The book contains articles of philosophers, theologians, and sociologists from 20 countries in Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. They describe the status of religions in different cultures and states and formulate the norms and conditions of the presence of religion in public spheres from different perspectives. There has been religious revival and a worldwide process of subjectivization and immanentization of the traditional institutional religions. This book raises questions that are particularly significant to the present-day social, cultural and political practice in a global dimension....

This book presents insights and understandings on the issue of identities and modernizations, contributed mainly by theoreticians from China and scholars from Central and Eastern European countries. Both regions have followed a similar path towards modernization until the second half of the twentieth century. The past experience in both regions leads to two crucial, yet paradoxical conclusions: Firstly, no modernization of economy, technology or science is possible without a prior modernization of the collective identity, i.e. of culture, tradition, religion and spirituality in general....