Damon Linker

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Damon Linker is an American journalist and author. He is the former editor of First Things. He is currently a senior lecturer in the Political Science department at the University of Pennsylvania. [1] He previously taught political philosophy at Brigham Young University. [2]

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Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion. It is most commonly thought of as the separation of religion from civil affairs and the state and may be broadened to a similar position seeking to remove or to minimize the role of religion in any public sphere. Secularism may encapsulate anti-clericalism, atheism, naturalism, non-sectarianism, neutrality on topics of religion, or antireligion. As a philosophy, secularism seeks to interpret life based on principles derived solely from the material world, without recourse to religion. It shifts the focus from religion towards "temporal" and material concerns.

Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system, or life stance that embraces human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism, while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making.

The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, though this is not a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative degrees of civility in different societies, but this concept of a ranking order has since fallen into disrepute in many contemporary cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State atheism</span> Official promotion of atheism by a government

State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non-theism into political regimes. It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments. To some extent, it is a religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically linked to irreligion and the promotion of irreligion or atheism. State atheism may refer to a government's promotion of anti-clericalism, which opposes religious institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen. In some instances, religious symbols and public practices that were once held by religions were replaced with secularized versions of them. State atheism in these cases is considered as not being politically neutral toward religion, and therefore it is often considered non-secular.

The words theoconservatism and theocon are portmanteaus of "theocracy" and "conservatism"/"conservative" coined as variants of "neoconservatism" and "neocon". They have been used as labels, sometimes pejorative, referring to members of the Christian right, particularly those whose ideology represents a synthesis of elements of American conservatism, conservative Christianity, and social conservatism, expressed through political means. The term theocon first appeared in 1996 in an article in The New Republic entitled "Neocon v. Theocon" by Jacob Heilbrunn, where he wrote:

[T]he neoconservatives believe that America is special because it was founded on an idea—a commitment to the rights of man embodied in the Declaration of Independence—not in ethnic or religious affiliations. The theocons, too, argue that America is rooted in an idea, but they believe that idea is Christianity.

Richard John Neuhaus was a prominent writer and Christian cleric.

<i>First Things</i> American ecumenical and conservative religious and political journal

First Things (FT) is a journal aimed at "advanc[ing] a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society", focusing on theology, liturgy, history of religion, church history, culture, education, society, politics, literature, book reviews, and poetry. First Things is inter-religious, inter-denominational and ecumenical, especially Christian and Jewish. It articulates Christian ecumenism, Christian–Jewish dialogue, erudite social and political conservatism and a critique of contemporary society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religious violence</span> Violence practiced in the name of religion

Religious violence covers phenomena in which religion is either the subject or the object of violent behavior. All the religions of the world contain narratives, symbols, and metaphors of violence and war. Religious violence is violence that is motivated by, or in reaction to, religious precepts, texts, or the doctrines of a target or an attacker. It includes violence against religious institutions, people, objects, or events. Religious violence includes both acts which are committed by religious groups and acts which are committed against religious groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Goldstein</span> American philosopher and writer (born 1950)

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an American philosopher, novelist, and public intellectual. She has written ten books, both fiction and non-fiction. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University, and is sometimes grouped with novelists such as Richard Powers and Alan Lightman, who create fiction that is knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, science.

John J. Dilulio Jr. is an American political scientist. He currently serves as the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saba Mahmood</span> American anthropologist, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Saba Mahmood (1961–2018) was professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she was also affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her scholarly work straddled debates in anthropology and political theory, with a focus on Muslim majority societies of the Middle East and South Asia. Mahmood made major theoretical contributions to rethinking the relationship between ethics and politics, religion and secularism, freedom and submission, and reason and embodiment. Influenced by the work of Talal Asad, she wrote on issues of gender, religious politics, secularism, and Muslim and non-Muslim relations in the Middle East.

Secularism—that is, the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state—has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states. Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites, and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.

The term New Atheism describes the positions of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. New Atheism advocates the view that superstition, religion, and irrationalism should not be tolerated. Instead, they advocate the antitheist view that the various forms of theism should be criticised, countered, examined, and challenged by rational argument, especially when they exert strong influence on the broader society, such as in government, education, and politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elaine Howard Ecklund</span> American professor

Elaine Howard Ecklund is a published author and professor of sociology at Rice University. She is also the director of the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance at Rice, a Rice Scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and the president of the Religious Research Association. Her research focuses on institutional change in the areas of religion, immigration, science, medicine, and gender.

Austin Dacey is an American philosopher, writer, and human rights activist whose work concerns secularism, religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of conscience. He is the author of The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights, and a 2006 New York Times op-ed entitled "Believing in Doubt," which criticized the ethical views of Pope Benedict. He is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the creator and director of The Impossible Music Sessions.

The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.

Joseph A. Bulbulia is a professor of psychology in the Faculty of Science at Victoria University of Wellington (2020–present). He was the Maclaurin Goodfellow Chair in the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts at University of Auckland (2018–2020). He previously served as a professor in the School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington (2000–2017). Bulbulia is regarded as one of the founders of the contemporary evolutionary religious studies. He is a past president of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion and is currently co-editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior. Bulbulia is one of four on the Senior Management Team of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a national longitudinal study started in 2009 that has repeatedly sampled over 45,000 New Zealanders. He is an associate investigator for Pulotu, a database of 116 Pacific cultures purpose-built to investigate the evolutionary dynamics of religion. In 2016 Bulbulia won a Research Excellence Award at Victoria University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cynthia Damon</span> Professor of Classical Studies

Cynthia Ellen Murray Damon is a Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on Latin literature and Roman historiography, having published translations and commentaries on authors such as Caesar and Tacitus.

Religion in politics covers various topics related to the effects of religion on politics. Religion has been claimed to be "the source of some of the most remarkable political mobilizations of our times". Beyond universalist ideologies, religions have also been involved in nationalist politics. Various political doctrines have been directly influenced or inspired by religions. Some religious strands support religious supremacism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doug Underwood (journalist)</span> American communications scholar

Douglas Mark Underwood is an American journalist and media studies scholar. He is a Professor of Communication at the University of Washington.

References

  1. "Damon Linker | Department of Political Science". live-sas-www-polisci.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu.
  2. "Author Damon Linker biography and book list". freshfiction.com.
  3. Wooldridge, Adrian (24 September 2006). "Church as State". The New York Times.
  4. "The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker".
  5. Webb, Stephen H. (May 11, 2007). "The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege – By Damon Linker". Conversations in Religion & Theology. 5 (1): 65–71. doi:10.1111/j.1479-2214.2007.00107_1.x via CrossRef.
  6. "The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege". www.libertymagazine.org.
  7. Dish, The Daily (October 3, 2010). "The Religious Test". The Atlantic .
  8. https://repository.sbts.edu/bitstream/handle/10392/839/2010-09-23.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
  9. Affairs, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World. "Getting Linker's "Religious Test" wrong". berkleycenter.georgetown.edu.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)