Secular Order Research Articles

Creer para ver. Instauración del discurso milagroso entre la población del Nuevo Reino de Granada, siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII

El artículo analiza la instauración discursiva del milagro en la sensibilidad religiosa de la población del Nuevo Reino de Granada, colonia americana del Imperio español, con sede en Santafé de Bogotá, durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII. Se recurrió a la identificación de sucesos milagrosos tanto en el territorio (ciudades, villas y pueblos de indios de la parte central del NRG) como a los relatos y descripciones que de ellos se hacía en las relaciones o diarios de viaje escritos por clérigos de diferentes órdenes regulares y seculares y se realizó una tipología de los hechos identificados. La metodología se orientó desde tres miradas de los milagros: la construcción discursiva desde la apropiación social de estos fenómenos, la aceptación popular de un hecho inesperado y la configuración simbólica que estos tuvieron en los procesos de cohesión social entre esta y otras provincias del territorio neogranadino; asimismo, se identificaron cuatro categorías de milagros: los de una imagen sobre sí misma, de asistencia, físicos y taumatúrgicos; estos, a su vez, se agruparon como impersonales, individuales o colectivos.

Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People by JohnMilbank (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), viii + 269 pp.

Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People by JohnMilbank (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), viii + 269 pp.

Vom Allgemeinbekannten zum Gerichtsbekannten: Das allmähliche Verschwinden der Notorietät und die Veränderungen des römisch-kanonischen Beweisrechts in der Frühen Neuzeit

Abstract From the wellknown to the notorious: The gradual decline of notoriety and changes in romancanon law of proof in the Early New Age. With the establishment of procedural natural rights at the beginning of the 14th century, notoriety, i.e. the declarative condemnation without any further procedure, had become unsuitable. The lawyers hesitated, however, to abandon this specialty of canon law. Instead they sought ways to harmonize the conflicting rules. In Modern Times lawyers became increasingly bold to deny the importance of notoriety or established procedural hindrances. The reactions in the central Europeans territories like Italy, France, and the Empire differed considerably. But towards the 19th century the interest declined. Only canon law kept the notoriety until 1918, whereas in secular legal orders only scarce traces survive. The decline of notoriety, therefore, indicates a slow, but decisive turn in the history of legal procedure.

Contested Secularism in Ethiopia: The Contention between Muslims and the Government

This study examines the nature, causes and dynamics of the conflict between the Muslim community and the Ethiopian government, particularly since 2011 over issues related to secularism and freedom of religion. By analyzing the historical trajectories of statereligion relations and the contemporary developments, the study seeks to answer why the relationship between Muslims and the government has soured – despite an auspicious beginning – leading to securitization of Islam in general and Islamic reform movements in particular. This is evident in the firm governmental control over Islamic institutions and the repression of the Muslim protest movement. Muslim grievances and complaints – channeled through their representative, social media and their weekly protests – were articulated in historical and social terms but sought remedy for religious parity within the constitutional framework of secularism and freedom of religion. Using the various complaint letters of the Muslims’ Solution Finding Committee, official speeches, government policy documents and the data obtained from the field through qualitative methods of data collection techniques, the study scrutinizes the concerns and fears of the Muslims and appraises the government’s claim of religious extremism in general and Islamic fundamentalism in particular as a national security threat. At the heart of the contestation lies the defense of secularism on both sides; each accusing the other for ‘violating the secular constitutional order’. From many of the empirical researches conducted so far, the data collected and analyzed in this study and information obtained from the narrations and deeds of the Committee members, the accusation of Muslims (what it calls Salafis/Wahhabis) by the government ‘conspiring for establishing an Islamic government and harboring religious extremism’ is found to be an overstretch and government responses to the demands of Muslims are too simplistic and inaccurate. Many of the government policies and actions towards Muslims are marked by antithetic between ‘bad and good, tolerant and intolerant, moderate and extremist’ that resonates with the western governments’ dichotomy between what Mamdani (2002) calls “good and bad Muslims”. By doing so, the option for promoting the practice of Sufism (supposed to be tolerant, apolitical and hence good) and encouraging Sufi-oriented Muslims to occupy important leadership positions in the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (Mejilis) have been ‘on the table’ for countering religious extremism and political Islam in the Ethiopian government policy circles. This has resulted in the deep involvement, if not intervention, of government in religious matters, which the principles of secularism and freedom of religion did not warrant. The strategy of encouraging apolitical and tolerant religious groups for developing mutual tolerance and peaceful coexistence between religious communities by itself might not be a bad idea but it has to be done by the government without taking religious side. Secularism should also be interpreted as ‘a constitutional principle’ that requires states to treat all religions equally and their official policies being free from the dictation of religious dictums instead of interpreting it as ‘a way of life’ to be adopted by individuals to secularize students through the prohibition of religious practices in educational institutions.

“Like sheep for the slaughter”

The primary objective of this article is to investigate how a Lutheran theology supports the soldier’s vocation in war. First, the analysis is made in relation to the concept of larva Dei, second, in relation to “the pastorate” and “technology of power”. By the interaction, I show how Luther’s theology can be used as a critique towards Foucault and vice versa. Through this narrative method, structures of power and liberation are unveiled. The interaction illuminates their diverse views on secular and non-secular order, as well as an immanent and transcendental order. Luther points towards eternity, while Foucault points towards society and its powers. The main outcome is firstly: faith for Foucault is never an explanation of “reality”, but a result of social relations. For Luther, faith is to experience the world as reality; and secondly: larva Dei creates a possibility to overcome suffering by faith, whereas by Foucault’s immanent structure, suffering is understood as “empty” or “meaningless”. Foucault contributes with an important critique of misusing vocation in war. An area for further research is to continue developing critiques of vocation and power in relation to contemporary soldiers’, terrorists’ and anarchists’ masks, since some are used to protect life and others to protect identities.

Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and The Representation of the People. By JohnMilbank. Illuminations: Theory & Religion. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. Pp. ix + 288. Hardback, $97.95; paper, $39.95.

Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and The Representation of the People. By JohnMilbank. Illuminations: Theory & Religion. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. Pp. ix + 288. Hardback, $97.95; paper, $39.95.

Review of John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People

Review of John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People

South East Europe and the New Turkish Strategic Vision

There is turmoil in Turkey, both internally involving Turkish President Recep Taip Erdogan, an undisputed political leader in the past decade in Turkey on one side, and followers of Fetullah Gulen, a prominent and influential religious and political leader currently residing in the Unitest States of America on the other side are fighting fiercely both in courts both in winning public opinion. Dispute is over the future that Turkey should take: towards West and its values or towards its former Ottoman glory projected in new 21 century. The secular order of the Turkish state has been challenged in the recent years as Erdogan promoted its agenda of revitalizing and reaffirming the Turkish Islamic tradition. This was pushed forward with the influence of current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogllu, who has never hidden his vision of Turkey with a neo-Ottoman future going further to promoting Pan-Islamism under Turkish leadership. There have been numerous allegations that the Government of Turkey is disrupting the work of the opposition as well as preventing freedom of press. In December of 2014, 23 journalists and editors were detained in orchestrated raids accused of having close ties with Fetullah Gulen whom Erdogan accuses of establishing a “parallel organization inside Turkey” aiming to overthrow his democratic government. There is also well known “Ergenekon Affair” which lead to 275 arrests of prominent police and army officers, most highly ranked being Chief General Staff Gen. Iker Basburg. After a five year trial Basburg alongside 18 fellow officers received life-sentences by Istanbul’s 13 High Criminal Court. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n1s2p265

The Use of Sacred Texts by Islamic Public Preachers in Mumias, Western Kenya

The public visibility of Islamic free preachers points to the development of religious leaders whose claim to authority is based on extensive knowledge of the Bible, not on traditional Islamic learning. Unlike traditional ulamā , these preachers specialize in inviting non-Muslims to embrace Islam. They claim that compared to Christianity, Islam is a more rational and biblical tradition. They call on Christians to debate with them, based mainly on biblical texts. They approach their activities as an exercise of Da’wah, a debate staged in the public square, where the truth of Islam against the Christian tradition is proclaimed by preachers who engage in discursive battles. Such discussions usually take on an essentialist character, reshaping religious boundaries between Muslims and Christians and between religious communities and the state. The nature of the engagement is largely polemic and tends to fuel interreligious tensions and challenge the political domain and the secular order.

Burqas and Bans: The Wearing of Religious Symbolsunder the European Convention of Human Rights

The wearing of religious symbols has been subject to more or less restrictive national regimes. In Europe, the European Convention of Human Rights sets transnational conditions in this regard and has recently been interpreted to give great leeway to national states. Open-face communication is now being accepted as an indispensable requirement of ‘living together’ that qualifies as ‘rights and freedoms of others’ within the meaning of article 9(2) ECHR. In SAS v France, the ECHR created a new ground to justify interference with the freedom of religious expression. This article questions the Court’s expansion of existing grounds of justification as no sufficient legal basis exists and sociocultural considerations do not protect individual rights as required under the term ‘rights and freedoms of others’. To that end, the basis for grounds of justification is examined in light of the evolution of the Court’s jurisprudence on the wearing of religious symbols. While public security and order, health and improper proselytism are well-established reasons for interference,the Court’s acceptance of secular orders highlights the ambiguity of the terms ‘pluralism’ and‘tolerance’ as referred to in case law. The article finds that this jurisprudence has given significant leeway to Member States in regulating religious expression and paved the way for the Court's new approach under which behavioural social norms may be used to ban face-covering religious cloth. In addition, the doctrine of the margin of appreciation does not justify the expansion of the legitimate aims pursued under article 9(2) ECHR.

Calvin's legacy for contemporary Reformed natural law

AbstractRecent scholarship has done much to uncover a continuous tradition of distinctively Reformed natural law reflection, according to which knowledge of the natural moral law, though not saving knowledge, is universally available to humanity in its fallen state and makes a stable secular order possible. A close look at Calvin's understanding of natural law, and in particular of conscience and natural human instincts, shows that Calvin himself did not expect the natural law to serve as a source of substantive action-guiding moral norms. First, Calvin held that conscience delivers information concerning the moral quality even of individual actions. But he also thought that we often blind ourselves to the deliverances of conscience. Second, he argued that our natural instincts predispose us to civic order and fair dealing insofar as these are necessary for the natural well-being or advantage of creatures such as ourselves. But he also carefully distinguished the good of advantage from the good of justice or virtue. The modern natural lawyers eroded Calvin's careful distinction between conscience as revealing our duty as duty, and instinct as guiding us towards natural advantage. They also turned away from Calvin's insistence on the moral incapacity of unredeemed humanity. The modern natural lawyers saw their task as one of developing an empirical science of human nature to guide legislation and shape international law, bracketing questions of whether this nature was fallen and in need of redemption. When Scottish Presbyterian Reformed thinkers, such as Gershom Carmichael and John Witherspoon, tried in diverse ways to restore eroded Reformed commitments to the science of human nature, about which they were otherwise so enthusiastic, they were not particularly successful. A science which could derive moral norms from an examination of human instincts, and a conscience which could deliver universal moral knowledge, proved too attractive to decline simply because of the transcendence of God or the fallenness of humankind. Those who wished to preserve an account of natural law which remained faithful to a fully robust set of Reformed theological commitments could do so only by refusing to regard the natural law as a positive source of moral knowledge.

Religious freedom and the political order: the Ethiopian ‘secular state’ and the containment of Muslim identity politics

The 2011–2014 controversies between the Ethiopian Government and Muslim communities on the role of Islam in Ethiopia have highlighted the precarious nature of religious relations in Ethiopia. Statements by public figures and religious leaders recently have drawn attention to the nature and scope of the Ethiopian secular state order. This paper describes the recent Muslim protest movement and the response to it by the government in the light of the secular state model. While the challenges to it also extend to the large Christian community in Ethiopia, the problems became prominent mainly in the case of the Muslims, who contest perceived ‘government interference’ in their community life and self-organization. I present an overview of key recent events and of factors inducing conflict between state and religion. The discussion makes reference to more general debates on the ‘secular model’ in Ethiopia and to the familiar though somewhat worn-out paradigm of ‘identity politics’. State repression of Muslim civic protest in Ethiopia revealed insecurities of the state: rather than an instance of the process of ‘othering’ a religious community, we see a case of political crisis, and a search for new modes of governance of diversity and communal religiosity in Ethiopia. As a result of the contestations, however, the secular order of the country will not be threatened, but modified.

The Layperson’s Distinctive Role by Francis Cardinal Arinze

218 Antiphon 18.2 (2014) beyond the ancient Church, rather preferring to concentrate on Clement, Ignatius, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Origen. Again, he keeps a synthetic grasp upon the three offices of prophet, priest and king and so considers the service of the word, service at the Eucharist, and the service of authority. Chapter four is a detailed commentary on Lumen Gentium 10 and 11, borrowing also from Presbyterorum Ordinis, in order to review the Church’s teaching today. He centers upon phrases the Council deemed important (“differ not only in degree,” in persona Ecclesiae, choosing the word “common” for the laity, and the unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders). And chapter five, as I said, wants to look not backwards but forward, prospectively, asking what a priestly spirituality and a ministerial spirituality would mean. Aidan Kavanagh remarked in 1979 that “the Church baptizes to priesthood: it ordains only to executive exercise of that priesthood in the major orders of ministry.” Keeping this straight and in balance, without denigrating either laity or priest, without defending one at the expense of the other, without forgetting the need for both one and the other, requires clear thinking and a humble disposition. We can be grateful to Torrell for aiding us in this. David W. Fagerberg University of Notre Dame South Bend, Indiana Francis Cardinal Arinze The Layperson’s Distinctive Role San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013 118 pages. Paperback. $9.95. Concisely and clearly, Francis Cardinal Arinze lays out the mission of the laity of the Church in his book, The Layperson’s Distinctive Role. In putting forward his thesis, the Cardinal relies heavily on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, namely, Lumen Gentium and Apostolicam Actuositatem. He first notes the importance of understanding the apostolate which is specific to the laity, an apostolate which is rooted in the call of every Christian by virtue of Baptism to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to all men and women. However, specific to the layperson is the call to carry out this mission in the temporal order. In fact, naming 219 Book review as insufficient the negative definition of the laity which would construe them merely as those who are not clerics or religious, the Cardinal defines the layperson positively as “one who by Baptism is incorporated into Christ and the Church and is called to evangelize the secular order” (14). He will go on to say that “The Christianization of the temporal order, or the bringing of the spirit of the Gospel into secular affairs, is the apostolate specific to the laity” (35) Further, by “temporal order” is meant “family, culture, economic affairs, the arts and professions, political institutions and international relations, as well as their development and progress” (41) With this in mind, the Cardinal then proceeds to make some interesting and most helpful distinctions. He first makes the distinction between individual and organized lay apostolates. The individual is called to witness to Christ with their life in the everyday – at home, at work, in the marketplace. At the same time, organization of the laity is necessary so that the Gospel of Christ can be spread in ways which go beyond the capacity of any one individual. Regarding this, the Cardinal points to the many Associations of the Christian Faithful which seek to witness to the Gospel in many and varied ways, associations which have sprung up with abundance especially since the Second Vatican Council. The Cardinal makes another helpful distinction between the witness of the laity in the temporal sphere, mentioned above, and their collaboration with the clergy in inner-Church affairs. The Cardinal points out that the collaboration of the laity in innerChurch affairs is absolutely necessary. On this point, he quotes Apostolicam Actuositatem 10: “[The activity of the laity] is so necessary within church communities that without it the apostolate of the pastors is generally unable to achieve its full effectiveness” (24). Of itself, the Cardinal’s systematic and concise laying out of the definition and role of the laity in the church is of great benefit, but the Cardinal then makes a further point, which is most helpful for the life of the Church today. He...

A New Islamic Populism and the Contradictions of Development

A new form of Islamic populism has evolved in many parts of the Muslim world. Its emergence is part of the more universal phenomenon of populist responses to the contradictions of globalised capitalism. It is also a consequence of the outcomes of Cold War-era social conflicts and of social-structural transformations in Muslim societies over the last half-century. Specifically, it articulates the rising ambitions and growing frustrations of urban middle classes across the Muslim world, the anxieties of growing urban poor populations and relatively peripheralised sections of the bourgeoisie. Thus representing cross-class coalitions, the New Islamic Populism aims to provide access to power and tangible resources to an ummah conceived to be both downtrodden and homogeneous, though in actuality, increasingly differentiated. This is demonstrated through a discussion of Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey. The article is intended to provide an alternative to analyses that have tended to dominate discussions of Islamic politics over the last decade. These include analyses that emphasise radical ideas transmitted by shadowy transnational networks that threaten the global secular order and those that posit a strong relationship between political moderation and democratic practice but tend to overlook the structural underpinnings of Islamic politics.

Debating the Merits of the 'Turkish Model for Democratization in the Middle East

The 'Turkish model' has been upheld as a positive example for Middle Eastern countries, particularly in light of the Arab Spring. While Turkey is, in many respects, successful'it has a dynamic economy and in recent years has made great strides toward political liberalization' and the current Turkish government has high standing in the Arab world, this paper will argue that the applicability of a 'Turkish model' to other settings is limited. In part, this is due to confusion over what the 'Turkish model' precisely is or should be. For many years, the 'Turkish model' was taken to be Kemalism, or a statist, authoritarian, secular order imposed 'from above' with the goals of modernization and Westernization. More recently, the 'Turkish model' would mean embracing a more moderate-type of political Islam, exemplified by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). While the AKP has proven to be successful in Turkey, it came to power in conditions very different than those that prevail in the Arab world at present. In particular, the AKP has evolved to reconcile itself to secularism in Turkey and embraced a program of Europeanization through accession talks with the European Union, an option not on the table in Arab states. Finally, a comparison of the political culture of Turkey with that in much of the Arab world reveals significant differences in values and priorities between the two cases

Re-emerging Christianity in West European Politics: The Case of the Netherlands

AbstractDoes Christianity re-emerge in politics even in the most secularized part of the world, Western Europe? In this article, the exemplary case of the Netherlands provides empirical evidence for two mechanisms of resurgent Christianity in party politics. In this way, the article also offers a more precise understanding under what conditions various dimensions of religion become (again) or remain politically significant. The first mechanism has been the incentive of secularization and secularism for remaining Christians to regroup in a so-called creative minority to convey an explicitly faith-based message to a broader public. Modernization has therefore not automatically meant less religion in politics. However, creative minorities remained a relatively minor affair in Dutch party politics, despite the large number of Christian migrants and their descendants. Second, Christian and culturally rightwing, secular parties have increasingly referred to a Judeo-Christian culture to mark the political identities of the European Union and its nations in response to Islam's growing visibility. The concept of Judeo-Christian culture foremost functioned as a sacred word to denote the liberal and secular order of the West, reflecting the re-emergence of Christianity as cultural phenomenon rather than faith in West European politics.

Religion and the Secular in Premodern Japan from the Viewpoint of Systems Theory

Abstract This article discusses the essential question of whether or not the concept “religion” is applicable to premodern Japan. Rather than looking for semantic equivalents of the Western term it stresses the necessity to look for structural analogies to the binary code religious/secular. Roughly within the theoretical framework of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, documents from medieval Japan are analyzed in order to find out whether an emic binary code was used as a functional equivalent to the religious/secular pattern. It is shown that the fundamental Buddhist distinction between things that belong to this world (laukika; seken) and those which transcend the world (lokottara; shusseken) functions as a culturally specific emic version of the binary code transcendence/immanence, i.e., the code by which—according to Luhmann—all religious communication is guided. Furthermore, it is argued that the distinction between the “ruler’s law” (ōbō) and the “Buddha’s law” (buppō), which was so prominent in the Buddhist political discourse of the Kamakura period, is closely related to the binary code transcendence/immanence (shusseken/seken). It is proposed that both “laws” or “orders” (hō) represent what we would call the “secular order” and the “religious order.” From the fact that medieval Japanese discourses actually organized the world by the binary code ōbō (seken) / buppō (shusseken) it can be concluded that “religion” as a generic concept was by no means alien to the Japanese as many post-colonial authors want to make us believe.

Politics, law, and the sacred: a conceptual analysis

The sacred is a source of legitimacy for political rule, while at the same time remaining always beyond politics and law. This article examines this intersection and interaction of religion, politics and law as a semantic field, focusing on the conceptual analysis of practices. First, the article addresses and challenges the myth of a purely secular and contractarian international order, allegedly created by the Peace of Westphalia. Second, it shows how this contractarian metaphor generated the notion of the ‘sacralisation of the people’ in modernity, and it was transfigured into the ‘nation’ as the source of legitimacy for politics and law. Third, the article develops a critical assessment of the human rights discourse and on the potential of imperial projects — of a ‘rule of lawyers’ instead of a rule of law. I also argue that ‘religions’ do not have the monopoly for millenarian derailments, since even ‘secular’ projects, such as human rights, have that crusading potential. Modern law cannot effectively dispense with the ‘sacred’, and perhaps even with politics, by substituting abstract entities such as ‘human rights’ for it.

Islam and the Sermon on the Mount

The theme of Islam and the Sermon on the Mount belongs to a lively, controversial field of discourse, in which representatives of the major monotheistic religions conflict in their claims to truth, and it has formed a central point in their encounters. For example, representatives of the Salafiyya saw in the Sermon a barrier to the secular order. Through their criticisms, they tended even to appropriate the Sermon for the purposes of Islam. However, the ethical message of the Sermon has usually not been interrogated as such. Form-critical, symbolic, structural and intentional similarities in Muslim remarks point to this appreciation. Nevertheless, Muslims seem much more concerned with the specific contextual meaning of the Sermon and its historicity rather than considering its principle of love for enemies or its legislative nature. Thus, positive receptions of the Sermon, such as al-Ghazzālī's or the recognition discourse of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, if not forgotten, have fallen into the background. In the atmosphere of Christian missionary and colonial experience and the post-colonial aftermath, this reception history and its semantic transformations are certainly understandable. However, they first offer a fertile ground for inter-religious dialogue when the mutual understanding processes are revealed and the discursively produced internal and external allocations, so rich with meaning, are exposed.

Vision for a Secular Pakistan?

This article will bring to light the transformation of the Pakistani state from a relatively tolerant to an unstable state dominated by militancy and violence. In the formative phase of Pakistan, the notion of religious extremism was almost non-existent as the founder of the country, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, made it clear that the new state would not be theocratic in nature. However, after his demise on September 11, 1948, his successors failed to curb the forces of religious militancy that not only changed the nature of the Pakistani state but also succeeded in making it a monolithic religious state in which non-Muslims were disqualified from seeking the highest positions in the state structures. This article also aims to examine the vision for a secular order in the context of Pakistan while relating it to the management of conflicts.