it, hence, lacking general accessibility. In mind of our increasingly pluralistic society, there is need for common understanding of religious potential truth contents for general agreement and unity of purpose. Hence, we say that anyone who wants to bring religious potential truth contents into the public sphere seems to have no option other than to translate them into secular language for common understanding. It is based on common understanding that participants in the public sphere enter into a meaningful rational-critical debate resulting in mutual agreement.