Category Archives: Topics

The North American Pacific Rim: A Response to Frank Pasquale and William Stahl

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by Patricia O’Connell Killen, Professor of religion and director of the Center for Religion, Cultures and Society in the Western United States at Pacifc Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington

I approach the Pasquale and Stahl chapters as an historian of religion, primarily of Christianity in North America, who has been working for some time on understanding the religious dynamics of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. Most recently, as part of the Religion by Region project of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, I co-edited Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone with Mark Silk. The volume provides a frst take on two questions:1) What is the religious configuration on the ground in the Pacific Northwest? 2) What difference does it makes for public life in the region?

The North American Pacific Rim: A Response to Frank Pasquale and William Stahl

The “Nonreligious” in the American Northwest

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by Frank L. Pasquale, Research associate of ISSSC engaged in the study of the nonreligious population of the U.S

In survey research, “seculars” has been a variable category encompassing distinguishable types of individuals. There is an ever­increasing amount of data emerging from survey work on “seculars” and Nones (those who profess no explicit religious identity or affliation). There has been less direct or detailed attention to the subset of Nones that might be characterized as “quintessential seculars”—the substantially or affrmatively non­transcendental/ not­religious, or “Nots.”

The “Nonreligious” in the American Northwest

Putting Secularity in Context

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by Bruce A. Phillips, Sociologist at the University of Southern California and professor of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles.

It has been correctly asserted that “Secularity and secular people in America have gone largely unresearched until now.” Indeed, Kosmin, Mayer, and Keysar have put secularism back on the scholarly agenda. The qualifer “largely” is important, however. Secularism did not entirely disappear from the sociology of religion, and putting these most recent fndings in the context of previous research raises a number of analytic challenges. In this chapter I look at these fndings in the context of previous research and suggest that the re-emergence of secularism in America needs to be understood in specifc analytic contexts.

Putting Secularity in Context

Contemporary Secularity and Secularism

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Barry A. Kosmin, Founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture and research professor of public policy and law at Trinity College

Secularism and its variants are terms much bandied about today, paradoxically, as a consequence of religion seeming to have become more pervasive and influential in public life and society worldwide. This situation poses a number of questions.

Contemporary Secularity and Secularism

Egypt: Secularism, Sharia, and the Prospects for an Inclusive Democracy.

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by Manar Shorbagy,  Arab Center for Development and Future Studies & Political Science Department, The American University in Cairo

The relationship between religion and politics is at the top of the political agenda in Egypt, and, as I shall argue, it has important implications for the political rights of Egyptian women and minorities. However, the issue is not a simple secular/religious divide. It is, rather, the problem of how to define the nature and characteristics of a civil, democratic state that is neither a theocracy nor an Islamically “naked” public space. The Islamist/secularist dichotomy is a false one; it has little or no relevance to actual political processes and possibilities in Egypt, where a middle ground is both theoretically and practically conceivable. Such a middle ground, however, must be deliberately sought and found by Egyptians, so that a national consensus on the relationship between religion and politics can emerge.

Egypt: Secularism, Sharia, and the Prospects for an Inclusive Democracy.

Stock Markets: Evolution in Nature and Society

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by Edward Peter Stringham, Hackley Endowed ChairSchool of Business and Economics Fayetteville State University

Can the theory of evolution be applied to topics other than the evolution of species?French economist Alain Marcaino argues that both Charles Darwin and Nobel prizewinning economist Friedrich Hayek refer to the same theory of human nature, which isborrowed from the founding fathers of political economy, Hume and Smith. This essay provides support for the idea that theory of evolution can be used to describe many important market institutions. Markets involve people who are often consciously choosingvarious business practices so the analogy between evolution in markets and evolution innature has some importance differences. But just as different species vary or adapt so dodifferent economic practices. Those that are more suited for their time and place willbecome more successful and will be copied and replicate. The history of stock marketsillustrates this point well

Evolution in Nature and Society

Varieties of Political Secularism

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by Barry A. Kosmin, Founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture and research professor of public policy and law at Trinity College.

Secularism, which is the focus of this essay, is an approach, attitude or outlook towards society and the contemporary world. It makes no metaphysical claims. It is not a distinct or complete belief system and is not directly concerned about ultimate truth, matters of faith or spirituality. Thus Secularism is not a personal attribute. Rather, in our definition, it involves collective behavior, organizations and legal constructs that reflect the institutional expressions of the mundane, particularly in the political realm and the public life of a nation. By their nature, these variables are hard to quantify, especially when viewed globally. Nevertheless, in ideological terms we can assert that secularism essentially involves the rejection of the primacy of religious authority in the affairs of this world. This process which is usually referred to as secularization is most evident in the West in the governmental or political realm where the outcome has meant the “desacralization of the state” (Stark and Iannaconne,1994).

Varieties of Political Secularism

The Dao of Secularism: Political Transformation and Secular Values in 20th Century Asia

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by Michael Lestz, Associate Professor of History, Trinity College

I. Course Description:

In the 19th century, societies across the Asian map were governed by autocratic states that derived their legitimacy from religious or meta-religious worldviews and their accompanying ideologies. In China, the dynastic state based its legal and institutional framework on Song Neo-Confucianism; in Vietnam and Korea, Confucian monarchies, likewise, dominated the state. In Cambodia and Thailand, dynasties found legitimacy from the Hindu notion of the “god king” (devaraja). And in Japan, a hybrid mixture of Shinto and Confucianism provided a template for imperial and Shogunal rule.

These traditional schemes of legitimacy vanished in the twentieth century. Struggles against colonial rule, revolution, and complex post-colonial conflicts about the appropriate nature of the state yielded new states. Communism, development dictatorship, democracy, or military rule were the dominant political templates for the states that emerged in the ruins of the traditional order.

Within these states, secular values often motivated dramatic acts of personal sacrifice and passionate devotion to goals such as national unification, socio-economic transformation, and resistance to real and perceived forms of oppression. In addition, there was often an explicit renunciation of the traditional values as they were deployed in the political arena.

At the same time, however, the bedrock of the Confucian, Buddhist, or Shinto past continued to channel the “dao” or “way” of secular states.

Using memoirs, novels, documentary material, and historical monographs, this course will investigate the intellectual fabric of such powerful secular commitments in a number of Asian societies. The course will be formed around the lives of particular historical actors, revolutionaries, humanists, soldiers, and proponents of secular change, in China, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia and perhaps other East and Southeast Asian societies.

This course will be a senior seminar and will be offered during the 2010-2011 academic year.

II. Bibliography (abbreviated/*starred titles to be ordered or duplicated for the course):

  1. Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War, Penguin, 1996.
  2. David Chandler, Voices from S21, Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison, University of California Press, 2000.
  3. Dang Thuy Tram, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, Harmony Books, 2007.
  4. Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York:  W.W. Norton and Company, 1999.
  5. Lloyd Eastman, The Abortive Revolution: China Under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937, Harvard University Press, 1974.
  6. Bernard Fall, Ho Chi Minh on Revolution and War, Selected Writings 1920-1966, New American Library, 1967.
  7. Kazuo Kawai, Japan’s American Interlude, University of Chicago Press.
  8. Joseph Lau, The Analects of Confucius.
  9. Joseph Lau and Howard Goldblatt, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Columbia University Press, 2007.
  10. Michael Lestz, Pei-Kai Cheng, and Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, A Document Collection, Norton, 1999.
  11. Michael Lestz, Fascism in Republican China, 1924 to 1938, ms.
  12. Michael Lestz (trnsl.) Zhou Daguan’s A Record of the History and Customs of Cambodia (Zhenla Fengtuji), ms.
  13. Li Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story (2 vols),
  14. Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father, Harper Collins, 2000
  15. Mao Zedong, Collected Writings of Mao Zedong,
  16. Nikolai Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered
  17. Philip Short, Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, Macmillan, 2006.
  18. Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, 1937.
  19. E. L. Voynich, The Gadfly, International Book and Publishing Company, 1900.
  20. Frederic Wakeman and Richard Edmonds, Reappraising Republican China, Oxford, 2000.
  21. Mary Wright, China in Revolution, The First Phase, 1900-1913, Yale University Press, 1971.

III. Class Schedule:

Week I: The Confucian State: China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan

  • *Selections from Lestz, Cheng, and Spence.
  • *Joseph Lau, The Analects of Confucius

Week II: The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and the Republican State in China

  • Selections from Lestz, Cheng, and Spence
  • Mary Wright, (selections) including:
    • Ernest P. Young, “Yuan Shik-k’ai’s Rise to the Presidency.”  pp. 419-442.

Week III: Fascism in China

  • *Lestz, Fascism in China
  • Eastman, The Abortive Revolution (selected chapters)
  • Wakeman and Edmonds, Frederic Wakeman, A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism, pp. 141-178

Week IV: Confucianism and the Yan’an Way in Northern Shaanxi

  • Dai Qing, Wang Shiwei and “Wild Lilies,” 1994. pp. 3-21
  • Ding Ling stories: Lau and Goldblatt, When I Was in Xia Village, pp. 132-146 and In the Hospital
  • Liu Shaoqi’s How to Be a Good Communist (nine sections):
    • http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/index.htm
  • Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature:
    • http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/YFLA42.html

Week V: The Plight of Korea: The Creation of New State Orders Below and Above the 38th Parallel in the Wake of Japanese Colonialism

Week VI: Occupation Japan: The MacArthur Constitution and the American-sponsored Invention of a New Constitutional Order

  • *Dower
  • Kazuo Kazai (selections)
  • documents

Week VII: Communist Revolution and Its Acolytes in Vietnam After 1954

  • Bao Ninh (selection)
  • *Dang Thuy Tram, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace
  • Ostrovsky (selection)
  • Voynich (selection)

Week VIII: Singapore and Li Kuan Yew: The Emergence of a Denatured Confucian Autocracy

Week IX: The Buddhist State: The Cambodian Variant

  • *Lestz,
  • Zhou Da Guan’s Zhenla Fengtuji

Week X: Sihanouk’s, the Devaraja System, and Development Dictatorship

  • Sihanouk memoirs

Week XI: The Pol Pot Experiment; A Communist State Founded on the Ruins of Angkor

  • *Chandler,
  • S-21 *Short selections