This book is based on texts that were designed and elaborated in accordance with the scientific research norms and criteria. Beyond their variety, they focus for the most part on four fundamental topics, which deal with the relationship between religion / ideologies and culture, philosophy, science, and also modernity / postmodernity . The first part of the volume, entitled Religion and Culture, gathers a series of articles devoted to the intrinsic link that has always existed between religion and culture, regardless of the geographical or spiritual space where we live, as well as to the need for a dialogue between the two. Generally speaking, religion has always humanized culture. Moreover, any cultural tradition anywhere in the world would remain absent if it lacks a spiritual and religious reading. Cutting culture off its religious dimension means depriving man of his own memory, which is a source of creative imagination, both at individual and at community level. The articles included in the following two parts of the book are mainly devoted to the fundamental relationship that exists and should exist between religion, on the one hand, and philosophy and science, on the other. In the twentieth century, Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, in his book Religion and Natural Science, emphasized that religion and science are not mutually exclusive, but complement and condition each other. Lately, life science has assimilated extremely rich knowledge. In turn, Christian anthropology, for example, can become an inexhaustible source of information for many areas of science, in particular for scientific anthropology, cosmology, biology and, more recently, socio-biology, which studies the human relations seen in the perspective of social behaviours. The analyses included in the last part of the book are perhaps the most relevant for contemporary concerns. Most of them deal with the major challenges of modern and postmodern man, of religion or religions, especially Christianity, from modern times until today. It is well-known that since the Renaissance many critics of religion have insisted on the idea of the end and disappearance of religion / religions. The deep secularization of modern society has always been used as a very strong argument. And yet, beyond the profound mutations that have taken place, including in the religious behaviour of man, this hypothesis - which has become so popular - has not been confirmed. If we look carefully at the current state of theology, the philosophy of religion, and the religious experience of man today, we find that things are quite different. Despite some grim predictions about the future of religion made by the theologians of "God's death" and deconstructive philosophers, such as J. Derrida, the opposite seems far more likely: a new "post-secular" understanding of the postmodern world, in which the revival of religion seems more likely than the collapse of Christianity. The pessimism shared by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the American Harvey Cox on the future of Christianity does not seem to be justified. Simply because, at least in the last decades, we are witnessing not the end, but a re-emergence of religion in the public sphere. In this respect, G. Kepel, in his work, very suggestively entitled "The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World” (La Revanche de Dieu: Chrétiens, juifs et musulmans à la reconquête du monde, Paris, Le Seuil, 1991), emphasizes a "comeback" of God and religion into the world. The last section of the book also includes a number of articles devoted to intra-and extra-Islamic issues, given that in the opinion of many analysts, Islam falls into the category of the great "challenges" of the future.
This book is based on texts that were designed and elaborated in accordance with the scientific research norms and criteria. Beyond their variety, they focus for the most part on four fundamental topics, which deal with the relationship between religion / ideologies and culture, philosophy, science, and also modernity / postmodernity . The first part of the volume, entitled Religion and Culture, gathers a series of articles devoted to the intrinsic link that has always existed between religion and culture, regardless of the geographical or spiritual space where we live, as well as to the need for a dialogue between the two. Generally speaking, religion has always humanized culture. Moreover, any cultural tradition anywhere in the world would remain absent if it lacks a spiritual and religious reading. Cutting culture off its religious dimension means depriving man of his own memory, which is a source of creative imagination, both at individual and at community level. The articles included in the following two parts of the book are mainly devoted to the fundamental relationship that exists and should exist between religion, on the one hand, and philosophy and science, on the other. In the twentieth century, Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, in his book Religion and Natural Science, emphasized that religion and science are not mutually exclusive, but complement and condition each other. Lately, life science has assimilated extremely rich knowledge. In turn, Christian anthropology, for example, can become an inexhaustible source of information for many areas of science, in particular for scientific anthropology, cosmology, biology and, more recently, socio-biology, which studies the human relations seen in the perspective of social behaviours. The analyses included in the last part of the book are perhaps the most relevant for contemporary concerns. Most of them deal with the major challenges of modern and postmodern man, of religion or religions, especially Christianity, from modern times until today. It is well-known that since the Renaissance many critics of religion have insisted on the idea of the end and disappearance of religion / religions. The deep secularization of modern society has always been used as a very strong argument. And yet, beyond the profound mutations that have taken place, including in the religious behaviour of man, this hypothesis - which has become so popular - has not been confirmed. If we look carefully at the current state of theology, the philosophy of religion, and the religious experience of man today, we find that things are quite different. Despite some grim predictions about the future of religion made by the theologians of "God's death" and deconstructive philosophers, such as J. Derrida, the opposite seems far more likely: a new "post-secular" understanding of the postmodern world, in which the revival of religion seems more likely than the collapse of Christianity. The pessimism shared by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the American Harvey Cox on the future of Christianity does not seem to be justified. Simply because, at least in the last decades, we are witnessing not the end, but a re-emergence of religion in the public sphere. In this respect, G. Kepel, in his work, very suggestively entitled "The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World” (La Revanche de Dieu: Chrétiens, juifs et musulmans à la reconquête du monde, Paris, Le Seuil, 1991), emphasizes a "comeback" of God and religion into the world. The last section of the book also includes a number of articles devoted to intra-and extra-Islamic issues, given that in the opinion of many analysts, Islam falls into the category of the great "challenges" of the future.
