Attempts to reach an understanding of how to live a Christian life in the contemporary context have never been more necessary. This is the aim of the International Symposium: Beyond Secular Faith, an annual conference held in Granada, Spain. This volume represents the fruits of over seven years of scholarship. The title Beyond Secular Faith suggests we are interested in (re)discovering and reflectively elaborating ways to overcome the limits imposed by the dominant contemporary culture. We are convinced that only a faith liberated from the conceptual restrictions and reductions (put forward by secular philosophy and theology) and centered radically on Christ can flourish in the dimension that is proper to faith; that is, in all spheres of human life. Featuring contributions from internationally recognized philosophers and theologians such as Tracey Rowland, Jarosław Jagiello, Rocco Buttiglione, Alison Milbank, Massimo Borghesi, John Milbank, and others, we will explore a diversity of questions from this common perspective: the light of revelation illuminates how Christians should live in the modern world, leading to a new beginning.

Is faith a necessary virtue in the contemporary world? May it be, or must it be, detached from religious commitment? What do genealogies of the secular tell us about faith? Does religion need secular faith? Secular Faith brings together leading and emerging scholars to reflect on the apparent paradox of "secular faith." Ranging over anthropology, religious studies, political science, history, and literature, from Muslims in China to Pentecostals in South Africa to a prison chapel in Texas, this collection of essays is as engaging and accessible as it is penetrating and rigorous. Communism was once labeled "the god that failed." Like Christianity, Communism involves faith in a superhuman endeavor, conversion, myth, discipline, and salvation--and, from the perspective of secular liberalism, both are unjustified and false. In recent years, scholars have begun to investigate whether secularism is itself based on faith in a god that failed, or is failing. Nevertheless, many still embrace such a faith, finding in the spirit of democracy an ethos of eternal renewal. Secular Faith enters and broadens this conversation, interrogating secular faith in a global context, tapping new theoretical resources, and grappling provocatively with the tragedies and opportunities of today's profane pantheon of beliefs. LIST OF ESSAYS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTORS 1 Uncool Passion: Nietzsche Meets the Pentecostals--Jean Comaroff / 21 2 The Secular Bad Faith of Harry Theriault, the Bishop of Tellus--Joshua Dubler / 44 3 Darwin's Dogs: Animals, Animism, and the Problem of Religion--David Chidester / 76 4 "IHave Seen Miracles in My Life": W. E. B. Du Bois and the Religious Limits of Secularism--Edward J. Blum / 102 5 Democracy, Piety, and Faith: AReading of Dewey's Religious Naturalism--Melvin Rogers / 126 6 Faith in the Time of Postsocialism--Cindy Huang / 153 7 Literary Enchantment and Literary Opposition from Hume to Scott--Colin Jager / 168 8 Imagined Communities, Holistic Histories, and Secular Faith--Michael Saler / 197 9 Interreligious Dialogue and Cosmopolitan Faith--Adam K. Webb / 226

Attempts to reach an understanding of how to live a Christian life in the contemporary context have never been more necessary. This is the aim of the International Symposium: Beyond Secular Faith, an annual conference held in Granada, Spain. This volume represents the fruits of over seven years of scholarship. The title Beyond Secular Faith suggests we are interested in (re)discovering and reflectively elaborating ways to overcome the limits imposed by the dominant contemporary culture. We are convinced that only a faith liberated from the conceptual restrictions and reductions (put forward by secular philosophy and theology) and centered radically on Christ can flourish in the dimension that is proper to faith; that is, in all spheres of human life. Featuring contributions from internationally recognized philosophers and theologians such as Tracey Rowland, Jarosław Jagiello, Rocco Buttiglione, Alison Milbank, Massimo Borghesi, John Milbank, and others, we will explore a diversity of questions from this common perspective: the light of revelation illuminates how Christians should live in the modern world, leading to a new beginning.

This book compares secularity in societies not shaped by Western Christianity, particularly in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

This book covers arguments made by various sides of the political-religious divide from the past 30 years, showing what the actual differences are between these groups. By stressing the typically ignored similarities, the book better informs partisans and the public to move debate forward.

Modernist thinkers once presumed a progressive secularity, with the novel replacing religious texts as society’s moral epics. Yet religion—beginning with the Iranian revolution of 1979, through the collapse of communism, and culminating in the singular rupture of September 11, 2001—has not retreated quietly out of sight. In Fiction Beyond Secularism, Justin Neuman argues that contemporary novelists who are most commonly identified as antireligious—among them Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer, Haruki Murakami, and J. M. Coetzee—have defied assumptions and have instead written some of the most trenchant critiques of secular ideologies, as well as the most exciting and rigorous inquiries into the legacies of the religious imagination. As a result, many readers (or nonreaders) on either side of the religious divide neglect the insights of works like The Satanic Verses, Disgrace, and Snow. Fiction Beyond Secularism serves as a timely corrective.

Peter D. Beaulieu examines the challenges to secular modernity and Islam as they encounter one another. By restoring a place at the table for Trinitarian Christianity alongside the monotheism of Islam and the skeptical indifference of Western rationalism, Beaulieu broadens the pallet of inter-religious and intercultural contact points.

Is death the final event in human life, or does another existence follow? What are the signs and possible proofs of such continuity? Such questions have sparked speculation in philosophy, religion, art, and science throughout human history and remain a familiar concern for even the most casual observer of the human condition. In his provocative new book, Fred Frohock explores the possibility that our existence is neither defined by nor limited to the purely physical-nor is it terminated at death. Fearlessly pursuing such a sensitive subject, Frohock suggests that death's domain may not be quite the "undiscovered country" lamented by Hamlet. He wades boldly into the debates between hardcore materialists and devout spiritualists; provides glimpses of recent findings in brain research, the so-called mind-body problem, and consciousness studies; and in general offers an idiosyncratic introduction to some of the most provocative and least understood aspects of what we call "conscious" life. In the process, he provides fresh insights into the narratives, claims, and conundrums associated with life after death, near-death and out-of-body experiences, reincarnation, and a host of psychic phenomena that continue to puzzle the experts. Demonstrating a keen grasp of subjects ranging from neurochemistry to popular culture, Frohock is a sure-footed tour guide through a richly diverse field of research. He considers what past life regression therapy suggests about reincarnation, assessing the credibility of pioneering research by Brian Weiss and Ian Stevenson. He introduces readers to the work of the University of Virginia's Near Death Experience Project, with reports stretching back 35 years, and the Human Consciousness Project's study of 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. And he contemplates whether people in permanent vegetative states, like Terri Schiavo and Sunny von Blow, are alive or not-and what these transitional states tell us about death. Leavened with humor and a Renaissance-style intellect that draws in Tolstoy and Hemingway along with films like Solaris and Blade Runner, Frohock's deep meditations are deftly interposed with brief fictional interludes that humanize his book's more abstract dimensions while exploring claims about the supernatural. Approaching the world's most baffling subjects with a critical eye, an open mind, and an agnostic's heart, Beyond looks beyond the last threshold and points the way toward a better understanding of human existence.

Post-secularism is the fundamental evidence of the end of modernity. Modernity, as sleeping reason in Francisco Goya's painting, realizes that, although it thought that it was awake, it was producing monsters. We try to analyze post-secular philosophy from the point of view of Russian religious thought. We believe that such philosophers as Vladimir Soloviev, Pavel Florensky, Sergey Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Georges Florovsky, and Semen Frank may be helpful for understanding and overcoming post-secular order. Their unique views on the relations between religion and philosophy, science, and social life are apparently missing in the current Western debates. It seems to us that Russian religious philosophy becomes surprisingly up-to-date and attractive in the contemporary world. We hope that the present volume will be a significant step forward in the inclusion of the heritage of Russian religious philosophy in contemporary debates.

Presenting cutting edge research on how religion can confront and obscure social inequalities in everyday life, Religion, Equalities and Inequalities argues that when religion is left out of social scientific analyses, it can result in incomplete analyses that conceal pathways to social inclusion and exclusion. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of contributors who operate at the vanguard of theoretical and empirical work on how social structures of power, institutions and bodies can generate equalities and inequalities in religion, the collection shows how religion can enable and challenge the inequities that affect people’s everyday lives. Academics and students of religious studies, sociology, politics and social policy will all find this book offers useful insights into the relationship between religion and contemporary culture.