Browsing by Subject "Secularization"
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Item Liberal multiculturalism and the challenge of religious diversity(2010-12) De Luca, Roberto Joseph; Hooker, Juliet; Pangle, Thomas L.; Tulis, Jeffrey K.; Stauffer, Devin; Forbes, Hugh DonaldThis dissertation evaluates the recent academic consensus on liberal multiculturalism. I argue that this apparent consensus, by subsuming religious experience under the general category of culture, has rested upon undefended and contestable conceptions of modern religious life. In the liberal multicultural literature, cultures are primarily identified as sharing certain ethnic, linguistic, or geographic attributes, which is to say morally arbitrary particulars that can be defended without raising the possibility of conflict over metaphysical beliefs. In such theories, the possibility of conflict due to diverse religious principles or claims to the transcendent is either steadfastly ignored or, more typically, explained away as the expression of perverted religious faith. I argue that this conception of the relation between culture and religion fails to provide an account of liberal multiculturalism that is persuasive to religious believers on their own terms. To illustrate this failing, I begin with an examination of the Canadian policy of official multiculturalism and the constitutional design of Pierre Trudeau. I argue that the resistance of Québécois nationalists to liberal multiculturalism, as well as the conflict between the Québécois and minority religious groups within Quebec, has been animated by religious and quasi-religious claims to the transcendent. I maintain that to truly confront this basic problem of religious difference, one must articulate and defend the substantive visions of religious life that are implicit in liberal multicultural theory. To this end, I contrast the portrait of religious life and secularization that is implicit in Will Kymlicka’s liberal theory of minority rights with the recent account of modern religious life presented by Charles Taylor. I conclude by suggesting that Kymlicka’s and Taylor’s contrasting conceptions of religious difference—which are fundamentally at odds regarding the relation of the right to the good, and the diversity and nature of genuine religious belief—underline the extent to which liberal multicultural theory has reached an academic consensus only by ignoring the reality of religious diversity.Item Material help, moral concerns : the Chilean ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Social Question 1891-1931(2016-07-06) Sanchez Manriquez, Karin Andrea; Garrard, Virginia, 1957-; Butler, Matthew; Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge; Martinez, Anne; Stuven, Ana MariaThis dissertation examines the Chilean Catholic Church’s response to the social problems of the working class, phenomenon called “Social Question,” between 1891 and 1931. In these forty years, the Chilean Catholic Church acted under the guidelines of the first main Vatican document that focused exclusively on social issues: the encyclical Rerum Novarum, issued in 1891. The revision of the Catholic social ideas present in sermons, pastoral letters, lectures, speeches, and articles written by some of the leading priests of the ecclesiastical hierarchy shows this influence, but also they show that the Chilean Catholic Church experienced its own secularization process. The main argument of this dissertation is, then, that the Chilean ecclesiastical hierarchy made a religious reading of modernity in order to maintain a hierarchical and paternalistic social organization. The Church adopted a discourse within the new modern context, playing modern rules by taking some concepts of modernity but making their own reading. Thus, they accepted some principles of modernity only when were within a Christian context, like “Christian Democracy,” for example. On that account, my project demonstrates how the way the Chilean Catholic Church faced modernity was more complex than the simple dichotomy between progressivism and traditionalism. Several factors explained this: the rigid doctrine from the Vatican; the particular circumstances of Chilean society and differences within the provinces; and the perpetuation through time of a certain way of social organization determined by Catholicism four centuries before. My work engages with religious and cultural studies by contributing to a better understanding of the path followed by Catholicism in the public space in Western countries in the last two centuries, following the repercussions of Enlightenment. This dissertation also seeks to contribute to historiography about the Catholic Church in Chile by bringing in a refreshing interpretation of Catholic social thought. Overall, this dissertation illuminates the process by which Chilean Catholicism faced modernity and shows the complexity of the experience of industrialization and secularization within the Chilean society in a crucial period of its modernization process as significant social and economic changes made possible the beginning in Chile of definitive modernity.Item The ʻulema of al-Azhar University responses to structural secularization and the re-"Islamization" in 20th century Egypt(2007-12) Lamm, Jennifer Elizabeth; Henry, Clement M., 1937-The paper explores the social, political, and economic condition of the Islamic studies graduates of Egyptian universities, referred to collectively as the ulema. It explains why Egyptian political elites targeted religious institutions, such as Al-Azhar University, for modernization., and how the ulema responded to reforms that challenged their privileged status. The author compares two historical periods- modernization in the 1920s/1930s and globalization in the 1980s/1990s- and examines how macro-forces fragmented Islamic authority. The first chapter discusses the effect of secular structuralization, i.e. the adoption of Western legal codes and educational institutions, on the ulemas social status. The second half uses the case study of Islamic banking in the 1980s/1990s. An analysis of the Shariah Supervisory Boards of Egyptian banks suggests that the favorable response among some ulema to Islamic finance represents an attempt to reclaim legal, social, and political authority. The paper concludes that the effects of two historical trends- secularization and re-Islamizationcan be observed, and correspond to, the tightening and loosening of what the Official ulema consider the bounds of Azhari standards of behavior and thought.