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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Humanist & secular alternatives to religion > General
In large chain bookstores the "religion" section is gone and in
its place is an expanding number of topics including angels,
Sufism, journey, recovery, meditation, magic, inspiration, Judaica,
astrology, gurus, Bible, prophesy, evangelicalism, Mary, Buddhism,
Catholicism, and esoterica. As Wade Clark Roof notes, such changes
over the last two decades reflect a shift away from religion as
traditionally understood to more diverse and creative approaches.
But what does this splintering of the religious perspective say
about Americans? Have we become more interested in spiritual
concerns or have we become lost among trends? Do we value personal
spirituality over traditional religion and no longer see ourselves
united in a larger community of faith? Roof first credited this
religious diversity to the baby boomers in his bestselling "A
Generation of Seekers" (1993). He returns to interview many of
these people, now in mid-life, to reveal a generation with a unique
set of spiritual values--a generation that has altered our historic
interpretations of religious beliefs, practices, and symbols, and
perhaps even our understanding of the sacred itself.
The quest culture created by the baby boomers has generated a
"marketplace" of new spiritual beliefs and practices and of
revisited traditions. As Roof shows, some Americans are exploring
faiths and spiritual disciplines for the first time; others are
rediscovering their lost traditions; others are drawn to small
groups and alternative communities; and still others create their
own mix of values and metaphysical beliefs. "Spiritual Marketplace"
charts the emergence of five subcultures: dogmatists, born-again
Christians, mainstream believers, metaphysical believers and
seekers, and secularists. Drawing on surveys and in-depth
interviews for over a decade, Roof reports on the religious and
spiritual styles, family patterns, and moral vision and values for
each of these subcultures. The result is an innovative, engaging
approach to understanding how religious life is being reshaped as
we move into the next century.
Das vorliegende essential beschaftigt sich mit der Nutzung des
Smartphones und gibt Antworten darauf, warum wir immer mehr Zeit
mit diesen Geraten verbringen. Es wird beschrieben, welche Gruppen
besonders von einer ubermassigen Smartphone-Nutzung betroffen sind.
Zusatzlich wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob digitale Welten
tatsachlich unser Gehirn verandern. Ausserdem: Wie sieht eine
gesunde Smartphone-Nutzung in der Familie und am Arbeitsplatz aus?
Das Buch halt Tipps fur einen moeglichst stressfreien Umgang mit
digitalen Welten bereit, damit wir wieder lernen, im Hier und Jetzt
zu leben.
This is a timely re-appraisal of feminist political thinkers and
their male contemporaries, providing a re-evaluation of feminist
humanism.
In this book, Marek Sullivan challenges a widespread consensus
linking secularization to rationalization, and argues for a more
sensual genealogy of secularity connected to affect, race and
power. While existing works of secular intellectual history,
especially Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (2007), tend to rely on
rationalistic conceptions of Enlightenment thought, Sullivan offers
an alternative perspective on key thinkers such as Descartes,
Montesquieu and Diderot, asserting that these figures sought to
reinstate emotion against the rationalistic tendencies of the past.
From Descartes's last work Les Passions de l'Ame (1649) to Baron
d'Holbach's System of Nature (1770), the French Enlightenment
demonstrated an acute understanding of the limits of reason, with
crucial implications for our current 'postsecular' and
'postliberal' moment. Sullivan also emphasizes the importance of
Western constructions of Oriental religions for the history of the
secular, identifying a distinctively secular-yet impassioned-form
of Orientalism that emerged in the 18th century. Mahomet's racial
profile in Voltaire's Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet (1741), for example,
functioned as a polemic device calibrated for emotional impact, in
line with Enlightenment efforts to generate an affective body of
anti-Catholic propaganda that simultaneously shored up people's
sense of national belonging. By exposing the Enlightenment as a
nationalistic and affective movement that resorted to racist,
Orientalist and emotional tropes from the outset, Sullivan
ultimately undermines modern nationalist appeals to the
Enlightenment as a mark of European distinction.
In The Power of Mammon, Curtis D. Johnson describes how the market
economy and market-related forces, such as the media, politics,
individualism, and consumerism, radically changed the nature of
Baptist congregational life in New York State during three
centuries. Collectively, these forces emphasized the importance of
material wealth over everything else, and these values penetrated
the thinking of Baptist ministers and laypeople alike. Beginning in
the 1820s, the pastorate turned into a profession, the laity's
influence diminished, closeknit religious fellowships evolved into
voluntary associations, and evangelism became far less effective.
Men, being the most engaged in the market, secularized the more
quickly and became less involved in church affairs. By the 1870s,
male disengagement opened the door to increased female
participation in church governance. While scientific advances and
religious pluralism also played a role, the market and its related
distractions were the primary forces behind the secularization of
Baptist life. The Power of Mammon is history from the ground up.
Unlike many denominational histories, this book emphasizes
congregational life and the importance of the laity. This focus
allows the reader to hear the voices of ordinary Baptists who
argued over a host of issues. Johnson deftly connects large social
trends with exhaustive attention to archival material, including
numerous well-chosen records preserved by forty-two New York
churches. These records include details related to membership,
discipline, finance, and institutional history. Utilizing
statistical analysis to achieve even greater clarity, Johnson
effectively bridges the gap between the particularity of church
records and the broader history of New York's Baptist churches.
Johnson's narrative of Baptist history in New York will serve as a
model for other regional studies and adds to our understanding of
secularization and its impact on American religion.
Drawing on ethnographic research, this book explores individualized
religion in and around Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. Claire
Wanless demonstrates that counter to the claims of secularization
theorists, the combination of informal structures and practices can
provide a viable basis for socially significant religious activity
that can sustain itself. The subjects of this research claim a
variety of religious identities and practices, and are suspicious
of religious institutions, hierarchies, rules and dogmas. Yet they
participate actively in an overlapping and cross-linking informal
network of practice communities and other associations. Their
engagements propagate and sustain a core ideology that prioritizes
subjectivity, locates authority at the level of the individual, and
also predicates itself on ideals of sharing, mutuality and
community. Providing a new theory of religious association, this
book is a nuanced counterpoint to the secularization thesis in the
UK and points the way to new research on individual religion.
Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both
an approachable intellectual history and a bracing treatise on how
we should understand and experience our lives. In it, one of
France's most prominent intellectuals explores the foundations,
limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his
critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, Tzvetan Todorov
seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental challenge: how to
maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social
ties, common values, and a coherent and responsible sense of self.
Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily
Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu,
and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one
major theme of human existence: liberty, social life, love, self,
morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with
other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of
modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by
conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or
humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that
we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act
according to our will while connecting the well-being of other
members with our own. It is through this understanding of free
will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue
universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and
personal integrity. Placing the history of ideas at the service of
a quest for moral and political wisdom, Todorov's compelling and no
doubt controversial rethinking of humanist ideas testifies to the
enduring capacity of those ideas to meditate on--and, if we are
fortunate, cultivate--the imperfect garden in which we live.
Today, anti-humanism is a dominant, even definitive, feature of
contemporary theory. Setting out to challenge this tendency,
editors David Alderson and Kevin Anderson argue that the political
moment demands a reappraisal of the humanist tradition. Humanism,
in all its diversity and complexity, may facilitate the renewal of
progressive theory through the championing of human subjectivity,
agency and freedom. Across four extended essays, David Alderson,
Kevin Anderson, Barbara Epstein and Robert Spencer engage
critically with the Marxist tradition, recent developments in
poststructuralism, postcolonialism and queer theory. Incorporating
an overview of the historical context that resulted in socialist
humanism’s eclipse in the 1950s and '60s, and a strident critique
of anti-humanism, For Humanism offers a coherent and compelling
argument for the rehabilitation of a much maligned tradition.
With The Human Animal Earthling Identity Carrie P. Freeman asks us
to reconsider the devastating division we have created between the
human and animal conditions, leading to mass exploitation,
injustice, and extinction. As a remedy, Freeman believes social
movements should collectively foster a cultural shift in human
identity away from an egoistic anthropocentrism (human-centered
outlook) and toward a universal altruism (species-centered ethic),
so people may begin to see themselves more broadly as "human animal
earthlings." To formulate the basis for this identity shift,
Freeman examines overlapping values (supporting life, fairness,
responsibility, and unity) that are common in global rights
declarations and in the current campaign messages of sixteen global
social movement organizations that work on human/civil rights,
nonhuman animal protection, and/or environmental issues, such as
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Cooperative for
Assistance and Relief Everywhere, People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals, the World Wildlife Federation, the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Rainforest Action
Network, and Greenpeace. She also interviews the leaders of these
advocacy groups to gain their insights on how human and nonhuman
protection causes can become allies by engaging common opponents
and activating shared values and goals on issues such as the
climate crisis, enslavement, extinction, pollution, inequality,
destructive farming and fishing, and threats to democracy.
Freeman's analysis of activist discourse considers ethical
ideologies on behalf of social justice, animal rights, and
environmentalism, using animal rights' respect for sentient
individuals as a bridge connecting human rights to a more holistic
valuing of species and ecological systems. Ultimately, Freeman uses
her findings to recommend a set of universal values around which
all social movements' campaign messages can collectively cultivate
respectful relations between "human animal earthlings," fellow
sentient beings, and the natural world we share.
With The Human Animal Earthling Identity Carrie P. Freeman asks us
to reconsider the devastating division we have created between the
human and animal conditions, leading to mass exploitation,
injustice, and extinction. As a remedy, Freeman believes social
movements should collectively foster a cultural shift in human
identity away from an egoistic anthropocentrism (human-centered
outlook) and toward a universal altruism (species-centered ethic),
so people may begin to see themselves more broadly as "human animal
earthlings." To formulate the basis for this identity shift,
Freeman examines overlapping values (supporting life, fairness,
responsibility, and unity) that are common in global rights
declarations and in the current campaign messages of sixteen global
social movement organizations that work on human/civil rights,
nonhuman animal protection, and/or environmental issues, such as
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Cooperative for
Assistance and Relief Everywhere, People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals, the World Wildlife Federation, the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Rainforest Action
Network, and Greenpeace. She also interviews the leaders of these
advocacy groups to gain their insights on how human and nonhuman
protection causes can become allies by engaging common opponents
and activating shared values and goals on issues such as the
climate crisis, enslavement, extinction, pollution, inequality,
destructive farming and fishing, and threats to democracy.
Freeman's analysis of activist discourse considers ethical
ideologies on behalf of social justice, animal rights, and
environmentalism, using animal rights' respect for sentient
individuals as a bridge connecting human rights to a more holistic
valuing of species and ecological systems. Ultimately, Freeman uses
her findings to recommend a set of universal values around which
all social movements' campaign messages can collectively cultivate
respectful relations between "human animal earthlings," fellow
sentient beings, and the natural world we share.
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