Forces of secularity in the modern world / Vol. 1

Stephen Strehle is a leading scholar of church/state issues. In this volume, he focuses his rigorous historical analysis and philosophical acumen upon a topic of great interest today and source of cultural wars around the globe—the process of secularization. The book starts with a discussion of earl...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Strehle, Stephen 1952- (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
WorldCat: WorldCat
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: New York Bern Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw Peter Lang [2018]
In: Forces of secularity in the modern world
Year: 2018
Series/Journal:Washington College studies in religion, politics, and culture
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
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Rights Information:CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Description
Summary:Stephen Strehle is a leading scholar of church/state issues. In this volume, he focuses his rigorous historical analysis and philosophical acumen upon a topic of great interest today and source of cultural wars around the globe—the process of secularization. The book starts with a discussion of early capitalism and how it saw the real world functioning well-enough on its own principles of individual struggle and self-interest, without needing religious or moral principles to meddle in its affairs and eventually dispelling the need for any intelligent design or providential orchestration of life through the work of Darwin. The book then discusses the growth of the secular point of view: how historians dismissed the impact of religion in developing modern culture, how scientists conceived of the universe running on self-sufficient or mechanistic principles, and how people no longer looked to the providential hand of God to explain their suffering. The book ends with a discussion of how the Deist concept of human autonomy became a political policy in America through Jefferson’s concept of a wall of separation between church and state and how the US Supreme Court proceeded to dismiss the importance of religion in shaping or justifying the values of the nation and its laws. The book is accessible to most upper-level and graduate students in a wide-variety of disciplines, keeping technical and foreign words to a minimum and leaving scholarly details or debates to its extensive notes
Stephen Strehle is a leading scholar of church/state issues. In this volume, he focuses his rigorous historical analysis and philosophical acumen upon a topic of great interest today and source of cultural wars around the globe—the process of secularization. The book starts with a discussion of early capitalism and how it saw the real world functioning well-enough on its own principles of individual struggle and self-interest, without needing religious or moral principles to meddle in its affairs and eventually dispelling the need for any intelligent design or providential orchestration of life through the work of Darwin. The book then discusses the growth of the secular point of view: how historians dismissed the impact of religion in developing modern culture, how scientists conceived of the universe running on self-sufficient or mechanistic principles, and how people no longer looked to the providential hand of God to explain their suffering. The book ends with a discussion of how the Deist concept of human autonomy became a political policy in America through Jefferson’s concept of a wall of separation between church and state and how the US Supreme Court proceeded to dismiss the importance of religion in shaping or justifying the values of the nation and its laws. The book is accessible to most upper-level and graduate students in a wide-variety of disciplines, keeping technical and foreign words to a minimum and leaving scholarly details or debates to its extensive notes
“This fascinating, but scholarly and wide-ranging, account lays bare the tangled roots of secularity in the Western world over recent centuries. In so doing, it casts a clear light on some of the major forces that are shaping the world we live in now.”—Roger Trigg, Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford
ISBN:1433143593
Access:Open Access
Contains:: Forces of secularity in the modern world
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3726/b13133