1
Introduction
WILLIAM SAFRAN
The place of religion in politics is at once a reflection of the extent of free choice of expression and the matrix around which a national culture and identity develop. Religion has functioned as a mechanism of social control, a rival to the welfare state and a brake to modernization. Many generations ago, religion and politics were inseparable; indeed, the state was, more often than not, a secular manifestation of the dominant faith. Many rulers of antiquity argued that they derived their authority and legitimacy from God, not from the people they ruled, and justified their absolute power on the basis of their divine right to rule. The Jewish nation and, subsequently, the Jewish state, were based on a contract with God, made through Moses, that committed them to obey revealed law; similarly, the Greek stateâs security and prosperity depended upon the grace of the various gods.
During the Middle Ages, a distinction was made between the cross and the sword, that is, between the spiritual and the terrestrial power; yet the supremacy of the Church in Europe was unchallenged by a secular state, because the state in the modern sense did not yet exist. In fact, the early Christian churches insisted that their sovereignty was supranational. The Holy Roman Emperor was anointed by the Pope; during the Protestant Reformation later on, monarchs, basing themselves on the principle of cujus regio, ejus religio, decided which religion was to be âestablishedâ, and they became its heads and âdefendersâ. Certain nations were so deeply imbued with a collective religious faith that they came to be identified in terms of it. Spanish, Irish and Polish nationalisms were congruent with Roman Catholicism and equated with it. Until the Revolution of 1789 (and except for a brief interlude in the seventeenth century), âFrenchnessâ was defined so thoroughly in terms of Catholicism that France was considered âthe eldest daughter of the churchâ. Analogous situations are found in other countries: thus, Russian and Greek nationalisms have been closely associated with Eastern Orthodoxy; and the âArab nationâ is difficult to imagine without Islam.
The coupling of religion and nationhoodâand the role of religion in nation-building efforts in the pastâapplied largely to the pre-democratic age, and applies today to many non-Western societies that have not yet modernized (such as Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia). How strongly, however, does it apply to modern polities? What is the relationship between nationalism and religion? To what extent is religion compatible with democracy? These are some of the basic questions that inform the essays that follow. The answers depend on what religion we are discussing as well as on the nature of the political system. When we think of modern democratic states, we refer to secularized societies to which religions, or rather, a plethora of competing and sometimes cooperating religious establishments, have accommodated to changes because they have been republicanized.
The relationship of religion to freedom and democracy has been a matter of controversy throughout history. The Bible calls upon Moses to âproclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereofâ (Leviticus 15:1). That call specifically applied to slaves, who were to be freed during the Jubilee year. Throughout the generations, Jews have thanked God for delivering them âfrom slavery to freedomâ. Unfortunately, the linkage between religion and either freedom or democracy has been noticeably weak historically. Many religionsâmost prominently Christianity and Islamâ have found ways to justify slavery; and to the extent that religions have been hierarchically organized, they have had little use for democracy. Until recently, Church establishments preferred monarchical forms of government as best suited to protect their privileges.
According to Locke, the typical religion, understood as an all-embracing Weltanschauung claiming a superior, if not absolute, truth, is not compatible with individual freedom, democracy and, above all, tolerance. In reality, however, the role of institutionalized religion in the promotion of democracy has been uneven. It is generally accepted that Protestant minority or âdissenterâ sects have played a significant role in economic and political development. We have been led to believe that Protestantism has been the major religious progenitor of democracy; according to Max Weberâs analysis, there has been a clear âdevelopmentalâ causal chain from the âProtestant ethicâ to individualism, capitalism and democratic governance.1 Some observers argue that not all Protestants (not even all Calvinists and Puritans) shared that productivist ethic and identify it with other religionsâR.H.Tawney with the Catholicism of Renaissance Italy and Werner Sombart with Judaism.2 To Marx, Judaism was the religion of money and the embodiment of collective greed, and hence the religion of capitalism; to many anti-Semites, it was the faith that led to Bolshevism; to still others, the socioeconomic marginality of Jews forced them to foster economic innovations that led to capitalism; to others again, a secular translation of the divine commandment to do good deeds (mitsvot) led Jews to embrace socialism. To many contemporary observers, the ethic of hard work is incarnated in Chinese Confucianismâalthough there is uncertainty about the extent to which it is associated with democracy.
It should be noted that the Protestantsâ original stress on the primacy of the individual as the interpreter of religious truth did not necessarily translate into political individualism, that is, the promotion of individual freedom. On the contrary, the German Evangelical Lutheran establishment was marked by its authoritarian character and was intimately associated with the Prussian autocracy; the Roman Catholic establishment was closely allied with the absolute monarchies in France, Spain and Portugal; and neither establishment had much difficulty in supporting Hitler and countenancing his massacre of the Jews. After World War II, both of these churches embraced democracy as well as the welfare state in Europe; furthermore, they were influential in promoting decolonization, land reform and grassroots democracy.
In short, some religions are the harbingers of democracy and progress, whereas others are not. It may be argued that in a number of countries neither capitalism nor democracy could develop because the beliefs associated with the religions that dominated there were incompatible with an autonomous and progressive civil society. For example, premodern Catholicism was marked by features that were not conducive to what is now called âdemocratizationâ; these included hierarchical institutions that regulated nonparticipant and highly inegalitarian societies and perpetuated the belief that this life was a vale of tears. Such a situation is widely believed to prevail in Muslim societies, owing to the fatalismâthe belief that everything is Godâs will (âinsh âallahâ)âthat is considered an important element of Islamic culture.
All countries discussed in this volume once constituted, grosso modo, nations that were defined, in turn, in terms of religion. A specific religion once determined the norms of individual and social behaviour of a countryâs citizens (or rather, âsubjectsâ); the stateâs leadership worked closely with the religious establishment in exercising surveillance over public morality, providing education and establishing personal status laws. Those who were outside the framework of the dominant religion were, at best, tolerated, and, at worst, socially ostracized, legally handicapped, forcibly converted, ghettoized or expelled.
That is no longer true in the countries under review. Members of all religions are equal before the law, provided, of course, that their practices do not clash with the dominant political values of the state. Religious conflict is no longer pursued by means of crusades, theological disputations or holy wars; blasphemers or heretics no longer are burned at the stake; and adherents of minority religions are no longer publicly molested and can openly practise their beliefs. Owing to the rapid pace of secularization and the decline of the peasantry, churches are losing members and are increasingly on the defensive. Moreover, owing to the influx of new populations and the spread of democracy, religious pluralism is now widely accepted.
The countries examined in this collection share a number of features: they are democratic, at least in the formal constitutional sense; they are committed to the principle of the free exercise of religion; the adherence of their citizens to a religion is increasingly voluntary, and, at least officially, âexitâ is possible. Although one or another religion may be dominant, it has lost its monopoly over defining the proper path to morality or spirituality; andâlargely as a result of the weakening of central ecclesiastical authorityâ there is increasing pluralism even within religions. Educational curricula and personal status increasingly are defined by the state (whether embodied in a central government or regional authorities) rather than religious institutions, within varying parameters ranging from those of secular France to selectively âtheocraticâ Israel. Finally, religious public-policy agendas are promoted by democratic and peaceful means, such as interest groups, social movements, political parties and elections. In some countries, religious groups enjoy official legitimation and their participation in the political processâvia confessional political parties, trade unions, or ârecognizedâ charitable associationsâis institutionalized; in others, religious groups have the same opportunity as other sectors of civil society to exert pressure on the public authorities by informal means. In some societies, adherence to a religion is less a matter of theology than kinship or other ascriptive ties. In short, in all these countries laĂŻcitĂ© is the dominant norm, although it may not be expressed in terms of the Jacobin dogma of republican France. This norm is reflected in the affirmation of fundamental rights, the religious neutrality of the state (at least in practice), freedom of religion and non-religion, and the autonomy of the individual conscience.
This is not to suggest that all countries have a uniform approach to religion. In six countriesâthe United States, France, Turkey, India and, more recently, Italy, Spain and Poland, religion has been âdisestablishedâ at least in some formal sense. In Greece, Israel (Northern) Ireland and the former Yugoslavia this has not yet been accomplished, in part because the very identity of these states continues to be defined in terms of a specific religion.
The British case is more complex: while there are two âestablishedâ religions, the non-established religions operate on a roughly equal playing field. Anglicanism may be the norm applied to the Crown, but it has gradually ceased to be the decisive indicator of Britishness (or even Englishness), and the continued reality of two established Churches has not had a chilling effect on the free exercise of a great variety of non-established religions. Yet religious equality has not yet been fully achieved: the âlords spiritualâ of only two religions have special representation in the House of Lords; and it is only very recently that former Catholic priests obtained the right to sit in the House of Commons.
In two of the countries under discussionâSpain under General Franco and France under Marshal PĂ©tainâreligious institutions once functioned as hand-maidens of autocratic governmentâbut they were politically deinstitutionalized as these countries returned to democracy. In fact, as democratization appeared inevitable, the Catholic Church in both countries adapted to the situation, if only in order to preserve what was left of its authority. In Spain, moreover (as Victor Urrutia argues), the Church anticipated democratic reforms toward the end of the Franco regime by supporting greater pluralism within civil society.
The essays presented here portray connections between religion on the one hand and ethnicity or nation on the other that reflect a considerable diversity, which can be summed up as follows:
- religion mixed (or fused) with ethnicityâin the cases of Greeks, Poles, Bosnians, Northern Irish Catholics and Israeli Jews;
- religion as transnational but as constituting, at the same time, a major element of national identityâin the cases of Turks, Serbs and Croats;
- religion as pluralistic, transethnic and nonpoliticalâin the cases of the United States, France, India and, increasingly, Great Britain and Spain.3
The cases of (former) Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland illustrate the fact that religion cannot always be separated from ethnonationalismâthat, indeed, the two have had a reciprocal influence. Yet there is no exact congruence between the two; for example, there are Albanian Kosovars who are Roman Catholic and Croatians who are Protestant. Similarly, in Ulster there are Catholics who wish to remain citizens of the United Kingdom and Protestants who would adjust without much difficulty to union with the Irish Republic. Furthermore, both religious and national identities are shaped by collective memories, especially a memory of cruelties perpetrated by one religious group against another. In addition, both religious and national identity may be reinforced, if not created, by institutional engineering and public policies.
Yugoslavia was established as a successor state that was from the beginning multiethnic, multilingual and multireligious. Under President Tito, religious pluralism was tolerated, because it did not interfere with ânation-buildingââi.e., the creation of a transethnic and transreligious Yugoslav political community based on Marxism, structured along federal lines and consolidated by means of a charismatic leader aided by the police. The intertwining of religion and ethnicity was exemplified by the Bosnian Muslims. The transformation of Bosnia-Herzegovina into a constituent republic under Tito led to the creation of a Bosnian Muslim nationality. This did not seem to matter too much, because the members of the various religious groups got along well in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. It was remarked that, âthe major difference between the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Muslims, and Jews [in that city] was that the Christians donât go to their churches, the Muslims donât go to the mosque, and the Jews donât go to synagogueâ.
Since the disaggregation of Yugoslavia, members of the various (Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian) communities seem to have turned to religion in order to provide an underpinning to their collective ethnic identities. The reassertion of such identities was stimulated and exploited by Serbian leader Slobodan MiloĆĄevi , whose oppressive cultural policies against the Albanian Kosovars fed the religious consciousness of the latter.
The interface between religion and politics is clearly apparent in Spain, where three religious groups lived in harmony for many generations; after the Inquisition, however, the country became so solidly Catholic that its culture and identity could not be disjoined from Roman Catholicism. During the fascist Franco regime, Catholicism became, in effect, an institutional component of the state. In the context of post-Franco democratization, several processes were inaugurated, among them secularization and the creation of a pluralistic society, a development that resulted in a gradual and partial âprivatizationâ of religion. This process, however, stopped short of clear separation of Church and state, since special formalized relationships were set up between the state and the Catholic Church on the one hand, and the other ârootedâ religions, such as Judaism, Islam and Protestantism, on the other.
Greece and Poland bear comparison because in both countries national and religious identities have tended to merge. Just as Greek Orthodoxy is a marker of âGreeknessâ, âto be Polish is to be Catholicâ. Both countries are committed to freedom of religion; but that commitment is limited in practice. Greek Orthodoxy enjoys a preferential status, while other religions have encountered official obstacles in their legitimation, if not their observances: for example, as Adamantia Pollis points out, the Eastern Orthodox leadership has been pressuring the public authorities to reinstate the mention of religion on identity cards. Muslims and Jews enjoy special legal status as well; but this means less than meets the eye. The Greek attitude to Islam is coloured by the countryâs more or less antagonistic relations with Turkey; and freedom of worship for Jews is not a significant public issue, since there are few Jews left in the country after the genocide committed during World War II (in which the role of the Greek Orthodox establishment was not negligible).4 Nevertheless, religious pluralism (or at least tolerance) is making steady progress, in part because of increasing secularization, and in part because of the influence and âsurveillanceâ of the European Union and the Council of Europe.
The role of religion in Poland is more complex. For many generations, the Church played a dominant role in the development of Polish national consciousness and, indeed, the Polish state.5 Poland developed as a distinct political entity when under the leadership of Duke Mieszko I, it embraced Christianity. The aristocracy and landed gentry were almost exclusively Catholic and (for the most part) Polish, and the Black Madonna of Cz stochowa became a powerful symbol of Catholic as well as Polish collective identity. From the fourteenth century on, many Jews and German Protestants settled in...