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Category - secularism

  • 7 Mar 2011
    Arab uprisings: what kind of religion or irreligion?

    Religion changes and mutates. Some of these religious mutations can be positively harmful in a changing Middle East. But other religious innovations can help religion accommodate itself to modernity, says Ahmad Sadri. It doesn’t matter whether a society has or does not have religion per se. What is important is what kind of religion or irreligion pervades in that society.

  • 11 Jan 2011
    Co-operation: the path to truth

    If we are fixated upon privilege or special treatment, we will miss the Gospel message that transformational relationships are at the heart of the faith of Jesus, says Jill Segger

  • 9 Nov 2010
    Major US academic project will examine religious and secular tensions

    The University of Notre Dame in the USA is inaugurating a major cross-cultural research project on 'contending modernities', religious and secular.

  • 23 Oct 2010
    Turkish aide wants Hagia restored for Muslim and Christian worship

    A Turkish government adviser has said that Christians and Muslims should be allowed to worship again in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia basilica.

  • 21 Oct 2010
    Christians and ‘aggressive secularism’

    The problem for Christians today is not primarily 'aggressive secularism', but the confusion of Christianity with power, says Simon Barrow. That and the the distortion of public debate about religiosity and secularity into a false dichotomy between dominating belief or privatised belief. A better way is needed - based on living by example, not the lust for control.

  • 17 Oct 2010
    The Pope and alternatives to imperial Christianity

    Many progressive Christians found themselves experiencing profoundly mixed feelings both about Pope Benedict’s visit and about the protests against it, says Simon Barrow. This is perhaps because neither imperial religion nor rejectionist forms of secularism are adequate to the task of remaking public life and public faith.

  • 27 Sep 2010
    Fundamentalisms, secular and otherwise

    Many Americans and Europeans are taken aback by the suggestion that collaborating with religious groups on matters of shared concern is a necessity for human flourishing in many parts of the world, says Scott Appleby. They shouldn't. Both bridge-building and bridge-burning wear many labels in today's world, secular and religious. Literacy and engagement are needed to distinguish the positive from the negative, not hardened ideology.

  • 20 Sep 2010
    Courtesy, conscience and the Pope

    As Pope Benedict's visit to the UK comes to an end, I am left with a sense of sadness. Despite the words of Archbishop Vincent Nichols, attempting to paint the visit as he would perhaps have wished it to be – an endorsement of pluralism and a call to quiet dialogue rather than shrill confrontation, it seems hard to imagine a clearer example of differing cultures failing to understand each other than we have observed over the past few days.

  • 14 Sep 2010
    Secularists clash over responses to Pope's visit

    The Institute of Ideas think-tank has accused fellow secularists of engaging in a "New Atheist witch-hunt" over the Pope's upcoming British visit.

  • 21 Jul 2010
    Burka ban is wrong and counter-productive