Religion in Global Politics

Jeffrey Haynes, Jeff Haynes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138459076
• eBook ISBN: 9781317886662
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

One of the most resilient ideas about societal development after World War II was that nations would inevitably secularise as they modernised. However, as we come to the end of the 'secular' twentieth century, it is obvious that religion continues to be an important factor in politics around the world. The author examines the continuing importance of religion, focusing upon the regions of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Examples of religion’s recent political impact abound in countries at varying levels of economic and political development. For example, there is the crucial role of Christian Churches in the ‘Third Wave’ of democracy in southern and eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa from the early 1970s; the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the contemporaneous growth of Islamist movements across the Muslim world from Morocco to Malaysia; the New Christian Right in the USA demanding fundamental political, social, and moral changes; long-running hostility between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland and between Muslims and Christians in Africa; Hindu and Sikh political radicalism in India and Buddhist activism in South-east Asia; and Jewish extremism in Israel. The result is that, around the world, the mass media, social scientists, professional politicians and many ‘ordinary’ people feel compelled to pay increased attention to religion as a socio-political actor.

Religious organizations of various kinds seem openly to be rejecting the secular ideals dominating national policies, appearing as champions of alternative, confessional options. In keeping faith with what they interpret as divine decree, increasingly they refuse to render to non-religious power either material or moral tribute. They are increasingly concerned with political issues, challenging the legitimacy and autonomy of the primary secular spheres, the State, political organization and the market economy. They are also refusing to restrict themselves to the pastoral care of individual souls, instead raising questions about, inter alia, the interconnections of private and public morality and the claims of states and markets to be exempt from extrinsic normative considerations. Intent on retaining social importance, many religious organizations seek to elude what they regard as the cumbersome constraints of temporal authority, threatening to usurp constituted political functions. In short, refusing to be condemned to the realm of privatized belief, religion is once again reappearing in the public sphere, thrusting itself into issues of moral and political contestation. (Religious privatization means that religious organizations shall not have the right to be actively engaged with matters of public concern or to play a role in public life.) As Casanova (1994: 6) puts it, ‘what was new and became “news” in the 1980s was the widespread and simultaneous refusal of the so-called “world religions” – that is, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism – to be restricted to the private sphere’.

This book examines the relationship between religion and politics since the early 1970s in a variety of countries.¹ Its title, Religion in Global Politics, aims to capture its goal, a general survey of the interaction of religion and politics in four regions: the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. Because this is obviously an ambitious task for one book, it cannot hope to be definitive. Nevertheless, by focusing on key issues, I seek to provide a commentary on what has taken place, and is currently happening, to the spheres of religion and politics throughout the world. Most chapters feature case studies of several countries, providing specific geographical foci to put empirical flesh on the theoretical bones outlined in the introduction. Overall, the aim is to offer a comparative treatment so that the reader can appreciate some of the rich variety of particular national situations involving religion and politics since the early 1970s.

Given the range of religious traditions – that is, the ‘world religions’ – and countries examined, it is necessary to establish at the outset what will and will not be focused upon. I am primarily concerned with the political relationships between states and leading religious institutions and organizations. Sometimes – as for example in Europe and the Americas – the main religious actors are various Christian Churches, while elsewhere – for example, the Middle East and Asia – non-Christian religions are the main focus. I do not focus on transnational religious actors except where they impact upon the domestic scene, as in Central Asia.²

The principal argument of the book is that religion is leaving, or refusing to accept, its assigned place in the private sphere. This is true, I believe, even in highly secular societies like England where mainline Christian Churches have re-emerged as important social, moral and – to a degree – political voices. There, building on a tradition established during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the publication in October 1996 of the Catholic Church’s 13,000-word pamphlet, The Common Good and the Catholic Church’s Social Teaching, was an important intervention in the political debate between the Labour and Conservative parties. Politicians – especially of the latter party – saw it as an endorsement of Labour’s policies. Six months later — in April 1997 – 11 Churches collectively published a further report entitled, Unemployment and the Future of Work, an outspoken attack on the inability of the main parties in Britain to focus upon the amelioration of the suffering of the underprivileged. The report accused them of putting tax cuts before solutions to poverty and unemployment in the battle for victory in the May 1997 general election (Bellos and White 1997).

Concerned with overtly political issues, The Common Good and Unemployment and the Future of Work were both manifestations of the contemporary process of repolitization of the hitherto increasingly private religious and moral spheres in England. The reports repesented an attempt to re-establish ethical norms of behaviour and activities in public and political spheres and to present a political case for so doing. In the publications, mainline Churches endorsed what were clearly political goals, expressing opposition to the dualism between religion and politics, and arguing that the concerns of social justice were, in fact, not only scripturaily rooted, but also wedded to the defence of liberal democracy, pluralism and the market economy (Watson 1994: 149, Huntington 1991, 1993). In short, the central issue for the Churches was the degree to which the consumerist version of politics should be modified or balanced by the social dimension (Edwards 1990, Glasman 1996).

However, it is not only Churches in England that are becoming concerned with social, economic and political issues. Numerous religious organizations and institutions around the world also share a desire to change their societies in a direction where religious standards would be more central than before. In pursuit of such objectives, they use a variety of tactics and methods: some, like the British Churches, lobby, protest and publish reports at the level of civil society (see pp. 68-71); others seek desired changes via political society (see pp. 28-33), for example, the American New Christian Right regularly endorses electoral candidates with the most ‘pro-religion’ policies; a few – such as Islamists in Algeria and Egypt – even resort to violence and terrorism to achieve their goals. However, the means to achieve goals are perhaps less important than the ends pursued: whatever the chosen modes of political interaction, what is new and unexpected in all this is the remodelling and reassumption of public roles by religion which theories of secularization had long condemned to social and political marginalization.

Secularization can be thought of as a fivefold process, involving: (a) constitutional secularization, whereby religious institutions cease to be given special constitutional recognition and support by the State; (b) policy secularization, that is, when the State expands its policy domains and service provisions into areas previously reserved to the religious sphere; (c) institutional secularization, that is, when religious structures lose their political saliency and influence as pressure groups, parties and movements; (d) agenda secularization, which occurs when issues, needs and problems deemed relevant to the political process no longer have an overtly religious content; and (e) ideological secularization, that is, when ‘the basic values and belief-systems used to evaluate the political realm and to give it meaning cease to be couched in religious terms’ (Moyser 1991: 14).

To state the main argument of the book briefly, what I believe is happening in the sphere of religion and politics, on the one hand, involves a widespread, if patchy, ‘deprivatization’³ of previously privatized religions in the Western world -that is, Europe, North America and Israel.⁴ These are regions and countries where there is a more or less clear tripartite division of democratic polities into State, political society and civil society; according to conventional social science wisdom such an arrangement should – inevitably – lead to religion’s privatization and corresponding decline in social and political importance. On the other hand, where the process of religious privatization is not so far advanced – that is, in most Third World⁵ countries – it is the fear of imminent or creeping privatization which, I believe, provides the stimulus for religion to act politically to prevent its social marginalization.

Religion and politics defined

Before proceeding, it may be useful to define two of the key terms used in the book: religion and politics. Defining politics is simple: it is about the pursuit of power. But when it is won – by a class, faction, group or whatever – politics is also about how to exercise power and to regulate the inevitable conflicts that emerge between the various interest groups within a polity.

Explaining the term religion satisfactorily is more difficult. For the sociologist, two main approaches are common. Religion is either (a) a system of beliefs and practices related to an ultimate being, beings, or to the supernatural or (b) that which is sacred in a society, that is, ultimate beliefs and practices which are inviolate (Aquaviva 1979). For purposes of wider social analysis, religion is normally approached (a) from the perspective of a body of ideas and outlooks, that is, as theology and ethical code; (b) as a type of formal organization, that is, the ecclesiastical ‘Church’; or (c) as a social group, that is, religious groups and movements. There are two basic ways in which religion can affect the temporal world: by what it says and by what it does. The former relates to religion’s doctrine or theology, the latter to its importance as a social phenomenon and mark of identity, working through a variety of modes of institutionalization, such as political parties and Church-State relations.

It is necessary to distinguish between religion at the individual and group levels: only the latter is normally of political importance. From an individualist perspective, religion may be thought of as ‘a set of symbolic forms and acts which relates man [sic] to the ultimate conditions of his existence’ (Bellah 1964: 359). This is its private, spiritual side. However, I am concerned with group religiosity, whose claims and pretensions are always to some degree political; there is no such thing as a religion without consequences for value systems (Ramet 1995: 64). Group religiosity, like politics, is a matter of collective solidarities and, frequently, of inter-group tension and conflict, focusing either on shared or disagreed images of the sacred, or on cultural and class, in short, political, issues. To complicate matters, however, such influences may well operate differently and with ‘different temporalities for the same theologically defined religion in different parts of the world’ (Moyser 1991: 11).

To try to bring together political and religious spheres in all their varied aspects and then to discern significant patterns and trends is not a simple task. But, in attempting it, three points are worth emphasizing. First, there is something of a distinction to be drawn between looking at the relationship in terms of the impact of religion on politics, and that of politics on religion. At the same time, they are interactive: the effects of one stimulates and is stimulated by the other. In other words, because I am concerned with the way in which power is exercised in society, and the way(s) in which religion is involved, the relationship between religion and politics is both dialectical and interactive: each shapes and influences the other. Both causal directions need to be held in view.

Second, religions are creative and constantly changing; consequently their relationships with politics also vary over time. Although I am concerned with the interactions of religious organizations and the State since the early 1970s, the picture is not static. Associations between religion and secular power may suddenly change. For example, in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Iran in recent times, leading religious institutions and figures shifted – apparently abruptly – from support to opposition of incumbent regimes.

Finally, religious organizations as political actors can only be usefully discussed in terms of specific contexts; I believe interactions involving the State provide the most fruitful area. Yet, the model of responses, while derived from and influenced by specific aspects of particular religions, is not necessarily inherent to them. Rather this is a theoretical construct suggested by much of the literature on State-society relations, built on the understanding that religion’s specific role is largely determined by a broader context. The assumption is that there is an essential core element of religion shaping behaviour in, for example, Christian, Islamic, or Buddhist societies. I question this assumption in the chapters which follow. The focus of many earlier studies has been to seek to analyse how an existing religious belief or affiliation affects political action. In this book, however, I am equally concerned with the reverse process; how specific political contexts affect religious organizations.

Church and State in comparative perspective

To understand the political importance of religious actors, we need to comprehend what they say and do in their relationship with the State. Following Stepan (1988: 3), I mean something more than ‘mere’ government when referring to the State: it is the continuous administrative, legal, bureaucratic and coercive system that attempts not only to manage the State apparatus but in addition to ‘structure relations between civil and public power and to structure many crucial relationships within civil and political society’. Almost everywhere, states seek to reduce religion’s political influence, that is, they seek to privatize it, significantly to reduce its political importance. Sometimes, in countries at differing levels of economic development – for example, the USA, Nigeria, Tanzania, Indonesia, Israel, Burma and Poland – the State will attempt to erect an arrangement called ‘civil religion’ where a certain designated religious format ‘functions as the cult of the political community’ (Casanova 1994: 58). The purpose is to create forms of consensual, corporate religion, claiming to be guided by general, culturally appropriate, societally specific religious beliefs, not necessarily tied institutionally to any specific religious tradition (Hallencreutz and Westerlund 1996, Liebman and Eliezer 1983). The main point is that the development of civil religion in a polity is a strategy to avoid social conflicts and promote national coordination, especially in countries with serious religious or ideological divisions. However, civil religions are often perceived by minority religious persuasions as aiming to install and perpetuate the hegemony of one religious tradition at the expense of others.

But religion’s relationship with the State is not only bounded by attempts to build civil religions; it has become of greater public salience in a wide range of State-religion relationships. That relations between religious organizations and the State have become more visible and often increasingly problematic in many countries in recent years does not, of course, constitute in itself evidence against the idea that states in the contemporary era do not need the kind of religious legitimation exemplified by civil religion. One certainly has, for example, to entertain the possibility that the recent proliferation of religious-based challenges to the authority of the State are merely transitory reactions to the onward march of secularization. Moreover, even if – as some significant figures in social science have claimed – the modem State is particularly vulnerable to legitimation crises, that does not in itself mean that religion is becoming again automatically relevant to the functioning of the State machinery. Normally, religion-based challenges have their roots in endeavours by the State to assert a monitoring role vis-à-vis religion, in effect to control it. We can see such a development at three levels: political society, civil society and at the level of the State itself.

Religion and political society

Many believe that religion is being liberated from providing slavish legitimacy for secular authority because religious officials and activists increasingly criticize government. Yet, if heightened concern about the State’s policies is held up as evidence of the regeneration of the socio-political power of religion, one must still ask further questions. The issues are themselves secular and in so far as religious agencies are active in these areas, this is a radical shift of concern from the supernatural, from devotional acts, to what are largely secular goals to be pursued by secular means. However, a note of caution may be in order: we need to bear in mind that when religious interests act as pressure groups – rather than as prayer bodies – they are not necessarily particularly effective. As Wilson (1992: 202-3) points out, the more secularized a society, the less likely religio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The United States of America: bucking the trend of Western secularization?
• 3 Latin America: Catholic hegemony under attack
• 4 Western Europe: secularization and the religious response
• 5 Eastern Europe: from communism to belief
• 6 Africa: religious competition and State power
• 7 The Middle East: religions in collision
• 8 Central Asia: the return of Islam to politics after communism
• 9 Politics and religion in India: Hindu and Sikh nationalism
• 10 Buddhism and politics in South-east Asia
• 11 Conclusions
• References
• Index