Modern Age - Fall 2016 - 92

MODERN AGE

FALL 2016

ing the violence there and across Europe. Stark, reporting these
statistics, would disagree. To discount what people actually say
they believe is to do a disservice to the power of their reason to
understand their circumstances. Conversely, simply attributing
stated religious belief to some other causes reduces the ability to
understand and engage in true dialogue with others.
One point Stark does not really address is whether these
various religious revivals can resist the secularization of elite discourse in the West. That is to say, there is a difference between
committed Christians bearing into the public square a twomillennia tradition of reflection on political power, and a collection of unchurched nones who have vague spiritual feelings but
no such tradition. In modern Western countries, for example, as
the public presence of Christianity withers, recently devised religions, such as those following the ways of Star Wars-inspired Jedi
Knights or the cobbled together Wicca, have taken its place. The
liberal website Salon, for example, has called this phenomenon
"Mysticore," and notes that "mysticism, witchcraft and magic are
stepping in" and becoming mainstream.5 Unlike the major world
religions, these sects are largely politically quiescent. They generally pose no challenge to the narrative of secularism, since they
are not developed enough to have an institutional presence as
an alternative to the secular power (there are no Jedi martyrs, for
example-except, of course, in the movies).
Indeed, their existence in a sense justifies secularism's disdain
for religious thought, because these new religions themselves
often simply echo secular premises or are not philosophical. Read
carefully, that is what Stark's chapter on Europe demonstrates;
conventional church attendance, much less militant Christianity, is not the way the religious revival is occurring there; rather,
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Modern Age - Fall 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Fall 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Fall 2016 - Cover1
Modern Age - Fall 2016 - Cover2
Modern Age - Fall 2016 - Contents
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