Christianity and Secularisation in the West and the Middle East: A Theological Stance

In this article I argue that Christianity is essentially secular. Hence, secularisation not only has a theological connotation concerning Christian faith but also it is the highest and most perfect realisation of Christian religion, since it signifies the cross that is in the centre of Christian faith. As Christians take upon themselves secularisation as an existential choice, namely the powerlessness of God and of the human being, they simultaneously take the worldly‐human existence as “here” and “now” upon themselves. I will argue that this is the culmination of Reformation. Further, I want to demonstrate that secular Christianity, in the sense given in this article, remains a challenge for both Western and Eastern worlds. In order to accomplish this I will reflect in the first part of this article — from a theological point of view — upon some sociological interpretations or theories concerning mainly secularisation in Western Europe and also the contemporary socio‐political scene in the Middle East. In the second part of the article I will present several Western and Eastern theological positions that defend secularisation, and through their contributions I will construct my own theological stance for secular Christianity.     

Religion and nationalism: four approaches*

ABSTRACT. Building on recent literature, this article discusses four ways of studying the relationship between religion and nationalism. The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race, as analogous phenomena. The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about nationalism – its origin, its power or its distinctive character in particular cases. The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of interpenetration and intertwining. The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism. The article concludes by reconsidering the much‐criticised understanding of nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon.     

An interpretation of Finnish religious nationalism: the four topoi of theological depoliticisation

ABSTRACT. The topic of this article is the relation between ‘politicality’ and theology in the discourse of Finnish religious nationalism during the Winter War of 1939–40 and the Continuation War of 1941–44. I shall draw on the ideas of Kari Palonen and Anthony D. Smith in attempting to thematise theological depoliticisation as an intrinsic element of religious nationalism. Also, I will elaborate its political significance in the Finnish context, where the role of traditional religion in the general development of nationalist thought has been particularly important. The specific focus is on how prominent representatives of the Finnish clergy related to war and nationalist claims in general. My interpretation is that their arguments were drawn from what I call the topoi of theological depoliticisation, which, at the same time, rendered the discourse extremely political.     

The idea of a Jewish nation in the German discourse about emancipation

This article compares the German conservative conceptualization of Judaism and Jewish emancipation with that of liberals, from the Vormärz (1830–1848) to the Neue Ära (1858–1861). It argues that both conservatives and liberals understood Judaism not merely as a religion but also as a nationality. Yet while liberals acknowledged the national dimension of Judaism as a secularized culture, and even supported Jewish emancipation, conservatives developed a different concept. Since the 1830s, conservatives accommodated nationalism while investing the Christian State ideal with national meaning. This national‐religious construction was imposed on Judaism, which was similarly interpreted now as a synthesis between religion and nationality. In accordance with this conceptualization, conservatives rejected Jewish emancipation on national ground while advocating for the establishment of a Jewish nation‐state. This thesis diverges from the existing literature, in which the reluctance of conservatism to embrace nationalism until the 1870s stands as the consensual view.     

Hans Kohn: the idea of secularized nationalism

More than seventy years after its publication, Hans Kohn's 1944 The Idea of Nationalism is still regarded as a ground‐breaking contribution to the study of nationalism. This essay is aimed to highlight a significant theme in this work which has largely gone unnoticed, namely, the pivotal role of religion and secularism in Kohn's account of nationalism, and especially, in his persistent struggle for a ‘perfect’ nationalism. Kohn's conception – and personal experience – of the relationship of nationalism and religion will be examined through several stages of his turbulent life. First, as a young Zionist in Prague, when he parlayed Martin Buber's Zionist creed into an ethnic concept of nationalism. Then, in Kohn's journalistic writing in the 1920s and in his first theoretical works on nationalism in the years 1929–1942. Finally, Kohn's more mature and crystallized account of nationalism in his 1944 book will be revisited from the perspective of the nationalism–religion relationship.     

Reading Anzac Religion and the Sacred: The Bible as a Central Text and Artefact of Australian Soldiers' Experience of the First World War*

This article demonstrates the resilience of religious traditions and practices among Australian soldiers, and the need for caution about presuming connections between the experience of modern war and secularisation. A core argument is that the Bible should be understood as a central text and cultural artefact of Australian soldiers' experience of the First World War. The pocket New Testament was the most widely possessed book among Australian soldiers, and probably the most read and valued. For many it offered profound religious, moral, and emotional consolation. For others it possessed talismanic qualities, conjured home associations, or became an “object of memory.” Communal reading practices made Testaments prominent in the aural experience of war, but such practices could also elicit antipathy towards religion. Taken together, these findings inform scholarship on the mentalités and material culture of Australian war experience, challenging the longstanding scholarly and popular myth of the secular Australian soldier. Additionally, the article breaks new ground in situating Australian experience within a substantial international scholarship on the crucial role of religion (both official and popular) among soldiers of all combatant nations. Partly due to its majority Protestant population, Australian soldiers' Bible possession and usage resembled that of Anglo-Saxon and German Protestants.     

LIBERAL AND MARXIST THEORY WITH RESPECT TO WORK AND LEISURE: A GEOGRAPHER'S ANTITHESIS TO THEIR COMMON THESIS

The special number of the Canadian Geographer devoted to West Edmonton Mall raises important questions, notably that of the relative status, as values, of work (seen historically as fundamental to our culture), and of leisure, perceived, albeit controversially, as being embodied in wem. In preparing to present my principal thesis, I review recent reinterpretations of human behaviour advanced by workers in the fields of symbolic interaction and the sociology of knowledge. These schools ha ve given rise to the concept of, though not the term, functional religion. The meaning of this concept is close to that of ideology; a comparative analysis of the two terms justifies using the former. A survey of recent work by geographers who approach religion from a functional point of view closes the second part of the paper. In the course of this review the relative status of work and leisure emerges as a significant issue. The view of leisure as a norm presented in the third part of the paper is that advocated by Pieper, Huizinga, and de Grazia. They argue that the Classical view, according to which human life finds its meaning in activities that are carried on for their own sake (e.g., games), rather than in those pursued for the material rewards they offer, is correct. Following their lead, and in opposition to both Marxists and Liberals, I argue that the adoption of leisure as a fundamental value would provide a more satisfactory foundation for our culture than work has to this point. Le numéro spécial du Géographe canadien consacréà?étude du West Edmonton Mall soulève plusieurs questions importantes, notamment celle du statut relatif, comme valeur, du travail (valeur-clé historiquement dans notre culture) et du loisir, valeurs incarnées, bien que de façon controversées, dans le WEM. Pour établir les bases de la thèse principale, on examine les réinterprétations récentes du comportement hurnain avancées, dans les sciences humaines, par des chercheurs travaillant dans les domaines de ?interaction symbolique et la sociologie du savoir. Ces écoles ont engendré le concept, sinon le terme, de la religion fonctionelle. Le sens de ce terme est proche de celui de ?idéologie; une analyse comparative des deux termes justifie ?emploi du premier. Pour conclure la deuxièrne partie de ce mémoire, on passe en revue quelques écrits récents par des géographes qui abordent la religion ?un point de vue fonctionnel. De cet examen il ressort que le statut relative du travail et du loisir est ?une importance capitale. Dans la troisième partie, on présente une perspective sur le loisir qui est proche de celle qu'avancent Pieper, Huizinga, et de Grazia. Ceux-cisupportent la position des auteurs classiques, selon qui la vie humaine trouve sa signification dans les activités entreprises pour ellesměmes (par exemple, les jeux) plutǒt que pour le gain matériel. Appuyant leur argument, et m'opposant à celui des marxistes et des libéraux, je prétends que ?adoption du loisir comme vaieur fondamentale fournirait une meilleure assise à notre culture que celle offerte jusqu'ici par le travail.     

Contextualizing marriage: conjugality and Christian life in Jonas of Orléans' De institutione laicali

The De institutione laicali by Jonas of Orléans has frequently been examined as a source for conjugal life in the Carolingian period, but rarely analysed in its entirety. In this article I propose an overall reading of the text, based on the version addressed to Count Matfrid before 828, in order to place the chapters about marriage in their context. I will formulate new interpretations of its purposes – arguing that Book II was configured as a speculum comitale – and of Jonas's view of marriage. The De institutione laicali will therefore be shown to have served the needs of Carolingian representations of society and public power.     

Culture and power: the rise of Afrikaner nationalism revisited*1

ABSTRACT. Outside parliament, the story of Afrikaner nationalism is largely a story of political (and sometimes economic) activists establishing language and cultural organisations. In a preliminary attempt to systematise the intentions and achievements of these extra‐parliamentary components of the Afrikaner movement, this article critiques and refines Joep Leerssen's model of nationalism as ‘the cultivation of culture’ (Nations and Nationalism 12, 4: 559–78). Drawing on the examples of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaanders and the Afrikaner‐Broederbond, I revisit the relationship between cultural and political nationalism – both as concepts and as actual movements – and question the notion of a dichotomy.     

Jacob Vernet and ‘The Religious Enlightenment’: ‘Rational Calvinism’, the Pastors of Geneva and the French philosophes

Summary

In this article I react to dismissive remarks made about my Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the philosophes (1994) in a recent book by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment (2008). Vernet, a distinguished Genevan pastor and theologian, who fell foul of d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau, is one of six figures studied by Sorkin, who claims that the religious dimension of the Enlightenment has been much underestimated and that the philosophes were considerably less significant than has usually been thought. Reacting to the accusation that my treatment of Vernet's theology was superficial and unreliable, I reconsider the latter's major theological works (including his Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, Instruction chrétienne, and Pièces fugitives sur l'eucharistie) in an attempt to validate my previous interpretation, and illustrate that Vernet refused to acknowledge ideas that he had actually published. The second part of the article draws more general conclusions, pointing out spectacular errors in Sorkin's depiction of eighteenth-century Geneva and arguing that he has a clear agenda, which, in my opinion, is wrong-headed, easy to refute and—above all—often based on gratuitous accusations and statements lacking any evidence.     

Gender Bending and Exoticism in Japanese Girls’ Comics

Gender bending has been a staple of the medium of shōjo manga, Japanese girls’ comics, as best exemplified by cross-dressing “girl knight” characters and “Boys Love” stories, whose plots focus on romance between effeminate beautiful young men. The imaginary space created through the representation of these figures shares many traits in common with another typical feature of shōjo comics, namely their exoticisation of Europe. Both have been used as simultaneously escapist and subversive strategies, as a refuge from contemporary social norms and a platform for critical reflection. In this article, I aim to problematise our understanding of the connection between gender bending and exoticism in shōjo manga through an analysis of the representation of one specific aspect of European culture – namely, the Christian religion – in the genre of Boys Love manga.     

Whence nationalism?

ABSTRACT. There is widespread agreement that nationalism emerged in the historical fountainheads of modernity, and was subsequently diffused outwards. Contrary to that, there is a long standing view that nationalism precedes modernity even in the broadly accepted cradles of both modernity and nationalism, such as England or France, neither of which was modern when it engendered nationalism. Besides, some emergent nationalisms ran concurrent with their English or French counterparts, with little evidence of having been spawned by diffusion. Such early or protonationalisms often sprang from resistance to foreign conquest, putting in doubt the invention‐diffusion hypothesis. I am therefore suggesting that nationalism has not emerged in few societies, but in many, and that it was engendered by social interactions, not by a particular social formation. While nationalism emerges within society, its genesis occurs in‐between social groups and societies, making it a product of their interactions. That makes it u‐topic, its cradles socially diverse, and its conception interactional, not gestational.     

Secularisation: process,program, and historiography

ABSTRACT

Today's dominant academic use of the term ‘secularisation’ refers to an epochal process that transformed a society based on Christian faith to one grounded in human reason. This paper argues that ‘secularisation’ had not been used in this sense prior to the 1830s, and that no such process has been shown to have taken place in early modernity. This new use of the term was in fact internal to rival secularising and sacralising programs. The notion of an epochal rationalisation of society was thus invoked by secularists seeking to turn a factional campaign into an historical process. Their sacralising opponents employed the same strategy when they claimed that this process contained a desecularising counter-current, or that secularisation was secretly grounded in an alienated religion whose de-alienation held the promise of a post-secular age. This suggests that until they can adduce evidence of an epochal rationalisation of society in early modernity, histories of secularisation should be regarded as disguised program-statements for rival cultural-political factions in the present.     

Jacob Talmon between Zionism and Cold War Liberalism

The paper focuses on the problematic relationship between Talmon's liberalism and Zionism. My argument is that Talmon's nationalism (Zionism included)—historicist, romantic, visionary—lived in permanent tension with his liberalism—empiricist, pluralist, pragmatic. His critique of totalitarian democracy, reflecting his British experience, emerged independently from his Zionism, grounded in Central European nationalism. The two represented different worlds. Talmon lived in both, serving as an ambassador in-between them, without ever bringing them together.

The essay's first section describes the political education of the young Jacob Talmon (née Flajszer) and the making of The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. It demonstrates the independence of Talmon's Cold War liberal project from his Zionism. The second section places Talmon in the context of Cold War liberal discourse, showing how integral his critique of revolutionary politics was to contemporary liberalism. The third illustrates the tensions between Talmon's view of Jewish history and his liberalism, between his Zionism and his critique of revolutionary politics. Focusing on Talmon's analyses of nationalism, it highlights the ambiguity of his Zionism.     

Was Fichte a Remonstrant?

On reading Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation (1806–7), one is struck by the numerous references to religion it contains. The religious aspect of Fichte's writing is interesting in itself as it touches upon wider issues of theology and political thought, but it is also surprising given that Fichte had been labeled an atheist. The purpose of this article is to explore the ‘religious’ aspect of the Addresses looking specifically at the relationship between Fichte's work and the idea of ‘a chosen people.’ I argue that though not restricted to Reformed theology or even to the Christian faith, the idea of a chosen people can be found in Fichte's work but that it cannot be understood in a Lutheran nor Calvinistic manner but rather through the teachings of Jacob Arminius and the Remonstrants.     

Confucianism,Secularism, and Atheism in Bayle and Montesquieu

It should be hardly surprising to discover that eighteenth-century European perspectives of other cultures were shaped to a large extent by concerns internal to European political life. Objective or unprejudiced accounts of non-European cultures are rarely found among travellers, missionaries, and philosophers of the time. While the insights of Enlightenment political thinkers on the non-European world may shed little light on the cultures being commented upon, they are useful for assessing the nature of the Enlightenment's engagement with cultural traditions external to Europe. In particular, Enlightenment conceptions of China were extremely varied and reflective of the debates between Enlightenment thinkers, especially on the proper relation between religion and politics. I shall argue that Montesquieu's account of Confucianism in The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit des lois, first published in 1748) was in part influenced by his critique of Bayle's position on the role of religion in society as expounded in his Various Thoughts on the Comet (Pensées diverses sur la comète, published in 1682). While Montesquieu's account and assessment of Chinese thought and culture are “Eurocentric,” his evaluation of Confucianism nevertheless arises from a considered philosophical position on religion and politics.     

DOES ANYBODY STILL NEED JUDAISM?

Both of the books under review focus on the tradition of Jewish scholarship and debate. The Genius of Judaism is written from a religious perspective, whereas the authors of Jews and Words envision a future in which Jews live without Judaism; they see Jewishness as a culture that can be divorced from religion. For Lévy, a sense of the divine—including the concept of being a chosen people—is the source of Jewish identity and historical continuity. Lévy also argues that the Jews are chosen to serve non‐Jews. Inspired by the prophet Jonah, Lévy undertook diplomatic missions in the Ukraine and in Libya, and I consider the lessons he draws from these missions. I also discuss the relationship of Judaism to various concepts in the philosophy of history: revolution, progress, messianism, and utopianism, as well as the affinity between Judaism and skepticism.     

Focusing on Chinese nationalism: an inherently flawed perspective? A reply to Allen Carlson

My article replies to Allen Carlson's critique of the existing literature on Chinese nationalism (Carlson's article was published in Volume 15, issue 1 of Nations and Nationalism, 2009). I address Carlson's criticisms and proceed to evaluate his proposal to move away from an allegedly unhelpful focus on nationalism towards the allegedly more illuminating framework of national identity construction. My approach to the existing literature on Chinese nationalism acknowledges efforts made within it at grappling with issues of theory and definition and builds on this acknowledgement to operate a selective appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses. I argue that while some of the problems identified by Carlson do indeed plague the literature, his advocacy of abandoning nationalism as a focus of research is unwarranted. There is continuing validity in using nationalism as a lens for understanding how China sees its place in the world.