Secularism Politics, Religion, and Freedom

by Copson, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780198809135
• ISBN10: 0198809131
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-12-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Andrew Copson is the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, where he was previously Director of Education and Public Affairs; First Vice President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union; and a former Director of the European Humanist Federation. In these capacities he is one of the most experienced and prolific advocates of secularism, its study, and its implementation. For over a decade he has carried out a range of national and international practical secularist policy work and spoken internationally on secularism. He has been an associate of the Centre for Law and Religion and the University of Cardiff since 2008 and represented the secularist point of view on public or other bodies such as the Foreign Office's Advisory Panel on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the Woolf Institute's Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life. He co-edited The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook on Humanism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), with A C Grayling.

Table of Contents

1. What is Secularism?
2. Secularism in Western Societies
3. Secularism in Asia: Turkey and India
4. The Case for Secularism
5. The Case Against Secularism
6. Conceptions of secularism
7. Hard questions and new conflicts
Afterword: The Future of Secularism
References and Further Reading
Index