Publication details
Město zbožné a město bezbožné
| Title in English | Religious city, irreligious city |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2007 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sociální studia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | religion secularization city urbanization societalization social stratification rationalization |
| Description | Traditional secularization theories saw urbanization as one of the processes that under the heading of modernization participate in a destruction of the world of traditional religion. A city there represents the symbol of secular modernity. It symbolizes a disenchanted space, the space characterized by instrumental rationality and pluralism of perspectives. However, if we look at the city with Max Weber, we can see a more colourful picture. In his Sociology of Religion Weber writes that Christianity as a dominant religion of the Western world originated precisely in urban environment in the midst of Hellenistic world. Here, the city plays a role of a source of religious innovation. What is the relationship between religion and the city then? The aim of this paper is to sketch some aspects of this problem and to focus on multi-layer nature and ambiguity of the influence of the urban environment on the religious life of individual as well as society in the pre-modern and modern eras. |