Steven Smith (2010) suggests that, even in the West, secularism is failing because of the inevitably shallow nature of a discourse that does not permit the declaration of normative commitments, commitments that must be smuggled in to resolve problems that secular principles cannot work out. ...At issue is the fear that the elimination of the secular, or rather the reduction of secularism to one doctrine among many, will result in an intellectual free-for-all, without grounding or potential resolution. Those already rooted in secularism may well wonder whether an academic discourse is possible under such a circumstance. In part, this fear is a product of twin myths: the myth of religious violence (Cavanaugh 2009), which exaggerates the dangers of religious thought, and the myth of religious neutrality (Clouser 2006), which denies the existence of fideistic assumptions in secular theorizing (cf. Milbank 1990). In part, it is simply a natural response to the realization that ones own perspective has been deeply privileged. -Engaging the Religiously Committed Other: Anthropologists and Theologians in Dialogue by Meneses, Backues, Bronkema, Flett, and Hartley
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 17:37:45 +0000
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