Exploring the Postsecular: The Religious, the Political and the Urban(13 International Studies in Religion and Society)

The re-emergence of the religious in secular domains has led prominent scholars such as Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor to speculate about a new ‘postsecular’ age. The alleged shift from the secular to the postsecular is most visible in the spheres of urban public space, governance and civil society. This volume addresses contemporary relations between religion, politics and urban societies primarily from a theoretical perspective, while also paying attention to empirical manifestations of the central conceptual ideas. The primary focus is the relations between public religion, deprivatization of religion and theorizations of modernity and modernities, with the secondary and closely related focus on theorizing postsecular urbanism including the role of faith based organizations (FBOs) in cities. Contributors include: Justin Beaumont, James A. Beckford, Luke Bretherton, Paul Cloke, Candice Dias, Wilhelm Gräb, Maaike de Haardt, Jason Hackworth, Christoph Jedan, Kim Knott, Michiel Leezenberg, Bernice Martin, David Martin, Gregor McLennan, Arie L. Molendijk, Nihan Özdemir Sönmez, Martijn Oosterbaan, Andy F. Sanders, Anke Schuster, and Hetty Zock.

About the Author :
Arie L. Molendijk, Ph.D. (1991) is Professor of the History of Christianity and Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Groningen. His latest book is The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands (Brill 2005). Justin Beaumont, Ph.D. (2000) is Lecturer in Urban Geography and Planning at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen. He is currently working on a monograph Cities of the Secular for consideration at Wiley-Blackwell. Christoph Jedan, Ph.D. (1999) is Lecturer in Ethics at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen. His latest book is Stoic Virtues: Chrysippus and the Religious Character of Stoic Ethics (Continuum 2009).

Review :
"This book is a rich and engaging read on the postsecular from a multitude of positions, of interest to readers of urban and religion sociology, geography and urban planning, religious studies, as well as contextual theology and political philosophy." - Carolina Ivanescu, Amsterdam, in: Comparative Sociology 15 "Although there is little consensus about what the term "postsecularism" means, the new book entitled Exploring the Postsecular edited by Arie Molendijk, Justin Beaumont and Christoph Jedan, is the most comprehensive and informative account of this intellectual debate." - Richard Cimino, in: Religion Watch "The book is a very significant example of problematizing of «post-secular» and will be of interest to anyone interested in contemporary social studies." - Roman Safronov, in: Researches in Religious Studies "From a missiological perspective, this volume provides the Church leaders with theoretical and empirical data regarding religious groups as well as their practices, tendencies, strenghts, and drawbacks. The empirical data provided by this volume are thus indispensible to New Evangelization in the post-secular city." - Indunil Janaka Kodithuwakku, in: Bibliographia Missionaria (2013)