Secularism and Theology: Contemporary Theological and Philosophical Readings of the Relation of the Enlightenment and Modernity with Religious Thought

Volume 12|Issue 45| Summer 2023 |Articles

Abstract

Until recently, a considerable number of Western scholars and interpreters adopted the conviction that the intellectual imaginations called 'the Enlightenment' and 'Modernity' are essentially a secularist and atheistic movements that were generically hostile to religion, and they launched a ferocious war to cast religious belief out of the scene. In opposition to this conventional conviction, this study displays examples of contemporary Anglo-Saxon theological and philosophical voices of scholars who call for re-reading the Enlightenment's and Modernity's projects and realizing that they were intellectual movements deeply rooted in historical theological and religious views and conceptions. The essay offers first three voices from the contemporary theological arena in The United Kingdom and the United States of America, which argue that Enlightenment's and Modernity's secularity was not actually atheistic or anti-religious in nature, and its followers did not deny their religious, even churchly, affiliation and interest. The second part of the essay sheds strong and attentive light on a similar reading in contemporary Anglo-Saxon philosophical reasoning by probing the discourse of the contemporary philosopher, Charles Taylor, who also develops in his writings a thesis on the religious roots and presumptions of secularism, arguing that the modernist call for disenchantment is inspired by ideas and concepts derived from the theological imagination of the Protestant Reformation and the Humanism of the Renaissance era. The paper ends, finally, with remarks related to the reception of the Western classical reading of the Enlightenment and Modernist secularity as anti-religious and atheistic and how the new Western reading of this subject can newly recommend a reckoning with secularism and its value from different perspectives and points of view. 

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​Associate Researcher, Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues Bonn University, Germany. 

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