Raising issues central to post-secularism, Ryan Gillespie reviews three distinct recent works—Steven D. Smith’s The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution, and Jürgen Habermas’ Between Naturalism and Religion—in the International Journal of Communication. According to Gillespie, the books are all part of the discussion on the failures of modernity and the important roles for religion to play in the public sphere as citizens deliberate (and perhaps fight for) their future. Gillespie writes:
As I’ll argue here, these three books can be read as offering specific uses of religion in the current era. The specific uses are that of religion: (a) providing a supplemental, not necessarily alternative, epistemology, (b) as a moral foundation for law and politics, and (c) as possibly grounding, if not inspiring, revolution in the name of more just societies. I will give a brief overview of the three works now and then take each of these three uses in turn, concluding with a discussion of faith and transcendence in the global era, including brief reference to the Arab Spring.
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