Religion, Nation and Democracy in the South Caucasus

Alexander Agadjanian, Ansgar Jödicke, Evert van der Zweerde

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138577077
• eBook ISBN: 9781317691563
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores developments in the three major societies of the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – focusing especially on religion, historical traditions, national consciousness, and political culture, and on how these factors interact. It outlines how, despite close geographical interlacement, common historical memories and inherited structures, the three countries have deep differences; and it discusses how development in all three nations has differed significantly from the countries' declared commitments to democratic orientation and European norms and values. The book also considers how external factors and international relations continue to impact on the three countries.

Part I
Conceptual frames

1
General trends in the interaction of religion and politics as applied to the South Caucasus

Ansgar Jödicke

All three South Caucasian countries have gone through a period of intense political change: its key terms – nationhood and democracy – are indicated in the title of this volume. The diagnosis of change is more difficult when it comes to religion. Has religion played any kind of role in the process of social change? Has religion itself changed? It very much depends upon the choice of theoretical approach as to whether “religion” is regarded as being as important an area of change as is the political regime or the politics of nation-building. The aim of this chapter is to appraise the role of religion in the contemporary societies of the South Caucasus. This chapter provides a theoretical framework for approaching religion by analysing the interactions between political and religious institutions. In doing this, religion will be understood as just one societal power among others. From this perspective, the role of religion in the process of societal change is neither crucial nor negligible and religion’s power depends on the particular societal constellations rather than a certain degree of modernization. Moving beyond the macro-theoretical assumptions of an incompatibility between modernization and religion, this theoretically informed, middle-range analysis reveals complex historical constellations of politics and religion in the South Caucasus.

In what follows, I will deal with both theoretical issues and their application to the situation in the South Caucasus. First, I will discuss some selected problems that are pertinent when applying modernization theory to the field of religious change in the South Caucasus. I propose a shift of interest from a macro-theoretical to a more meso- and micro-theoretical approach by emphasizing the interactions between the religious and political spheres. This is followed by a comparative analysis stressing the institutional and symbolic capacities of the majority religions, the influence of religious actors on politics and the influence of politics on religion. By doing so, I am connecting the other contributions of this volume with a wider mapping of constellations between religion and politics in the South Caucasus.

Political change and religious change: problems with modernization theory

The experience of accelerated socio-political change in the South Caucasus raises questions about the ways in which this change may be thought to be related to religious change. The two types of change seem to be linked. In most of the macro-theories of the social sciences, they are linked through the assumption of a general process of modernization. However, when we use the term “modernization,” we get involved in difficult problems of terminology and normativity which call into question the merits of the theory in the face of the complex situation it attempts to explain.

Modernization theory assumes that a number of processes are coinciding in society. From a classical sociological point of view (Durkheim, Weber, Parsons), these processes are understood to be part of a bundle of change, rather than a loosely connected variety of changes. They include, for example, social differentiation, nation-state building, industrialization, changes in societal values, globalization, and so on. One of them – secularization – is itself the subject of a variety of theories and counter-theories.

It is not necessary here to reconstruct secularization theories as, indeed, some of the other contributions to this volume already do this. However, I would like to stress one aspect of the widely discussed struggle between the various secularization theories, their modifications (Martin, 2005) and their rivals, such as “privatization/new forms of religion” (Luckmann, 1967), “desecularization theory” (Berger, 1999) and the “revival of religion” (Tomka, 2011). What secularization theories and competitive theories have in common is the view that the social situation in respect of religion has changed dramatically in modern times. All of these theories are theories about religion in modernity. Either they assume that modernity is, at least in principle, a tough environment for religions to survive in or they are more optimistic about religions in modern times under the proviso that they are being transformed by these societies. The first assumes there is a dichotomy involving “either modernization or religion”; the latter postulates a characteristic “modernization of religion.”

In the first type of argument – an example being that economic industrialization leads to secularization – religion is a definitive feature of the pre-modern society, so that modernization threatens its very existence. Thus, cities are normally more industrialized than rural areas and as a consequence, urban areas are supposed to be more secular than rural ones. A lot of data support this view, but contradictory observations also have been made. In Georgia for example, populations in towns have a higher proportion of participation in religious rituals than populations in rural areas.¹

Besides this contradictory evidence, there is one crucial problem with putting forward this sort of argument; specifically, that it assumes religion to be outside of the modernization process. The changing societal environment may be hostile to, or at least problematic for, religious groups, but religion itself is understood to be a static enclosure, unable to change itself and adapt to a changing environment. This fits with the commonly recognized and self-acknowledged innate conservatism of religious traditions in that they are perceived to offer guaranteed, unchangeable values. By contrast, however, the history of religions actually reveals that religions have frequently changed and should be understood as being an active element in society, responsively adapting their contents, organizational features and impacts on everyday life.

The second type of argument – the modernization of religion – overcomes this problem. If modernity provides a completely different environment, religions will survive when they are adapted to this environment, or to put it in other words, when they change their forms.² In my opinion, the most innovative aspect of the counter-theories of secularization is not their assertion that religion is not declining in modern society, but rather that religion is understood as being part of modernization. It is worth noting for our topic that we have at our disposal completely contradictory theories which use this sort of argument. Some, as in the case of privatization and individualization theories, emphasise the fact that religion in modernity has to find its place outside public debates or political engagement. Others, such as civil religion (Bellah, 1967) or nationalism theory (critical: Brubaker, 2012), identify new forms of religion emerging, especially in the realm of politics.

This type of argument raises several problems. First, religious change is still understood merely to be a function of social change. To assume that religion only survives when it changes its form presupposes nonetheless a linear understanding of modernization. The search for religious phenomena that fit into a modern social structure underestimates the capacity of religion to contribute to the building of social structures. Second, this approach has been applied to highly individualized world views far from the sites of the “traditional” religions, such as those of the Caucasus. There is some plausibility in this approach in some Western countries; however, such findings are not appropriate for getting a grasp on developments in the Caucasus, where traditional religious institutions are the significant occupants of the field of religion.

Both the “either modernization or religion” and the “modernization of religion” approaches are limited to a perspective that perceives religion as being passive in the face of social processes. Both approaches fail to understand that religion is actively shaping society. In addition, both arguments are backed by some empirical evidence but cannot be generalized. Therefore, the academic struggle for and against secularization theory may not have come to an end, but it is decidedly fizzling out when it comes to the case of simply ascertaining the existence or nonexistence of “secularization.” It seems obvious that as Casanova suggests, there are a number of dimensions behind this term (1994, pp. 19–39) and that different constellations are possible as a response.

Consequently, we need to limit the degree of generalization, and we must restrict our analysis to concrete interactions between political and religious bodies. We have to ask for reverse dependencies as well as independencies. Interactions in the fields of politics and religion cannot be understood as being a throwback from pre-modern times before they were separated; rather, they are the basis on which we can analyse the modernization process itself. It is better to analyse religion as an active element within modernization processes, even if, like the so-called fundamentalist movements, it condemns modernization. Religious traditions try to adapt to, but also influence, the process of societal change. They are best characterized neither as mere bystanders nor as agents so powerful as to be able to stop social change. Religious ideas, religious leaders or religious communities can stimulate the preservation of, as well as innovation in, social values.

Political and religious groups – in some cases this distinction might be difficult to make – observe each other and respond. The politics of religion are sometimes worked out in negotiation with religious communities and sometimes without any negotiation. Religious communities sometimes negotiate their decisions with state authorities but otherwise make them independently. My analysis of the dynamic interactions between political and religious bodies in the South Caucasus will be guided by four considerations, outlined below, concerning religious change and modernization.

First, the process of modernization has to be regarded as just that – a process. It is not helpful to understand modernity as something that already has arrived and then look to see where islands of pre-modernity persist. That would not be an analysis of societal or political change; rather, it would amount to an ideology of modernization. The problem of neglecting the historical process of modernization has been strongly criticised by new theories of modernization which take into account the fact that processes of modernization are much more complicated and less linear than has been assumed (Beck et al., 1994). Not only secularization theories but also modernization theories have become more complicated. The variety of configurations of modern societies is much greater than earlier theorists were aware of, leading to the concept of “multiple modernities” (Eisenstadt, 2000). There is no telos to modernity; modernization itself might be a political programme but academic, historical and sociological approaches can illuminate the variety of configurations, as well as the specific interconnections, of modern and pre-modern aspects in a social context because ‘the social in the modern world is fragile and fragmented’ (Turner, 2010, p. 663).

Second, the term “religious” is not a qualifier that characterizes a society as a whole; thus, there is no point in asking whether or not a society is religious. We cannot even measure personal religiosity in one dimension; we know much less about the interconnectedness of the social dimensions of religion, such as personal interactions, religious communities, religious organizations and overarching (identity) discourses on religion. The distinction between pre-modern (traditional) and modern is too simplistic to be applied to society as a whole, but the specific configurations of pre-modern and modern activities are worth scrutinizing.

Third, it is obvious that religious institutions are related to power, community and society. Religious traditions are based on sign systems³ upon which communities – and, as we will see later, also societies – are built.⁴ In this sense, ‘religion and the state are intrinsically related’ (Hammond and Machacek, 2009, p. 391). Even if specifically modern systems may be more efficient, religious sign systems are characterized by concrete ideas about the family, education, juridical decision-making or power distribution. Thus, the very idea of a society lives within the sign systems, even when religious communities are “only” a part of the society (Luhmann, 1989). This is why political leaders regard religious communities as highly politically relevant, either positively or negatively. It is worth noting that religions may provide alternative concepts of society even if they are not able to realize them. Interactions between political and religious institutions are not automatically a sign of a pre-modern rationale, either of religion or of politics. A more pragmatic view characterizes them simply as negotiations between actors on issues of society, power and legitimacy.

Fourth, the study of religion and politics inevitably evokes normative assumptions: ‘Among Western scholars, and probably among much of the Western public, the suspicion surrounding the admixture of religion and politics reveals instead deeply rooted assumptions about the modern secular state’ (Hammond and Mach-acek, 2009, p. 399). The task of this introductory chapter is exactly to map this admixture. The paradigm of a separation of the two is neither an empirical category nor a self-evident fact. It has been part of political emancipation programmes since the eighteenth century and the subject of communicative negotiations with regard to any given society.

The following comparative sketch of interactions between the political and religious spheres in the South Caucasus is organized around three issues. First, the identification of the main religious actors and issues of power associated with them. From there, I will proceed to the influence of religious actors on politics and, thirdly, the state’s politics of religion.

Majority religions: symbolic and institutional capabilities

The recent history of religions in the South Caucasus primarily has been shaped by three majority religions: the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC) in Georgia, the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) in Armenia and, in Azerbaijan, Shi‘a Islam (about 65 per cent) and Sunni Islam (about 30 per cent). Given that the differences between Shi‘a and Sunni Islam are, in the view of the political elite, not very important in Azerbaijan, it is possible to speak of the three countries as countries with majority religions. After massive waves of migra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Editors’ introduction
• PART I Conceptual frames
• PART II Religion and politics
• PART III Religion, nationalism and education
• PART IV Cultural values, ideology and democracy
• PART V International context and external impacts
• Index