Secularist Humanism, Law and Religion in Ian McEwan’s The Children Act
Ian McEwan’s The Children Act focuses on a real-life conflict between religion and children’s rights in a pluralist society. By drawing on Charles Taylor’s work on religion in the “secular age”, I argue that McEwan’s narrative is ultimately built on secularist assumptions that devalue religious expe...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
MDPI
2021
|
In: |
Religions
Year: 2021, Volume: 12, Issue: 7 |
Further subjects: | B
Charles Taylor
B Law B secularist humanism B Religion B Jehovah’s Witnesses B immanent frame |
Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
Summary: | Ian McEwan’s The Children Act focuses on a real-life conflict between religion and children’s rights in a pluralist society. By drawing on Charles Taylor’s work on religion in the “secular age”, I argue that McEwan’s narrative is ultimately built on secularist assumptions that devalue religious experience. McEwan’s approach aims to build a bridge between literary imagination and scientific rationality: religion is, from this perspective, reducible to a “fable” and an authority structure incongruous with legal rationality and the quest for meaning in the modern-secular society. In The Children Act, art substitutes religion and its aspiration to transcendence: music in particular is a universal idiom that can overcome barriers of communication and provides “ecstatic” experiences in a godless world. |
---|---|
ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions
|
Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel12070468 |