It was difficult all along to conceive of religion (its ritual practices, mystical unions, or attractions and immersions of any…
Naive and reflective faiths
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
Heraclitean spirituality: ephemeral selves
"That it cannot break time and time's greed---that is the will's loneliest misery." Thus spoke Zarathustra. To try to escape…
Heraclitean spirituality: divine conflict
From the vertiginous summit of his virtue, and against all evidence to the contrary, Heraclitus informs us that "it is…
Akbar Ganji in conversation with Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor: If the human relation to religion and to God is not as shallow as the mainstream theory thinks,…
Discerning the religious spirit of secular states in Asia
In his monumental book, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor distinguishes three meanings of secularism, as it refers to the "North Atlantic…
Embedded religion in Asia
The secularity of modern Asian states has by no means led to widespread social secularity, Taylor's second secularity, a decline…
Hybrid consciousness or purified religion
Charles Taylor's framework for understanding the advent of a "secular age" in the North Atlantic world offers a useful first…
Justice and theism
The central claim of Nicholas Wolsterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs is that justice is based on natural human rights that inhere…
Rehabilitating religious rights talk
In December, we celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted by the United Nations General…
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s fear of the secular
The truly dynamic discussion in America today about religion and politics is not between "wall of separation" secularists and Christian…