Asia and the secular

This afternoon, I was fortunate enough to attend the GSRL's monthly research seminar at Campus Condorcet.

We enjoyed a remarkable presentation of this book :

Asia and the Secular, Francophone Perspectives in a Global Age

• Edited by: Pascal Bourdeaux , Eddy Dufourmont , André Laliberté and Rémy Madinier

This volume looks at the secular state in the context of contemporary Asia and investigates whether there existed before modernity antecedents to the condition of secularity, understood as the differentiation of the sphere of the religious from other spheres of social life. The chapters presented in this book examine this issue in national contexts by looking at the historical formation of lexicons that defined the "secular", the "secular state," and "secularism". This approach requires paying attention to modern vernacular languages and their precedents in written traditions with often a very long tradition. This book presents three interpretive frameworks: multiple modernities, variety of secularisms, and typologies of post-colonial secular states.

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Political Pentecostalism: 4 Synoptic Surveys (Asia Africa Latin America)

With volume 17 the series Weltkirche und Mission takes up again the topic of Pentecostal religiosity which made the start in the research projects conducted at the Institute for Global Church and Mission since 2010. The renewed engage- ment is motivated by the focus on the perception of an increasingly political and public activity of actors with Pentecostal background. Since 2016 there has been a project position “Pentecostalism” at the Institute that underlines the importance of scholarly discussion about the phenomenon.

This new 2021 volume is addressing the challenge in a comparative perspective. Local developments and ethnographic studies are for the first time reflected upon from a global perspective.

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