Social theorists have engaged religion as a social agent and submitted that it has the capacity to foster positive and negative changes in the society. Milton Yinger, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx lead the pack among ...Social theorists have engaged religion as a social agent and submitted that it has the capacity to foster positive and negative changes in the society. Milton Yinger, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx lead the pack among other sociologists. The need to therefore interrogate religion as an agent of social engineering cannot be overemphasized normatively and functionally. One of the implications of such engagement is that religion; study and practice need to respond to issues in the society. Basic challenges facing the Nigerian nation are issues of poverty, diseases, corruption, and illiteracy. However, in Nigerian universities, the situation posits that religion is studied with theological intentions based on the curriculum bequeathed by the missionaries that laid the foundation for the academic study of religion in Nigeria leading to exclusive and reductionist approaches to its study. There is also government policy that placed emphasis on science and management courses for development. The situation has led to reduction in students＇ enrolments for the study of religion in Nigerian universities. Therefore, this paper seeks explanations for the non-functional design（s） of the curriculum for the academic study of religion in universities, southwest of Nigeria. Descriptive and analytic methods were adopted in the study to pursue the thesis that the academic study of religion in Nigeria should be rebranded and repackaged to respond and interrogate social challenges/problems, such as the scourge of HIV/AIDS plaguing the society thereby recreating a new social identity and relevance for its study.展开更多
The U.S. Supreme Court gave the privately owned company Hobby Lobby the authority to deny healthcare coverage to its employees, a decision by a secular authority involving the owner＇s religious beliefs. In France, th...The U.S. Supreme Court gave the privately owned company Hobby Lobby the authority to deny healthcare coverage to its employees, a decision by a secular authority involving the owner＇s religious beliefs. In France, the first issue released by the secular magazine Charlie Hebdo after the terrorist attack depicted a religious figure declaring, ＂All is forgiven.＂ In each instance the boundaries between the ＂secular＂ and ＂religious＂ were transgressed. In the academic study of religion, an additional direction methodology needs to take involves the lens formed by academic concepts and categories as shaped by the historical development of the university＇s discourses and lines of inquiry. The university is an epistemological project and we look ＂out there＂ through concepts and categories formed ＂in here＂, inside of the history of ＂the university＂. It is another dimension to the problem of the insider/outsider. This paper will use the characteristics of interdisciplinarity to historicize how the university as an epistemological project has developed the concepts of ＂religion＂, the ＂secular＂, and the binary they form, in order to suggest directions for their use to interpret events in the 21 st century through the academic study of religion.展开更多
Given Latin America＇s historical and robust religiosity, how do sociologists explain that Uruguay became an extremely secular society since the turn of the twentieth century？ Earliest attempts to interpret and expla...Given Latin America＇s historical and robust religiosity, how do sociologists explain that Uruguay became an extremely secular society since the turn of the twentieth century？ Earliest attempts to interpret and explain Uruguayan secular society came in the 1960s from Uruguayan scholars. Typically, these studies were produced by religious practitioners, or at least researchers sympathetic to religion, who attributed weak religiosity, at least weak Catholicism, to two factors： the lack of a colonial heritage and European immigration. Counterfactuals to the ＂weak institution＂ and the ＂social base＂ claims are based on new research, especially as it pertains to immigration and settlement patterns among Italian and Spanish immigrants. The counter-arguments presented here, while not entirely invalidating the ＂social base＂ and ＂weak institutional church＂ claims make it more difficult to assume that urban demographics and ecclesiastical history in Uruguay are significantly correlated to the secularization of Uruguayan society. This study is important because it creates theoretical space that should stimulate researchers to consider alternative causes for Uruguayan secular society that provide greater explanatory power by integrating historically contingent evidence in the context of theoretical explanation展开更多
文摘Social theorists have engaged religion as a social agent and submitted that it has the capacity to foster positive and negative changes in the society. Milton Yinger, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx lead the pack among other sociologists. The need to therefore interrogate religion as an agent of social engineering cannot be overemphasized normatively and functionally. One of the implications of such engagement is that religion; study and practice need to respond to issues in the society. Basic challenges facing the Nigerian nation are issues of poverty, diseases, corruption, and illiteracy. However, in Nigerian universities, the situation posits that religion is studied with theological intentions based on the curriculum bequeathed by the missionaries that laid the foundation for the academic study of religion in Nigeria leading to exclusive and reductionist approaches to its study. There is also government policy that placed emphasis on science and management courses for development. The situation has led to reduction in students＇ enrolments for the study of religion in Nigerian universities. Therefore, this paper seeks explanations for the non-functional design（s） of the curriculum for the academic study of religion in universities, southwest of Nigeria. Descriptive and analytic methods were adopted in the study to pursue the thesis that the academic study of religion in Nigeria should be rebranded and repackaged to respond and interrogate social challenges/problems, such as the scourge of HIV/AIDS plaguing the society thereby recreating a new social identity and relevance for its study.
文摘The U.S. Supreme Court gave the privately owned company Hobby Lobby the authority to deny healthcare coverage to its employees, a decision by a secular authority involving the owner＇s religious beliefs. In France, the first issue released by the secular magazine Charlie Hebdo after the terrorist attack depicted a religious figure declaring, ＂All is forgiven.＂ In each instance the boundaries between the ＂secular＂ and ＂religious＂ were transgressed. In the academic study of religion, an additional direction methodology needs to take involves the lens formed by academic concepts and categories as shaped by the historical development of the university＇s discourses and lines of inquiry. The university is an epistemological project and we look ＂out there＂ through concepts and categories formed ＂in here＂, inside of the history of ＂the university＂. It is another dimension to the problem of the insider/outsider. This paper will use the characteristics of interdisciplinarity to historicize how the university as an epistemological project has developed the concepts of ＂religion＂, the ＂secular＂, and the binary they form, in order to suggest directions for their use to interpret events in the 21 st century through the academic study of religion.
文摘Given Latin America＇s historical and robust religiosity, how do sociologists explain that Uruguay became an extremely secular society since the turn of the twentieth century？ Earliest attempts to interpret and explain Uruguayan secular society came in the 1960s from Uruguayan scholars. Typically, these studies were produced by religious practitioners, or at least researchers sympathetic to religion, who attributed weak religiosity, at least weak Catholicism, to two factors： the lack of a colonial heritage and European immigration. Counterfactuals to the ＂weak institution＂ and the ＂social base＂ claims are based on new research, especially as it pertains to immigration and settlement patterns among Italian and Spanish immigrants. The counter-arguments presented here, while not entirely invalidating the ＂social base＂ and ＂weak institutional church＂ claims make it more difficult to assume that urban demographics and ecclesiastical history in Uruguay are significantly correlated to the secularization of Uruguayan society. This study is important because it creates theoretical space that should stimulate researchers to consider alternative causes for Uruguayan secular society that provide greater explanatory power by integrating historically contingent evidence in the context of theoretical explanation
