Best Selling Books by Justin Beaumont

Annotation Each chapter of Working Faith narrates the inspiring story of how faith is the prime motivation for an organized response to social and political need in different contexts.

The Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity offers an internationally significant and comprehensive interdisciplinary collection which provides a series of critical reviews of the current state of the art and future trends in philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual terms. The volume likewise presents a range of empirical knowledges and engagements with postsecularity. A critical yet sympathetic dialogue across disciplinary divides in an international context ensures that the volume covers a wide and interrelated intellectual and geographical scope. The editor's introduction with Klaus Eder offers a robust foundation for the volume, setting out the central aims and objectives, the rationale for the contributions, and an outline of the structure. Thorny issues of normativity and empirical challenges are highlighted for the reader. The handbook comprises four interrelated sections. Part I: Philosophical meditations discusses postsecularity from philosophical standpoints, and Part II: Theological perspectives presents contributions from a variety of theological viewpoints. Part III: Theory, space, social relations contains pieces from geography, planning, sociology, and religious studies that delve into theoretically informed empirical implications of postsecularity. Part IV: Political and social engagement offers chapters that emphasize the political and social implications of the debate. In the Afterword, Eduardo Mendieta joins the editor to reflect on the notion of reflexive secularization across the volume as a whole, alluding to new lines of inquiry. The handbook is an invaluable guide for graduate and advanced undergraduate teaching, and a key reference for students and scholars of human geography, sociology, political science, applied philosophy, urban and public theology, planning, and urban studies.

This paper investigates the relationship between economic growth and religion, particularly whether growth leads to desecularization. The secularization hypothesis (which is the opposite to the desecularization hypothesis (Casanova 1994); Berger 1999)) postulates that economic growth is correlated with a decline in church membership and related practices, such as church attendance and paying church taxes. Empirical evidence for the secularization hypothesis is provided by among others, (Harskamp 2005; Kennedy 2005). However, (Gorski 2000; Alvey 2003) question the secularization hypothesis and postulate that religious movements remain strong despite economic development. So far, the secularization hypothesis has been mainly tested for Christians in developed countries. For instance, (Becker 2005) finds for the Netherlands that Church membership has been decreasing year after year while SCP (year) predicts that the secularization process will continue for the coming decades. The proposed paper revisits the secularization hypothesis for Muslims in Malaysia. Secularization is measured as individual contribution to Zakat which is a donation to those who are less fortunate. It is obligatory for a Muslim to donate 2.5% of her or his wealth each year to. In Malaysia Zakat is not imposed by the government; hence, it is voluntary. Therefore, it can be considered as an indicator of one's attitude to religion and its institutions, i.e as an indicator of (de)secularization. On the basis of a nationwide data set for the year 2005 we test an individual's Zakat contribution as a function of income controlling for various regional and socio-economic characteristics. Malaysia is an important and interesting case to test the secularization hypothesis because it is a rapidly developing country. Moreover, it is predominantly Muslim with a relatively well-developed education system which does not only focus on conventional fields but also on religion which has increased Malaysians' awareness of their religion. To our best knowledge, the proposed study is the first relating to a Muslim country.