CONFERENCE ON SECULARIZATION

Photo by J. Varsoke

In January 2006, the Institute hosted a one-day conference on religion and secularization in the Rotunda at the University of Virginia with invited scholars José Casanova, Talal Asad, and Pippa Norris. The conversation took up the following quandary: Despite the predictions of many social scientists, religion has not disappeared from public life, either through the waning of religious belief and practice or through its privatization or expulsion from the public sphere. Given this, is secularization theory still useful, perhaps with some revision, to understand the role of religion in the contemporary world? Or, is a new theory, paradigm, or discourse needed to replace secularization theory?

Papers from this conference are published in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of The Hedgehog Review.

THRIFT AND AMERICAN CULTURE CONFERENCE

In October 2005, some thirty scholars, from the disciplines of philosophy, history, economics, psychology, and sociology met in Prouts Neck, Maine to discuss papers dealing with the significance of thrift in American society, as part of the Thrift and American Culture Project. Drawing on the word’s original connotation of thriving, scholars explored the following questions: What is human thriving? What goods does it depend upon? Are these goods reflected in our economic priorities? What would it mean for our nation to flourish in its present circumstances?

VIENNA CONFERENCES

Photo by J. Varsoke

The Center on Religion and Democracy and Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture organized the following conferences in Vienna, Austria:

"Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order" Laxenburg/Vienna, Austria
June 1, 2005

At this workshop contributors to a forthcoming volume, "Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order," presented their draft chapters and received comments from one another. The overarching question the volume asks is: Are the solutions to religious conflict proposed by the Western Enlightenment feasible or appropriate outside the West?

"Religion, Secularism, and the End of the West"
Laxenburg/Vienna, Austria
June 3, 2005

The conference explored the empirical validity, explanations, meaning, and political ramifications of the "End of the West" thesis. Among the topics addressed were the history of the idea of the West; competing notions of the cultural content of the West; the role of religion in shaping the democratic cultures of the societies of the West; the role of the two world wars and the Cold War in solidifying the West, and of the Cold War's end in fragmenting it; and the implications for democracy in Western countries and for world order in general.

Read transcripts of speakers' remarks from "Religion, Secularism, and the End of the West"

Several of these "End of the West" conference papers were published in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of The Hedgehog Review.

DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL

The Institute's first conference, “Democracy on Trial,” grappled with the question: Is democracy, an Enlightenment-era institution, sustainable in an increasingly post-Enlightenment public culture? Conference participants included Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Sandel, Richard Sennett, John Gray, Lawrence Friedman, Neil Postman, William Galston, John Patrick Diggins, and Richard Merelman. The conference received extended national coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Over the course of two days, discussion ranged from examining the weakening of the ethical foundations of democratic institutions to considering transformations in the character and environment of public discourse to debating the role of fear in politics. Participants also considered the moral justifications for democracy, looking at, among other things, the moral culture of jurisprudence and the relationship between technology and the state.

Several of the papers from this conference were published in the Spring 2000 issue of The Hedgehog Review.