Articles
No. 2(5) (2013): Post-Secularisms
Between Rejection of Religion and World-Saving. Itineraries of Sociology and Postsecular Social Theory
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Submitted
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11 June 2020
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Published
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01-11-2013
Abstract
The essay describes rivalry between different kinds of knowledge. Encroachments of contemporary social theory on the field of theology are especially interesting. The focus is on the present trends of postmodernist postsecularism. As a result of the changes it has undergone, theology facilitates connections with postmodern social theory, since theology is also postsecular. In the field of theology, the influence of the social and cultural sciences is evident to the point that sociocultural problems are being presented as theological problems. Political theology, theology of liberation, theology of revolution and feminist theology are all closely linked with comparative theology, for which reflections on religious pluralism represent the most important issue. A diagnosis of the multiple variants of world theology which bloomed in the 1960s lends an interesting aspect to the problem. Secularized theology meets with theologizing postsecular social theory above and beyond sociology. This is facilitated by the constant ambiguity of discourse. In this discourse, “theology” is a vehicle of indeterminate meaning - “something theological”; in other words, theology is not the same thing as traditional theology. Social theory is not a theory but a praxis that uses the term “social theory” with its modernist connotative envelope of science and rationality, but with no obligation whatsoever to maintain objectivity of cognition. Sociology does not disrupt the differentiated cultural tissue of meanings when studying it in social contexts. Thus, it does not interfere with theological discourse, although it may analyze this discourse, leaving the otherworldly outside its perspective of analyzing sociocultural phenomena. The sociotheological discourse of ambiguity opposes both religion and the rationality of social science.
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