Collectivistic Religions

Religion, Choice, and Identity in Late Modernity

Slavica Jakelic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138260399
• eBook ISBN: 9781317164197
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Collectivistic Religions draws upon empirical studies of Christianity in Europe to address questions of religion and collective identity, religion and nationalism, religion and public life, and religion and conflict. It moves beyond the attempts to tackle such questions in terms of 'choice' and 'religious nationalism' by introducing the notion of 'collectivistic religions' to contemporary debates surrounding public religions. Using a comparison of several case studies, this book challenges the modernist bias in understanding of collectivistic religions as reducible to national identities. A significant contribution to both the study of religious change in contemporary Europe and the theoretical debates that surround religion and secularization, it will be of key interest to scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, political science, religious studies, and geography.

1 Religion and Identity: Theoretical Considerations

DOI: 10.4324/9781315572710-2

The concept of religious nationalism that shapes contemporary thinking about religion and collective identity emerges in theories of nationalism. In the work of Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, and Anthony Smith—three theorists taken here to represent some of the most influential theoretical approaches to nationalism—religion is considered an important variable, but always in regard to the historical, political, and symbolic forces of nationalism. Gellner, Anderson, and Smith conceptualize and study religion as epiphenomenal to nationalism.

This chapter explores the contributions and limitations of nationalism studies for understanding religions that form historically specific collective identities. But its principal goal is to indicate a trajectory for the study of this important and under-theorized phenomenon¹—by bridging the gap between the social sciences and religious studies and by introducing the notion of “collectivistic religions.” The chapter identifies two salient features in the study of nationalism. The first is the modernist perspective, which assumes the decline of religion or the radical transformation of its social role with the rise of nationalism. This perspective persists despite critiques from both scholars of nationalism and religious studies.² The second feature in the study of nationalism, which partly stems from the resilience of the modernist approach to nationalism, is the idea that religion becomes secularized in the realm of collective identification because it ceases to be strictly “religious”—it functions primarily as collective identity. Inherent in most theories of nationalism, I argue, are two designations: that national identity is the collective identity of our modern age and that religion is religion only when it occurs in the domain of beliefs, ideas, and rituals. The former reveals a flawed conceptualization of collective identity, the latter an implicit theory of religion shaped by a particular type of Protestant Christianity.

¹ For the suggestion that this area of study is rich with potential, see Claire Mitchell, “The Religious Content of Ethnic Identities,” Sociology, 2006, 40, 1135–1152. ² On modernism in the study of nationalism, see Anthony Smith, Nationalism and Modernism_ A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, London, New York: Routledge, 1998; for a multilayered critique of the modernist view of religions and nationalisms, see the collection of essays, Nations and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, eds. Peter Van Der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

As I will show, the conceptualization of collective identity as national identity arose in the evolutionary theories of modernization and is often accompanied by the thesis that modernization leads to less religion.³ The definition of religion as the realm of ideas, beliefs, or theology, however, is somewhat paradoxical. The focus of nationalism studies is on the social implications of religion, but their conceptualization of modern religion, as it is and as it ought to be, has a theological rather than a sociological foundation. The epistemological background for this development can be uncovered using the insights of some recent religious studies scholars: Jonathan Z. Smith, Russell McCutcheon, and Timothy Fitzgerald. They all point out the Christian and, more specifically, the Protestant origins of contemporary theorizing about religion, thus calling attention to its analytic limitations.

³ See Smith 1998; see also Smith's Chosen Peoples, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Smith, McCutcheon, and Fitzgerald's critiques are important for understanding the cultural frameworks within which the study of religion emerged. They are also useful for conceiving new paths for the exploration of religion. But, they are not concerned with theorizing the relationship between religions and collective identities, although they do focus on religion and culture. McCutcheon and Fitzgerald in fact operate with a conceptualization of religion as the other stuff of social life. Their approaches to theorizing religion thus resemble the prevalent use of the notion of religious nationalism in one significant manner—they de-center religion in the very study of religion.

Religion and Collective Identity in the Theories of Nationalism

At first glance, scholars of nationalism do not agree about much. They are divided on the question of “what” nationalism is, alternatively seeing it as a movement (John Breuilly), an ideology (Miroslav Hroch, Elie Kedourie), or a cultural identity (Anthony D. Smith, Steven Grosby).⁴ The wide range of answers to the question of “when is the nation?” defines the history of the field, from the 1960s until today. Depending on how scholars respond to this question, they may represent modernism (nationalism and nations are a modern phenomenon) or perennialism (nations have existed from time immemorial); constructivism (nationalisms and nations are constructed or invented) or primordialism (nations underlie historical developments or, although invented, they bind individuals to groups as if they are unchangeable, cultural givens).⁵

⁴ See Philip S. Gorski, “The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of Modernist Theories of Nationalism,” The American Journal of Sociology, March 2000, Vol. 105, No. 5, 1428–1468; 1430; Smith 2001, 6. ⁵ For a summary of these views, particularly useful is Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism_ Theory, Ideology, History, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001.

Notwithstanding the complexity of these -isms and the disagreements about the “when” question, there is no doubt that the orthodoxy in the field is that of modernism.⁶ It posits that nationalism, as a movement and an ideology in particular, is inseparable from modernity—the industrial and democratic revolutions, the spread of capitalism, and the rise of the modern state.⁷

⁶ See Smith 2001, 49. On the complexity of variations, see also Alexander J. Motyl, Review of “Imagined Communities, Rational Choosers, Invented Ethnies,” in Comparative Politics, January 2002, Vol. 34, No. 2, 233–250. For the focus on the “when” question, see Atsuko Ichijo and Gordana Uzelac, eds. When is the Nation? Towards an Understanding of Theories of Nationalism, London and New York: Routledge, 2005, 2. ⁷ See Smith 1998, 97; Gorski 2000, 1429; Ichijo and Uzelac 2005, 2.

The dominance of the modernist narrative has several implications for understanding religion and collective identity and, hence, for the substance and format of this chapter. First, it suggests that religion and nationalism must be explored within a larger (sociological) narrative about modernization and modernity. One of the central elements of this narrative is the putative march of secularization—the idea that the rise of nationalism in the context of the urbanization, industrialization, and rationalization of the world necessarily brings about the decreased importance of religion.⁸ What stems from this thinking is a view of religion as epiphenomenal to nationalism whenever scholars speak of modern collective identities.

⁸ See Slavica Jakelić and Jessica Starling, “Religious Studies: A Bibliographic Essay,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2006, Vol. 74, No. 1.

The second implication of the modernist orthodoxy is the choice of theorists considered in this chapter. I classify two of the three—Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson—as modernists, the latter because of his understanding of religion and despite his postmodernist inclinations.⁹ The insights of scholars who, in different ways and to a different extent, may be considered primordialist or perrenialist—Edward Shils, S.N. Eisenstadt, Clifford Geertz, Pierre van den Berghe, Walker Connor, or Steven Grosby—are not discussed here. Due to the resilience of modernism in nationalism studies, their work is not at the center of contemporary thinking about nationalism and religion in the social sciences or the humanities, and as such, does not greatly influence the content or use of the notion of religious nationalism.¹⁰

⁹ I owe this point to Anthony Smith's analysis of Benedict Anderson. Smith argues that the link modernity-nationalism-religion is central to Anderson's entire project, especially his notion of imagined communities; see Smith's discussion of Anderson, 1998. ¹⁰ See Edward Shils, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties,” in his book Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975, 111–126; for a discussion of the complex nature of primordial attachments, see Clifford Geertz, Old Societies and New States, New York: Free Press, 1963; see Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Cultural Programs, the Construction of Collective Identities, and the Continual Reconstruction of Primordiality,” in Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, Leiden: Brill, 2003, 75–134; see Steven Grosby, “The Category of the Primordial in the study of early Christianity and Second-Century Judaism,” History of Religions, Vol. 36, No. 2, November, 1996, 140–116. All of these thinkers offer valuable insights about tradition and primordial aspects of social existence, including religion.

I begin the discussion with Gellner's ideas as an example of a modernist approach to nationalism. I continue with Anderson, focusing on his modernist views of religion and nationalism. I then move to Anthony D. Smith, who represents an ethno-symbolic approach to nationalism, taking special note of his attempts to overcome the shortcomings of the modernist approach to nationalism. Smith's work is central to our discussion because it shows that all students of nationalism, even when attentive to religion, implicitly or explicitly link the rise of (modern) nationalism to a decline of (a particular type of) religion and thereby conceptually marginalize religion by the very nature of their focus on nationalism.

For Gellner, nationalism is not a universal or perennial category; rather, culture and social organization are.¹¹ But, while nationalism is constructed and invents nations, it is not an ideological accident; it is our destiny.¹² Nationalism could not, Gellner writes, operate in an agrarian or a pre-industrial society.¹³ It is our modern condition that explains its very possibility.¹⁴

¹¹ See Gellner, Nationalism, New York: New York University Press, 1997, 5. ¹² See Gellner, Thought and Change, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1964, 168; 11. ¹³ Industrial stage is the last of the three stages of what Gellner describes as a historical progress, the other two being agrarian and pre-industrial stages, see Gellner, 1997, 24. ¹⁴ Gellner is sometimes accused of a functionalist orientation in theorizing nationalism and of “deterministic ‘sociologism,’” see Steven Grosby, “The Primordial, Kinship and Nationality,” in When is the Nation? Towards an Understanding of Theories of Nationalism, eds. Atsuko Ichijo and Gordana Uzelac, London and New York: Routledge, 2005, 65. Gellner's focus on the industrial transformation of societies and the cultural and political processes that accompany it makes him different form other modernists: Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, who focus on media and imagination, or Charles Tilly, Mann, Anthony Giddens, John Breuilly, and Paul Brass, who focus on the modern state and mass politics; Tom Nairn or Michael Hechter, who focus on class and economic conflict; see Breuilly “Introduction,” in Ernest Gellner, Nation and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell, [1983], 2006, XXXII.

Gellner's theory of nationalism was incidental to his larger quest—the philosophy of history and his understanding of the progress from traditional to modern societies.¹⁵ Consequently, Gellner considers religion only when it is relevant to the processes of modernization and the rise of nationalism. According to this criterion, the only important—and the only modern—religion is Protestantism. In Gellner's account, Protestantism focuses on beliefs, doctrine, and scripture—on words and language—in order to advance the cause of faith, thus elevating the vernacular on the pedestal of “high culture,” the latter being the variable that establishes modern societies. High culture, as Gellner describes it, enabled the emergence of large portions of a literate population, which general education then turned into homogenous societies.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: When Religion is Not a Choice
• 1 Religion and Identity: Theoretical Considerations
• 2 Bosnian, Croatian, and Slovenian Catholicisms in Contemporary Europe
• 3 Bosnian, Croatian, and slovenian Catholicisms: narratives, Legacies, and Collective Identities
• 4 Collectivistic Christianities in the European Context
• Conclusion
• Index