Religious America, Secular Europe?

Berger, Peter L.; Davie, Grace; Fokas, Effie

doi:10.4324/9781315244662

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Secondly, and as a consequence, it denies both the resurgence of Christianity in Latin America and Africa through the unexpected popularity of Pentecostal and other forms of Evangelical Protestantism (Berger, 2005;Meyer, 2004), as well as the resurgence of Islam in global demographics and the public sphere (Berger, 2005;Habermas, 2008;Thomas, 2007), and other religions across the globe. Indeed, Europe, and more recently North America, seem to be the only "big exception" of continued religious decline (Berger, 2005; see also Berger et al, 2008;Brown & Woodhead, 2016;Davie, 2002).…”

Section: Religion's Retreat From Churches To Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Wildt¹

2023

The Pop Theology of Videogames

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Religion is surprisingly common in videogames. That is odd: religion was supposed to disappear under modernity, but survives in media despite decreased church attendance. It is now far more likely for young people to encounter religion in videogames than in church. Why is that so? And how should that change our understanding of religion? In this introduction, I summarize the related literatures on secularization, religion, games and play. Particularly religion and play have been theoretically intertwined, from the works of Durkheim and Huizinga to those of contemporary experts on games and religion – some of whom have been overly enthusiastic about finding religion. I finish by outlining how this book will theorize the pervasive and persistent presence of religion in contemporary videogames, asking why game makers use religion in their games, and how players make sense of this.

show abstract

Section: Religion's Retreat From Churches To Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Wildt¹

2023

The Pop Theology of Videogames

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There is a socio‐spatial relationship between the rise of a Chinese diaspora mission and the resacralization of European urban space as reflected in the activities of a specific church ministry targeting Chinese tourists in Italy, especially Rome, which is a strategic site in the Chinese diaspora mission field. Unlike the quintessentially secular state of France, Italy is one of the few exceptions to secular rule in historically Catholic Europe (Berger et al., 2008). It is more tolerant and accepting of the public presence of immigrant religions, and what is true of Italy as a whole is even more true of Rome.…”

Section: The Resacralization Of Historic Spaces and Transnational Con...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Merchants and missionaries: Chinese evangelical networks and the transnational resacralization of European urban spaces

Cao

2022

Global Networks

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article sheds new light on the diverse modes in which migration and religion intersect in shaping everyday transnational practices by exploring the articulations of religion and business migration in an emerging Chinese-led transnational mission field. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Wenzhou, Rome and Paris, I show how a large group of transnational Chinese merchants has adopted a vigorous homegrown evangelical Christianity as the spiritual and social anchor of their territorial mercantile culture in diaspora. These merchants have actively engaged in producing religious activities and events that link China to Europe and in resacralizing secular real estate and attaching evangelistic meanings to Europe's historic urban spaces. For rural-originated migrants who embrace a global hierarchy of places, the evangelical discursive distinction between the mundane and the transcendent spheres finds expression in their perceived opposition between the peripheral local and the modern global centre in the global market economy.

show abstract

“…Certainly, the United States was characterised by high levels of 'religious vitality' (Warner 1993). Europe was the exception rather than the rule, even as the relevance of religion to public space seemed generalised or culturalised (Berger, Davie, and Fokas 2008). Others focused on 'disenchantment' rather than disbelief.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secularisation as the fragmentation of the sacred and of sacred space

Tol

Gorski

2022

Religion, State and Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Contemporary conflicts about secularity in 'the West' tend to focus on public space. Although collective Christian heritage means that public space is rarely exclusively neutral, conflicts continue to arise over the relationship between secularity and religious symbolism, and especially over those symbols which derive from religious minorities. This contribution critically considers the designation of space as either sacred or secular in political imaginaries, approaching processes of secularisation as part of a fragmentation of the sacred and of sacred space. We introduce the concept of transliminal space: spaces which can contain multiple and potentially conflicting ascriptions of meaning. Conceptualising public space as trans-liminal allows for contemporaneous and competing ascriptions of the secular, the sacred, the secular-sacred, the sacredsecular, without being exclusively grounded in either. Transliminality does not preclude public space to be predominantly secular, but it does problematise the phenomenon of normative exclusions of religious symbols from public spaces.

show abstract

Religious America, Secular Europe?

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Introduction

Introduction

Merchants and missionaries: Chinese evangelical networks and the transnational resacralization of European urban spaces

Secularisation as the fragmentation of the sacred and of sacred space

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About