2017/07/24 by James Mark SHIELDS · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Japanese History and Culture #Study and Philosophy of Religion #Indian and Buddhist Studies
paper · doi:10.15055/00006734
openalex publication_date 2017/07/24 · openalex created_date 2026/04/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/05
The secularization thesis, rooted in the idea that “modernity” brings with it the destruction—or, at least, the ruthless privatization—of religion, is clearly grounded in specific, often oversimplified, interpretations of Western historical developments since the eighteenth century. In this article, I use the case of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai) of the Meiji period (1868–1912) to query the category of the secular in the context of Japanese modernity. I argue that the New Buddhists, drawing on elements of classical and East Asian Buddhism as well as modern Western thought, promoted a resolutely social and this-worldly Buddhism that collapses—or preempts—the conceptual and practical boundaries between religion and the secular. In short, the New Buddhists sought a lived Buddhism rooted in a decidedly “immanent frame” (Taylor), even while rejecting the “vulgar materialism” of secular radicalism.