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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Humanist & secular alternatives to religion > General
While scholars, media, and the public may be aware of a few
extraordinary government raids on religious communities, such as
the U.S. federal raid on the Branch Davidians in 1993, very few
people are aware of the scope and frequency with which these raids
occur. Following the Texas state raid on the Fundamentalist Church
of Latter-day Saints in 2008, authors Stuart Wright and Susan
Palmer decided to study these raids in the aggregate-rather than as
individual cases-by collecting data on raids that have taken place
over the last six decades. They did this both to establish for the
first time an archive of raided groups, and to determine if any
patterns could be identified. Even they were surprised at their
findings; there were far more raids than expected, and the vast
majority of them had occurred since 1990, reflecting a sharp,
almost exponential increase. What could account for this sudden and
dramatic increase in state control of minority religions? In
Storming Zion, Wright and Palmer argue that the increased use of
these high-risk and extreme types of enforcement corresponds to
expanded organization and initiatives by opponents of
unconventional religions. Anti-cult organizations provide strategic
"frames" that define potential conflicts or problems in a given
community as inherently dangerous, and construct narratives that
draw on stereotypes of child and sexual abuse, brainwashing, and
even mass suicide. The targeted group is made to appear more
dangerous than it is, resulting in an overreaction by authorities.
Wright and Palmer explore the implications of heightened state
repression and control of minority religions in an increasingly
multicultural, globalized world. At a time of rapidly shifting
demographics within Western societies this book cautions against
state control of marginalized groups and offers insight about why
the responses to these groups is often so reactionary.
Seventh-Day Adventists, Melanesian cargo cults, David Koresh's
Branch Davidians, and the Raelian UFO religion would seem to have
little in common. What these groups share, however, is a millennial
orientation-the audacious human hope for a collective salvation,
which may be either heavenly or earthly. While many religions
feature a belief in personal salvation, millennial faiths involve
the expectation that salvation will be accomplished for an entire
group by a superhuman agent, with or without human collaboration.
While the term "millennialism" is drawn from Christianity, it is a
category that is used to study religious expressions in diverse
cultures, religious traditions, and historical periods. Sometimes,
as with the American Millerite movement, millennialism expresses
itself benignly. Other times, as in the Branch Davidians' showdown
with the FBI in Waco, these movements turn violent. This handbook
will offer readers an in-depth look at both the theoretical
underpinnings of the study of millennialism and its many
manifestations across history and cultures. The book will begin
with a section that lays out the four different types of
millennialism and will then move on to examine millennialism in a
wide variety of places and times, from ancient millennial movements
to modern apocalyptic movements. This handbook will be a valuable
resource for scholars of religious studies, sociology, psychology,
history, and new religious movements.
Humanists have been a major force in British life since the turn of
the 20th century. Here, leading historians of religious non-belief
Callum Brown, David Nash, and Charlie Lynch examine how humanist
organisations brought ethical reform and rationalism to the nation
as it faced the moral issues of the modern world. This book
provides a long overdue account of this dynamic group. Developing
through the Ethical Union (1896), the Rationalist Press Association
(1899), the British Humanist Association (1963) and Humanists UK
(2017), Humanists sought to reduce religious privilege but increase
humanitarian compassion and human rights. After pioneering
legislation on blasphemy laws, dignity in dying and abortion
rights, they went on to help design new laws on gay marriage, and
sex and moral education. Internationally, they endeavoured to end
war and world hunger. And with Humanist marriages and celebration
of life through Humanist funerals, national ritual and culture have
recently been transformed. Based on extensive archival and
oral-history research, this is the definitive history of Humanists
as an ethical force in modern Britain.
This book explores the implication of diversity for humanism.
Through the insights of academics and activists, it highlights both
the successes and failures related to diversity marking humanism in
the US and internationally. It offers a timely depiction of how
humanism in general as well as how particular humanist communities
have wrestled with the nature of our changing world, and the issues
that surface in relationship to markers of difference.
Can the existence of God by proven by science? The answer will
still surprise you. Since the advent of science in the 16th
century, it has navigated mankind in the direction of mechanistic
materialism, and as a consequence to atheism. Since the beginning
of the 20th century this direction has changed. Relativity and
quantum physics, in conjunction with Big Bang cosmology, laid the
foundation for a revolution in physics, in what became labelled as
the "New Physics". Subsequently during the 1970's it was discovered
that the universe, at every level and from its first billionth of a
second at the time of its creation, was mysteriously fine-tuned.
This fine-tuning comprises the inexplicable and delicate balance of
the four fundamental forces that rule the universe: gravity,
electromagnetism, and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. This
discovery implies that even the most basic building blocks of
matter, such as atoms and its sub-atomic particles, can only exist
by the grace of an inexplicable, complex and delicate balance
between these forces. The chance that this fine-tuning could have
emerged spontaneously and fortuitously, is not only improbable, but
utterly impossible. Intelligence or Chaos elucidates that the
complexity and fine-tuning of the universe can only be explained by
the presence of an all-pervasive intelligence, the source and
reservoir of the Information that actually guides and controls the
universe. For the first time in history such a conclusion is
confirmed by indubitable scientific evidence. The existence of an
all-pervading intelligence, as expressed in the principle of
fine-tuning, is also at the core of the ancient Vedanta philosophy
of India. The author explores how Vedanta disentangles some of the
paradoxes encountered in quantum physics and major cosmological
questions such as the Big Bang and its origin. Using the latest
empirical and scientific evidence Intelligence or Chaos clearly
shows that the universe is ruled by intelligence and information,
and not by chance and chaos.
The Western World is becoming atheist. In the space of three
generations churchgoing and religious belief have become alien to
millions. We are in the midst of one of humankind's great cultural
changes. How has this happened? Becoming Atheist explores how
people of the sixties' generation have come to live their lives as
if there is no God. It tells the life narratives of those from
Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Canada who came from
Christian, Jewish and other backgrounds to be without faith. Based
on interviews with 85 people born in 18 countries, Callum Brown
shows how gender, ethnicity and childhood shape how individuals
lose religion. This book moves from statistical and broad cultural
analysis to use frank, humorous and sometimes harrowing personal
testimony. Becoming Atheist exposes people's role in renegotiating
their own identities, and fashioning a secular and humanist culture
for the Western world.
Does life have meaning if one rejects belief in God? This book
responds affirmatively to that question. Paul Kurtz, America's
leading secular humanist, provides a powerful defense of the
humanist alternative, rejecting both religious spirituality and
nihilism. In this inspirational book, Kurtz outlines the basic
virtues of the secular humanist outlook. These virtues include
courage, not simply to be or to survive, but to overcome and
become; that is, to fulfill our highest aspirations and ideals in
the face of obstacles. The two other virtues Kurtz identifies are
cognition (reason and science in establishing truth) and moral
caring (compassion and benevolence in our relationships with
others.) Kurtz offers an optimistic appraisal of the "human
prospect" and outlines a philosophy both for the individual and the
global community.
This book reflects the wide-spread belief that the twenty-first
century is evolving in a significantly different way to the
twentieth, which witnessed the advance of human rationality and
technological progress, including urbanisation, and called into
question the public and cultural significance of religion. In this
century, by contrast, religion, faith communities and spiritual
values have returned to the centre of public life, especially
public policy, governance, and social identity. Rapidly
diversifying urban locations are the best places to witness the
emergence of new spaces in which religions and spiritual traditions
are creating both new alliances but also bifurcations with secular
sectors. "Postsecular Cities" examines how the built environment
reflects these trends. Recognizing that the 'turn to the
postsecular' is a contested and multifaceted trend, the authors
offer a vigorous, open but structured dialogue between theory and
practice, but even more excitingly, between the disciplines of
human geography and theology. Both disciplines reflect on this
powerful but enigmatic force shaping our urban humanity. This
unique volume offers the first insight into these interdisciplinary
and challenging debates. The relationship between religion and
politics is both fascinating and challenging, and recent years have
seen substantial changes in the way this relationship is studied.
"Edward Said's Rhetoric of the Secular" provides an important new
reading of Edward W. Said's work, emphasizing not only the
distinction but also the fuzzy borders between representations of
'the religious' and 'the secular' found within and throughout his
oeuvre and at the core of some of his most customary rhetorical
strategies.
Mathieu Courville begins by examining Said's own reflections on
his life, before moving on to key debates about Said's work within
Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, and his relationship
to French critical theorists.
Through close attention to Said's use of the literal and the
figurative when dealing with religious, national and cultural
matters, Courville discerns a pattern that illuminates what Said
means by secular. Said's work shows that the secular is not the
utter opposite of religion in the modern globalized world, but may
exist in a productive tension with it.
Who are the "Nones"? What does humanism say about race, religion
and popular culture? How do race, religion and popular culture
inform and affect humanism? The demographics of the United States
are changing, marked most profoundly by the religiously
unaffiliated, or what we have to come to call the "Nones". Spread
across generations in the United States, this group encompasses a
wide range of philosophical and ideological perspectives, from some
in line with various forms of theism to those who are atheistic,
and all sorts of combinations in between. Similar changes to
demographics are taking place in Europe and elsewhere. Humanism:
Essays on Race, Religion and Popular Culture provides a much-needed
humanities-based analysis and description of humanism in relation
to these cultural markers. Whereas most existing analysis attempts
to explain humanism through the natural and social sciences (the
"what" of life), Anthony B. Pinn explores humanism in relation to
"how" life is arranged, socialized, ritualized, and framed. This
ground-breaking publication brings together old and new essays on a
wide range of topics and themes, from the African-American
experience, to the development of humanist churches, and the lyrics
of Jay Z.
This book conceives of "religion-making" broadly as the multiple
ways in which social and cultural phenomena are configured and
reconfigured within the matrix of a world-religion discourse that
is historically and semantically rooted in particular Western and
predominantly Christian experiences, knowledges, and institutions.
It investigates how religion is universalized and certain ideas,
social formations, and practices rendered "religious" are thus
integrated in and subordinated to very particular - mostly
liberal-secular - assumptions about the relationship between
history, politics, and religion.
The individual contributions, written by a new generation of
scholars with decisively interdisciplinary approaches, examine the
processes of translation and globalization of historically specific
concepts and practices of religion - and its dialectical
counterpart, the secular - into new contexts. This volume
contributes to the relatively new field of thought that aspires to
unravel the thoroughly intertwined relationships between religion
and secularism as modern concepts.
This is an authoritative guide to contemporary debates and issues
in the sociology of religion providing a clear examination of
classical secularization and the post-secularization paradigm.
"Secularization and Its Discontents" provides an illuminating
overview of major current debates in the sociology of religion,
exploring changing patterns of religious practice in the West
during the past 150 years. Examining classical secularization
theory as well as modified versions that allow for difference
between national and social contexts, Rob Warner also explores the
proposed post-secularization paradigm, as well as its close
offshoot, rational choice theory. Possibilities for a spiritual
revolution and the feminisation of religion are scrutinised, and
also theories of the durability of conservative religion. The
author goes on to develop a new interpretation of resilient
religion from an analysis of 21st century trends in religious
participation. These are categorised as entrepreneurial and
experiential-therapeutic, before the volume finally focuses upon
individual identity construction through autonomous religious
consumption. This book provides a clear and penetrating overview of
theoretical frameworks and develops a new theoretical synthesis
derived from fresh examination of empirical data, and will be of
interest to academics and students in religious studies, practical
theology and the sociology of religion.
Scholars from various disciplines worked together to present the
first interdisciplinary book to address the issue of Islam,
secularism and globalization. The book has a clear structure which
represents its interdisciplinary approach: the first section
addresses the philosophical and historical discussion about Islam
and secularism; the second section discusses the topic from an
ethnographical and social anthropological viewpoint; and the final
section addresses Islam, secularism and globalization from a
political viewpoint. This unique collection not only offers
innovative research and new material, it also provides empirical
examples and theoretical debates, and could therefore also be used
as a textbook for courses on Islam, globalization, anthropology,
politics, sociology and law.
The study of New Religious Movement (NRMs) is one of the fastest growing areas of religous studies. There are now several journals dedicated to the study of NRMs, as well as an academic association (CESNUR), in addition to a section of the American Academy of Religion devoted to NRMs. This handbook covers the current state of the field and breaks new ground. Its contributors are drawn equally from sociology and religious studies and include both established scholars and 'rising stars' in the field. The core chapters deal with such central issues as conversion, the brainwashing debate, millennialism, and modernisation. Another section deal with NRM subfields such as neopaganism, satanism, and UFO religions. The final section considers NRMs in a global perspective. This book will be indispensible resource for every scholar and student of this field.
An up-to-date synthesis of the spread and impact of humanism in
Europe. A team of Renaissance scholars of international reputation
including Peter Burke, Sydney Anglo, George Holmes and Geoffrey
Elton, offers the student, academic and general reader an
up-to-date synthesis of our current understanding of the spread and
impact of humanism in Europe. Taken together, these essays throw a
new and searching light on the Renaissance as a European
phenomenon.
This fascinating book considers systems of belief and practice
which are not religions in the full-blown sense, but which
nevertheless affect human life in ways similar to the role played
by the recognised religions. Professor Smith's thorough account
compares the features which Humanism, Marxism and Nationalism share
with recognised religions, analysing each in turn, and asks whether
there is not always a threat of the demonic when any contingent
reality - man, the economic order, or the state - is made absolute.
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