INTL 440 Religion, Secularism and Democracy in the World

Murat Somer Rise of Religion, Secularization Theories and

Globalization

• Global “rise?” of “religion”? Why?

• Is it a threat?

• How is it related to globalization?

Real or False Binaries? • Struggles/Conflicts:

• between nation state and religion?

• Enlightenment and religion?

• liberal market capitalism and religion?

• Humanist

• Islam and the rest?

• Secular-religious conflict or intra-religious conflict?

Simple Secularization Theory

• Westphalia: sovereign state defeats the Church

• French revolution: add national identity, nation state

• secular nationalism

• secular enlightenment (source of ethics and rationality)

• Scientific revolutions

• Industrial revolution and secular progress

Simple Secularization Theory

• Secular ideologies rise religion declines

• Liberal markets rise

• Capitalism

• Socialism

• Fascism

• Liberalism

• Secular nationalism

19th - 20th centuries • Second half of the 19th century: secular

liberals/nationalists/socialists and religious actors battle over the public space

• Seculars win

• Post-second WW: God is dead. Secularization theory

• Religion has no role in determining international institutions

• Traditional secularization theory (Marx, Durkheim, Comte, Freud, Tonnies, old Berger etc. ) = with modernization, science and rationality => faith ↓

• Disenchantment with religion, God

• This story is too simplistic • God was never dead. Faith and rationality do

not necessarily conflict.

• Religion not monolithic. E.g. Modernist and reactionary Islamism

• Nationalism and nation state are not as “secular” as we thought

• Image versus reality. Overrepresentation of European exceptionalism

Late 1980s -

• Religion is reasserting itself and becoming more vocal

• New forms of religion are emerging

• Religion in the context of Nationalism (See Bosnia, Somalia ect.)

• New Age religions • Islamic resurgence, (Iranian Islamic Revolution,

Malaysia, Pakistan, Sudan) • Liberation Theology in Latin America • Catholic resistance to President Marcos in the

Philippines, to communism in Poland • Resurgence of religion in former communist

countries • Hindu nationalism • Religious politics in the US, Israel • Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Justice and Development

Party (PJD) in Turkey and Morocco, Ennahda in Tunisia

Challenges of Nation State & Religion

• Nation state challenged from above and below

• In this context, nation states (and politicians) use religion to shore up national identity and the state

• But also religion becomes the medium of opposition to particular nation states or to the nation state system. Examples?

• When physical borders weaken, religion has an advantage because it has a ready transnational language, ideology and institutional linkages

Liberal Capitalism & Religion

• With the weakening of socialism, religion became the medium of opposition to liberal capitalism

• Religion becomes a mechanism of resistance to commercial and consumerist mass culture.

• But often also a way of internalizing materialist markets without feeling sinful

Supply Side

• Religions adjust to new needs

• They provide services

• They reinterpret themselves to appeal to current needs

• Many pious are not very happy about all this

• Intra-religious struggle

• Other religious movements try to capture the state to fight moral and religious corruption

• When liberalism expands to non-western segments of the world, liberal values need to be reinvented from within non-western religious traditions

Crisis of modernity?

• “Modernism has already played itself out of principle. Accordingly, societies that have been built on modernism are destined to collapse. Indeed, the total failure - a side current of modernist society…. and the dramatic breakup of the Soviet Union are only precursors to the collapse of Western liberalism, the main current of modernity. Far from being the alternative to failed Marxism, and the reigning ideology ‘at the end of history,’ liberalism will be the next domino to fall.”

• Takeshi Umehara

• Absolutes of modernity versus ambiguities of post-modernity

• Unanswered questions

• Abortion

• Euthanasia

• Universal appeal of religion vs. the (perceived) euro centric nature of the enlightenment

Crisis of liberalism – Challenges:

– communitarian critique of liberalism

– liberalism in not aware of the extent to which its ideas and practices are embedded in the moral foundations of religion

– liberalism is overly individualistic and erodes civic culture causing negative personal and social costs

– Liberalism espouses the same moral framework as religious institutions but lacks the values and religious faith necessary to sustain them

• Jonathan Haidt: both liberals and the conservatives care about morality, fairness and justice but define these concepts differently.

• Liberal (Millian) society: contractarian society. Society emerged as agreement among individuals. Dominant values ensuring peace: Care and fairness.

• Conservative (Durkheimian) society: Organic society. Emerged by punishing selfishness and rewarding loyalty. Self-control more important than self-expression, duty before rights.

• Conservative advantage in appealing to emotions

Failures of secular nationalism and leftism in the developing world

•

• failure to build modern welfare states

• failure to build modern democracies

• Religion was never dead but religion was diminishing in some contexts and adapting in others

• Globalization, postmodernity and modern capitalism are creating new roles for religion

• Are people becoming more “religious”?

• Not necessarily

• But religion more vocal, more active, more political

• Why?

Revised Secularization theories • Faith does not necessarily decline, but other

things happen.

• Charles Taylor: the possibility of unbelief ↑ (it becomes thinkable not to believe)

• Peter Berger: pluralism ↑

• Bruce: R becomes something that people can pick and mix as they wish. Supermarket religion

• Charles Taylor: Secular Age is not about the death of God

• İt is not unbelief

• It is change in the way people believe: the possibility of unbelief . Belief becomes a choice.

• Taylor: since the turn of first millenium, “Latin Christendum” (aka West) moved from collective rituals to personal commitment, belief and devotion

• A more Christocentric religion

• Greater inwardness of devotion

• Greater disenchantment with the sacred as located in time, person or gesture

• Focus on externalized moral action and inner piety

• 3 “B”s of Religion (Samim Akgönül):

• Belief

• Belonging

• Behavior

• All these B’s change rather than disappear

Revised Secularization theories

• Fox: Both secularization and sacralization are happening in different areas. R tries to reinvent itself. Some components of modernization/globalization gives an advantage to religious communities.

• Grace Davie and others: functional and actual differentiation of religious and non-religious institutions, practices, and rationality

Revised Secularization theories

• Casanova: secularization theory has three components.

1. Differentiation of secular spheres from religious norms and institutions 2. ↓ religious beliefs and practices 3. Privatization of R.

• 1 occurs but not necessarily 2 and 3. Legitimate

role for R is possible in public sphere, as long as R can reinvent itself.

• Norris and Inglehart: with ↑ existential security, rel values and practices ↓

Religion by Society

Religious Participation by % Agrarian Industrial Post industrial

Attend Church at least weekly 44 25 20

Pray “every day” 52 34 26

WVS 1981- 2001

Within these designations there is significant variation: -Older Populations are more religious than younger -Women are more religious than men -Socially disadvantaged individuals are more religious than the affluent

Trends in Religious Participation and Beliefs

• What evidence is there for the erosion of religious values over time? – Substantial decline in all surveyed European

countries 1970 - 1998

– Similar data does not exist for developing countries

– Increasing interest in the meaning and purpose of life

– Values of agrarian societies have remained constant

Norris and Inglehart: economic security and secularization

Global Religious Culture

Important Trends:

Secularism rising in Developed

countries with low birth rates

Religion is growing in less developed

countries with high birth rates

Demographic advantage

• Religious people make more babies

• While religion adapts to markets, nation- states, modernity and globalization, often modern nation states also feel that they need religion and support it.

• Example: civil religion

Do you consider yourself:

• Religious (1-10)

• Secular (1-10)

Is Critique (only) Secular? Free Speech vs. Blasphemy

Intl 440

Murat Somer

• What is the relationship between seduction and freedom of expression?

• Is seduction desirable for religion?

• What do the Danish Cartoon Crises and Charlie Hebdo attacks tell us about (a) religion and freedom of expression and (b) Islam and freedom of expression?

• Is this a clash of civilizations? Or are we observing intra-civilizational conflicts?

• Why is all this about “politics” rather than just theology?

• Two competing perspectives/claims

I. Civilizational Difference

• Islamic East and Judeo-Christian West have different views on:

• seduction (freedom of speech)

• “truth”

• belief versus faith

• Human body and subject

=> Seduction is OK in the West but not in Islam

• Pope Benedict Regensburg lecture (2006): Christianity reconciled Greek reason with biblical faith. But Islam has not, has no faith in reason.

• Truth will save you + truth can be found

• Belief

• Seduction (freedom of speech) is essential to achieve truth

• Islam (according to traditional—conventional, orthodox—views):

• Truth is inscrutable (cannot be found)

• What will save you is social practices & public behavior

• Faith and commitment rather than belief

• Private belief is free but seduction is dangerous. Undermines commitment, a contract with God and the Islamic community

• John Locke: belief can be neither willed nor coerced

• The mind is the site of true religious belief. You find it through argumentation and trial and error

• Orthodox Islam: belief (or disbelief) can be willed or forced therefore seduction is illegitimate

II. Intra-religious difference • Neither Christianity nor Islam has one established

view

• Dominant views on faith and freedom of expression changed over time in Christianity

• Byzantine iconoclasm (726-787 and 814-842)

• Diversity within classical Islamic theology. E.g. The rationalist Mu’tazila thought in Islam (8th – 10th centuries)

• Struggle between different conceptions of truth and human subject within both Islam and Christianity

• The struggle is not only philosophical. It is political!

• Power struggle between states and societies, different religious scholars, social classes, and genders!

• Hidayet Şefkatli Tuksal: 'Kadınlar hastalıklı erkekliğe emanet değil, erkek yorumunu dini hüküm hâline getirdiler...'

• Kimsenin kendi anlayışını 'gerçek din' diye dayatma hakkı yok, laiklik bunun için gerekli

• http://t24.com.tr/haber/kadinlar-hastalikli-erkeklige-degil-kendilerine-emanet-islami-erkege-gore-bir-dine-donusturduler,288207