On Changing the Subject

Secularity', 'Religion', and the Idea of the Human

Bibliographic Data

ID3457973
AuthorsCornel Grey (0000-0002-8721-9536, Durham University, corresponding author), Carmody Grey, Oliver Dürr (0000-0003-0970-4090, University of Fribourg, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume14
Issue4
Pages466
Publication date2023-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel14040466
OpenAlexW4362577729
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited24

The 'religion/secular' frame should be retired as a way of characterizing contemporary northern European cultures. The concepts of 'secularity' and 'religion' are both falsifying and question begging. They invisibly and unhelpfully predetermine the conversation about who and where we are now. Further, they are terms which increasingly lack salience in these cultures. If we seek to locate and articulate, in order to reflectively engage, the horizons within which contemporary northern Europeans generally live, the goods that orient people's lives, the ideas and values that move and motivate them, we need to talk not about 'religion' and the lack of it, but about the idea of the human. Within the concept of the human is nested today the sense of orientation, meaning, goodness and importance that notions of 'religion' used to express. This is the conceptual territory on which arguments about 'what really matters' are now conducted. If one wishes to have salience in contemporary culture, one needs to speak to this

Aesthetics · Conversation · Epistemology · Political science · Secularity · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious Education and Schools · Religious Tourism and Spaces

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