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This book challenges the modern myth that tolerance grows as societies become less religious. The myth inseparably links the progress of toleration to the secularization of modern society. This volume scrutinizes this grand narrative theoretically and empirically, and proposes alternative accounts of the varied relationships between diverse interpretations of religion and secularity and multiple secularizations, desecularizations, and forms of toleration. The authors show how both secular and religious orthodoxies inform toleration and persecution, and how secularizations and desecularizations engender repressive or pluralistic regimes. Ultimately, the book offers an agency-focused perspective which links the variation in toleration and persecution to the actors of secularization and desecularization and their cultural programs.
List of contents
1. Vyacheslav Karpov and Manfred Svensson. "Secularization, Desecularization, and Toleration: Towards an Agency-Focused Reassessment."
Part I. Secularization and Toleration in the History of Ideas
2. Manfred Svensson. "A Dirty Word? The Christian Development of the Traditional Conception of Toleration in Augustine, Aquinas, and John Owen."
3. Stephen Hirtenstein. "Human Dignity and Divine Chivalry: Rights, Respect and Toleration According to Ibn 'Arabi."
4. Andrew Murphy. "'Politics,' 'Religion,' and the Theory and Practice of Toleration: The Case of William Penn."
5. Holger Zaborowski. "Religious Freedom and Toleration in Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem"
6. George Harinck. "Abraham Kuyper's Vision of a Plural Society as a Christian Answer to Secularization and Intolerance."
7. Steven D. Smith. "The Resurgence of (Immanent) Religion and the Disintegration of the Secularization Hypothesis."
8. Eduardo Fuentes, "To Kill a Calf is Not to Kill a Calf: On the Description of Religious Objections and Toleration."
Part II. The Practice of Toleration in Comparative Perspectives
9. Jean Meyer, "The Conflict between State and Church in Mexico (1925-1938) and La Cristiada (1926-1929)."
10. Carol Troen and Ilan Troen. "Theological and Secular Discourses in Validating a Jewish State."
11. Daniel Philpott. "Religious Liberty and the Muslim Question."
12. Barbara McGraw and James T. Richardson. "Tolerance and Intolerance in the History of Religious Liberty Jurisprudence in the United States and the Implementation of RFRA and RLUIPA."
13. Fenggang Yang. "Secularization Regimes and Religious Toleration: China's Multiple Experiments."
14. Effie Fokas. "Messages from the European Court of Human Rights on Religion, Secularism, Tolerance and Pluralism."
15. Vyacheslav Karpov. "Secularization and Persecution: Lessons from Russia, Ukraine, and Beyond."
About the author
Vyacheslav Karpov is Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University, USA.
Manfred Svensson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Andes, Chile.
