"Freethinkers," including both atheists and secular humanists, have always been a minority in American society--and not a very popular one. There are still laws in several states preventing non-theists from holding office. Just as evangelical Protestants up until one hundred years ago held a largely optimistic view of the future and the end times (known as postmillennialism), secular humanists ...

This study proposes and explores a new fertility determinant: societal secularism. Using country-level data from multiple sources ( n = 181) multilevel 58 countries in the World Values Survey 83,301), author documents strong negative relationship between secularism both rates individual-level behavior. Secularism, even small amounts, is associated with population stagnation or decline absent su...

This Special Issue has its genesis in a Ford Foundation-funded Institute held at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 12–16 September 2007. The Institute, titled ‘Engaging Islam: Feminisms, Religiosities and Self-Determinations’, brought together 29 scholars and activists from around the world to discuss challenging and provocative issues relating to the intersectionalities of Islam, fem...

The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the ‘secularizati...