Constituting religion after Williams: The false dichotomy of theocracy and secularism

The Williams case is a relevant segue to consider the broader issue of constitutional relations between church and state in Australia. This paper argues that the dichotomous approach of theocracy as opposed to secularism is false and actually undermines the proper operation of s 116. A theocracy would contravene s 116 as an establishment of religion, but secularism also amounts to a conflict with s 116 as prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The necessary alternative is to find a middle ground compatible with s 116, one which will not establish any single state religion but will allow the contribution of different religious perspectives in the process of policy-making. This paper briefly considers how such an approach may be implemented.

A Catechumenate for the Korean Methodist Church: Ressourcement, Formation and a Response to Secularism and Korean Traditional Religions

Research by Korean sociologists of religion indicates that Korean Protestantism has lost much of the spiritual vitality of preceding generations and that it increasingly shows the influences of Korean shamanism, Neo-Confucianism, and Western secularism and consumerism. Suggestions in the areas of homiletics and Christian social ethics have been offered to help steer the Korean Protestant churches away from these worldviews toward a more biblically-based course. Drawing upon and expanding these earlier studies and proposals, the current work recommends another method for developing a biblically-based, spiritually-revitalized, baptismally-shaped and ministry-committed Protestantism in Korea: a pre-baptismal adult catechumenate, in this case one designed for the context of the Korean Methodist Church. In order to produce a renewed catechumenal structure for Korean Methodism, adult catechumenal processes as well as baptismal theologies and rites are examined and analyzed from three principal sources: the first five centuries of the Christian church, and especially the mystagogical literature of the fourth century; the Roman Catholic Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults developed after the Second Vatican Council; and the United Methodist Church in the United States, both texts officially authorized by the denomination's General Conference and unofficial materials, among them resources for an adult catechumenate in the Come to the Waters series. In addition, previous and current practices of preparation for baptism in the Korean Methodist Church are identified and critiqued. From these findings a set of principles is put forward that guide the proposed catechumenal structure.

Journal article: Indoctrination, Secularism, Religious Liberty and the ECHR

This article examines the recent developments in religious freedom before the European Court of Human Rights Two major trends can be distinguished. On the one hand, the Court considers cases that are focused on individuals and it emphasises values such as the prevention of indoctrination, neutrality, secularism and laïcité. On the other hand, the Court deals with cases involving the compatibility of entire domestic regimes regulating religious affairs with the Convention. It will be shown that these two trends in the caselaw do not always sit happily together and have serious repercussions for religious liberty.

Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession

Negotiating the boundaries of the secular and of the religious is a core aspect of modern experience. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany, secularism emerged to oppose church establishment, conservative orthodoxy, and national division between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Yet, as historian Todd H. Weir argues in this provocative book, early secularism was not the opposite of religion. It developed in the rationalist dissent of Free Religion and, even as secularism took more atheistic forms in Freethought and Monism, it was subject to the forces of the confessional system it sought to dismantle. Similar to its religious competitors, it elaborated a clear worldview, sustained social milieus, and was integrated into the political system. Secularism was, in many ways, Germany's fourth confession. While challenging assumptions about the causes and course of the Kulturkampf and modern antisemitism, this study casts new light on the history of popular science, radical politics, and social reform.

Germany and the New Global History of Secularism: Questioning the Postcolonial Genealogy

Secularism has emerged as a central category of twenty-first century political thought that in many ways has replaced the theory of secularization. According to postcolonial scholars, neither the theory nor the practice of secularization was politically neutral. They define secularism as the set of discourses, policies, and constitutional arrangements whereby modern states and liberal elites have sought to unify nations and divide colonial populations. This definition is quite different from the original meaning of secularism, as an immanent scientific worldview linked to anticlericalism. Anthropologist Talal Asad has connected nineteenth-century worldview secularism to twenty-first century political secularism through a genealogical account that stresses continuities of liberal hegemony. This essay challenges this account. It argues that liberal elites did not merely subsume worldview secularism in their drive for state secularization. Using the tools of conceptual history, the essay shows that one reason that “secularization” only achieved its contemporary meaning in Germany after 1945 was that radical freethinkers and other anticlerical secularists had previously resisted liberal hegemony. The essay concludes by offering an agenda for research into the discontinuous history of these two types of secularism.

Krishna consciousness discourse - modern secularism versus traditional theism

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Secularism exhausted? : non-indigenous postcolonial discourses and the question of aboriginal religion

[No Abstract]

Disenchantments of secularism: the West and India

This Chapter is an exercise in comparative secularism. In this chapter I will be concerned basically with a critique of Western conceptions of secularism, beginning with Hegel’s invention of a particular reading of secularism that, through imperialist literature, gave a preeminent direction to the ideology of the less-religiously orientated Indian nationalists during their drawn-out independence struggle. My main concern will be to contrast the Western debates on ‘the secular’, particularly in its recent permutations or attempted revisions as a response to the crisis of modernity, with the current Indian debates—where ‘ the secular; has all but been hijacked by the Hindu Right—and to show—reversing Hegel’s trajectory—what impact the latter could have on the former. There is some evidence of this already occurring, particularly in Charles Taylor’s work and travels wherein he does make some gestures towards looking at non-Western experiences of secularism (which is taken more or less to be synonymous with secularization). There are severe limitations to this overture however, and the chapter hopes to sound a word of caution on the kind of excitement over which Taylor seems to have become something of a celebrity in the academe. Even more disappointingly, one does not find a similar emphatic approach or opening to non-Western experiences and rethinking of the secular in the works of other modernists; and I point to Habermas and Žižek as my examples, who I touch on, albeit very briefly. This lack or lacuna makes both the discourse of modernity and the supplementary critique of secularism much the poorer for it.