Santa Clara University

Religion and Civil Society

Major Historical Context:

To put today's issues in the larger context of the history of religion, the reader could consult the five contemporary sources below. Current discussion focuses on changes during the Axial Age and modernization and globalization from 1500 to the present.

Armstrong, Karen. The Case for God (New York: Knopf, 2009).

Esposito, John L., Fasching, Darrell J., and Lewis, Todd. Religion and Globalization: World Religions in Historical Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). This is the 2008 edition intended for upper-division and graduate students. Postmodern and post-colonial issues are central to the argument.

Micklethwait, John, and Wooldridge, Adrian. God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World (New York: Penguin, 2009). The superiority of the American over the European model for political-religious relations. Modernity must be pluralistic.

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard Belnap, 2007).

"The Axial Age and its Consequences for Subsequent History and the Present." This July 3-5, 2008 conference at Erfurt, Germanty focused on the axial age and its relation to current religion. The list of participants is extraordinary, e.g., Bellah, Casanove, Habermas, Joas, Taylor, Wittrock.

Resources to think about Religion and Civil Society:

This section combines theoretical work on Civil Society with considerations of the role of religion in the West, especially in the Anglo countries.

Ahdar, Rex, and Stenhouse, John, eds. God and Government: The New Zealand Experience (Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press, 2000).

Chambers, Simone, and Kymlicka, Will, eds. Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) Perspectives: Christianity, Classical Liberalism, Confucianism, Critical Theory, Feminism, Islam, Judaism, Liberal-egalitarianism, Natural Law.

Chanda, Nayan. Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). See Chapter Four on the Preachers.

Eck, Diana L. A New Religious America: How A “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).

God and Globalization. Three volumes edited by Max L. Stackhouse, Princeton Center of Theological Inquiry, and one collaborator each. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International Press, 2000-2002. The theoretical framework can be found in Stackhouse’s introduction in the first volume, co-edited with Peter J. Paris, Religion and the Powers of the Common Life, pp. 1-52. The series joins ethics and theology in the new context of globalization. “The concerns of theological ethics are primary.”

The second volume, The Spirit and the Modern Authorities, co-edited with Don S. Browning, treats the educational, legal, and medical professions, technology, “nature,” and charismatic leadership. The third volume, Christ and the Dominions of Civilization, co-edited with Diane B. Obenchain, treats world religions. 

Guth, James L. and Fraser, Cleveland R., “Religion and Partisanship in Canada,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40 (March 2001): 62-63. 

Madsen, Richard, Sullivan, William M., Swindler, Ann, and Tipton, Steven M., eds. Meaning and Modernity: Religion, Polity, and Self (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

Obenchain, Diane B., “The Study of Religion and the Coming Global Generation,” in Max L. Stackhouse and Diane B. Obenchain, eds., God and Globalization: Christ and the Dominions of Civilization (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International Press, 2002), 59-109.

Phillips, Kevin. The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

Rosenblum, Nancy L., and Post, Robert C., eds. Civil Society and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Perspectives: Christianity, Classical Liberalism, Confucianism, Critical Theory, Feminism, Islam, Judaism, Liberal-egalitarianism, Natural Law.

Stark, Rodney. Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief (New York: HarperOne, 2007).

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belnap Press, 2007). Winner of 2007 Templeton Prize. 

Thomas, Scott, “The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Changing Character of International Politics,” in Max L. Stackhouse and Diane B. Obenchain, eds., God and Globalization: Christ and the Dominions of Civilization (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International Press, 2002), 110-38.

Major Historical Context:

To put today's issues in the larger context of the history of religion, the reader could consult the five contemporary sources below. Current discussion focuses on changes during the Axial Age and modernization and globalization from 1500 to the present.

Armstrong, Karen. The Case for God (New York: Knopf, 2009).

Esposito, John L., Fasching, Darrell J., and Lewis, Todd. Religion and Globalization: World Religions in Historical Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). This is the 2008 edition intended for upper-division and graduate students. Postmodern and post-colonial issues are central to the argument.

Micklethwait, John, and Wooldridge, Adrian. God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World (New York: Penguin, 2009). The superiority of the American over the European model for political-religious relations. Modernity must be pluralistic.

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard Belnap, 2007).

"The Axial Age and its Consequences for Subsequent History and the Present." This July 3-5, 2008 conference at Erfurt, Germanty focused on the axial age and its relation to current religion. The list of participants is extraordinary, e.g., Bellah, Casanova, Habermas, Joas, Taylor, Wittrock.

November 2, 2009.