Notes from My Reading: Religion & Politics

While doing reading for my Religion & Politics class I came across the quote.  It's interesting and wanted to share it.

It comes from Prof. Robert D. Lee's book Religion & Politics in the Middle East: Identity, Ideology, Institutions, and Attitudes.

He quotes in chapter 2, page 45 from D.E. Smith's book Religion and Political Development, speaking on the rise of secularism in a culture and country.

Underlying the secularization of political culture is the decline of explicitly religious values, generally throughout the society.  Religiosity and piety are no longer highly valued socially.  Material values rank higher than other-world values....There is a growing skepticism concerning the truth or validity of traditional religious doctrine....Religious values no longer motivate importantly....People do not think about religion much; it occupies a diminish part of their consciousness.  There is growing tolerance of religious values foreign to one's own culture and a growing relativism based on scepticism of all religious truth claims.

I wanted to share this with you.  This quote comes from his section where he is hypothesizing about a extremely religious culture attempting to secularize to develop politically.

Another quote (Ernest L. Fortin, Human Rights, Virtue and the Common Good: Untimely Meditations on Religion and Politics) he provides in argument to this hypothesis is as follows:

Contrary to its stated aim, liberal democracy does breed a specific type of human being, one that is defined by an unprecedented openness to all human possibilities.  What this leads to most of the time is neither Nietszchean creativity nor a noble dedication to some pregiven ideal, not a deeper religious life, nor a rich and diversified society, but easy going indifference and mindless conformism.

I can see claims on both sides.

What say you all?