Exploring how religious and secular forces interact in the modern world.
A “democracy” that lacks a fundamental commitment to pluralism opens the door to totalitarianism.
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ATALIA OMER
The conference “Making Democracy One’s Own: Muslim, Catholic and Secular Perspectives in Dialogue on Democracy, Development, and Peace” (Rome, May 30-June 1, 2016) sought to strengthen and intervene in theorizing the question of religion and democracy.
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Contending Modernities welcomes our newest co-director Dr. Atalia Omer. As a scholar trained in the theories and methods of the study of religion she brings expertise in religion, conflict and peacebuilding as well as attention to conceptual questions of modernity and secularism. Read the full article »
Read More →Lynch’s research is to be celebrated for the ways it foregrounds and explicates the importance of interrogating the discursive formations that inform religious ethics and popular casuistry. Her neo-Weberian framing allows for an elastic lens through which to examine the intersections of neoliberal and (African) orientalist discourses in the diffusion and praxis of the technocratic donor-driven apparatus of humanitarianism and development work. Read the full article »
Read More →Full review can be found at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion Saba Mahmood’s Religious Difference in a…
Read More →Since at least the time of Pope Urban II and the launching of the first Crusade (1096-99), European Catholicism was partly defined in relation to two “others”: the Jews, who were left dispersed as a negative testament for their failure to accept the teachings of Jesus and for their supposed complicity with deicide, constituted the other within; and the Muslims, against whom Christendom came to be articulated cohesively as such, constituted the other without. Recognizing the intricate connections between the Vatican’s relations to both Jews/Israel and Muslims may be pivotal for the ever complex interfaith challenges facing the Church globally. Read the full article »
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