Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order

by Owen, John M., IV; Owen, J. Judd

• ISBN13: 9780231150071
• ISBN10: 0231150075
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-15
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

Largely because of the cultural and political shift of the Enlightenment, Western societies emerged from sectarian conflict and embraced a more religiously moderate path. In nine original essays, leading scholars ask whether it is possible to export the Enlightenment solution abroad. Contributors begin by revisiting the Enlightenment's restructuring of the West, examining its past and future encounters with Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. While strongly attuned to the difficulties of implementing the principles of the Enlightenment worldwide, these scholars ultimately believe its elements have a necessary place within the new global order. Their approach treats conflict as a means to cooperation and sees religious commitment as a bolster, instead of a detriment, to political civility. Ultimately, they collapse both the claim that the West's experience offers a ready-made template for the world to follow and the belief that the West's achievements are to be ignored, despised, or discarded.

Author Biography

John M. Owen IV is associate professor of politics and faculty fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is author of Liberal Peace, Liberal War and The Clash of Ideas in World Politics and lives with his wife and three children in Charlottesville, Virginia. J. Judd Owen is associate professor of political science and a senior fellow at the center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. He is the author of Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism and is finishing a book on the Enlightenment's project of religious transformation. He lives with his wife and two children in Decatur, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. IX
The Enlightenment Revisited: Theoretical Questions	p. 1
Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order	p. 3
Religious Violence or Religious Pluralism: The Essential Choice	p. 37
Religion, Enlightenment, and a Common Good	p. 57
How and Why the West Has Lost Confidence in Its Foundational Political Principles	p. 74
The Enlightenment, Secularity, and the Religions	p. 107
The Enlightenment Project, Spinoza, and the Jews	p. 109
Puritan Sources of Enlightenment Liberty	p. 140
India: The Politics of Religious Reform and Conflict	p. 174
Reason and Revelation in Islamic Political Ethics	p. 194
Islam, Constitutionalism, and Liberal Democracy	p. 221
The Identity of the Christian Democratic Movement and Theory of Democracy	p. 240
Concluding Thoughts	p. 265
Contributors	p. 275
Index	p. 279
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