Re-Publicizing Religiosity Modernity, Religion, and the Middle Class* (original) (raw)
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This essay explores Bernard Williams’s portrayal of his, Alasdair MacIntyre’s, and Charles Taylor’s views of how to move in relationship to religion in our modern world: backward in it (MacIntyre), forward in it (Taylor), and out of it (Williams). I contend that this portrayal is not entirely accurate in each case, though there is some truth in it, and that looking at each authors’ views on the relationship of religion to modernity is instructive for those of us who wish to keep religious faith alive in our modern, secular age. I begin with Williams, and then discuss MacIntyre and Taylor in turn. I seek to show how MacIntyre and Taylor can help us overcome the challenge to religious faith that Williams presents and how both offer important guidance for the life of faith in our modern, secular age.
Insaniyat: Journal of Islam and Humanities, 2018
This paper aims to elaborate the measurements of modernity and its relation to religion. In the Third World, modernity is often measured by unclear measurements, and in some cases, some of the attitudes of certain circles in the West now also appear to be at odds with modernity. Based on a literature survey, this paper finds that modernity is a condition, not as a specific marker of a certain period and region. Modernity points not only to the West, but also to non-West, because modernity can be measured by: capitalism as an economic rationality; mass production-based industries and the existance of industry mentality; urban population pressure and its medical control; secular and humanist nation state; democratic country; rational bureaucracy, the state's rule of law, military-based technology; and empirical science and rationalism. Even so, for a secular state, it does not require the latest modernity that should alienate religion absolutely in a public sphere. Religion is pos...
From Secular Modernity to "Multiple": Social Theory on the Relations between Religion and Modernity
Gosudarstvo, religija, Cerkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom, 2012
This article was originally published in Russian as: Uzlaner D. From secular modernity to 'multiple': Social theory on the relations between religion and modernity [Ot sekuljarnoj sovremennosti k «mnozhestvennym»: social'naja teorija o sootnoshenii religii i sovremennosti] // Gosudarstvo, religija, Cerkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom. 2012. № 1. S. 8-32.
This chapter addresses the theoretical viability of ‘modernity’ for the contemporary sociology of religion. It opens by identifying a number of approaches which, in combination, problematise established representations of modernity (by classical modernisation theory) as comprising an ahistorical evolutionary model which is both overly homogenising and ideologically biased. It is then argued that many of the contemporary problematisations of modernity currently fashionable among sociologists of religion (exemplified here by the multiple modernities paradigm) have actually swapped one faulty theoretical model (‘uncritical universalism’) for another (‘granular provincialism’). As employed by sociologists of religion, the faulty model of granular provincialism manifests through both an analytical preoccupation with regional particularity and a conceptual disregard for broader questions of a cross-cultural and meta-theoretical nature. Believing this faulty model to have thrown out the ‘baby’ of modernity with the ‘bathwater’ of traditional modernization theory, the remainder of the chapter explicates an approach by which this lopsided focus upon the local and its attendant neglect of overarching transnational dynamics might begin to be corrected. In so doing, this chapter argues that an understanding of modernity of use to the sociology of religion must be both analytically robust (in respect of the defining features of modernity) and hermeneutically nuanced (vis-à-vis local instantiations of typically modern dynamics and processes). Constituted through analytical abstraction from empirically observable processes, the conceptualisation of modernity proposed here comprises a historically novel social formation and existentially distinct mode of being in the world formed by the ongoing and transformative interaction of a range of dynamics, structures and processes (e.g. nation state, market economy, rapid, widespread and ongoing transformation, structural differentiation, detraditionalization, socio-cultural pluralization, individualization and globalization) which manifest concretely through regional/local instantiations of a macro-structural, mid-range institutional and micro-social nature. Though of a formal kind, the theorisation of modernity undertaken by this chapter is intended to provoke further debate as to the analytical frame and hermeneutical approach best suited to the sociological study of contemporary religious belief and ritual practice.
European Journal of Philosophy, 2006
Religious traditions and communities of faith have gained a new, hitherto unexpected political importance since the epochmaking change of 1989-90. 1 Needless to say, what initially spring to mind are the variants of religious fundamentalism that we face not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Southeast Asia, and in the Indian subcontinent. They often lock into national and ethnic conflicts, and today also form the seedbed for the decentralized form of terrorism that operates globally and is directed against the perceived insults and injuries caused by a superior Western civilization. There are other symptoms, too. For example, in Iran the protest against a corrupt regime set in place and supported by the West has given rise to a veritable rule of priests that serves other movements as a model to follow. In several Muslim countries, and in Israel as well, religious family law is either an alternative or a substitute for secular civil law. And in Afghanistan (and soon in Iraq), the application of a more or less liberal constitution must be limited by its compatibility with the Sharia. Likewise, religious conflicts are squeezing their way into the international arena. The hopes associated with the political agenda of multiple modernities are fueled by the cultural self-confidence of those world religions that to this very day unmistakably shape the physiognomy of the major civilizations. And on the Western side of the fence, the perception of international relations has changed in light of the fears of a 'clash of civilizations'-'the axis of evil' is merely one prominent example of this. Even Western intellectuals, to date self-critical in this regard, are starting to go on the offensive in their response to the image of Occidentalism that the others have of the West. 2 Fundamentalism in other corners of the earth can be construed, among other things, in terms of the long-term impact of violent colonization and failures in decolonization. Under unfavorable circumstances, capitalist modernization penetrating these societies from the outside then triggers social uncertainty and cultural upheavals. On this reading, religious movements process the radical changes in social structure and cultural dissynchronies, which under conditions of an accelerated or failing modernization the individual may experience as a sense of being uprooted. What is more surprising is the political revitalization of religion at the heart of the United States, where the dynamism of modernization unfolds most successfully. Certainly, in Europe ever since the days of the French Revolution we have been aware of the power of a religious form of traditionalism that saw itself as counter-revolutionary. However, this evocation of religion as the
In the nineteenth century, sociologists boldly predicted the death of religion. Max Weber (1904/5, 1918-19, 1968) pointed to the growing rationalization of many fields of human enterprise and the corresponding decline of magical thinking and religion. At about the same time, Georg Simmel was conducting research on different realms of modern life. Simmel (1900, 1903, 1950, 1971) who was well aware of religion's sway over various facets of communal life, drew attention to the intellectualization of modern urban society. He estimated that religion would continue to be felt in all social relations, but business transactions, politics, family life, fashion, and music was becoming more calculated. Furthermore, Simmel averred that religion itself would be transformed by these same developments, as it too would become yet another commodity that is consumed by human beings. Emile Durkheim (1912) also underscored the importance of religious beliefs and practices as catalysts of social solidarity throughout the course of human existence. In his study on totemism in various cultures, Durkheim unveiled the common denominators between religious and scientific thinking. Analyzing the organizational complexities of Australian aboriginal society, he explained how tribes divide and subdivide into exogamous moieties, classes, and clans. Each of these cohorts is associated with different species on the totem, in a system that incorporates all natural phenomena and reflects the particular society's classifications of identity and belonging. This process demonstrates how people form groups and classify all the surrounding elements within the shared framework of the clan. As such, totemism is not only a way of thinking about culture, but a system that enables tribe members to define their actions, express their feelings, and organize life events around codes that distinguish between the sacred or profanethe orderly and disorderly. Put differently, totems are the symbolic representations of a much greater forcethe mana: the way society portrays itself to its members. In light of the above, the mana is always concomitantly external and internal to the worshiper. Alternatively, Durkheim (1912) argued that when a society develops and variegates from a technological standpoint, the nature of magic and religion also change. In fact, this process of differentiation, according to Durkheim, is the main feature of what we call modernity. Due to the fragmentation of communal conscience and activities, the spheres that society usually considered to be sacred realities are increasingly subject to the individual's own volition and thus separated from mundane activities (1912). He believed that solidarity will eventually be reconstituted, but this process will not necessarily be underpinned by religious or magical frameworks and practices.