Does religion promote environmental sustainability? : exploring the role of religion in local energy transitions

This article explores the role of religion in local energy transition processes. By combining insights from (a) sustainability studies and (b) academic contributions on religion and sustainability, a theoretical approach for describing the role of religion in local energy transitions is developed. Religion is conceived of as a subsystem among other local subsystems that potentially contribute via their competences to energy transition processes. Three potential functions of religion are identified: (1) Campaigning and intermediation in the public sphere; (2) “Materialization” of transitions in the form of participation in projects related to sustainable transitions; and (3) Dissemination of values and worldviews that empower environmental attitudes and action. These functions are studied in the case of the energy transition in Emden, a city in North-Western Germany. Although religion attends, to some degree, each of the three functions, it does not assume a dominant role relative to other local subsystems. Actors from other social subsystems appear to overtake these functions in a more efficient way. As such, in a highly environmentally active region, there are few indications for a specific function of religion. These results shed a critical light on the previously held assumption that religion has a crucial impact on sustainability transitions

The Science and Religion Relationship

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. The widely known debate of science and religion has been around for hundreds of years. This is a widely conflicted debate because it is hard to separate both sides. Though it is easy to see that science and religion explain problems differently. Science answers questions by explaining how and religion wonders why. My thesis is that science and religion contrast each other but also can complement one another and it is important to recognize this

Resource Use Decisions: A Framework for Studying Religion and Sustainable Environments

Analyses of everyday religion and sustainable environments in the Himalaya are not helped much by the blunt instruments of “world religions” approaches to religion and ecology. This article suggests that a better grounded understanding, especially helpful for policy-makers integrating case studies from widely varying regions, might be gained by bypassing debates about the nature of “religion” entirely. Inspired by discussions in the Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments project, this article proposes a research framework with the deliberately mundane name resource use decisions. Attending to the reasons given, in various settings and to various stakeholders, for decisions regarding the cultivation and use of resources will take us beyond unreflectively secular understandings of these terms, as well as beyond reified understandings of “other-worldly” religion which exist more in the texts of scholars than in the everyday worlds where religion lives. Consonant with the recent turn to “lived religion,” resource use decisions draws attention to the religious creativity of agents at every level, lay, specialist and even other-than-human, and to the categories they employ in navigating and sustaining religious worlds. This approach better suits the ecologically, culturally and politically varied and changing Himalayan region, but also suggests ways in which Himalayan studies can contribute to broader reflection on the nature of religious practices and traditions in a pluralizing, globalizing and environmentally changing world

If Analytic Philosophy of Religion is Sick, Can It Be Cured?

In this paper, I argue that, if ‘the overrepresentation of Christian theists in analytic philosophy of religion is unhealthy for the field, since they would be too much influenced by prior beliefs when evaluating religious arguments’ (De Cruz and De Smedt (2016), 119), then a first step toward a potential remedy is this: analytic philosophers of religion need to restructure their analytical tasks. For one way to mitigate the effects of confirmation bias, which may be influencing how analytic philosophers of religion evaluate arguments in Analytical Philosophy of Religion (APR), is to consider other points of view. Applied to APR, this means considering religious beliefs, questions, and arguments couched in non-Christian terms. In this paper, I focus on Islam in particular. My aim is to show that Islam is a fertile ground of philosophical questions and arguments for analytic philosophers of religion to engage with. Engaging with questions and arguments couched in non-Christian terms would help make work in APR more diverse and inclusive of religions other than Christianity, which in turn would also be a first step toward attracting non-Christians to APR

Societal Rather than Governmental Change: Religious Discrimination in Muslim-Majority Countries after the Arab Uprisings

This study examines shifts in governmental religion policy and societal discrimination against religious minorities in Muslim-Majority states after the Arab Uprisings by using the Religion and State round 3 (RAS3) dataset for the years 2009-2014 and by focusing on 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories. We build on threads of literature on religious pluralism in transitional societies to explain the changes in governmental religion policy and societal discrimination against religious minorities after the Arab Uprisings. This literature predicts a rise in all forms of discrimination in Arab Uprising states as compared to other Muslim-majority states, and an even more significant rise in societal religious discrimination since societal behavior can change more quickly than government policy, especially at times of transition. The results partially conform to these predictions. There was no significant difference in the shifts in governmental religion policy between Arab Uprising and other Muslim-Majority states, but societal religious discrimination increased substantially in Arab Uprising states as compared to non-Arab Uprising states. Understanding the nature of religion policies and religious discrimination provides further opportunities to unveil the dynamics of regional politics as well as conflict prevention in the region

Religious Authority in Public Spaces: The Challenge of Jurisdictional Pluralism

The new significance of religion in Australian politics raises serious questions about how our politics is conceived and conducted. Liberal theorists have proposed three successive approaches to resolving the problem of religious disagreement in a diverse society. The first was to propose that reason, rather than religion, should bind the society together; that individuals should be free to continue to practice their religion privately, but that religion must no longer play a guiding role in public life. The second liberal solution was to extend the prohibition to all ‘comprehensive doctrines’, whether religious or secular, and to insist that state power must only operate on the basis of ‘public reasons’ that any sensible person could in principle understand and accept. The third liberal solution is to propose that secular reason and religious conviction operate in a deliberative dialogue with each other, in which each recognises its limitations and its reliance on the other. However, relationship between religion and politics is today being challenged by a new development that neither of these approaches can really address. This development is the emergence and intensification of legal and jurisdictional pluralism. Jurisdictional pluralism challenges the liberal settlement, not by threatening to ‘take over’ the state as such, but by developing alternative forms of public order that exist alongside those of the state. This development requires us to think about the relationship between religion and the state in a different way: one in which religion doesn’t simply inhabit spaces that are private while the state possesses monopolistic control over the public sphere. In the new religious politics, religion seeks to define, create and inhabit spaces that are just about as public as those governed by the secular state. This is a situation that our politics has only just begun to think about

The ‘Two Experiments’ of Kant’s Religion: Dismantling the Conundrum

The past decade has seen a sizable increase in scholarship on Kant’s Religion. Yet, unlike the centuries of debate that inform our study of his other major works, scholarship on the Religion is still just in its infancy. As such, it is in a particularly vulnerable state where errors made now could hinder scholarship for decades to come. It is the purpose of this paper to mitigate one such danger, a danger issuing from the widely assumed view that the Religion is shaped by “two experiments.” We will begin with a survey of the four current interpretations of the experiments, and then propose one further interpretation, one that hopefully will help dismantle this alleged “conundrum” and thereby help scholarship on the Religion move beyond this early misstep

Azerbaijan: Religious Freedom Survey, 2018

Azerbaijan restricts freedom of religion and belief with interlinked freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. Forum 18’s survey analyzes violations including prisoners of conscience who were jailed and tortured for exercising freedom of religion and belief, strict state literature censorship, and regime claims of its “tolerance.” Forum 18\u27s survey analysis documents Azerbaijan\u27s violations of freedom of religion and belief, with interlinked freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. Serious violations include but are not limited to: - a complex labyrinth of “legal” restrictions to prevent the exercise of freedom of religion, belief, and other fundamental freedoms; -total state control of the Islamic community; - a ban on all exercise of freedom of religion and belief by groups of people without state permission; - raids on people exercising freedom of religion and belief without state permission; - forcible closure of places of worship, especially Sunni mosques; - a ban on praying outside mosques; - jailing prisoners of conscience for exercising human rights, including freedom of religion and belief; - torture of people who exercise freedom of religion and belief; - prosecutions and punishments of conscientious objectors to the compulsory military service; - a highly restrictive censorship regime, including pre-publication, bookshop, photocopy shop and postal censorship; - and severe denials of human rights in the Nakhichevan exclave