The public and academic debate on the relation between Islam and secularism has been forcefully revived since 9/11 and the “Arab Spring”. Especially essentialist and monolithic depictions by Western scholars have claimed the incompatibility of Islam with secularism as a prerequisite for democracy. Another strand of literature claims that evidence of Islam’s democratic essence (Esposito and Voll...

Since the end of the Second World War in 1945, Europe has experienced some dramatic events and drastic changes that have had consequences on population structures and economies. To this must be added that secularism and immigration during the last thirty years have changed European religious life. These positive and negative developments have also affected Seventh-day Adventist churches. In ord...

Inquiring into the causes behind the spread of secularism in the modern world, this paper proposes that the concept has proliferated owing to its peculiar property as culture: It is simultaneously a piece of culture and also a reflection upon culture. In its latter capacity, it imagines a world in which alternative religious belief systems divide people. It spreads as a piece of culture because...

Abstract Review article on Jacques Berlinerblau's Secularism: the Basics .

Abstract In line with Jacques Berlinerblau’s Secularism: The Basics, this commentary highlights manifestations of secularism beyond the west. It argues that state regulation religion and religious citizens is not one dimensional. Secularism takes different forms contends differing sociopolitical realities.

A particular formation can be observed in the discourse of spiritual healing and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Explanations of the effectiveness of spiritual healing by medical doctors and psychologists sometimes include ideological and non-scientific conclusions and concepts, which are similar to but also different from New Age science on healing. With discourse analysis discur...