General Study on Religions and Modernity

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This study focuses on the relations between religious systems and modernity. We have formed a team composed of eight regular researchers and four irregular researchers. Their specialties are so different that we could cover all the important societies through our five workshops organized for two years.This study aimed a comparative one. We began to distinguish three types of modernization process:1) The most advanced societies like England and France, where the secular and the religious opposed most clearly since the latter half of the nineteenth century.2) The secondary modernized societies such as German and Japan, where the secular and the religious combined mysteriously to form an amalgam called fascism.3) The colonized societies like India and Malaysia, which underwent modernization and westernization simultaneously. In some countries, like many African countries, Christianity was accepted to become a primary religion; but in other countries like India and Malaysia, it was totally rejected and the traditional religion is plasticized with more eagerness.It is generally accepted that the modernity is antinomy of religious belief and practices. But this study has demonstrated that the relations betweens these two is more complicated and that problematizing these altogether is very favorable to deepen our understanding of modernity and of religion.This study has also examined the chief notions of religious studies to make them clear: secularization, sacred, ritual, possession, syncretism, nationalistic religion, folk religion, colonialism and religion, politics and religion.