Technology, tourism, politics, and law have connected human beings around the world more closely than ever before, but this closeness has, paradoxically, given rise to fear, distrust, and misunderstanding between nation-states and religions. In light of the tensions and conflicts that arise from these complex relationships, many search for ways to find peace and understanding through a “global public sphere.” There citizens can deliberate on issues of worldwide concern. Their voices can be heard by institutions able to translate public opinion into public policy that embraces more than simply the interests and ideas of the wealthy and the empowered. Contributors to this volume address various aspects of this challenge within the context of Bahá’í thought and practice, whose goal is to lay the foundations for a new world civilization that harmonizes the spiritual and material aspects of human existence. Bahá’í teachings view religion as a source of enduring insight that can enable humanity to repair and transcend patterns of disunity, to foster justice within the structures of society, and to advance the cause of peace. Accordingly, religion can and ought to play a role in the broader project of creating a pattern of public discourse capable of supporting humanity’s transition to the next stage in its collective development. The essays in this book make novel contributions to the growing literature on post-secularism and on religion and the public sphere. The authors additionally present new areas of inquiry for future research on the Bahá’í faith.

This book explores the recent trend toward the transformation of religious symbols and practices into culture in Western democracies. Analyses of three legal cases involving religion in the public sphere are used to illuminate this trend: a municipal council chamber; a town hall; and town board meetings. Each case involves a different national context—Canada, France and the United States—and each illustrates something interesting about the shape-shifting nature of religion, specifically its flexibility and dexterity in the face of the secular, the religious and the plural. Despite the differences in national contexts, in each instance religion is transformed into culture or heritage by the courts to justify or excuse its presence and to distance the state from the possibility that it is violating legal norms of distance from religion. The cultural practice or symbol is represented as a shared national value or activity. Transforming the ‘Other’ into ‘Us’ through reconstitution is also possible. Finally, anxiety about the ‘Other’ becomes part of the story of rendering religion as culture, resulting in the impugning of anyone who dares to question the putative shared culture. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of sociology of religion, religious studies, socio-legal studies, law and public policy, constitutional law, religion and politics, and cultural studies.

Contemporary liberal thinkers commonly suppose that there is something in principle unjust about the legal prohibition of putatively victimless immoralities. Against the prevailing liberal view, Robert P. George defends the proposition that `moral laws' can play a legitimate, if subsidiary, role in preserving the `moral ecology' of the cultural environment in which people make the morally significant choices by which they form their characters and influence, for good or ill, the moral lives of others. George shows that a defence of morals legislation is fully compatible with a `pluralistic perfectionist' political theory of civil liberties and public morality.

With a balance of wisdom, candor, and scholarly rigor the beloved archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia takes on life’s central questions: why are we here, and how can we live and die meaningfully? In Things Worth Dying For, Chaput delves richly into our yearning for God, love, honor, beauty, truth, and immortality. He reflects on our modern appetite for consumption and individualism and offers a penetrating analysis of how we got here, and how we can look to our roots and our faith to find purpose each day amid the noise of competing desires. Chaput examines the chronic questions of the human heart; the idols and false flags we create; and the nature of a life of authentic faith. He points to our longing to live and die with meaning as the key to our search for God, our loyalty to nation and kin, our conduct in war, and our service to others. Ultimately, with compelling grace, he shows us that the things worth dying for reveal most powerfully the things worth living for.

Moral Empowerment is a groundbreaking recommendation that education systems and students can benefit from a new approach in learning - the development of the students capacity to pursue their own intellectual and spiritual growth, as well as the students active engagement in the long-term transformation of their communities. This illuminating idea is carried out on the basis of two central premises that we live in an age of transition from humanitys childhood to its maturity, and that a fundamental characteristic of this age is the growing consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Arbab explores the philosophical framework capable of guiding educational programs seeking the moral empowerment of students. Such efforts focus not only on the development of the students capacity to pursue their own intellectual and spiritual growth, but also on the students active engagement in the long-term transformation of their communities.

Although humans have always migrated, the present phenomenon of mass migration is unprecedented in scale and global in reach. Understanding migration and migrants has become increasingly relevant for world Christianity. This volume identifies and addresses several key topics in the discourse of world Christianity and migration. Senior and emerging scholars and researchers of migration from all regions of the world contribute chapters on central issues, including the feminization of international migration, the theology of migration, south-south migration networks, the connection between world Christianity, migration, and civic responsibility, and the complicated relationship between migration, identity and citizenship. It seeks to give voice particularly to migrant narratives as important sources for public reasoning and theology in the 21st century.

Since the 1970s, more and more religious stories have made their way to headline news: the Islamic Revolution in Iran, televangelism and its scandals, and the rise of the Evangelical New Right and its role in politics, to name but a few. Media treatment of religion can be seen as a kind of indicator of the broader role and status of religion on the contemporary scene. To better understand the relationship between religion and the news media, both in everyday practice and in the larger context of American public discourse, author Stewart P. Hoover gives a cultural-historical analysis in his book, Religion in the News. The resulting insights provide important clues as to the place of religion in American life, the role of the media in cultural discourse, and the prospects of institutional religion in the media age. This volume is highly recommended to media professionals, journalists, people in the religious community, and for classroom use in religious studies and media studies programs.