The Resurgence of Religion in the Advent of Postmodernity (original) (raw)

FUTURE OF RELIGION IN THE POSTMODERN SECULAR CONTEXT

The International Scientific Conference Communication, Context, Interdisciplinarity, 2014

Secularization and the future of religion are current topics of interest not only for the philosophy of religion and for Christian theology, but also for other areas of culture and contemporary society. Postmodern thinking has changed the nature of society and how religion is viewed and practiced. What has changed in the perception of religion in today's society, and how will the religious phenomenon look in this century? Gianni Vattimo, René Girard, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor are thinkers who debate on the return of religion in public discourse and in the academic space. In this context, Gianni Vattimo speaks about secularization as a destiny of Christianity. He sees secularization as a form of expression of Christianity, and not any form, but the best expression. Secularization does not have to be seen as a negative phenomenon, but a positive one to helpChristianity to fulfill its purpose.

Afterword: Religion and Philosophy between the Modern and Postmodern

Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, 2009

The essays in this volume are guided by a shared premise, namely, that philoso-phy of religion in the western tradition has thus far been vitiated by its failure to take into account the direct impact and the somewhat less visible implications of the 'colonial difference' that inflects the ...

The postmodern condition and the meaning of secularity: a study on the religious dynamics of postmodernity

Ars disputandi supplement series, 2011

As McClay explains the role of postmodernism:. .. Western secularism's claims to universal truth and impersonal rationality are decried as a form of cognitive imperialism. As a result, the claims of religion are no longer so easily bracketed as speculative and subjective. In the postmodern dispensation, where knowledge is understood as inseparable from the discourse of particular communities, religious assertions have as good a claim as anything else, and a better one than most on the mantle of`truth' Wilfred M. McClay,`Two Concepts of Secularism', The Wilson Quarterly 24 (Summer) (2000). 17 Kevin Vanhoozer,`Theology and the condition of postmodernity. A report on knowledge

The Metamodern Bend: Theorizations for Religious Studies and a Review of ~Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism~

Religious Studies Review, 2022

Very few full-length texts have been written on the burgeoning concept-theory of metamodernism. Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth after Postmodernism by van den Akker, Gibbons and Vermeulen is, to date, the only scholarly, multi-authored, ed- ited volume on the topic. Their volume develops the conception of metamodernism introduced in a 2010 exploratory essay (by Vermeulen and van den Akker) titled “Notes on Metamodernism.” In the mid-2000s, at a time of general, cross-disciplinary agree- ment that “postmodern vernacular has increasingly proven inapt and inept in coming to terms with our changed social sit- uation” (van den Akker et al. 2017, 2), these scholars joined a spirited discussion adjacent to others floating new terms such as digimodernism (Alan Kirby 2006), altermodernism (Nicholas Bourriaud 2009), cosmodernism (Christian Moraru 2011) and performatism (Raoul Eshelman 2000) as to what ought to be the term and form/concept to follow postmodernism. In a sense, all of these alternatives echo Fredric Jameson’s call from 1988 ad- dressing the need for a new discourse to reflect the postmod- ern historical moment, this time by refreshing it for today’s post-postmodern moment: if history did not, in fact, “end” with Fukuyama’s famous pronouncement, then what did it do? If it has instead “bent”—a term Vermeulen and van den Akker bor- row from John Arquilla—what is the tone of this bend, and in what ways has it, as they write, “come to define contemporary cultural production and political discourse”? (2). Of these bids to theorize a post-postmodern, it is van den Akker and Vermeulen, later joined by Gibbons, whose writings most decisively introduce a paradigm for the humanities writ large, one that has been taken as a scaffold by scholars in nu- merous fields who have contributed to developing metamodern theory since. What follows is an evaluation of its usefulness as such, including a brief review of their volume to highlight its applicability for the humanities and especially for the study of religion. Shareable link: C. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/Q6TETNCMUIWNFVSH7XEF?target=10.1111/rsr.16195

Religion, Post-Religionism, and Religioning: Religious Studies and Contemporary Cultural Debates

Method &# 38; Theory in the Study of Religion, 12, 2000

The interaction between the contemporary study of religion and contemporary cultural debates has tended to be marked by indifference, and there have been relatively few attempts to engage with the discourses of postmodern theory. In this paper I examine some of the ways in which recent anthropologists have sought to question some of their basic disciplinary assumptions with regard to the 'culture concept', particularly by putting forward strategies of 'writing against culture' or by writing culture in more dynamic terms (as cultural or culturing). This insight, which is relevant in itself to the contemporary study of religion, can be extended to a re-evaluation of the 'religion' concept, which I suggest could be reconstructed in terms of practice theory as religious practice or religioning. By conclusion I argue that to maintain its relevance within the broad field of contemporary humanities scholarship, the discipline of religious studies needs to align itself more clearly (theoretically and methodologically) with the dynamic interface between the approaches of cultural anthropology, cultural theory, and other 'postmodern' theoretical discourses.

Postmodern Aspects of New Religious Movements

2017

The aim of the study is to analyse new religious movements and look for a potential forming-up-place of their origin in postmodern thinking. To achieve this goal, we will first have to analyse chosen attributes of postmodern thinking, which we will then apply to the new religious movements, using religious reflection as a methodological instrument. The study shows that the way to an authentic belief does not lead via fragmentation and isolation, but through a quest for unity while preserving internal

Religion after Religion, History after History: Postmodern Historiography and the Study of Religions

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2003

The following essay reviews Steven Wasserstrom’s Religion after Religion— a partial history of the History of Religions—and three theoretical works on historiography: Hayden White’s Metahistory, Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream, and Robert F. Berkhofer Jr.’s Beyond the Great Story. As well as introducing readers to the argument of these works, the essay uses Wasserstrom’s book as an example of a “monovocal” style of the narration of the phenomenal past in opposition to the polyvocal style called for by the historiographers. The purpose of the essay is to indicate the degree to which monovocal representations can apparently justify singular viewpoints by concealing various agendas and lending authority to dubious conclusions. The essay challenges the elevation of a single authorial voice over the plurality of voices representing the plurality of phenomenal pasts and calls for a greater engagement with the pluralism and polyvocality of postmodern historiography.