Research Catalog

Title

• Postsecularism : the hidden challenge to extremism / Mike King.

Author

King, Mike

Publication

Cambridge : James Clarke & Co., c2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

279 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

• Drawing on a wide range of contemporary thinkers from Dawkins to Anthony Flew, from Christopher Hitchens to Alister McGrath, from across the spiritual spectrum, King identifies a new mode of thought, exploring its relevance to everything from physics to the arts, postmodernism, and feminism. What emerges is a thoughtful and persuasive discussion of the route to reconciliation between the combative worlds of the religious and the secular. (Publisher).
• In Postsecularism, the follow-up to his acclaimed Secularism, Mike King posits that out of the conflict between socially dominant secular thinkers and the embattled 'new defenders of faith' a third approach arises which is neither a return to pre-Enlightenment beliefs nor a continued hegemony of the secular. King identifies this as the postsecular. It retains critical modes of thought and at the same time returns in all seriousness to questions of the spirit. The postsecular provides a framework within which to move beyond religious and atheist extremism.
• The détente or 'mutual ignorance pact' between secular culture and religious faith that characterized most of the twentieth century has been shattered in the early twenty-first. From the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the American Christian Right to the fiercely anti-religious writings of staunch atheists such as Richard Dawkins, arguments over the role that religion and spirituality should play in our lives - public and private - have never been more hotly debated. One extremism is pitted against another, but a new voice of moderation, a hidden challenge to both extremisms, is now emerging.

Subject

• Postsecularism
• Religion > Forecasting
• Secularism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-272) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Some establishing principles -- Recapitulating the origins of secularism -- The new atheists and extreme positions -- The new defenders of faith -- Postsecularism and the new debate -- Postsecularism and physics -- Postsecularism and consciousness studies -- Postsecularism and transpersonal psychology -- Postsecularism and the new age -- Postsecularism and nature -- Postsecularism and the arts -- Postsecularism and postmodernism -- Postsecularism and feminism -- Reflections and conclusions.

ISBN

• 9780227172476 (pbk.)
• 0227172477

OCLC

259266423

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library