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Over the last few decades, politicians in Europe and North America have fiercely debated the effects of a growing Muslim minority on their respective national identities. Some of these countries have prohibited Islamic religious coverings in public spaces and institutions, while in others, legal restriction remains subject to intense political conflict. Seeking to understand these different outcomes, social scientists have focused on the role of countries' historically rooted models of nationhood and their attendant discourses of secularism. Emily Laxer's Unveiling the Nation problematizes this approach. Using France and Quebec as illustrative cases, she traces how the struggle of political parties for power and legitimacy shapes states' responses to Islamic signs. Drawing on historical evidence and behind-the-scenes interviews with politicians and activists, Laxer uncovers unseen links between structures of partisan conflict and the strategies that political actors employ when articulating the secular boundaries of the nation. In France's historically class-based political system, she demonstrates, parties on the left and the right have converged around a restrictive secular agenda in order to limit the siphoning of votes by the ultra-right. In Quebec, by contrast, the longstanding electoral salience of the “national question” has encouraged political actors to project highly conflicting images of the province's secular past, present, and future. At a moment of heightened debate in the global politics of religious diversity, Laxer's Unveiling the Nation sheds critical light on the way party politics and its related instabilities shape the secular boundaries of nationhood in diverse societies.

Secularism --- Ethics --- Irreligion --- Utilitarianism --- Atheism --- Postsecularism --- Secularization (Theology) --- Political aspects

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Secularism. --- Great Britain. --- Ethics --- Irreligion --- Utilitarianism --- Atheism --- Postsecularism --- Secularization (Theology)

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This volume explores the dynamic life of religion and politics in France. The separation of Church and State and the autonomy of school education from religion are the two fundamental pillars of France as a Secular Republic. The historical construction of French Secularism (laïcité) was particularly marked by the strong opposition between the State and the Catholic Church. However, the religious disaffiliation of a significant proportion of the French strengthened State Secularism, which gradually became more consensual - despite some persisting tensions in the school context. Yet, in the last decades, several factors have revived public debate on laicity: the quarrel over 'sects' and new religious movements; controversies over Islam, today the second-largest religion in France; and, more recently, dispute over bioethics. Faced with these challenges, laicity as well as the religious groups involved have been changing. The authors of this book, ranking amongst the best French experts in the study of religion and secularism, introduce the reader to a living and lived laicity influenced by the social and religious dynamics of contemporary France. They demonstrate that the configurations of French Secularism are both more flexible and complex than they appear to be. The volume investigates the extent to which the French idea of secularisation has been pushed to be more thorough and radical in its interaction with its other European counterparts. A key work on French political thought, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of international politics, political philosophy, political sociology, and religion and politics.

Secularism --- France --- History --- Ethics --- Irreligion --- Utilitarianism --- Atheism --- Postsecularism --- Secularization (Theology)

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Postsecularism. --- Postsecularism. --- Religion and culture. --- Religion and culture. --- Religion and sociology. --- Religion and sociology. --- Religion. --- Developed countries --- Developed countries. --- Western countries --- Western countries. --- Religion. --- Religion.

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Stephen Strehle is a leading scholar of church/state issues. In this volume, he focuses his rigorous historical analysis and philosophical acumen upon a topic of great interest today and source of cultural wars around the globe-the process of secularization. The book starts with a discussion of early capitalism and how it saw the real world functioning well-enough on its own principles of individual struggle and self-interest, without needing religious or moral principles to meddle in its affairs and eventually dispelling the need for any intelligent design or providential orchestration of life through the work of Darwin. The book then discusses the growth of the secular point of view: how historians dismissed the impact of religion in developing modern culture, how scientists conceived of the universe running on self-sufficient or mechanistic principles, and how people no longer looked to the providential hand of God to explain their suffering. The book ends with a discussion of how the Deist concept of human autonomy became a political policy in America through Jefferson's concept of a wall of separation between church and state and how the US Supreme Court proceeded to dismiss the importance of religion in shaping or justifying the values of the nation and its laws. The book is accessible to most upper-level and graduate students in a wide-variety of disciplines, keeping technical and foreign words to a minimum and leaving scholarly details or debates to its extensive notes.

Secularism. --- Ethics --- Irreligion --- Utilitarianism --- Atheism --- Postsecularism --- Secularization (Theology) --- Religion --- Christianity --- Literature & The Arts