ATHENS,JERUSALEM, AND THE ARRIVAL OF TECHNO‐SECULARISM

Abstract. Western civilization historically has tried to balance secular knowledge with revealed religion. Science is the modern world's version of secular knowledge and resists the kind of integration achieved by Augustine and Aquinas. Managing the conflict between religion and evolution by containing them in separate “frames,” as Stephen J. Gould suggested, does not resolve the issue. Science may have displaced religion from the public square, but the traditional science‐religion conflict has become threadbare in intellectual terms. Scientific theories have become increasingly abstract, and science has been attacked from the left as a source of objective knowledge. However, technology, not science, has displaced religious belief, a phenomenon I call techno‐secularism. Robert Coles's suggestion that secularism is a form of doubt inevitably attached to religious belief, and William James's reduction of religious experiences to psychological states, evaluating them according to their “cash value,” are unhelpful. Technology enables us to remake our environment according to our wishes and has become a kind of magic that replaces not just revealed religion but also theoretical science. Techno‐secularism has an ethical vision that focuses on healthful living, self‐fulfillment, and avoiding the struggles of human life and the inevitability of death.     

Theory as a Tool in the Social Scientific Study of Religion and Martin Riesebrodt's The Promise of Salvation

No single paradigm or debate currently orients the social scientific study of religion. Because of this, those engaged in the multidisciplinary study of religion find that a public conversation is often difficult. In this article and the Forum it introduces, we explore Martin Riesebrodt's recently published book, The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion. Responding to the inadequacies of secularization paradigms, rational choice models, and postmodern criticism, Riesebrodt proposes an approach that ideal‐typically reconstructs the subjective meanings of institutionalized religious practices (liturgies). These subjective meanings center on the prevention and management of crises—social, natural, and bodily—through appeal and access to superhuman powers. This pragmatic emphasis on the superhuman defines religion as a distinct sphere of social action transhistorically and transculturally. Riesebrodt's theory creates new analytical possibilities, especially for understanding the modern resurgence of religion under conditions of secularization.     

关于全球伦理的哲学审思

全球化过程有两个基本方面：一是科学技术的发展,一是资本主义的发展。迄今为止的全球化过程是资本主义利用不断更新的科学技术来实现自己发展的过程,此过程的社会实质在于资本主义全球化——包括资本主义经济全球化和与之相适应的资本主义伦理全球化。然而,诸如反全球化浪潮之美的国际现象和国际事件表明,原来作为全球化之推动力量的资本主义,如今正在走向其反面,愈来愈成为全球化的阻碍力量了;而日益严重的全球性生态危机,更其表明资本主义再也不能按其固有的方式存在和发展了。因此,客观上要求变革现存的资本主义经济制度及其伦理——包括资本主义经济理性、人理性和科学理性。适应解决当今全球性生态危机的需要,一种新伦理——生态伦理正在形成之中,它有望最终演变为取代传统资本主义伦理的全球伦理。     

Religious Deprivatisation in Modern Greece

Comparative surveys suggest that generational replacement has negative implications for the future of religion in Europe. Using Greece as a critical case, it is argued here that focusing only on the aggregate levels of personal commitment can lead to such exaggerated pessimism. This note shifts empirical attention to show how religious authority remains relevant in society despite declining trends in individual religiosity. Preliminary findings are based on a multi-dimensional definition of religious change, which includes the scope of church authority in the public sphere. European Values Study (EVS) data from 1999 suggest that societal modernisation is not a uniformly negative influence on religion, at least when the investigation moves beyond levels of individual commitment.     

"伦理"与"道德"概念的三重比较义

“伦理”与“道德”是伦理学或道德哲学中的两个核心概念,但二者长期处于概念模糊和逻辑混乱状态,导致伦理学和道德教育“名不正而言不顺”。通过对这两个概念进行以词源学为基础的三重比较:汉语言文化中的比较、英语文化中的比较、中西文化中的比较,我们可以得出的结论是:当代“伦理”概念蕴含着西方文化的理性、科学、公共意志等属性,“道德”概念蕴含着更多的东方文化的情性、人文、个人修养等色彩。“西学东渐”以来,中西“伦理”与“道德”概念经过碰撞、竞争和融合的过程,目前二者划界与范畴日益清晰,即“伦理”是伦理学中的一级概念,而“道德”是“伦理”概念下的二级概念。二者不能相互替代,它们有着各自的概念范畴和使用区域。     

What Difference Does It Make?

Abstract. The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion has its most direct influence on faculty members who teach in colleges, universities, and theological schools. These faculty members, in turn, have an impact upon churches through their leadership and teaching in local communities. Wabash workshops encourage faculty to continue to develop four qualities that make a difference in their teaching and scholarship, in the lives of students who become community and church leaders, and ultimately in the life of the church: these are the abilities to (1) help pastoral leaders integrate multiple kinds of knowledge, (2) value context and particularity, (3) strengthen their skills as public theologians and community leaders, and (4) cultivate the encouragement to live lives of wholeness. The gift of hospitality at Wabash workshops provides the environment and space for faculty to engage these qualities in their teaching, research, scholarship, and living.     

Church Voting Recommendations,Voter Preferences,and Political Decisions

In Switzerland, two key church institutions—the Conference of Swiss Bishops and the Federation of Protestant Churches—make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this situation to directly measure religious organizations’ power to reflect and shape human decision making. That is, using a direct measure of voters’ commitment to their religious institution, we analyze whether they are more likely to vote in line with this organization's voting recommendation. We find that these recommendations do indeed wield influence, implying that even in a secularized world, religion plays a crucial role in voting decisions. Our results hold for both aggregate and individual-level voting decisions.     

Military Service in the Church Orders

The debate concerning the approach of the early Christians to the military can be advanced by paying attention to a genre of literature that scholars have largely ignored: the church orders. These documents—the Apostolic Tradition, Canons of Hippolytus, Testament of Our Lord, and Apostolic Constitutions—are illuminating in that they deal with ethics within comprehensive treatments of worship, catechesis and pastoral life. They also are useful in that they, as variations upon a common original, are means of monitoring change across the third and fourth centuries. This article uses the church orders to assess four elements of a “new consensus” (David Hunter) on Christians in the military. By and large it confirms these, but at times it alters emphases and adds nuances. It argues that: (1) the church orders viewed killing as the big problem for Christians in the legions, not idolatry; (2) the church orders confirm that the pre‐Christendom church was divided on Christian participation in the legions; (3) the church orders provide evidence for both discontinuity and continuity on the issue across the centuries, although the deepest continuity, based on John the Baptist's “rule” of Luke 3.14, is between the pre‐Constantinian laity and later theologians; (4) the church orders confirm a regional variation in attitude and practice. The church orders' authority in practice is never clear.     

Prejudice, Prodigality, and the Precariousness of Life

In this essay, I focus on James Dittes' Bias and the Pious (1973), which addresses the relationship of religion and prejudice from a psychological perspective. I give particular attention to his discussion of the needs that underlie prejudice, his suggestion that religion may meet these needs better than the prejudice itself, and his distinction between contractual and prodigal faith. The incident discussed in the book involving conflict between the minister and church leaders of Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha is highlighted because of my personal association with this church.     

Ethics,Alterity, and Psychotherapy: A Levinasian Perspective

Current psychologies of religion reflect the modernist context in which they are situated. Religion is reduced to what is researchable, generalizable, individual and “thin.” This essay suggests that a psychology of religion which takes seriously the implications of Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on ethics and the alterity of the Other would result in a different model of psychotherapy. Levinas’s view of the Other as the trace of the transcendent radically changes our understanding of the client within the therapeutic relationship. Levinas begins with ethics and so healing would be, by implication, an ethical enterprise. In a highly secularized, individualized, objectivized culture, a therapy which recognizes the sacred, which models how to view the Other as transcendent, and which does not presume to know, is a gift to the client.     

Beyond the Lynn White Thesis: Congregational Effects on Environmental Concern

An extensive literature has explored the effects of religion on opinions about environmental protection and action on environmental issues, but has largely concerned itself with the effects of theology as inspired by the Lynn White thesis. However, religion is multifaceted and any complete study should also incorporate the social dimensions of religious experience. In this article, we employ a unique data set to demonstrate the varied informational effects of church membership on environmental attitudes. We find that social sources of information in the church shape the dimensions of religious belief and exert much stronger effects on attitudes on the environment than do doctrinal or religiosity measures.     

Religion,Morality, and Democratic Virtues: A Liberal Theological Approach to Pastoral Care

Starting from a general definition of pastoral care and politics, it is argued that pastoral care can have nothing to do with party politics. Instead, the theme of pastoral care and politics should be regarded as a sub-set of the larger issue of religion and politics in a democratic society. Adopting the view that political philosophy is at bottom an exercise in moral reflection, this article focuses on two interrelated issues: the compatibility of religion and democracy, and the connection between religion and morality. The argument proceeds in three steps. In the first section, it is demonstrated why and how major political philosophers deem it necessary to impose certain limitations on the role of religion in the public square. In the second section, Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the biblical story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22) is treated as a problematic tradition in Christian theology of admiring authoritarian faith. Finally, as a means of overcoming these difficulties, a plea is made for returning to the tradition of liberal theology and its emphasis on the internal connection between religion and morality, and on developing conscience and civic virtues by way of self-culture.     

THEOLOGICAL ETHICS, THE CHURCHES, AND GLOBAL POLITICS

Several discourses about theology, church, and politics are occurring among Christian theologians in the United States. One influential strand centers on the communitarian theology of Stanley Hauerwas, who calls on Christians to witness faithfully against liberalism in general and war in particular. Jeffrey Stout, in his widely discussed Democracy and Tradition (2004), responds that religious people ought precisely to endorse those democratic and liberal American traditions that join religious and secular counterparts to battle injustice. Hauerwas, Stout, and many of their interlocutors envision liberal U.S. culture as the context of Christian social ethics. The ensuing debate rarely incorporates Catholic scholars, feminist scholars, scholars of color, or international and liberationist voices. Their inclusion could enhance an understanding of the role of the church in society, and support a common morality in the face of global pluralism. More importantly, it could broaden the scope of discourse on religion and politics to envision global Christian social ethics.     

Politics and Church: Byproduct or Central Mission?

One of the more intriguing paradoxes that has developed in mainline Protestantism over the last 30 years is that mainline clergy have become more politically active. Since the public politicking of mainline clergy in the late 1960s generated storms in the churches, why would clergy become more politically active over time? In this article, we adopt the theoretical structure of a benefit exchange between leaders and members initiated by Mancur Olson. We seek to determine the extent to which church members' appetites for political action by the clergy are shaped by a satiating selective benefit exchange or are driven largely by political compatibility. We propose that because of continued political disagreement between clergy and church members and considerable disapproval of clergy involvement in politics by church members, clergy politicking is allowed largely by the satisfaction of a selective benefit exchange.     

Patterns of Religious Education Policy in Switzerland: The Long Arm of Distanced Christians?

In spite of its different cantonal jurisdictions and traditions, the development of religious education in Switzerland over the past decade has taken a common direction: the state has assumed a more active role in the field of religious education in public (state‐run) schools. In this article, we ask the question: How do key social actors interpret these reforms and how do these interpretations relate to the social structure of religion in Switzerland, in particular with respect to the majority category of the so‐called distanced Christians? Drawing on qualitative interviews with members of the schools’ teaching staff, school administrators, and church representatives, the article highlights a dominant interpretative pattern that frames the socially accepted representation of religion in public schools. Thus, rather than addressing the pedagogical dimension of religious education, we discuss the significance of this pattern for the debate on the public presence of religion in Switzerland and Europe.     

Economics of religion on trial: how disestablishment did not lead to religious revival in the Swiss cantons of Geneva and Neuchâtel

According to ideas in contemporary economics of religion, religious disestablishment will lead to religious vitality: more strictness, more evangelising, and more growth. The present article puts this theory to the test by inspecting the historical record (1900 to the present) of the two Swiss cantons where disestablishment went farthest—Geneva and Neuchâtel—and by comparing them to other Swiss cantons where church and state remained closely linked. I find that the predictions of the economic model are not corroborated. Formerly established churches did not become stricter, did show increased, but relatively unsuccessful marketing efforts, did not grow, and became very poor financially. Non-established churches did not seem to benefit in any way from the disestablishment. The article makes four specific theoretical points that explain why this was the case.     

The secularisation of religious education: humanism,religion and worldview education in the Netherlands in the 1960s

Secularisation is often mentioned as an explanation for changes in worldview education in modern history. Worldview education has become less preoccupied with preaching religious truths and more with developing children’s personal worldviews. However, how secularisation exactly explains these changes is not clear. To get a clearer picture, we analyse developments in the Netherlands in the 1960s and compare these with Britain. Our source material primarily consists of educational, religious and humanist journals. We connect developments in worldview education to secularisation understood in three ways: reduced church attachment, the rise of alternatives to the dominant religion, and the decrease in references to religion in public space. Our findings show that changes in theology, decline in church attendance, professionalisation of academic pedagogy, and the growing popularity of dialogical methods strongly influenced the direction of both religious and humanist forms of worldview education in a similar way.     

Scientists Negotiate Boundaries Between Religion and Science

Analysis of interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at 21 elite U.S. research universities suggests that only a minority of scientists see religion and science as always in conflict. Scientists selectively employ different cultural strategies with regards to the religion‐science relationship: redefining categories (the use of institutional resources from religion and from science), integration models (scientists strategically employ the views of major scientific actors to legitimate a more symbiotic relationship between science and religion), and intentional talk (scientists actively engage in discussions about the boundaries between science and religion). Such results challenge narrow conceptions of secularization theory and the sociology of science literature by describing ways science intersects with other knowledge categories. Most broadly the ways that institutions and ideologies shape one another through the agency of individual actors within those institutions is explored.     

Transforming churches: the lived religion of religious organizations in a contemporary context

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes patterns of transformation in a specific majority religious institution, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark (ELCD), through a case study of communicative actions related to new church practices. The argument is that the patterns most often identified in the study of the religion of late-modern individuals, which is an “ever-changing, multifaceted, often messy—even contradictory—amalgam of beliefs and practices” (McGuire 2008, 4), are also relevant when scholars describe changes at the level of religious organizations. Meredith McGuire’s concepts are supplemented with other discussions of the transformation of traditions in a contemporary context. Our research question is: what characterizes the communicative actions concerning the transformation of traditions within the ELCD today? The empirical material consists of communicative actions related to practices associated with Halloween and Valentine’s Day from two distinct contexts: 1) the public debate about the Church in the newspaper The Christian Daily and 2) public announcements in the official online Church calendar. This leads to a discussion of the creative agency of religious institutions as part of the complex pattern of contemporary religion. The article argues in favor of an increased focus on the development of new practices in churches as examples of lived religion at the level of institutional religion.     

News Coverage of Intimate Partner Violence: Impact on Prosocial Responses

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive and widespread problem in the United States, yet the issue is not well understood among the general public. Media portrayals of IPV have a significant influence on public perceptions, including public support for IPV victims and willingness to engage in helping behaviors. In the current study, we tested a path model examining the influence of contextual information about the victim and perpetrator described in a news article on feelings of sympathy for the victim of the described IPV incident, affective perspective taking, and prosocial responses that include: (a) support for public health initiatives to help victims of IPV, (b) preferences for prosocial information seeking, and (c) behavioral intentions toward engaging in protective actions to help victims of IPV. The model demonstrated acceptable fit and provided support for all 6 hypotheses. Results showed that sympathy does not have a direct impact on individuals' prosocial responses to help victims of IPV, but instead has an indirect effect through affective perspective taking. Implications for framing IPV in ways that promote a prosocial, public health–oriented response are discussed.