The Future of Religion

Abstract

Religion evokes strong emotions and raises hard questions. This volume addresses many of the contentious elements that religion provokes and challenges some of the easy answers contemporary society has produced. The frequent and often facile dictum about the separation of church and state, when examined closely, may prove to contribute to the erosion of some of our most cherished human values, rather than to their preservation. The science-versus-religion dichotomy is dogma for many, yet the empiricism that is the hallmark of scientific method and knowledge can be singularly absent from positions that claim to be science. The current spate of attacks against God and religion that are now commonplace, when critically scrutinized, often fail to provide compelling arguments or even to be as objective as their authors claim. These and other explorations are the focus of this book. From the Forward in which Charles Kimball challenges the West to re-evaluate its perspective and understanding of the East, particularly Islam, to the Afterword in which theologian Gregory Baum chronicles the extraordinary reversal of sociology's estimation of religion, the invitation from this volume to all of us is to review our pieties and presuppositions as we reflect on the future of religion.