Religion: A Secular Theory

1983 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 174
Author(s):  
Barbara Hargrove ◽  
Andrew M. Greeley
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Edmund F. Byrne

In this paper I discuss recent scholarly work on ideology, mostly by Europeans, that exposes a secularist bias in current political theory, invites a nonderogatory concept of religion, and (I argue) justifies more flexible church/state relations. This work involves (1) redefining ideology as any action-oriented ideas, whether destructive or ameliorative, including both secular theory and religion, then (2) drawing on hermeneutical and critical studies of the power/ideology relationship to rediscover a role for ‘utopia’ as a social catalyst for amelioration. I then call attention to the relevance of ‘mission’ to this work. For in both secular and sacred contexts, missions are defined and assigned to individuals or groups to enhance some aspect of the organizing entity’s sense of purpose and possibility. What stands out in each instance is that the sense of mission is not passively epistemic but actively project-oriented, goal-directed. It can be used with reference to any end or goal that is at least implicitly normative and which people seek to attain. A mission moves people, however, only if it is tied to some belief-based social identity which can be interpreted as oriented to that end. A case can be made, accordingly, for accommodating religious views in our political discourse, for they have a history of directing people’s thinking beyond what is to what ought to be, and without them we are ever more inclined to tolerate mediocrity in ourselves and despair in others.


2012 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christa Van Laerhoven ◽  
Richard Greenberg
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo Dionigi

AbstractIn 1953, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly elected a low-key and relatively unknown personality as the second Secretary General of the UN. Dag Hammarskjöld, nonetheless, turned out to be one of the most entrepreneurial and innovative Secretary Generals that the UN has ever had. He invented peacekeeping, radically reformed the administrative structure of the UN, and promoted a crucial multi-lateral diplomatic role for the UN Secretariat. Behind this innovative approach to the politics of the UN, there was a personality with a deep and complex religious discernment that emerged occasionally in public speeches, as well as in private writing. This article interprets Hammarskjöld's norms entrepreneurship through the lens of post-secular theory and the concept of Habermasian institutional translation. It shows how — in contrast with merely secularist assumptions — Hammarskjöld's religiosity shaped and advanced international political processes consistently with the principles of the UN Charter.


1992 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 349-354
Author(s):  
R.S. Gomes

Some features of the dynamics of particles affected by drag, in the field of the Sun and planets, are presented here. In particular mean motion and secular resonances are investigated. When dust particles are considered as a whole in the zodiacal cloud, a simple secular theory can explain much of its geometry. Dynamics of particles near an inner planet is mostly dispersive, but an average behavior can be deduced from some analytical and numerical considerations.


1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 480-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
John I Birch ◽  
Curtis Cramer
Keyword(s):  

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (S310) ◽  
pp. 88-89
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Georgakarakos ◽  
Siegfried Eggl

AbstractPerturbation theory in the three body problem has greatly advanced our ability to understand and model a variety of systems ranging from artificial satellites to stars and from extrasolar planets to asteroid-Jupiter interactions. In a series of papers, we developed an analytical technique for estimating the orbital eccentricity of the inner binary in hierarchical triple systems. The method combined the secular theory with calculations of short period terms. The derivation of the short term component was based on an expansion of the rate of change of the Runge-Lenz vector by using first order perturbation theory, while canonical perturbation theory was used to investigate the secular evolution of the system. In the present work we extend the calculation to the orbit of the outer binary. At the same time, we provide an improved version for some previous results. A post-Newtonian correction is included in our model. Our analytical estimates are compared with numerical and analytical results on the subject and applications to stellar triples and extrasolar planets are discussed.


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