Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:48:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Olivar Alves Pereira.pdf: 1411844 bytes, checksum: ad21c031f20fb94eb86a9afee2d4135c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-25 / Discusses Theology of Secularization as proposed by the Baptist theologian Harvey Gallagher Cox Jr., who emerged in the academic and literary scene in the 1960s in full uproar caused by the Radical Theology, popularly known as the Movement of the Death of God. Analyzes five major works of that author who deal directly with the secularization and its implications for Christianity both Catholic and Protestant, and this analysis highlights what Harvey Cox proposes to search for the plausibility of Christianity. Thus, it follows that not all claims that Harvey Cox did in the 1960s about religion were correct, such as those related to the decline of religiosity, however, other claims sound like "prophetic" and have occured accurately. Aditionally, in order to do justice to the thought of that theologian it should not identify him as a "theologian of the death of God", but rather as a "theologian of secularization". Finally, if Christianity, represented by the Church (Catholic and Protestant) wants to be considered relevant during these days and in the future must be engaged in the society and serve it even having to deal with the declared atheism of such society. / Aborda a Teologia da Secularização assim proposta pelo teólogo batista Harvey Gallagher Cox Junior, o qual despontou no cenário acadêmico e literário na década de 1960 em pleno alvoroço causado pela Teologia Radical, popularmente conhecida como o Movimento da Morte de Deus. Analisa as cinco principais obras do referido autor que tratam diretamente da secularização e suas implicações para o Cristianismo tanto o católico como o protestante, e nessa análise destaca-se o que Harvey Cox propõe para a busca da plausibilidade para o Cristianismo. Conclui-se que nem todas as afirmações que Harvey Cox fez na década de 1960 sobre a religião estavam corretas, tais como as que se referiam ao declínio da religiosidade; contudo, outras afirmações deles soam como proféticas e se cumpriram com exatidão. Também que para se fazer justiça ao pensamento desse teólogo não se deve identificá-lo como um teólogo da morte de Deus , mas, sim, como um teólogo da secularização . E por fim, o Cristianismo representado pela Igreja (católica e protestante) se quiser encontrar-se relevante para esses dias e no futuro deverá se engajar na sociedade e servi-la mesmo tendo que lidar com o ateísmo declarado dessa sociedade.

The Swedish Church can be understood as having a large focus on social- and supportive work, in Sweden as well as abroad in their international projects. An example of their engagement is the extensive responsibility the church took during the refugee crisis 2015. This commitment in society raises questions about the role of the Swedish Church, such as how the church manifest itself in a so called secular society. On that basis, the aim of this paper is to examine how the Swedish Church’s work with refugees during the refugee crisis 2015, can help us understand the role that the Swedish Church has in the Swedish society today. The purpose is therefore to find out how the receiving of, and work with, refugees was expressed and what it can tell us about role of the Church today.   Moreover, the empirical material includes five case studies about the church’s commitment in the refugee crisis 2015, made by the Swedish Church itself. Theories about secularization is used for the analysis, and more particularly theories about internal secularization and deprivatization.   The conclusion of this paper is that the church’s answer to the refugee crisis, show us that the Church has in some aspects adopted a secular public role. This can be understood by the fact that they welcomed people to activities with main focus on integration, rather than pronounced Christian activities. Through their refugee work, the Swedish Church can also be understood as an important voluntary welfare provider supporting the Swedish state.

Secularization is an ambiguous concept. An important part of the Swedes' self-understanding is about a larger secularization process that forms the basis of Swedish society. The link between revival movements and secularization indicates a paradoxical relationship, since "revival" may have meant religious renewal; repentance or spiritual awakening. Spiritualism has been hijacked by religion, an individual spiritual center does not have to mean an "invisible religion". The release from the supremacy of religion can mean the prophet, the pope, the priest, the church or the state religion. This essay has a western and a secularized perspective, as the essay also emphasizes that secularization is a western phenomenon. The thesis examines Gustavi's congregation in the dioceses of Gothenburg during the years 1860 to 1903. The thesis investigates how the number of communion guests has changed during these years. The question is how much has the number of communion guests changed as a percentage from 1860 to 1903 as well as what the priests' views on the sects in the congregation were. The question regarding the number of communion guests has been answered by statistical calculations. The question of the priests' view of the sects within the congregation has been answered by reading the priesthood documents. The essay also provides a deeper understanding of the concept of secularization, as this concept is widely debated. The revival movements undermined the unified power of the state church. The collectivist state church was replaced by individualists who, in their revival, sought a spiritual awakening. In the Gustavi congregation there was a liberation from a religious authority.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on how the internal secularization of the Church ofSweden affects the congregations' work when it comes to fulfilling its mission. Where thecongregations may provide answers to the questions in their written planning of their tasks andfocus areas. Three internal secularization theories have been used in the analysis of the sourcematerial, which are ”classical secularization theory”, ”supply-side-theory” and a third theory whichcan be called the critical secularization theory.The first question in this study examines whether or not it is possible to see any regional differencesand similarities between the parishes The second question intend to investigate if there any topic orproblem that the congregations particularly highlights.. Based on the study of the source material,the third question aim to see if one theory of secularisation is more correct than the others when itcomes to describingthe development of the Church of Sweden today. The last question in this studywill try to place the parishes in one of Anneli Öljarstrand's two categories, these are the reluctantcongregation and the conformist one. These questions will be answered by using the contentanalysis method, where the analysis will be based on a coding scheme. The coding scheme containsfive categories that are based on the empirical material, the theory and the previous research.The answer to the questions has been that the congregations emphasize the importance of beinginclusive and open. And that there is a differnece between the parishest as well as similarities. Thestudy shows that the classical secularization theory are the theory that best fits the assembledcongregations. The answer to the last question is that there are congregations that fit in as bothconformist and reluctant.

This thesis seeks to re-examine theories of religious decline in the inner-city. From Edward Wickham (Church and People in an Industrial City) to Callum Brown (The Death of Christian Britain), decline and death have defined inner-city Christianity. In the late twentieth century the Church of England in Newham began a process of renewal by creating combined churches and community centres in a number of its parishes. Examining the motivation behind these projects creates a more nuanced understanding of the present secularization debate. Four churches were chosen that underwent this process to reflect the diversity and complexity of this approach. This work draws on minutes, reports, newspapers, interviews and oral histories. This is a study of how one area of East London renewed itself, inspired by the theological approach of J. G. Davies and his followers. Far from discovering the Church in its death knell, evidence emerges of an energetic, highly motivated Christian community, able to draw funds and expertise into this process of renewal. The Church of England is still willing to reassert its mission to the inner-city and expand its sphere of influence to encompass communal activities in a process of reclaiming a role within Newham life. The Anglican Church has defied notions of decline and secularization, and this study reveals an inner-city part of London that has a thriving religious culture. The renewal of its buildings has enabled the church to carve a role out within the community that ensure it remains positive, financially stable and numerically more resilient that its suburban neighbours. This suggests that the predictions of the death of Christian Britain are premature in this instant and arguments about decline have to be further evaluated in the light of this study.

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Thesis advisor: Paul Schervish / The rapid increase in the number of religious non-affiliates in the United States makes non-affiliation an important issue to study. Traditional secularization theories have explained the overall increase in the number of people who report not belonging to a specific religion, but have not explored the diversity among them. Studies attempting to explain the rise in non-affiliation have been basically descriptive, focusing on sociodemographic characteristics or social networks of religious non-affiliates, examining the effects of cohort, political orientation, parents' religions, and peer religions. There is no comprehensive social theory on the dynamics of religious non-affiliation. In sum, the previous literature requires us to reconsider the theoretical limits of modernity and the unilateral understanding of secularization and suggests a new framework for multiple secularities in accordance with high modernity. In this study, I conceptualize religious non-affiliation as "multiple secularities," creating a new framework that takes into account the existence of various forms of non-affiliation in the United States. Specifically, I identify three types of worldviews (theism, spiritualism, immanent frame) and two categories of institutional religious affiliation (affiliation and non-affiliation). Thus, six forms of belief are considered--affiliated theism, affiliated spiritualism, affiliated positivism, unaffiliated theism, unaffiliated spiritualism, and unaffiliated positivism. Utilizing the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey and the Religion Module of the 2008 International Social Science Survey, this dissertation explores differences among multiple secularities in the U.S. with respect to three dimensions of holistic implications: head, heart, and hand. Findings indicate that there are distinct differences among unaffiliated individuals based on belief types. Compared to unaffiliated spiritualists and unaffiliated positivists, unaffiliated theists place less importance on the role of human agency as compared to divine agency, have lower levels of moral liberalism, are more likely to favor religion when considering the tension between religion and science, more likely to report experiences of being filled with the Spirit, more likely to participate in political associations, but less likely to attend political rallies and demonstrations. Unaffiliated spiritualists have the highest rates of reporting experiences of oneness with the universe and interest in New Age (astrology and alternative medicine), and they are most likely to participate in political rallies or public protests among the unaffiliated individuals. Unaffiliated positivists are most likely to place importance on human agency, and they have the lowest rates of religious and spiritual experiences among the unaffiliated. These findings make several important contributions to the literature. First, they contribute to the recognition of the limits of the `secularization' thesis in a high (or late) modern society such as the United States and provide a new framework for understanding `multiple secularities' by examining interactions between the institutional level of secularity (non-affiliation) and the individual level of secularity (privatization of belief). Second, they confirm the Weberian insight that `elective affinities' exist between worldviews and ideological, experiential, and social aspects of life in a high modern society. Third, they demonstrate that social research should further explore the subdivisions among "unchurched believers" (unaffiliated theists and spiritualists). Fourth, they contribute to the debate on "spiritual individualism" versus "engaged spirituality" by demonstrating that spirituality promotes various forms of social engagement. Finally, this dissertation suggests that contemporary social scientists should recognize the limits of the traditional secularization thesis and face a new conundrum of post-secularity beyond belief types and affiliation types in order to promote social cohesion. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The ecumenical movement was the major international expression of organized Protestantism in the first half of the twentieth-century. This dissertation reconstructs the intellectual origins of the movement and its principal institutions, showing how ecumenical ideas and practices were transformed in response to geopolitical cataclysms, such as World War I, the collapse of European order in the 1930s, the Cold War, and decolonization, that divided international Protestant and Orthodox elites in the North Atlantic and Asia. Focusing on church leaders and lay intellectuals like John Mott, Joseph Oldham, Emil Brunner, Karl Barth, Willem A. Visser’t Hooft, John Foster Dulles, and M. M. Thomas, the project shows how a new relation between Christian faith and politics emerged from Protestant-led efforts to internationalize religious authority. Seeking to manifest world unity through common faith, ecumenists successively redefined the meaning of Christianity in their efforts to secure international consensus on the public role of the church among a politically polyglot constituency that included liberals, conservatives, communists, and fascists. This dissertation argues that the ecumenical movement went through three stages between 1900 and 1952: the first oriented around building the Kingdom of God on earth (1900-1925), the second seeking the realize the worldwide church as the basis of universal community (1930-1950), and the third mobilizing Christians for political revolution (1946-1952). The focus of the dissertation – chapters 2 through 5 – concerns the rise and decline of the ecumenical project to realize the church, which I argue was the first systematic and internationally successfully effort to articulate “ecumenicity” as a form of Christian pluralism. I show how this project was grounded in a missionary theology of anti-secularism that attributed a breakdown of social and international order to modern civilization’s repudiation of God. First defined at a conference of the International Missionary Conference in 1928 as a new “system of life and thought” that had displaced other religions as Christianity’s chief global rival, “secularism” identified an enemy that Allied and German Protestants, estranged since World War I, could unite in opposing. Mobilizing dialectical theology against the “totalitarian” claims of the state and the cogito alike, ecumenical anti-secularists jettisoned the historicist theological liberalism on which earlier forms of Protestant internationalism was based. In the 1930s, organizations like the Universal Christian Council of Life and Work and the World Council of Churches institutionalized theological dialogue as a mode of submission to God’s sovereignty; for the architects of these bodies, Christian faith was the only possible basis of community life in an age of global fracture. A strategy of international consolidation that ascribed political polarization to spiritual alienation, the ascendant anti-secularism of the 1930s did not anathematize the Nazi-sympathizing Reich church but sought to incorporate it into a world Christian community prioritizing the subordination of “political” to religious loyalties. After 1948, however, the ecumenical program to realize the church collapsed as its leaders struggled to surmount the ideological divisions of the Cold War. While Eastern European church leaders attacked the World Council as a mask for Western imperialism, critics in the West attacked the Council as an agent or stooge of world Communism. To escape the ideological impasse of East and West, the movement turned to the Third World in search of a new basis of global Christian unity. Reinventing the ecumenical project in the postwar world, a younger generation of theologians from the global South argued that the universal fellowship of the church would be actualized not by overcoming politics, but by specifying political commitments in solidarity with the liberation struggles of the poor, the non-white, and the colonized. In this paradoxical denouement, those struggling to surmount internal political divisions embraced political action as the essential expression of religious faith, and Christianity, long declared to be the basis of social order, came to be seen as its revolutionary solvent. By locating the ecumenical movement within a history of the ideas that made its institutional functioning possible, this project breaks from common narratives that lodge the movement within trajectories of secularization that rely on problematic attempts to adjudicate the boundaries between theological and non-theological thought and practice.

Revisions to secularization theory over the past two decades call for reconceptualization of the relation between race and secularity. Structural theories— depicting secularization as the linear, straightforward decline of religion in modernity— commonly explain the tenacity of African-American religiosity as resulting from their marginalization in modern society, a product of educational and economic disparities. However, recent theories address the secular as a historically contingent, incidental phenomenon, what has been called an "accomplishment"; it merits substantive study in itself, carrying the distinct values, beliefs, and understandings of a particular social history. This new framework invites analysis of the racial assumptions embodied in mainstream US secularity as explanation for blacks' religiosity, rather than citing their structural exclusion alone. This research attempts such through ethnographic analysis of black and white young adults' discussion of their religious and spiritual identities, using interviews conducted in Wave 4 of the National Study of Youth and Religion. Finding that most white young adults pursue autonomy from family and community as means of establishing credible identity, and that most black young adults facilitate identity by showing fidelity to them, I argue that these differences demonstrate racialized understandings of human agency, personhood, and social structure that vividly persist in the 21st century United States. Yet those of white young adults are typically treated as normative both in sociological discussions of secularity as well as in broader Western culture, with costly political consequences.

<p>There is a widespread belief among many researchers that Islam and secularization is incompatible. Obviously, in the Eastern world and in Muslim countries in particular, the problematic relationship between religion and democracy is still shows itself intensively. The current lack of democracy in most Muslim countries derives in part from this mindset contending that Islam is incompatible with secularization. So the application of concept “secularization” to studies of the Muslim countries Middle East has often been more problematic than enlightening.</p><p>The present study continues the discussion of the compatibility of secularization and Islamic religion bringing to the fore the case of modern Turkish politics. By considering the possible ways of how secularization can emerge and survive in a predominantly Muslim society, the study demonstrates the state-religion interaction in Turkey.</p><p>The thesis examines how the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Turkish nationalism decreased religious authority which led to the emergence of secularization. It shows that western institutions played a crucial role in survival of secularization. Later it discusses the reasons of revival of religion and survival of secularization in Turkish politics.</p><p>The main purpose is to present Turkey as a case in support of the argument concerning the coexistence of Islam and secularization.</p>