ABSTRACT
There are few more contentious issues than the relation of faith to power or the suggestion that religion is irrational compared with politics and peculiarly prone to violence. The former claim is associated with Juergen Habermas and the latter with Richard Dawkins. In this book David Martin argues, against Habermas, that religion and politics share a common mythic basis and that it is misleading to contrast the rationality of politics with the irrationality of religion. In contrast to Richard Dawkins (and New Atheists generally), Martin argues that the approach taken is brazenly unscientific and that the proclivity to violence is a shared feature of religion, nationalism and political ideology alike rooted in the demands of power and social solidarity. The book concludes by considering the changing ecology of faith and power at both centre and periphery in monuments, places and spaces.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |6 pages
Introduction
chapter |23 pages
Secularisation, Secularism and the Post-Secular: The Power Dimension
part |46 pages
Religion, War and Violence
chapter |12 pages
The Problematic
chapter |11 pages
The Rhetorical Issue of Sentences about Religion and Violence
chapter |11 pages
Modes of Truth and Rival Narratives
chapter |8 pages
The Rival Narratives
part |104 pages
Religion and Nationalism, Religion and Politics
chapter |19 pages
The Political Future of Religion
chapter |16 pages
Nationalism and Religion: Collective Identity and Choice
chapter |26 pages
Charisma and Founding Fatherhood
chapter |14 pages
Religion and Politics
chapter |18 pages
Religion, Politics and Secularisation
chapter |8 pages
No Logos without Mythos
part |80 pages
Religion, Power and Emplacement