– Greetings, I’m Dr. Harold D. Lewis Sr., Vice President of Biblical Diversity, servin’ outta the national office in Orlando, Florida of the Converge movement. One of the questions I get asked often as I go around the Converge community facilitating biblical diversity workshops and seminars, Dr. Lewis, what’s the difference between biblical diversity
And secular diversity? Let that question sink in. What’s the difference between biblical diversity and secular diversity? Very good question and I’m goin’ to try and unpack it for you right now. Let’s start with the premise, first and foremost, that biblical diversity is a God idea.
Ah, let me say that again, biblical diversity is a God idea. Man did not concoct this idea about biblical diversity, however, they did co-opt it and went into a general kind of diversity, played with that diversity. God’s love letter, his word, the scripture, are littered with a number of texts
That talks about biblical diversity and God’s eternal expectation on how we should get along on the planet, not just as baptized and born again believers, but humanity in general. So let’s answer the question. What’s the difference between biblical diversity and secular diversity? Here it is, I’m afraid a mess up someone’s theology,
But it is what it is. Biblical diversity is predicated upon the word of God. Secular diversity is predicated upon the ways of the world. Biblical diversity submits only to God’s theocracy. Theocracy, yes, see God has a kingdom and in his kingdom he is a king and is not subject
To popular opinion or polls. Whereas secular diversity submits to government democracy. All you have to do is put a bill in place and folks vote on the bill and then whether or not God’s word commands it or not, people go contradiction towards it. Biblical diversity yields only to the commandments of God
Where secular diversity yields to polls, politician, and popular opinion. Case and point, in our world, we have all these different laws that are bein’ legislated how we should govern ourselves as, not only, general constituents in the country as citizens, but also regulatin’ the church. But God’s word specifically defines
How we should treat each other. God’s word specifically defines how we should not trespass against each other’s property, each other’s families. God’s word is distinct, the divinely distinguished, between biblical diversity and secular diversity. And so when we look into the world, the church is supposed and is called to be counter culture.
Counter culture, whatever racial tension that’s goin’ on in the world, we shouldn’t have that same racial tension in the church. We oughta come together on the Matthew chapter number 18 we talked about if you have ought against a brother or sister, go to that brother, one on one.
If that doesn’t work, take another disciple with you. If that doesn’t work, bring them before the council or the body and if that doesn’t work, bring them before the congregation. Biblical diversity, again, is predicated upon God’s word. Secular diversity is predicated upon the ways of the world. Until the next time.
IN WISCONSIN. I’M SOLEDAD O’BRIEN. WELCOME TO MATTER OF FACT, AS WE APPROACH THE 2024 ELECTIONS CYCLE, ONE SOCIAL ISSUE IS EMERGING AS A FLASHPOINT. IT’S THE ISSUE OF LGBTQ PLUS RIGHTS. WE’RE SEEING A RECORD NUMBER OF STATES INTRODUCING BILLS BANNING TRANSGENDER OR RELATED CARE AND ACTIVITY, SUCH AS GENDER AFFIRMING MEDICAL TREATMENT FOR
MINORS, PROHIBITIONS ON SURGERIES AND HORMONE THERAPIES AND SPORTS AND BATHROOM BANS. WELL, NOW THE ISSUE IS CREATING A RIFT IN MANY CHRISTIAN CHURCHES WHERE THE POLITICAL STANCE IS CHANGING. WHO’S SITTING IN THE PEWS? THE ANNUAL CENSUS OF AMERICAN RELIGION IN 2022 FOUND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S LARGEST GROUP OF RELIGIOUS VOTERS ARE WHITE EVANGELICALS.
AT 30%, WHILE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S LARGEST RELIGIOUS GROUP ARE CHRISTIANS OF COLOR. OUR CORRESPONDENT DINA DEMETRIUS TRAVELED TO WESTERN MICHIGAN TO SEE HOW CULTURAL ISSUES ARE SPLITTING CHURCHES ALONG PARTY LINES. AND IT PUT ONE YOUTH PASTOR’S CALLING INTO JEOPARDY. IN THE TOWN OF HOLLAND, MICHIGAN, YOUTH PASTOR CHRIS ANTON AND HIS FAMILY ARE
STRUGGLING WITH THE AFTERMATH OF HIS REFUSAL TO DENOUNCE LGBTQ RELATIONSHIPS. CHURCHES FEEL LIKE THEY HAVE TO TAKE THESE REALLY STRONG, DISHONEST, SO THEY MAKE IT A NON-NEGOTIABLE SYMBOL WHEN IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SALVATION AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS. IN HIS WORK, CHRIS HAS BRIDGED
CHURCH THEOLOGY WITH THE TOUGH QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIAL ISSUES THAT YOUNG PEOPLE ASK. I THINK CHURCHES WOULD BE MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE IF THEY WOULD JUST OPEN THEIR EARS AND LISTEN AND BE WILLING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT THESE DIFFICULT TOPICS INSTEAD OF BEING SCARED OF THEM. IN FEBRUARY, AFTER THREE YEARS,
CHRIS WAS LET GO FROM HIS POSITION IN THE LOCAL CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH, OR CRC. MOST TO THE STUDENTS ARE REALLY AFFIRMING OF LGBT RELATIONSHIPS. WE HAD STUDENTS IN OUR GROUP WHO WERE A PART OF THE LGBT COMMUNITY, RIGHT? AND SO PARENTS THEN WANT ME TO CONVINCE THEIR KID THAT THEY’RE NOT THAT.
AND IT’S LIKE, NO, I’M NOT. THAT’S NOT MY JOB. WAS THERE ALSO PRESSURE FROM YOUR PASTORS AND LEADERS IN THE CHURCH A LITTLE BIT FROM MY DIRECT BOSS, WHO I WORKED WITH. WE HAD HAD A LOT OF OPEN DISCUSSIONS ABOUT HOW WE BOTH FELT ABOUT LGBT RELATIONSHIPS.
AS I READ A LOT OF THE VERSES THAT PEOPLE WILL USE TO CONDEMN LGBTQ PEOPLE AND STARTED TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT IN WHICH THEY WERE WRITTEN, SORT OF TO UNDERSTAND INTERPRETATION. I BEGAN TO REALIZE THAT, OH NO, THE BIBLE DOES NOT TEACH THIS AT ALL. CONVICTION HAS COME AT A COST.
AS CHRIS WORKS A PART TIME RETAIL JOB LOOKING FOR ANOTHER POSITION. HIS WIFE, JENN, GRAPPLES WITH A LARGER LOSS. IT’S PRETTY RAW RIGHT NOW, AT LEAST FOR ME. I STILL COMPLETELY AM IN LOVE WITH JESUS CHRIST AND I’M STILL CHRISTIAN, BUT I THINK ORGANIZED RELIGION IS NOT THE PLACE FOR ME RIGHT NOW.
IN 2022, THE CRC IS GOVERNING SIN AND TOOK THE UNPRECEDENTED POSITION THAT ACTIVELY PURSUING SAME SEX RELATIONS IS A CONFESSIONAL ISSUE, MEANING IT’S A SIN. NOW CHURCH LEADERS CAN NO LONGER SAY GAY MARRIAGE IS ACCEPTABLE. THAT MEANS THAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE THAT POSITION, THEIR POSITION IN THE CHURCH IS THREATENED.
LEN VAN DER ZEE IS A CRC PASTOR FOR 53 YEARS. HE SAYS THE DOCTRINAL CHANGE TOOK PLACE WITHOUT THE USUAL COMMITTEE DEBATE. PARTLY IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE OF THE WHOLE POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE WITHIN OUR COUNTRY AND IT’S SO STRONG AND IT INHIBITS REAL DISCUSSION OF PEOPLE WITH EACH OTHER, REAL UNDERSTANDING.
NOW, A PAINFUL DECISION IS LOOMING FOR SOME CRC CHURCHES TO BREAK AWAY. IF THE 2023 SYNOD DOESN’T ACCEPT THEIR OVERTURES FOR MORE INCLUSIVE DISCUSSION. WHERE WE’RE SEEING REAL DIVISIONS HAPPEN IS WITHIN A LOT OF THE MAINLINE PROTESTANT CHURCHES, METHODIST CHURCH, LUTHERAN CHURCH, PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. MATTHEW WILSON TEACHES RELIGION AND POLITICS AT SMU.
IF THE COMMON FAITH IS NO LONGER STRONG ENOUGH TO OVERCOME THE DIFFERENCES REGARDING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL QUESTIONS, THE CHURCH RISKS BECOMING YET ONE MORE ARENA WHERE PEOPLE SORT THEMSELVES ALONG POLITICAL LINES AND SHUT OUT ALL COMPETING VIEWS. WILSON SAYS THAT WHILE PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTIVISM HAS ALWAYS BEEN PART OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHURCH, THE
WHITE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IS NOW THE BACKBONE OF THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT. AND INCREASINGLY, THIS IS THE NEW THING FOR POLITICAL REASON. TO MATCH THEIR RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY WITH THEIR IDEAL LOGICAL AND COMFORT ZONE. CRC MEMBER MEL SOLEY SAYS THAT SEARCH FOR A PARTIZAN COMFORT ZONE IS NOW CAUSING SCHISMS WITHIN HER MORE MODERATE CONGREGATION.
NAVIGATING THE CONVERSATIONS. IT’S A CHALLENGE BECAUSE YOU YOU WALK ON THIS REALLY THIN ICE, RIGHT? LIKE FRIENDSHIPS HAVE BEEN LOST. PEOPLE SIT ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE CHURCH NOW THAN THEY USED TO BECAUSE SO-AND-SO IS OVER THERE AND I DON’T ALIGN WITH THEM. AND IT JUST IS MESSY. THE HURTS THAT I’VE EXPERIENCED
DO NOT COMPARE TO THOSE OF THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY WHEN THEY COME OUT AND WHEN THEY STAY WHO THEY ARE, WHO GOD CREATED THEM TO BE. FOR CHRIS SANTORUM, THERE’S NO CURRENT CHURCH HOME. BUT HE’S COME TO FIND HIS CENTER IS WITH PEOPLE AT THE EDGES. ALL OF THIS IS WORTH IT TO STAND
WITH THE MARGINALIZED BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT’S WHERE JESUS IS STANDING AS WELL. IN WESTERN
– Welcome back, I’m Michael Kessler, executive director of the Berkeley Center faculty member in the government department and theology in the Law Center. This panel is our final panel before we hear from Jose, who will have the floor in about an hour and a half. The topic is “Contested Concepts: Religion, Fundamentalism, Secularism.”
We have three very distinguished colleagues of Jose, friends of the center, eminent scholars. First R. Scott Appleby, who’s the Marilyn Keough, Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs, and a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. It’s been 27 years since you concluded a major project,
Which is the subject of one of the contested claims here, the fundamentalism project, but it’s done much work on contending modernities among many other topics. Next is Beth Hurd, who is the professor of political science and religious studies and holds the Crown Chair in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University,
And works on religion, immigration policy, the global politics of secularism, and where I know her most from debates in religious freedom, and secularism. And last, but not least, is Hent de Vries, who is the Paulette Goddard Professor of the Humanities at New York University
And director of the summer School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, and formally, much closer to us at Johns Hopkins. So we have asked each of the panelists to offer about eight minutes of reflection on the significance of Jose’s work in light of these three contested categories
And their own thinking about the significance and the challenges ahead. So first, Scott. – I wanna join everyone in thanking our host. And since Bob Hefner began a litany Allah continue of spurned suitors of Jose, at the same time Notre Dame was trying to grab you. But for some reason, apparently,
You decided the Jesuits were more meaningful to you than the congregation of Holy Cross a younger French, I don’t know why, why you did that. – Today is not the day. – I’ve got three quick parts, and I’m gonna stick to my text so I can stick to my time. Overall, I’m asking how his mind has changed. That’s the core of what I wanna talk about. The fact of deep and abiding pluralism, expressive of multiple and varied forms of religious and secular interaction,
And co-imbrication renders it impossible to speak of the modern world as determined by a single material structural or moral homogenizing process. This much we have learned from Jose and others. On the other hand, they remain striking non-superficial, non-trivial resemblances across these multiple forms and expressions of religion, which demand closer scrutiny before assuming
That the forms and expressions are not each in its own way, partaking in reacting to a set of global conditions and circumstances that we’ve identified, for example, the widening excessive inequality between rich and poor within and across regions, countries and localities, the increasingly ubiquitous regulatory reach of the state,
The ramifying contestation is about an over social media and other technologically empowered methods of social control, we could proliferate some of these well known contemporary conditions, such conditions and circumstances further demand of an evoke from all religious and indeed secular subgroups, a logic of response. A strategy or strategies of resistance, accommodation,
Withdrawal, whatever it may be. By the way, this little part of my presentation is just letting you know what I’ve learned these two days. I hope it’s by way of summary and his account of religious subjectivities during the previous session, Patrick Gilger called this what I’m calling a logical response to the circumstances,
A style of public participation or publicity in his Catholic cases the style is premised on an acceptance of differentiation in the public square, while resisting differentiation and preserving the integrity or wholeness of the religious or spiritual community in question. And of course, we know there are multiple publicities, multiple logics of response
And disparate justifications for each chosen logic. So it seems to me the question we’ve posed this last day, is how we might ask, does the combination of the core premises of modernity as experienced today, and deepening pluralism. How does that combination contextualize the moral and organizational choices
Which religious and secular movements and groups make, those are the contexts. This is my way of asking how has Casanova’s mind changed since the publication of public religions 28 years ago. 14 years ago, right cutting that period in half, he gave us a midterm report, and a 2008 essay published
And hence religions beyond the concept volume. There, Jose revisits public religions after 911, after the political ascendancy of Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis, after he had begun to wrestle Jose, that is with the fact of religious pluralism in a newly profound way. And as he was pivoting toward his concept of global denominationalism.
At the time, Jose was still enamored of both multiple modernities and the twin tolerations. And even though it seemed that I heard yesterday, a little bit of backing off on the multiple modernities concept, I’d like to hear more about that. I think Jose would still stand by his rejection
Of the single cosmopolitan modernity as a general process of secular differentiation, indeed, is a normative global project. But the question is then, how are we to conceptualize plural global imaginaries? And how are they different now than when the Jesuits roamed the earth embedding themselves in non-European cultures? And what are global denominations exactly?
Is this an updated form of the Global Local, Jose cause Pentecostalism in that 2008 essay, maybe not for the first and certainly not the last time cause Pentecostalism, the first non-territorial global religion. If I understand you correctly, but we Catholics know that the Jesuits are a religion unto themselves and their extraterritoriality
Preceded the Pentecostals by centuries. And are the Pentecostals really still recognizably unrecognizable, in terms of their lack of structure, doctrine, their logic of resistance and a combination? I think that’s an evolving question. There was great enthusiasm then in 2008, and I heard yesterday as well from Jose and others,
For integrating into any theory proposing to comprehend religious secular, modern ways of knowing, believing and acting, such new old facts as inter-civilizational encounters, trans-cultural limitations and borrowing, diasporic diffusions and hybridity. This awareness, appreciation and integration Jose wrote in 2008, would surely displace the presumption of Western hegemony in cosmopolitan homogenization.
Adding that he added, that we tended to call any religious or secular threat to this western enlightened project fundamentalism. And this thus is introduced the contested term I’m supposed to address here and what remains. I’m not sure if in that article, Jose was defending the fundamentalists, denying their existence or defending the anti-modernists,
Who are typically denigrated as being a threat by virtue of their resistance to what they see as atheistic modernism. In any case, I come not to deny their existence and not quite to to defend them. But to agree with the claim implicit in Jose’s condemnation of binaries, that they,
So called fundamentalist should not be relegated to the uncharted waters of the ancient maps that simply warned here be Monsters, or as we would say today, here be bad religion. Of course, fundamentalisms are hardly anti-modern, they are quite modern, it fiercely opposed to elevating the conventional technical and material aspects
Of modernity to an existential way of being in the world. In its most egregious misapplication, fundamentalism is applied to any movement, party or individual who offers theological or religious warrants for their public positions and programs, when those positions or programs are judged by the labeler, to deviate significantly
From liberal secular or cosmopolitan norms. If non-violence and this is a theme I like us to pick up at the end to return to the question that it’s arisen here a couple of times. If non-violence is to be the one true global fundamental, as it were.
Extremist religious groups are hardly the only violators of this one moral norm, whose universality is thinly assumed but observed in the breach every hour. The 17 clusters of movements, groups, organizations we studied in the 90s, roughly simultaneous to the writing of public religions, under the rubric of fundamentalism.
These clusters of movements included Hindu, Jewish, Islamic as well as Christian offshoots, did appear to follow a comparable mode of religious logic, a habit of mine which manifested itself, the mutatis mutandis as a strategy or a set of strategies, by which believers attempted to preserve what they embraced,
As their distinctive identity as a people or group, feeling this identity to be at risk. They fortified it by selective retrieval of doctrines, beliefs and practices from sacred or primordial past. These retrieved fundamentals were defined, modified and sanction in the spirit of shrewd pragmatism. They are to serve as a bulwark
Against the encroachment of outsiders, who threatened to draw the believers into a syncretistic our religious or irreligious cultural milieu. Moreover, these fundamentals are accompanied in the new religious portfolio by unprecedented claims and doctrinal innovations. By the strength of these innovations and the new supporting doctrines. The retrieved and updated fundamentals are mentary
Regain the same charismatic intensity today by which they originally forge communal identity from the formative revelatory religious experience long ago. These groups took different attitudes to the state as they do today. From the Hindutva organizations in India, the secular Jews in the West Bank, the Bible believers in the US,
Who, each in one way or another, enjoy a mutually manipulative and interdependent partnership with a supposedly secular state. To across the spectrum state defying would be state replacing Muslim Congress, they recognized and exploited internal religious pluralism. And while they made a big noise about despising external pluralism, these 17 clusters groups and movements
Shared a tendency to borrow and continue to borrow from secular as well as other religious ideologies and tactics. My point is, they’re not so much far out there and the kind of processes we’ve been describing across movements. They’re not that much of an outlier. And not least they became increasingly transnational
From the early 20th century onward to this day. So why can’t these types of groups be seen to fit rather neatly with and be generously included within the array of global religious forms across a moral and ideological spectrum? Unless, of course, the global denominations must be called
And expected to develop something like a moral consensus, say, against violence, against the repression of women, the taking of slaves, and so on. This of course, is something very like, the good old secular religious consensus that inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So this is yet another way of asking you, Jose,
How your mind has changed on these questions. And particularly, I’d like also to get a minute to explore not only the question of non-violence in this global imaginary, but also your comments about moral pluralism and what that might mean. – Thank you so much, that was great.
Jose, you’ll have a few minutes after each host speak. – Put at the end. – At the end, yeah, Beth. – Okay, thank you so much, Michael. Hi, everyone, it’s good to be here. Thank you, Jose, for hosting this wonderful event. In a recent post, a shout out to my colleague here
On the contending modernities blog. Nelson Maldonado Torres reminds us that whoever defines, identifies and explains religion wields much power. I think we’d all agree this makes Jose very powerful. Today, I’m interested in pursuing his important work on the category and history of religion by considering what it means to decolonize,
Globalize and pluralize this category, that is to use the modern term religion to teach with it, to write about and around it. How do we do that? Given its intense entanglements with colonialism, its dizzyingly complex legal lives, its embeddedness and even complicity at times in histories of domination,
Many of which we’re now learning are deeply racialized. Is it possible to use this category without reproducing these hierarchies? Is it possible to do something other than simply say, we were wrong. Modern rational religion we all know was defined by a lack of entanglement with supernatural power, with magic are with the state.
Bad religion is criminalized as dangerous, uncivilized, wild, pre-modern, thuggish and demonic. In his earlier work, Jose provided an alternative a powerful alternative to these simplistic narratives. Yet we know that making religion across colonial settings did mean excluding practices described as superstition, magic, witchcraft, and so on. Working in the shadow of religion,
As I’m proposing here does not mean that we can just include those practices in the category and then move on. You can be a religion, you can be a religion, and so can you. Instead, we have more work to do, we need to decolonize and pluralize the category itself
Open it up into and onto other possibilities, and “To Think Religion Otherwise,” which is the title of the paper that this talk is based on. I agree with Webb Keen, we can’t just throw away these categories though. They’re part of elite and everyday discourse as they mediate self awareness just about everywhere.
He says the categories of themselves become social facts. David Chittister agrees after reviewing the history of religions, colonial productions and reproductions we might happily abandon religion and religious terms of analysis, if we were not as the result of that very history, stuck with them. So my question is simple, are we stuck?
Standing in the shadow of this category means I think striking a balance, taking some distance from it without acting as if it’s no longer influential. Here I wanna highlight a new book that I think achieves this balance admirably Brent Crosson, “Experiments with Power: Obeah and the Remaking of Religion in Trinidad.”
Brent sets out with the benign intention of recuperating Obeah, a form of spiritual work to add it to the pantheon of protected world religions. He wanted to show Obeah as also a religion. He wanted to morally vindicate it from ambivalence and even dark popular associations,
Which he conceived of as the product of its colonial and postcolonial criminalization. It was actually a crime in Trinidad until 2000, and remains a crime today, in much of the Anglophone Caribbean. Crosson runs into problems. He’s forced outside of the category of religion and into its shadows and here things get interesting.
He says, I came to my research wanting to defend Obeah as a religion, but his interlocutors reversed the terms of this project. Rather than making Obeah into a religion. They made me ask, How does spiritual work challenge the hegemonic limits of the category of religion itself, forced outside the comfort of this category,
Crossing abandons his redemptive project. Some religions then it appears are forced into the shadows. An example is the American occupation of Haiti 100 years ago, in which historian Kate Ramsey shows US occupiers equated sorcery with popular insurgency. Sorcery was in fact framed as the source of insurgency.
The Americans enforced laws against lisa tillage or spells in the name of moral decency and of consolidating American control of the island. This was not understood to involve the export of or establishment of religion, however, but the promotion of universal values of free market, modern scientism, public health, secular marriage and gender conventions,
The rule of law and religious freedom. And this is a global story involving the invention of modern ideals not only of religion and secularism, but also citizenship and nationalism. Now, some might counter that that category of religion has already been adequately decolonized and dissected.
The US is after all out of Haiti, at least for now. But my current research on Santa Muerte the patron saint of the marginalized in the poor in the American Mexican Borderlands suggest otherwise. Santa Muerte has many devotees in the Borderlands and all over North America.
In the eyes of US law enforcement, however, and echoing their forefathers who occupied Haiti a century ago, Santa Muerte poses an existential threat to US national security. This is palpable in a 2011 master’s thesis written for the US Marine Corps University in Quantico, whose title says it all,
“Santa Muerte: Threatening the U.S. Homeland.” The author warns Santa Muerte is in and of itself a religion incompatible to good order and discipline and promotes a society of lawbreakers. Counterterrorism authorities describe devotion to her as spiritual insurgency involving the worship of a perverted Christian God,
To invite her and her devotees into the pantheon of world religions I think would be a mistake. How do we do them justice without reducing them to the categories from which they’ve been so violently excluded? Here, I think Jose’s current work on the Jesuits rises to the challenge by opening new perspectives
On early modern globalization and Jesuit evangelization. That challenged persuasively modern assumptions about the West globalization and modernity. He calls us to focus on the brokers, on the borders, on the spaces in between. I’ve run into one of his Jesuits in my current work in the borderlands Eusebio Francisco Kino, Father Kino,
A Tyrolean Jesuit missionary explorer, cartographer, and astronomer, whose missions in the primary altar, which is now Northern Sonora, Southern Arizona, shaped the political, cultural and religious landscape in the late 1600s until his death in 1711. Father Kinos legacy lives on today in the Kino Border Initiative,
Which works on behalf of humane migration policy between Mexico and the US. The Jesuits to perhaps came to live in the shadow of religion overtaken as they were at the time of their expulsion, by the rise of a new kind of Western hegemony. Perhaps Jose would agree that modern religion is crossed
And concludes must be pursued through what it excludes, rather than through its recognized representations. In our search for new vocabularies to approach the ambivalence of power beyond modern religions, moral racial limits, Jose escorts us to and through an earlier world before those limits had firmly taken hold. Obeah, Santa Muerte and aspects indeed,
Of the early modern Jesuits practice, exceed a model of religions is mutually exclusive communities gathered together around sets of beliefs and rituals. They allow us to think religion otherwise, thank you. – Well, thank you. – Good morning. I would like to begin, as well by thanking Jose Casanova
For making this wonderful event possible for the book and the subsequent work that we are celebrating. It has accompanied me, since its publication, and in my own individual research, and in collaborative projects, devoted in reverse order to the history, concept and ongoing relevance of so called political theologies,
To the empirical and also intrinsic relation between religion and violence, religion and media, old and new. And last but not least, and more recently, in a project on spiritual practices, or exercises,. Jose’s work has been a constant reference also that I have shared with my students
Assigned on syllabi, and is part of my Canon so to speak. It’s an honor to be here today, and to learn from you all. And I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Thomas Banchoff, Michael Kessler and Ruth Copan, for their repeated gestures of hospitality,
Here at the Berkeley Center over the years. There’s little that has not already been set, and better than I can do it. So let me just make a few personal observations and propose some further, I’m afraid, all too abstract and somewhat speculative thoughts, on which I hope to expand in the written version
Of this contribution. In some, I want to say something about the ongoing relative, in my view, metaphysical and pragmatic usefulness of the category of religion, perhaps over and against the others in the title of our panel, namely fundamentalism and secularism. That’s a bit of a provocative claim, but,
And I won’t be able to substantiate the claim sufficiently, but at least it’s a thought. I’ve also been intrigued by Jose’s more recent proposal to look at early modern Ignatian spirituality and its forms of organization, quote, through the prism of globalization, and conversely, of looking at the letter
Through the lens of the former while avoiding both anachronism and reductionism. And I would like to venture some very tentative suggestions as to where that might leave us now. A quarter century after the publication of by now classic public religions in the modern world, quite a few things, undeniably data and trends,
Causes and ends have significantly changed and become more apparent. So my question basically, is in what ways and to what extent, have global transformations affected the books underlying concept of Public Religion, as it has continued and it seems increasingly manifested itself, in what we are still inclined to call the modern world.
Have these transformations or rather, revolutions, which are not merely scientific and technological, but economic and political. And that we somewhat vaguely designate as global have they necessitated shifts in our understanding, that are nothing short of paradigmatic, or have we merely come to see that there are still more blanks to fill in
Epicycles in the overall pictures to add, and so on and so forth? Do we need to broaden our horizon to include for example, non-western or non-European, say non-secular, pre para or post actual cultural domains, regions and periods, to improve our comprehension of what has happened and keep on happening, keeps on happening today?
Or do recent phenomena and current affairs that we are faced with require that we more fully reset and reorient our thinking, and one hopes, also, our acting and practices or practices in a more profound and vertical fashion, espousing an altogether different metaphysical and pragmatic viewpoint, one that is at once deep and resolute,
For lack of better words. In any case, should we perhaps adopt a perspective and take an approach that cast its net, even wider still, reaching back into the what I like to call immemorial past and archive of religion, and more, perhaps even further out into the unfathomable future,
While continuing to search also around us, for all that does not quite match our expectations so far? This much is clear. In the last quarter century, ever newer and paradoxically, in the very nature and structure or format, more and more global publics have kept emerging.
And this up to a point and beyond the critical point, where the polysemy of the very meaning of public, as well as for that matter of modern or world, including their enabling, surrounding and transcending Lifeworld in the western alien and Habermasian lingo, have undergone fundamental and wide ranging changes.
There is little doubt that the original meaning and force contributed, attributed to the concept and practice of Publix has been subject to a near-alietory process of indefinite perhaps infinite dissemination, which has all the demeaning and used or force of these concepts and references in question virtually beyond recognition.
As a consequence, we can no longer simply assume that a single or even pluralistic body or body politic, made up of constitutive products, with some overlapping consensus so much as exists in our present, if ever it did, or ever did, and does that it has much chance of surviving
The ongoing proliferation and exponential growth of proverbial markets of commerce and communication, money and instrumentalisation not to say militarization to say nothing about the more and more recurrent at times symbolical, at times violent reactions and revolts against them. After all, the letter hardly restore the older sense of public.
If anything, they modernized transform and globalize it further diffusing its putative origins as if there were none. And this is perhaps why fundamentalism were always so deeply modern. Now, I would like to give an example as to where the contemporary emargination puts pressure on the boundaries of these concepts of public religion,
But also of fundamentalism and secularism. When the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, in his 2020 novel, “The Ministry for the Future” recommended by President Obama and New York Times podcaster, Ezra Klein as a must read, which I agree with. Invokes the inalienable rights of generations of future beings,
The totality of mankind and indeed of all non-human animals. When in fact and as a matter of principle, he thinks through the models to enforce them, with virtually all possible means, ranging from the diplomacy and exertion of soft power to covert that is, strictly speaking, extra judicial forms of violence when necessary,
And also resorting, interestingly to old and new religious sensibilities. But this is both metaphysically, abhorrent and pragmatically sound, when gets, I think an idea of totality of universality fundamentally might mean, totality here is almost like an idea of a good beyond being, but indispensable nonetheless.
In both our present and Robinson’s “Not Too Distant Future,” sociological and intellectual categories, such as fundamentalism and secularism seem less and less relevant, or at the very least, not that productive, in the sense of conducive to greater justice, equality, and the democratic mobilization of movements and masses,
Which would be required to ward off the worst and to avoid the catastrophe. If the ongoing changes in the meaning as well as reality, one is tempted to say a reality and virtuality of the global in these above remarks are correctly summarized then, surely the analytical tools, and the normative realm of expectations
And justifications must have shifted and must further shift accordingly. And yet, while the contested concepts and practices of fundamentalism and secularism have in my judgment largely succumbed to the quote, unquote, death of 1000 qualifications, to cite Anthony Flew in his famous article, “Theology and Falsification”
That is under the onslaught of the multiple historical and empirical, social, cultural, economic and political pressures of the current late modern age, such that there is also ample reason to believe that they are in their very concept and what remains of their practices increasingly worn out
Then this, my suggestion is, is not the case of religion. We need not naturalize or even believe so much as we need, that we need religion. As Robert Towler’s suggested title “Homoreligiosis wants all too naively implied,” and as Hans Joas nuanced considerably,
In order for us to claim that it religion continues to form or at least inform our horizon for now. In this respect as a critical term, and heuristics or strategic concept, religion has already shown to have a longer lifespan than any of its contenders or offshoots, or even presumed successor forms.
We will be still talking religion, just as there will be an abundance of and I would say need for God talk. Well, after fundamentalism and secularism, have lost much of their present currency. I would even go so far as to suggest that perhaps the terms populism and liberalism,
Both in its relatively benign form of political liberalism, and in its pernicious economic ideology of neoliberalism, may well have been the most plausible substitutes for these theorems, fundamentalism and secularism. Just as authoritarianism and naturalism are their political, theoretical and quasi epistemic analogues and functional equivalents. Anti-authoritarianism was, as you will recall,
The later Richard Rorty’s term of choice to demarcate the stance he had earlier to his regret, described as anti-clericalism. And naturalism he added in an essay on God talk, or to be no longer in the business of ontology, but precisely of cultural politics, which simply means of figuring out
What is better for us to believe. Now, I have some further remarks, giving an example with the help of Jose’s work on the Jesuits and globalization. But I’m looking at Michael, because I may have to leave that for the next round. – Maybe leave that for the next round,
Because I think each of you have opened up a number of questions that I think we should let Jose who has been exceedingly patient throughout this conference, to jump in, and perhaps answer a couple of these important questions, and then we can continue to probe each other’s definitions. – Why don’t we ask questions, rather than- – It’s your show. So, Beth, Scott, Hent. Beth, you were taking a lot of notes when Hent was opening his critique of religion and religions. Do you have further questions for him? – I’ll probably need some time to think about it. Before I have a question.
But I agree with this on its sort of gut reaction level, that these terms secularism and fundamentalism are worn out in the words that you use, and that religion, I’m not sure I agree. I think it’s worn out in certain ways too but maybe it has other aspects or other dimensions
That have yet to be fully thought and fully explored. So I think I’m on the same page there. And I do think that asking this question about the concepts in Jose’s book, the terms that you’re using, the categories that you rely on, and how the development
Since that book came out almost 30 years ago, may have actually transformed the meaning of those terms, how we’ve understood them, what goes into them, and the need to sort of catch up, I think and reassess. How do we think the questions that Jose was thinking when you wrote that excellent book?
How do we think, how do we ask those questions today? Are they different questions? If so, how are they different? And if they’re different questions, do we require different concepts in order to reorient and reset the conversation? So I think the forward looking aspect, the kind of renovation of those content concepts,
The revisiting of those concepts is a really important task for us today. And I would love to hear your thoughts because, we always I remember Willington Talal said to me, “I never read anything I wrote, after it’s published, I will not read it.”
And I thought, wow, I really like reading what you wrote after it was published. But I kind of, I think that all of us, when we go back and visit something I’m imagining here and projecting on to you, Jose, but after 30 years, you think, wow, to what extent
Does this still hold water? Is it still alive and still speak to the transformations and challenges of our time. And so to me to reassess those categories and to rethink what we mean by publics. And what we mean by religion and to kind of renovate
Our understanding of them to update with where we sit today, I think is just extraordinarily important. And I agree with, initially with what Hent was talking about, although I don’t know what an alieatory processes. I have to admit, I’m not quite that fancy. But- – What doesn’t know. – I wanna just build on this also, because I know Jose wants to listen and wait before he jumps on your, where you’re leaving Beth, the word one of the words you used when you refer to the tired nature of fundamentalism, secularism, maybe even religion, is neoliberalism.
And I think if I understood you correctly, you were saying almost you could replace some of these terms within the category or put them within the category near liberalism if I understood you correctly. This question is why come back to the question of a moral global or what that might mean?
And whether what we’re talking about we step back within the sphere of religion, but not only religion, that the world is even more clearly configured around power dynamics, wealth accumulation, neoliberal capitalism, and everyone in a way, is in some kind of responsive mode, accommodation resistance mode. And so the question is almost not
What is fundamentalism, what is secularism? But what are the kinds of modes of reaction, response, resistance, accommodation, to a global order that has seemed to me to be overwhelmed by markets, by capital, by wealth, by this widening inequality, which affects religious expressions, but not those alone? So whether fundamentalism or secularism,
Whatever these terms should become or or be shelved? I think the question, the moral questions of violence, and I’ve been pleased that these have come up as including in the tribute to the constructive and positive explorations you’re making about how do we move forward in a moral framework within this context?
I think those are really interesting questions. And we almost come back to these contested terms after thinking about what is the context that we’re all facing, and which religious groups can opt out of that, which religious groups can escape it. Maybe the Amish but but even the Amish so anyway,
That your immigration there have a larger social and economic, I think homogenizing tendencies that are more pronounced than they were in 2008, 1994 changed his game for us in a way. – To read or do you want me to enter the conversation Hent? – Well, I was going to give two quotes from the later essay that I referred to on the Jesuits and globalization, where you write two things that struck me deeply. And I’m grappling with what the implications of it would be,
And where it would lead us. So one quote is that, “We are entering a new dissented global age after Western hegemony. And the other is the following and perhaps even deeper, where you say, and I quote again, if on take seriously the argument that processes of globalization are contingent historical processes,
Not functionally necessary processes are consequences of modernity, that the most important lesson from the global history of the Society of Jesus, as its prefigures globalization and for helps us to form a lens as what route might have been taken as well, is that different historical processes
Could have led to a different age of globalization.” And then you conclude by saying one enters and that’s the abstract speculative thought that appeals to be hopeless metaphysician as I am among social scientists and political scientist. “One enters thereby into the highly problematic, yet illuminating field of speculative what if stories,.
The merit of such theoretical exercise or thought experiment resides not so much in its ability to construct rational social structures freed from any particular historical constraint, but rather, it is facilitating the critical reflexivity that is required to free ourselves from what Charles Taylor calls the unthought,
That is to allow us to reflect critically upon the deep taken for granted structures of our own epistemic and metaphysical presuppositions.” And so without wanting to develop this now in the article, which now most of you will have read and which I cannot render in a few terms, the question then becomes,
So what is this appeal to another globalization in the early phase of the globalization mean to us without falling into reductionism or anachronism? How is that counter model as it were a prism or lens that allows us to reopen, let’s say, the debate on globalization and on modernity.
My fascination with that was that, it speaks exactly to what I suggested earlier, namely that, religion is and remains the larger immemorial archive whose unfathomable resources will inform even the most enlightened critical thinking. And through the sheer wealth and depth of that repository and reservoir, enlightenment thought or more than secularity
Will always be on the losing end, be less imaginative, less resourceful, less interesting, less but it’s better for us to believe as it were. At the same time, I could not suppress a certain worry, namely, as to whether the model of Ignatian Spirituality and its practices would allow for an openness
To everything that the contemporary world demands and challenges and asks of us as it were. And in that sense, my abstract speculative or metaphysical question is perhaps also my being stuck in a certain Habermasian perspective, not so much of the discourse theoretical framework, but this sense that you find prominently
In the Theory of Communicative Action, that modernity stands and falls and rationality stands in falls with there being a formal concept of an objective world, nature, the social world and an inner world that can be filled up, that can be particularized in multiple ways. And the challenge I think in religion,
And that may be the distinction between rational, relation and lived religion, or revealed religion, or historical religion, is always whether it’s universal idea seats to a form of particular reason, that at the same time also always opens up as it were. But I’ll stop here for now. – While those are impossible questions,
I wish I had some answers to them. I mean, I think we need to pause them today. Let’s begin with a one your race on global denominationalism and who do we include here, which is close to your question, who is included in our category of religion and who is excluded is bad Religion,
Therefore not religion, but magic. Which of course brings us to Durkheim in the sacred and profane because really, for him the fundamental distinction between religion and magic. Religion is the publicly sacred, whatever is societally publicly sacred is religion, whatever is private and it’s magic and superstition. Which is a way of saying that
Privatize religion precisely is magic, while the sacred secular is what is the sacred in modern societies. This way of putting it. So on global denominationalism, the arena making history based on the place of mutual recognition. Of recognition without giving up the claims to truth of any of the religions
To accept and the equal claims of others. So this is one aspect of it. And actually, the idea came to me very obviously, when I was doing simply visiting in Umbanda temple in Sao Paulo. The founder is a famous heart surgeon, so a very secular expert,
But also has written a lot of books on all forms of oriental mysticism, Indian, Tantric, Parisian, Sufi. So he’s both a scholar of mysticism. He’s a surgeon and he’s the priest of the so called superstition, let’s say Afro-Brazilian religion. And the slogan in their own temple is, we are different but not unequal. In this idea, yes, we are different, we are not Christian, we have a different religion, but this can make us less than others. So this notion of emphasizing the uniqueness, the particularity, while also appealing to the universality, so how can we do both? And obviously, I think the solution has to be
In some form of linking of precisely religions in the sense of the post-sacred Axial religions dealing with transcendence, therefore, the end the notion of civil religion. So we have to accept both, a global denominationalism, which brings a certain affirmation of the difference of his religion and the right to be different,
While also accepting their claims to equality, universality, whatever, while at the same time realizing that this is not enough, that we still need some common moral universalism, let’s call it the sterilization following hands, the sterilization of the human person that precisely will lead to some questions of non-violence.
So not the sacralized the human person. But what this means in practical terms, it cannot be answered theoretically. For me, it’s very clear that whatever we call equality, gender equality, obviously we all are for gender equality, will my colleagues, Muslim feminists claim that for them Islam is the best religion
Because it is the one that really, really emphasizes gender equality, all my secular feminists what are they talking about? So obviously, we are both appealing to the principle of gender equality and yet what it means for us concretely personally is very different things. But this also what, the same thing goes to public
Is fear in democracy, et cetera. I was always stuck on socialities, I spent all my life teaching the founders of the discipline, Marx, Durkheim, excuse me, Marx, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Weber, and then Mosei and then the Chicago. And for me Tocqueville, these obsessive with the notion that equality, democratic equality is the providential,
Unstoppable force of global history, that nobody can stop it, everything is contributing to equality. And he calls democratisation the unstoppable force. And he could not see gender equality as part of this force. So if the great prophet of equality is really marvel at the fundamental definition of what is,
Could not see gender equality, you realize precisely how pragmatically we are embedded in countries that we do not allow us to ask this question. So the best we can do is precisely to free ourselves from the unthought. And how do we do it? Well, then precisely by being able to
Cross from our culture to others, from our language to others, from our historical period to others. What the gesture is this for me? For me the Jesuits had been the typical anti-enlightenment, anti-modern, I’m come from Spain, they are bad guys, because they were the bad guys in barbarous police history,
They decided with the country formation, decided with the anti-enlightenment, and so in the nation, they were spelled rightly so many times. And then the question is, why did everybody gang up on them? Where they so dangerous, so bad that everybody, every Catholic Kings as they had to be expelled from every country?
Every Catholic king and then ultimately by the Pope’s and so on. The idea is, I realized how much my whole thought is caught up in the fundamental Theories of Modernity, which is was what sociology is, a theory of modality. Hegemony theory of western modality. And to free myself from it,
I had to go beyond or earlier than modernity, and realize it when I say that the global age something is, we are entering. That we cannot view this simply as a continuation of western modality. That we have to realize that, we have to break with this western hegemonic face
Of organizing the world, either through capitalism, through the West national system of state, but how to do it? So again, it’s not a so another question of counterfactual. But then the idea is, when they go, when Kino goes to Sinaloa, when Kino goes to the Southwestern Native Americans.
I mean I visited Kino territory in Mexico two years ago and fascinating to see these tribes that still remained bear the Jesuits is that left them for 200 and they didn’t want to have any other priests but them. So they’ve welcomed the Jesuits again, now they are the missionaries,
They are the missionaries they respect. But the same thing was with the Japanese that have been underground for 200 years and with the French missionary in the 19th century came, and after having been exposed to so many Protestant Christians, a Protestant ministers and they ask this, are you married?
No, I’m not marry, I’m a Catholic priest so you are a padre. The idea again, so the idea that somehow there was a relationship there. So the question to colonial how to decolonize, to realize the colonial encounter was much more complex than our own theories of colonialists.
That religion has not been simply the construction of Western circularity. And this is my main distinction with Talal Asad. The notion in the beginning, the encounter of the Jesuits, they themselves didn’t know what religion is and they don’t use the category. But in the encounter itself,
They open up a possibility of different types of things, differential of religion and culture. So it has been a process of 300, 400 years. So we have to enter the whole intercolonial exchanges, heavy, much more complex than our theories of Western hegemony and anti-Western Orientalism imply. – [Beth] Absolutely.
– So this is basically way of getting at it. Obviously, hands a bit, I was going to make this come in later. Yesterday, when I felt this fantastic reconstruction of my live work, I was not shocked because I had read it before in German. Otherwise, I could be shocked
That somebody can understand yourself better than you do. And in reconstructed and by looking precisely in the particular programmatic countries, the seats in 11, there are many countries within which your ideas are being produced. And so we are struggling all of us, nobody has an answer.
If somebody thinks that anybody knows where we are going, we have no idea. So let’s be honest, and let’s try to free ourselves from our certainties of what we are building realized that we are. In a certain sense, Durkheim was right. The old gods are there, the new gods are being born.
But of course, this has been going on for 200 years. The reason for a constant transitional thing that we are moving. So rather than knowing what the telos is recognizing that no, and they will make a difference, how do we project what we want to construct
Or the thing in there is a telos we know really what the telos is. So this is where transcendence comes in. So the power of transcendence to free us from the notion that somehow whatever in money, whatever we can rationally construct is all there is to it.
And this of course, the power of Durkheim’s pre-rational, rational, the societal, is we in the non fully rationalisable. So the origin of the social, there is something which is transcendent. And of course, he doesn’t want to accept the very notion of really, non-human transcendence, and therefore, it’s somehow in the social.
But the fact that they cannot all be rationalized, then they attempt to rationalize fully what we construct. And that simply it’s, so there is some mystery, there some questions that we cannot answer rationally, and that we have to accept through other means of getting it them.
Let’s put it this way, there is no spot illogical. For instance, and violence and pieces. We know this pope is committed to going beyond just war theory, getting read together for wars. Yes, it’s pathologically this world we all want. But then when the real world comes you need a just war theory,
To say which kind of defense is ethically defensible and which kind of defense is simply entering to the logic of war. So again, I think that we are not there so we can try to, but here’s the problem sometimes with this Pope, he can be very, very clear and criticizing the devil,
Let’s say in the liberalism and the capitalism kills. But then there are things that actually will kill, then he’s much more reluctant to call it. And so this is where we’re struggling with telos. Yes, of course, we all want to have a war without wars, without violence.
But we are far from it and we still out in business big, have to accept that this cutter is not here yet. – Beth, Scott had comments or further questions for Jose? – I was looking for a little more certainty from you. No, but I think I think the ambiguity we face is, is the reality of it. And so I appreciate the way you wound up your comments, the uncertainty of it, and where we headed is not a teleological destination. And I was struck, I’ll simply say, I was struck yesterday by the exchange,
About the situation in Ukraine, and it’s one thing for Parylene, to say, we’re opposed to, that the Ukrainian should defend themselves, but just don’t give them the means to do so. – Beth. – No, I think I would love to just, hear you say a little bit more about
The category of public religion, in particular, and how you’ve people use it all the time. Are you happy with how it’s used? Do you think that it does justice to that which it seeks to capture or represent in its current forms? And its current instantiation, current usages?
– Well, as you know very well it had a very clear normative element. What is good public religion, and obviously, Talal Asad challenged me on this right? – Of course, yeah. – And I became very clearly conscious that my whole category came out of the experience of adjournment of Article Two
And the way in which this was a unique historical moment. And the one on evangelical Protestantism is where it opens the possibility of a cacophony, I talk of the cacophony of the public sphere, in which all the voices precisely are equal. And it’s we can enter into precisely
The fragmentation of media and the public sphere that we are all observing today. I mean, even in all the countries I feel so confident democratic, leaving my honest pain is a mess. And obviously, a lot of European countries have gone through unthinkable ideas that somebody like Berlusconi
Could be elected three times to office, right? And obviously, let’s find out I mean, I always, when Trump came into the picture, I always said, “Well, this is our Peron,” and we are going to have Peronism for a long time. And Peron obviously was defeated again and again.
But Peronism reasserted itself in a way in Argentinian politics that made basically almost the democratic game impossible, because in so we have to be honest about the possibilities that our own democracies are in various you just travel and therefore the public is fear, I was always aware of the notion that mobilization itself
In civil society can be very undemocratic, obviously. I mean, this was something that when somebody like bowling alone was offered, Putnam was talking about these movements in Italy, and obviously Juan Linz that has studied a lot about this failure of democracy pointed out all these moves,
Those are the places where fascism were the strongest. So, these civil society that you are talking about is the one that actually open itself up to fascism so seriously. So obviously, we need history and we need to be very, very humble about our presentism.
And think that certainly wherever is now is the best and we have so open ourselves to learning from other people also from the past and it’s mainly from Primavera from primal, I mean, the question of actuality of course, raises the question are you then the religious which are actually therefore universal, therefore good,
Because the other which are pre-axial, but point is that today, this my point, precisely Umbanda wants to so I acceded to the ceremony. And, of course, first you have the kind of the public ceremony in which everybody’s invited. And you have very much like a procession
Of white clad ministers into something looks like a lot of priest been together concelebrating in mass, but of course, half of them are women, which of course, you know it’s not the Catholic Church, when half of the priestesses are there concelebrating. But this is in a kind of a celebration of equality,
And human rights and… Then comes the actual pragmatic aspect of exorcism where people come from healing. And then you have the public event and because you have publicly, the way in which people come is clients to be exercised by the people they are,
So you are presentialy, all these type of exorcisms they are and obviously, a lot of people are helped by in the process, not everybody, they may go to some other place to find salvation or to find healing. And then you have their own Santa Sanctorum. Then they invited me what initiation
Into the real Umbanda religion, was of course, one that for me was the most exotic, if you will, the most mad superstitious in you is right. But I realized that these surgeon can have this possibility of living in this world of view with practical religion.
But of course, he knows that we are in the 20 century of global moral universalism, and is he himself is fluent in all forms of mysticism of all the world religions. This our 20 century. – Jose, we can draw in a few other people into the conversation at this point,
We have about 15 minutes. Yes, Craig, – Not quite sure. Which individuals direct this two. I’m wondering how much the discussion continues to focus or is focused overwhelmingly on the ideas of good and bad order and not disorder. That is the extent to which the accounts of public and public religions but also in democracy, I presume, an order, not the cacophony that Jose has also referred to,
But that there is some resolving order, from the state, from morality, from reason, from somewhere, the discussions of public religions invite inter-civilizational look at good and bad order, alternative order, multiple modernities. But where is the place? I mean, Hent says alliatory processes we throw dice
Or something, but where is the place of non-order in this? And it seems to me that lots of the motivation in the projects that are at issue is the fear of disorder or the attempt to avoid disorder or non-order not merely to choose among orders,
So I’m just kinda struggling with how that fits in. – Yeah Hent. – Yes, thank you Craig, that helps me clarify, my thought on the matter, and it speaks to something that Jose brings up because I think I was trying to press the point. Thinking back to harbor masters theory,
That there is something on a superficial level. And I’m not doing justice to all the complexities, but, one might come away with the following impression, namely, that given the global impact of let’s say, world capitalism and the world system of nation states, which left to their own devices create havoc,
In their mutual clashes, but also intrinsically, we need to imagine history narrative, as a resource, as a repository, as an archive, as I said. Tapping into its forces of subjectivation of embodiment and of community and whatnot. So I take Jose’s work but I may be wrong of having shifted,
Let’s say to Habermasian, pragmatic paradigm, somewhat away from let’s say, communication back to interaction and love and friendship and things that religion know something about. My worry, and that goes back to Craig’s question is that, that may run the risk. Even though it acknowledges human finitude and cacophony,
It may run the risk of thinking too optimistically or too ecumenically, about the possibilities of encounter of an intertwinement and I was struck, I made a note of this, of a passage in the interesting recent biography of Robert Bellah, the book by Matteo Bertolini, who quotes a research proposal that apparently
Did not make it at the Rockefeller Foundation, a quote from Richard Matson in August 2006, which reads as follows, “The strains upon the emerging global civilization, might produce civilizational breakdown, that could be solved only by new social and cultural breakthroughs, perhaps even a new actual age.”
And now, that suggests to me that the moment of transition of how to orient ourselves individually and collectively in an age of global transformations may be dictated as much by this continuity as by possible continuity. And in my vocabulary, that would mean that, to think through, to return to almost like the tradition
Of not of manichaism, or dualism, but a form of metaphysical occasionalism, so that each thing happens. And history after all, is one damn thing after the other, is the occasion for a miracle, disaster or redemption or a catastrophe. Now, without being too hysterical about that or too dramatic about it.
One wonders now then whether Jose has not at bottom, this may be a form of ontological positivity on his part, which I think is a good thing also, has not relatively optimistic gradualist or ecumenical view of how things might work out in due course or if not, at the level of prediction,
The only path forward to have them work out in ways that are not pernicious or detrimental. And I found this passage, first, actually, in the syllabus that he kindly made for a seminar last year at the school of criticism and theory, but then also in similar words, in global religions and secular dynamics,
The modern system of classification where he writes, and I quote, taking a long duray, global perspective from 1492 to the present, one can see two seemingly divergent routes, the internal European road of secularization without religious pluralization and the external colonial route of Global Intercultural and interreligious encounters,
Leading to the global system of religious pluralism. Presently, we can observe the intertwinement of religious and secular dynamics, through the globalization of the secular imminent frame, and the expansion of global denominationalism, end of quote. And now, one element of that is, to somehow shortcut if that’s the right description,
A discussion that can become super tedious namely, did Europe or did the Atlantic West, secularized or not? And by saying, well, let’s take that as a factor completely, but let’s also provincials it and contrast it with a larger global domain where all these dynamics play out in a different way.
– Hent, Scott is itching to jump in. – All right sorry. – He has his point. There were a couple of points of contact. And earlier what you said in taking it back to Craig’s question. I wonder if we might consider now Pentecostalism as one of the world’s fastest
If not the fastest growing religious movement, that in a way it was born out of the experience of disorder, of collapse of chaos of economic displacement of not being and its own dynamics. This is what I was trying to get at earlier. How much Pentecostalism itself
And it’s trying to reconstitute a sense of order. And because the question is, are there structures that are or is Pentecostalism itself evolving structures of order and boundaries, when in fact the emphasis the religious experience of Pentecostalism is not that, it is a cacophony of voices of movements of spirit?
But it’s born out of a sense of collapse crisis disorder. So the dynamic there is this the global religion, the global religion that arises out of a sense of displacement, dispossession. Of course, Pentecostalism has replicated with its mega churches and its wealth, and it’s a lot of the processes we see elsewhere.
But it’s, I think, an interesting empirical case to ask these questions about order and disorder. – And of course, Pentecostalism is not only a different religion, different from Christianity, but now Pentecostal Christianity has penetrated every form of religion. So you find it of course, in Brazil,
You have now more Catholic charismatics and Pentecostals. In Ethiopia, you have a charismatic renewal within the Ethiopian Church, which perhaps they didn’t have for centuries. So the poor in India, you have of Pentecostal movements, within all forms of Christianity and so on. And you could argue about not the same Pentecostal
But movements of renewal with non-Christian religions in this respect. So yes, I think that again, purely sociologically, if you start with Durkheim you say you have ultimately this question about the faith or trust or optimism. That ultimately if the social produces the sacred religious, that will ultimately disorder cannot be, it could be,
Disorder can’t be the final, it could end everything right. But somehow there is trust in the Durkheim sense, within the societal, right? Certainly there is an emphasis greater than order than disorder in the whole tradition. And one could say the same thing within theology, right? Sin is explained as a disorder.
But of course, sin is there all the time. So the question is, you need rituals to understand that then comes some special days in which you feel that despite everything, life triumphs over death. So, yes, do I needs some kind of trust, is there a glass half full or half empty?
What I prefer to say is half full because if by saying is half full, it helps people to try to make a self fulfilling prophecy. I prefer to be proven wrong. By having heaven optimistic outcomes. That didn’t happen, then to be proven right by having a pessimistic outcome that actually did happen,
Because I believe that our own definitions of the situation can make a difference in the outcome, then I think that to have an optimistic outlook is societally, so purely sociologically makes sense. And of course, theologically, if you are a person of faith even more so.
– So we have time for one more question. If anyone is… – Charles has been very silent. I would like Charles to enter into this. – [Charles] This three questions. What you just said. Isn’t, pop cultural spiritualism the greatest threat to the world’s great religions going forward? Whether it be Harry Potter or… Whoever cares to answer it. – No. – No, I mean, I don’t think that. I don’t think that I mean,
No again, you’re one of our colleagues who wouldn’t come here is Peter Vanderveer, who has added to our whole debate between the sacred and religious you have to add a spirituality in magic superstitions are the four categories that have emerged together as part of our modern discourse everywhere.
And we have to integrate them, we can’t when all these people who say, I’m a spiritual, not religious is a way of saying, I want to be religious, but who can be religious given these institutions, right? So I rather stick to my own spirituality rather than follow these institutions.
So I guess that in all of those things, the spirit moves in all kinds, I would say the spirit moves everywhere in all kinds of places, even outside of the church, I would say, yes. – Charles, did you have a final thought? – Well I have a thought yeah. Maybe this problem order and disorder, we’re always trying to seek order by I wanna make this distinction between, morality and ethics that people have made, morality is what we all do each other, some principle of justice and so on, really is the negation of negation, you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that
Deprive people of rights. And ethics is some sense of what proper human fulfillment is about. Maybe, on the level of morality, you never can get a system which is really going to work because there are some kinds of, overriding of justice, which can only be defeated by ethical growth,
I’m thinking of what I was gonna say yesterday, that you get bones of ethical growth when you have something like Gandhi, preaching non-violent resistance. And it’s only through that, that you can solve the conundrum of achieving the liberation of this people buy from that oppression and still have some kind of
Relationship or friendship. And we can only get over the present crisis, what we call populism, which, if we have an ethic, where people feel really fulfilled by exchange with others, in the sense that the fullness of humanity only comes from exchange with others. So, you can only get over certain kinds of breaches
In order, if the ethical advance occurs with a large enough number of people. So at a certain levels of ethical growth, there is no solution. You have to fight things out. And by fighting things out you hurt other people and you create reactions and so on.
In that this can be seen as a pessimistic outlook. If you think there’s no further ethical advance possible in humanity, this is very pessimistic story. But maybe that if this is possible, then its a long-term optimistic story. That’s my sense. – Thank you, Jose. Thank you, Scott, and Beth and Hent.
We will leave the stage and now we will turn it over to you for the concluding remarks and then we’ll adjourn to lunch.
– Good afternoon and welcome everybody to a new episode in our series ongoing series of conversations on global, religious and secular dynamics. My name is Jose Casanova and I’m a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs which sponsors this event.
The event is also being sponsored by Reset DOC USA DOC stands for dialogue of civilizations. We are very fortunate to have today for the discussion on religious and secular global dialogue, Dr. Professor Azza Karam. Probably the person most qualified to lead this conversation. Thank you for being with us Azza today.
Our webinar is being recorded and eventually, very soon will be posted on the Berkeley Center website and you will be able to access it. It’s our routine we’ll have a conversation about 50, 55 minutes with Azza. And then we’ll have a question and answer section to which you can place questions
And we’ll have as many answers as possible. At the bottom of your screen, you will see a question and answer image. Please open it if you want to write questions for Professor Karam. So let’s start. Welcome Azza. Thank you, thank you very much for being with us.
– Thank you very, very much for having me, Jose. – Let’s begin with just setting the stage. In our contemporary global aids, we are becoming increasingly aware of the need to come to terms with two different kinds of pluralism. Secular and religious pluralism and multi religious pluralism
And the need both for dialogue and cooperation within these pluralisms. In the first part of our conversation today, we will examine some of the dynamics of the religious secular pluralism corporation and dialogue through your work for many years in the United Nations, actually leading this dialogue. In the second part of our conversation,
We will explore some of the dynamics of multi religious pluralism and inter-religious dialogue through your work as secretary general of Religions for Peace International. So can we start. – Absolutely. – So let’s begin with the United nations. Historically, the United Nations we know is the symbolic representation
Of the Westphalian global system of nation states, which actually started after the peace of Westphalia with the notion to leave religion out of international politics. The rate that a pioneer of international law had the famous sentence that international law and the international system should function As if God would not exist. Now in the last 50 years, we’ve seen that these separation is not easy to maintain. Religion has entered in many ways, the United Nations and the United nations through its work around the work on development first step on the feet and the field of religion
Throughout the world. You have been both a privilege observer and participant of these confrontations, tensions and dialogue is in your function as senior advisor for culture in social development at the UN population Fund. And this coordinator chair of the UN inter-agency task force, and engaging faith based organizations
For development at the United Nations. So I would like you to start in any way you want to tell us what have you observed? What has happened to these confrontation dialogue in the last 20, 30 years, while you’ve been at the center of it? – Well, first of all,
Thank you again for this opportunity, Jose, and I’m not letting it get away with the fact that I have to highlight, which is that you’re a mentor to me and many others in this space. So I am extraordinarily delighted that I had the opportunity to have this conversation with my mentor.
I learned a lot from what you have been writing over the years. It was extremely helpful for me to be able to juxtapose the learning into this United Nations hemisphere. I joined the UN after I already actually has been working for Religions for Peace for some years.
And then I joined the United Nations Development Program. So I have come from this deeply inter religious space with all its political and cultural and social nuances straight into it, I felt like I had gone from a very warm fire place next to a fireplace straight into a freezer.
– From hell to somewhere. – It wasn’t by no means hell. It was an incredible learning experience to work with so many religious institutions around the world. It was a certain kind of warmth and a certain kind of cynicism as well which I’ll get to in a second.
But I think going from that space of relational dynamics, which are very, very personal actually, ’cause when you work in an ultra religious space, you per definition and have to work with your emotions and your feelings and what you believe, it’s your right. It’s all about what you believe
And how you do this work and so on. So to go from there into the United Nations Development Program and to be told within the first week, even though it was working in the Arab Bureau, and as far as I know, the Arab region is where all three major monotheistic traditions emerged.
So we’ve never kind of gone into that secular space at all in the Middle Eastern context. And so to go into this United Nations Development Program regional Bureau of Arab States and be told within the first week, we don’t do religion was literally like being thrown into Siberia. What do you mean?
So how do we do? If we don’t do religion in an Arab context where we’re supposed to be, I was working on the Arab of human development report as a coordinator and I thought, well, how are we even addressing some of these issues of governance, human rights, democratization, the whole women’s rights.
How do are we doing all this without doing religion? So that was my first cultural shock in the UN system. And I realized very, very quickly that there is, it’s not because of a, it’s almost a willful determination not to engage the religious space. So I think now that you’ve described
That particular motto in Latin, I think the United Nations system honors that motto till this minute, till this day. And to be honest with you, I think it has to. It doesn’t have to ignore God, or pretend God isn’t there, but it does need to be very fiercely protective
Of the secular space because you have 193 governments and heaven knows it’s difficult enough to work with 193 governments. Bringing religion into this equation, in addition to all the nationalisms that are already there. In addition to all the territorial, economic, financial issues that have to be dealt with,
Bringing the religious into this mix is not necessarily immediately helpful into this space. And I’ll belabor that in a second, but I think one of the first things that therefore after trying to overcome the cultural shock and trying to understand why. Why do you not need to, do you not do religion?
I realized that a great part of it had to do with the origin of this particular developmental space inside the United Nations system. And remember, United Nations is a massive universe. It’s a big entity with so many different sub solar planets. You’ve got the World Health Organization
Is part of the United Nations system. The World Bank is part of the United Nations system. Then there’s all these different development groups and agencies in that system and then there’s the secretary. So it’s a big universe. And the idea was that the origin of the development thinking and community that United Nations
Development program symbolized, it was coming out of the liberation struggles with the 1960s South Africa and the apartheid, the Palestinian-Israeli dynamic. It was coming out of that era and it had emerged in that. It had merged to form. There were two different entities that merged to form UNDP in that era.
It was coming from that ethos of the liberation movements, none of which in the 50s and 60s had the been particularly religious by the way. So that legacy of activism, of service in a space that was about coming together and building and solidarity and stuff like that, was not articulated
With a religious lens in the 50s and 60s. It was still the height of the secular, solidarity and nationalism based on shared identities that are not religious in that moment. So this is the origin of the UNDP space. And therefore, the idea that you would, and also remember that the emergence
Of a very powerful global feminist movement that was coming together, which for very good reasons, was deeply skeptical about the religious institutions and the religious discourse that wasn’t necessarily renowned for its feminist agenda in any way, shape or form. So this hybrid mix of the origin of the UNDP
And much of the UN development space explains why there was in a way, at best a sense of ignorance of the religious space and dynamics. And at worst, quite frankly, a sense of fear and mistrust that we all and remember heavily influenced by governments member states who not all of whom
Were comfortable with religion, themselves. Many of whom had had invested significantly in putting the religious space in its size. Rightsizing the religious space into not too much public involvement. Very limited kind of public involvement. So you have that from your board. Your board is the governments and the governments been doing their best
To try to be very limiting in terms of how much religion and religious institutions play the role in the public space. And at the same time, your own emergence out of a nationalist liberation struggles and feminist struggles, which were deeply which at best just didn’t see religion
As a very valid space, even with liberation theology in Latin America and that space. It was still a secular ethos that came to that table. So I understood that therefore, the issue was our particular glasses inside the UN system were colored by that vision of mistrust,
Fear and frankly, ignorance of the religious space, because there’s a certain arrogance that comes to being in a global system. There’s a certain arrogance that comes with that. By the way, some religious institutions have it too and that particular arrogance in a global space assumes that because we’re so big,
Because we do so much, because we answer to all different needs or we’re supposed to, because we deal with all these esteemed governments at the highest possible level, et cetera, we know it all, we’ve got this. So what is it that the religious can support or provide?
So I realized that if we were going to try to engage with the religious sectors, writ large, who are much bigger together, much bigger than the world of United Nations at its height. But if we were going to engage with that sector, with those different sectors, the multitude,
We had to begin to humanize them, literally. To realize that it’s not just men in robes that we’re talking about who have a particular universalistic discourse about human rights. Either it’s all good like liberation theology, supposedly, or it’s all bad, like certain religious discourses about Whitman for instance. It’s not like that.
There’s a wealth of being and a wealth of institutional discursive narrative realities to religious communities, religious leaders. And so we started by trying to humanize meaning, deliberately inviting our religious, non governmental organization colleagues. And the focus was very deliberate on the NGOs, the religious NGOs, inviting them to the different tables
That we were hosting in the UN. Different seminars about this and this and that issue, different policy discussions, different research oriented discussions. And I worked a lot at that time also with the social science research council, and so I was happy to hear Greg Calhoun had that conversation with you.
The social science research council was one of the first people I reached out to, to say, okay, let’s begin to host these consultations. And you may recall Jose, you were at a pretty good number of them actually in New York and elsewhere. But the idea was, can you please sit as UN officials
Responsible for the policy, for the programs and speak to your peers in these NGO and academic communities who are the religious, they’re also religious folks. They’re not wearing the regalia of religious leadership, but they are very much engaged in this religious space. So I deliberately made a point of saying,
Okay, we have to speak. We have to have a conversation and engage with these religious actors. Show the other side of the religious actors, not just the religious leaders in their institutions which is what everybody saw all the time, but show those who are working in exactly the same development and humanitarian spaces
As the UN actors working with very similar modus operandi, you have your strategic plans and you have your audits and you have your program indicate that you all, all that Tamasha was there in a religious NGO. And invite as many of them to the table as possible.
So there was a conversation between us about our common work, what we were doing together, and therein began what later, what we refer to as the strategic learning exchanges between the, if you will, the secular policy guys inside the UN system, the officials and the religious policy and NGO guys in that space.
So I think that became very instrumental because it literally puts a face to this idea of religion and it puts a very deliberately put a different face than the religious leaders in the religious garb. So some of them were religious leaders. Some of those CEOs and program advisors and policy advisors
Inside the religious NGO space for ordained leaders, but they were serving inside this development and humanitarian space. So the emphasis was to come at it from let’s meet as common folks working in this policy in developmental and humanitarian space within institutions that are actually pretty alike
So we can have a common table and not, and very, the emphasis was also on, we’re all here as peers. So I understand that we are extraordinarily hierarchical within the religious world. We’re extraordinary hierarchical within the policy world of the UN. But you know what, we’re all here. This table, we’re all equals.
We’re all peers. Let’s have a conversation based on the issues, how we do them, why we do them. What makes your work different than mine? Why is your work has, why does your work have any value added as a religious NGO? What is it that’s so special
About what you do as a religious NGO? What is it that’s so special about the humanity? – Yes, but listening to you, I would assume that there was also dynamics of recognition, precisely of equality that created tensions between the new cameras and the old religions that claim to be dead to religion.
It was easier for certain new religious groups to try to lobby the UN openly than perhaps the old religions that prefer not to enter into a table as equals, but to have core priorities kind of influence. – That was of part of what happened in the very beginning of those conversations.
Because remember that the, if you will, the learning that was taking place, the deconstruction and reconstruction that was taking place on what’s happening on all sides. On our UN side, it was also happening within the religious side. So the religions leaders and actors who came to these tables
Were also transformed with time as were we as UN staff and policy folks. We were also transformed through that encounter. It was mutually transformative, and each came to the table with their particular perspectives on particular worldviews. Here’s why we think our work is so fine. And so one of the conversations that started
In that beginning of those strategic planning exchanges was what I called the claim to exceptionalism that actually both sides had. So you were sitting as a UN person and you think that the UN is an absolutely exceptional space, which of course it is. Of course it is.
In many ways it’s an exceptional space, but then you have the religious actors, these heads of religious NGOs, the policy and program people in different religious NGOs who also would come, especially the ordained ones among them who would also come and say, we’re not just regular civil society.
This isn’t just regular civil society. We’re special in so many words, it wasn’t of course said like that, but this is a special community here. You’re not just dealing with any NGO which the UN has a big history of working with by the way.
But so the conversation was not, but we’re not just that. I mean, we are definitely, but we’re not just that. So eventually the pushback had to be within the UN ecosphere, we don’t have a category for exceptional. We shouldn’t have a category for special and exceptional. It’s governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental
And obviously in the non-governmental, that’s the field that includes all of different civil society actors. So yes, we understand that there’s a special claim because of a special relationship supposedly in the mission statement that isn’t necessarily inspired with the universal declaration of human rights in any way, shape or form,
But it’s actually inspired by God said, and the prophet did. And so yes, there’s different in that. – So this is one side of the story. Namely, the UN and you particular inviting religious groups as nongovernmental organizations would take part in this table of equals with other nongovernmental organizations
To hear precisely with all common issues of development, human rights, health, education, et cetera. The other side of the story is the United Nations going into the war and becoming involved in development at the civil society level, not anymore on the intergovernmental relations, but more and more realizing that the UN
Has to becoming both really grassroots organization for development, health, education, women’s. And of course then it’s not only that their religion is embodied, but now the United Nations begins to step on their feet as it were and the feel of religious communities. So there is the other element of it.
The UN is not only an agency in New York, but also mobilizes (indistinct) across the world and the more it goes into civil society, the more even countries religious groups. – So one of the first things that we did after we started doing these strategic cleaning exchanges
By bringing our peers in the religious sectors, humanitarian and development to the table, one of the first things that each of the different UN agencies started to do, and this was now thanks to actually setting up a space inside the UN system, an inter-agency task force
That at that time, the heyday of the UN reform agenda was delivering as one. We all have to come to this. We’re so big, we’re so many. We had to come together and deliver at country level at least, and hopefully a global level, but at least the country level,
We had to work as one entity. So you don’t have the UNICEF, UNDP, but you actually come together as a country team, at least the development guys and serve and deliver as one. So part of the way of doing that was to say, let’s have inter-agency modalities, mechanisms.
So sure enough, we established an inter-agency modality on religious engagement, on engaging with religious actors and for the longest amount of time, that was the inter-agency mechanism that nobody would hear about. It’s just, it was so down low on the priority of all the inter-agency stuff. Funding and resource mobilization and gender equality,
All good and religion. So it took a while to actually give status to that particular inter-agency mechanism. And it’s one of the few that still continues until today, because of course the system has changed multiple times since with different leadership in the UN. So the inter-agency mechanism,
Not necessarily the most popular thing these days, but the inter-agency task force on religion continues and is working. And it’s grown in fact. – Thanks to you. Thanks to you. – Many, many colleagues in the system, but one of the things we learned, Jose, was let’s do our own homework.
Let’s find out whether this business of working with religious actors is indeed such a novelty as Rome and New York and Geneva would help us believe. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? So I said, let’s look at what are our country, especially the operational entities
Who do development and humanitarian work. We have country presence. We have offices in countries. Let’s just begin to see, have we worked with them? Have we done research with these people? Have we indeed partner and guess what, Jose, we realized that not a single UN entity with a humanitarian
Or development mandate, not a single one had not engaged at one point or time or another over the last 50 years with certain kinds of religious actors, none. But the issue wasn’t so much that engaging issue was A, do you actually systematize that engagement? Do you actually realize
That this is part of your civil outreach, civil society outreach? Does Rome or Geneva or New York know the outcome of this, that you’re actually having this program and the outcome of it and some of the learnings? No. So the issue was we learned within the UN system,
We learned about our own legacy and history of engagement and started to rediscover it at the same time, by the way that our religious counterparts, our partners were beginning to rediscover why they do work the way they do. What is it about the Christian tradition that actually, so they were rediscovering
Their religious roots because they had existed for so long as partners of the multilateral world in their secular NGO hat. So they were religiously inspired. They were faith-based, NGOs, faith inspired and based NGOs but they weren’t using the religious language. They were busy doing the work and trying to, in a sense,
Not necessarily acknowledge the religious identity so much. So as our religious counterparts were rediscovering their here’s the biblical narrative that inspires this particular kind of engagement on children or on women or on refugees. And here’s the Islamic texts that actually inspires why we do. They were rediscovering their religious discourse
And the roots of their passion and mission while we were rediscovering the basic reality of the fact that we had been working with these actors for a very long time. So that transition happened, and that was extremely important for us to learn about heritage, if you will, on both sides
And use some very basic data that till this moment is still deeply contested. How can you work in this space of education and or health and or nutrition and or sanitation and or refugees? How can you work in any of these areas and not engage with those
Who are the original providers of service in those spaces? No, there’s no way you can do it. We had to come up with the data. So our World Bank colleagues then undertook in that inter-agency space, they brought to it some of the data of their engagement and legacy
And that’s how we learned so much from people like Katherine Marshall, who had been setting up this space and leading it inside the World Bank for so many years. They came to this inter-agency space with their data and their evidence of here’s how we have been working with these different actors.
Largely we discovered in the space of health, the most amount of engagement that happened in that health space. So that’s how we began to learn about ourselves, quite frankly. – And of course our dear Katherine Marshall which is my colleague at the Berkeley Center those are types of some of the conversations
Before we move to the second part on the Religions for Peace, obviously the most contested issue in all these fields has been the issue of gender. And this is the issue at the center of precisely UNDP, population, reproductive health, women’s rights. Since Cairo, the 94 conference in Cairo,
Sine Beijing in 95, this has gone in different directions. Obviously first it was apparently the Catholic church and the Muslim world. Now, lately is the evangelicals. American evangelicals in the Russian Orthodox Church and the Moscow party arcade against feminism and gender equality. How have you been able to navigate all these tensions
And what do you see has happened in this field in the last 20 years, both positive and negative? – So it’s important to highlight a very interesting couple of realities that you come across when you’re actually working in this space. So the first reality is that it turns out
That the United Nations population fund. I remember I joined UNCP first, then I moved to UNFP. I realized that the United Nations population fund was actually one of those entities in the UN system that had the longest legacy of partnering with religious organizations. And that wouldn’t necessarily be intuitive.
That was actually kind of counter intuitive because their agenda is reproductive health, which is sexuality and sexual relations. So how come this was the UN entity with a very long track record, actually. One of the longest track records of engaging with religious actors at country level.
It turns out that, of course you can’t do this work. You can’t speak these issues in a country if you have not already managed to have a few partners in the religious space who at best, at best will work with you, will actually work with you on some of these issues.
But even when it’s things are really not going very well, Jose, at least they’re not going to condemn your work. They’re not going to stand in direct opposition to your work, which is a big deal, which is, cause sometimes you won’t be able
To work with people, but at least don’t close the doors that I can actually work in, so to speak. So we realize that the agency that has sexual reproductive health and rights as its key mandate is the agency with one of the longest track records of actually working in partnering with religious actors.
We also realized something else, that as we expanded the circle of partners in this religious engagement space, there were basically two blocks. There was two different blocks happening. One block was the, for lack of a better word, the much more conservative oriented religious institutions who were working with governments
With certain governments, very, very well. And so therefore in many ways were much more powerful inside the UN space because they had some governments with them behind them. – Mainly Catholic countries, Muslim countries. – It started with the Catholic countries. – And America and after Cairo, right?
I think in also Muslim countries and yeah. – Yes, over the years, but interesting because it’s not necessarily a coincidence. As the voices of, for lack of a better word, the pro human rights, pro sexual and reproductive health and rights atmosphere, just the broader pro human rights openly,
No discrimination, no cherry picking between them. As that religious space expanded thanks to the efforts of inviting a broad swath of people around the table regularly so that it became normal to speak and see, and witness and have conversations that included their leaders. As that space was increasing, Jose the number of partners
On the more conservative side of the religious spectrum was also increasing. The voices were increasing and the quality and nature. So it became not only a Catholic voice. It became a Catholic, Orthodox, evangelical, Muslim. And in the last few years, also a Hindu supported or tacitly supporting voice.
So the range of, I wouldn’t say it’s very hard to categorize this way, by the way and I’m not sure that could do that officially on the parts of religions for me. So I’m not speaking as Religions for Peace now, but really as a scholar of religion and development.
I can tell you that the, for lack of a better word, the more conservative voices around the issues of sexual reproductive health and rights in particular, those have expanded and grown over the years, and so have the counterparts on the other side, who were speaking for sexual reproductive health and rights,
They have also expanded so that they’re not just Christian or Muslim, but they have actually expanded and grown together. And a large part of this on the one side, the expansion of the conservative multi-religious discourse has happened thanks to, as I said earlier, the collaboration with certain governance.
The absolute green light given by certain governments because it served the purpose to say, well, this is against our religion. We’re not going to do this particular set of rights because it’s against the norms and whatever, whatever. But the other group, the other group that was trying to inspire a conversation
That all human rights were interconnected, no set of rights is more significant than the other. None can be realized at the expense of each other or the silencing of some of them. That group also grew deliberately thanks to the deliberate effort of the UN system actors in country at regional and global levels
To provide also a space for those voices to be heard at the table. And they also were very multi-religious. They were also Catholic and different kinds of Protestant Evangelical and whatever, and Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist. And so in a way we kind of,
If I look at it from a less concerned perspective, I can tell you that the expansion of the multi-religious narratives in and of itself has been in a source of affirmation for why it is important to be in this. How can we speak about strong civic societies
If we don’t have a vibrant multi-religious space and narrative as part of that civil society? So yes, the UN system has, since the 1970s very deliberately reached out to the civil society. I would say that over the last 20 years, it’s expanded. Now, where does the Religions for Peace
Institutional representation feature in this space? I can give you a very simple example based on the years of working inside and outside of the system. There’s a very different dynamic that happens Jose, when you invite the Catholics together, the different Protestants together, ecumenical, Muslim, and each gets convened in their own spaces.
This is incredibly valuable, extremely helpful, and also can have its limitations. What I have observed happening systematically over the last 30 years, whether I was in the Middle East or in Central Asia or in Europe, or here is that when you bring the different religions
And religious voices together around a common set of issues, human rights, education, children, environment, something very amazing happens. And I personally call it grace, to be honest with you. I just call it plain as it is. As I see it as I feel it, it is grace.
When these different religions come together, Jose, yes, day one, everyone is speaking to their particular text interpretation that here’s my official position, my institutional position. The conversation goes on, Jose. And by day two, they are speaking as people, as human beings with deep, deep hearts that are committed to serving. There’s a dynamic,
There’s an incredible change in the conversation. It doesn’t become, what is your institutional position? How can that be defended? It becomes, how can I serve these needs best? And there’s an actually an element of competition that creeps in. It’s very constructive competition. It’s very progressive competition. It’s competition about who’s serving most
And that is precisely when grace takes place, because you suddenly realize that not everybody’s hung on to their particular interpretation, their particular texts and their particular narrative, but they’re actually, and they look, they see each other speaking about the divine in so many different ways, but a divine that is of humanity,
Of service, of love, of saving lives. It’s a totally different caliber of conversation, but it has to be stewarded. It has to be intentionally convened. It has to be about very practical situations with very hard evidence and facts. Then the narrative changes
From here’s what my God says has to happen, or you’re a God to how can we serve this? How can we serve this best? I saw this happening in the Arab region and I saw this happening in the African region and the Latin America. So I think this is the key,
And this is why Religions for Peace has such a critical role to play in transforming the dynamics of inter-religious civic conversations about everything, about governance, democracy, and human rights about gender equality, about environmental sustainability, about inter-religious education, about learning education. How do we learn and how do we get through years of postgraduate
Without knowing a thing about our faith respective data? So when you convene religions together, there is a dynamic that happens that is absolutely phenomenal, and it is a must. It is no longer a luxury for us. It is a must in a context where we have lost the diplomatic space.
There is no diplomacy as we know it today. There’s a lot of voices out there from the top most political leadership to the governance and civil society entity and actors. There’s a lot of voices out there, Jose, but I think we’ve lost the art of diplomacy as in tactfulness to reach one another
And to relate to one another. We speak at, we don’t speak with. So in this conversation, in this context, the multi-religious narrative is providing us with resources, opportunities, language in which we can reinvent our diplomacy to be what it was meant to be. The coming together, to heal together the entire universe,
Not just our respective vested interests, but each one coming at it from their vested interest, for sure. But when we come at it together from within this multi-religious space to be added to the civic space, the secular civic space benefits, the multi religious space means that per definition,
No one religion can claim an exclusive right to truth. One of our problem. – And this is of course is the central issue because there is a very strong Christian European cognitive tradition of arguing that inter-religious dialogue is a continuity of theological dialogue who has the truth. And of course you get nowhere.
Dialogue has to begin with interpersonal recognition as you say, it’s kind of a space where persons recognize each other as persons, and then everything else can come later. Perhaps you don’t need to get into the actual theological controversies, if you can work together on many, many fields.
– And that is proven that actually working together has and is a space of serving together, which is why religious repeats created its multi-religious humanitarian funds because we realized, all of us are running to serve. The religious communities today and in the face of COVID or at the forefront
Of serving the needs of their communities on every possible level. But guess what? Each one is going about it in their own institutional way. So when we talk social cohesion, we have to act social cohesion. The pandemic is a moment that forces us to work together.
How can we encourage this serving together in that space? And this is what made the change and I just got the note from Catherine, if I may refer to it. When we convened the different religious actors together across who are serving the NGOs now, not just the religious institutions,
But the NGOs who are delivering humanitarian and development. And we convene them around what? Around sexual reproductive health and rights after years of begging them together to come and talk about the common, the safety issues. Children, environment, all the safe stuff. Death, things that we can all talk about
Without getting too worried about what God actually meant when he was saying this or that. One of the things we realized is that even in that space of deep contention, the religious leaders and the actors in the NGO system were prepared to say that some of the harm that is happening
In the name of serving this religious purpose, early child marriage, female genital mutilation, rape, violence against boys and girls, that none of this could possibly be and should never be in their own name as a religious person, as a religious leader, not in my name was the mantra or the statement
That they all actually signed down to. Because yes, we understand that there are certain interpretations and understandings, but the harm that gets done in the name of religion. No, there’s a rejection to that. Not in my name was a very video key tipping point in this conversation between the different religious actors.
They can agree together that harm is not in the name of their respective traditions and therefore not in the name of all of them. Already that agreement may seem minor given everything that’s going on around us, but it’s not minor. If I agree with you and we’re both coming
From different theological perspectives and traditions. If I agree with you that that harm is not in our name, is not in the name of my faith, that is massive. That’s an act of faith. That’s a statement of solidarity. That’s a move towards transforming social norms and behaviors in a radical way.
And that’s what is possible when you bring the different religions together with the different civic actors. – So I was of course, extremely happy when I learned that Religions for Peace have elected a woman as its secretary general. I know you and I knew that you were extremely, especially qualified for this role.
But I can imagine that we know that patriarchal legacies for religious traditions. And so kind of frankly, how difficult it is for you to deal with the clerical leadership of all the religious traditions and how do these institutions deal with Religion for Peace? What is the relationship between these very unique
Place or space where religious can come together, precisely work together and the religious institutions themselves, which each of them wants to maintain, its privileges, authorities, it’s places. – So I learned something very valuable from the executive directors, women executive directors in UNFPA because they were handling such a sensitive,
Hot potato set of issues all the time. And they’re dealing with, yes, of course, female leaders, but also peers who are male leaders in the political establishment. So it’s not exactly the easiest walk in the park, either. One of the things I learned from them, especially
Another mentor of mine, Dr. Threa Albeit from Saudi Arabia. One of the things she told me many years ago was first of all, you have to find allies in this space who come from precisely the camp of detractors. And you have to just put your head down
And keep working and look on the bright side of things. And so the first thing that struck me about being elected to serve in this position, to be perfectly honest with you and I have been on record for saying this repeatedly is it’s not about me. Honestly, yes okay.
Thank you very much for that acknowledgement, but it isn’t about me. The election of me, of this woman is a testament to the religious leaders who came together and agreed that it would be a woman who would lead them in their effort to who would serve them in their effort to work collaboratively
In an institution that’s 50 years old with 90 different chapters around the world. They agreed, Jose to accept this leadership of a woman. To me, that is the most important moment of amazement, quite frankly and it’s such a testament to the courage of these individual leaders
And to the readiness, quite frankly of their institutions to say, okay, okay. – You will call it grace. – I do, actually. I didn’t want to say the word again, but yes I do actually. I really do. And I think that this, there is grace everywhere we step.
I am a firm believer in that. We don’t exist, but for the grace of the love of the divine. So, but yes, there are so many moments of grace. Definitely, definitely knowing that they had elected me and entering into that big hall during the 10th world assembly of Religions for Peace
In Lindo, which was hosted, thanks to a secular German government working with a wonderful organization and foundation called Lindo. Walking into that hall of 900 delegates who many of whom were cheering and they did no me, Jose. They didn’t know me. They were cheering of the fact that this organization
Of 50 years is electing a woman. And here she is that little thing walking into the hall and that is grace because I felt very tangibly the aspiration to formation, to coming together, to serving grace, not just epitomizing, but serving grace. That was a moment. Why would they otherwise? Why that incredible anticipation
And all elation and joy when they didn’t know me? Many of them didn’t know me. So I think there’s something to be said for that moment we are living in. We can choose, Jose to focus on all the negativity that’s happening around us in terms of leadership that is much more violent
In its narratives and actions, or we can choose to see what’s actually unfolding in the multi-religious space globally, that at least I can see. And in the civil society spaces, because I firmly believe that our salvation is humanity and the salvation of this earth is going to happen
When the civil society is vibrant. Governments are fine. We need them, they’re necessary. Multilateral entities are needed more than ever, but multilateral entities and governments need civil society and civil society needs the multi religious space. It’s not possible to exist with only one hand. You’ll do certain things with one hand,
You do much, but when you have both hands and to me, that’s the secular and the religious and where they meet, that is when we can move. Grace. – And I myself would say the most important lesson for me is the recognition of the irremediable plurality, cultural religious of the human condition.
And we simply, this is the point of the part of our global aids, mutual recognition. And this is a dynamic which is different from the dynamic of capitalism, one single system. From dynamic of the nation states. It is this at this level of a global civil society, where, what I call global denominationalism
This process of mutual recognition of all the not only religious, I’m talking of all the groups that want to claim, this is my name. This is what I stand for and I want to be recognized like that and I recognize you also in return. And obviously I would say this is essential
For working together, any global issue, whether refugees, social justice, these environmental issues and to which extent we see that some of the most important voices and those issues come precisely from religious leaders, which are free from what other wars are the constraint of nationalism. Making America great again,
And saving the vaccines for our nation. This vision, global human vision, but not as one of power to say my religion is the one, but really of mutual recognition. And this is a unique moment we find ourselves. And I’m very glad that you are actually leading this organization at this very, very moment.
I want to remind the audience that we will be moving very soon to our question and answer period, that you’ll have a chance put down in writing in the question and answer box, the question you would like to raise for Professor Karam. I call her professor because besides all these roles,
She’s also social professor of religious studies at Free University in Amsterdam. So before we go to the question and answer, I would like simply to yes, any thoughts about any issue that you think are really, really big issues that you are facing as a secretary general,
The issues that you see is the ones which are both most problematic, but also most necessary to face in the series of challenges we are facing as global humanity. – Thank you for allowing me that. I think there’s a couple of points I wanted to share
If I may and one of them has to do with what you were very rightly pointing out is an absolute necessity of that civic space and the plurality of it, that per definition, the plurality gets us those opportunities to grow and be better people, quite frankly. I always say that I’m a believer
And if God wanted us all to be alike, I don’t think it would have been much of a problem for him to create this all alike, quite frankly. – Sounds like Mohammed in the Quran. – It sounds like different, all the different faith traditions.
Divinity is power and the divine is capable of everything. And so how do we all meant to be, had we all been meant as equal and the same people, then it would not have been so difficult for the creator to do so. The fact that we are created diverse in so many ways
Is a testament to the divine. It’s not about, oh dear. It’s actually a testament to the divinity. It’s also what we have to aspire to respect in one another, that incredible diversity that we embody. One of the things that I’m seeing COVID force us to do though,
We are as a result of what I would call the failure of global meta narratives to actually serve anymore. And the increase in isolated discourses based on very limited narrow self-interests of certain political communities or nationalist ideologies. Because we’re in this era of we don’t have something
That mobilizes all of us at the same time, unless it’s the Black Lives Matter gave us a spark to believe in something that is beyond the interests of any particular, but it’s actually very inclusive of the interests of many towards justice. But we are facing that moment of crisis globally
In terms of meta narratives that can inspire and get people to actually come together in different ways. Because of this, I think religions are, and religious discourse is being exploited, left, right and center by politicians who are religious and politicians who are not religious. There are very odd alliances that are taking place
And flowering around the world, that are consolidating around the world about, and between the political and the religious spaces. Not all of it is good. Not all of it is built on welfare rights for all irrespective of where they come from and what they look like.
And therefore, I think that we stand at a precipice to be honest as, as human beings. And that precipice is if we can join hands together with our faith as a deep form of inspiration, but also without, but just as out of a commitment to all, if we can do that,
We can actually jump over that precipice to the other side. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of religious division that I’m seeing happening between intra and inter-religious and ironically, COVID has brought so much of those religions to the fore. And that’s one of the reasons why I think that the idea of multi-religious collaboration
Is not a luxury, can not afford to be treated as a luxury, but has to become a priority, socially, politically, financially, economically. Multi-religious civic stakeholdership and collaboration has to be the way to go. Otherwise we are looking at very deep, more deep rifts being created between different communities in the name of it.
– Thank you very much. We could go on and on for back to the United Nations, there are so many different issues, but I thank you very much for these very open and candid conversation. Let’s open up the question and answer. Our first question comes from our very, very dear friend,
Katherine Marshall, who asks Azza can you tell the story of the not in my name event and comment on the role of Raya Obeid, who will be speaking at the G-20 interfaith event? – I think I already did that actually. I spoke about the, not in my name event
When the religious actors came together and signed on to the fact that they will accept no harm in the name of their respective traditions, and they will do another. And I spoke about the legacy of Dr. Obeid in terms of developing this work and giving me the guidance
As to how to approach some of this work in this space. – I just want to give you the opportunity to expand on it, if you wanted to say something, but then we can move to the next question which comes from Brian. Is the universal these Unitarian church involved in your efforts?
If so, what contributions have they offered? If not, should they be involved? – If the effort is related to Religions for Peace, that Brian means, then my understanding is that the Unitarian Universalists were actually some of the founders of Religions for Peace 50 years ago. So there’s been a long history
Of commitment to this multi-religious space, which is for definition of what the Unitarian universal’s philosophy if you will is very much about. It’s coming together across differences and working together. So yes, the answer very simply is yes, and they are, they have, they are committing, contributing to the convening of different religions together,
The upholding of the human rights agenda, the realization of collaboration towards the sustainable development goals, peace and security, the whole demotion. – The next question comes from Dr. Yosef Berlin who asks, or who says UNESCO has a long history now of the many agencies of the United Nations. UNESCO has a long history
Of engagement with religious communities, religious actors in a scholar sovereign region, in countless seminars, conferences, reports, and programs in a deliberate and strategic way, at least since the late 1980s, focusing on culture, education and inter-religious dialogue. How would the speakers and I will ask you this team of speaker in singular,
See UNESCO’s contribution over the past 30 years to the discourse in the UN system? After you answer, I will give you guys a few footnotes on UNESCO of religion and gender. – When we set up the inter-agency task force, the United Nations inter-agency task force,
UNESCO was one of the early to join members of that task force. Their work has been singular in its outreach, particularly within the academic spaces. They have done some remarkable work bringing together some of the best brains in the system. That’s why Professor Joseph Lula and Professor Casanova
Are amongst those different distinguished chains of leaders who have been engaging, advising, working in that space within UNESCO’s academic hemisphere. There has been an inter-religious dialogue on specific issues that UNESCO has stewarded over the years. And I think that it’s been very important that there’s been this space in the UN system.
And I think that there’s more that can be done, quite frankly and I do believe that there’s a tremendous need to bridge the service providers in the inter-religious spaces with the academics, the theologians, the brains of the inter-religious and intercultural space. I think there’s a lot of work to be done
In terms of bridging those together, and it’s a little bit like bridging the UNESCO heritage in this space with the heritage of say, UNDP, UNHCR, UNH and the other operational agencies that are in different countries. So there is still work to be done in that bridging of those inside the UN system,
But we’ve come a very long way and I think UNESCO has established particularly around cultural heritage and religious sites established quite an impressive legacy. – If I may add a footnote some years ago, probably around eight years ago. UNESCO organized a very, very large project on public religions around the world
Taking basically the framework from my analysis by recognizing and pointing out that the issue of gender had not been really, really central to my analysis. And so what happens when you bring gender into the discussion of public regions? And for this task, basically female scholars from all over the world,
Catholic countries like Poland, India, Muslim countries, like I believe it was Turkey and Indonesia and so on precisely spend some time to bring up the issue, how gender basically makes it even more complex. The question of public religious in the mother world which I had incorporated.
And so I think that in this respect, UNESCO has done much in also serving as a place where different voices of scholars but also activist practitioners and I would say women leaders enter into these debates and conversations. The next question will come from Tatiana Barrett
And she asks Professor Karam on what she thinks about the role of youth from religious communities in promoting human rights, building peace, et cetera. Would she have any good examples to share, please? – Thank you. That’s a very good question. The reason I’m laughing
Is not because it’s a great question, but I’m laughing ’cause I don’t know where to start with the brilliant examples to share. Let me just give the thing that’s top most on my mind, but there are so many examples. So Religions for Peace has the oldest, most diverse, most proliferating interfaith youth network
Amongst all the different sort of inter-religious groups and communities and organizations. And one of the things that just happened recently, totally. First of all, it’s spontaneity of service and working together is definitely a hallmark of youth when they come together across the faith traditions. They come up with the most amazing, innovative ideas.
So as soon as COVID hit, the African Youth Network, Religions for Peace’s African interfaith youth network came up with idea that they needed to work with the women of faith, African women of faith youth network which is the other massive global network that Religions for Peace is extraordinarily privileged to serve.
And they said, the youth said, we need to give y’all training on social media. How to use social media. And they did they did. They organized it all together in COVID. I don’t know how they managed to do it, but they managed to organize for an entire regional,
Women of faith network, not in consequential and not a small network. And they came together as the young leaders in their own spaces and trained the women of faith on using social media. And the next thing we knew, we were getting tweets and Facebook posts and LinkedIn with all these women of faith
Speaking to their work and publicizing the work that they were doing collaboratively. And they now have a social media presence, which was phenomenal if you think about it because it took the young folks to train them in doing that with obvious results. So there are many examples. What I mentioned before
The multi-religious humanitarian fund, that Religions for Peace sets up and invited all the different religious actors to try to contribute to in kind or with the most minimal of resources, but to be deliberate about supporting communities to come together, to serve together in this pandemic context.
And we realized that so many of the applicants were actually youth networks who were coming up with the most amazing ideas and projects ’cause they were as busy in the information sharing, the awareness raising, the service delivery of actually packages of food and medicines and spending time with the elderly people,
People with disabilities to look after them during this time where everybody was just hiding in their own space, et cetera, et cetera. They were doing amazing work. They’re the ones who work asking for contributions to do more in this space to serve their communities.
There are so many examples I would invite you to share, to visit our website. I would also invite you to visit the website of the parliament of world religions, the United Religions Initiative, because some tremendous work is happening at so many different levels around the world with youth
Because of youth and thanks to the youth. When the UN secretary general issue to call for a global cease fire, Jose, you may remember that basically saying it’s a pandemic. We have a bigger, a bigger enemy to be confronting than one another. The Interfaith Youth Network of Religions for Peace
Came together and put their own video where each of them from different parts of the world, different religions were echoing that call and calling upon their own communities, their own in some cases in conflict ridden society saying, yes, this is the call that has to be headed. We must heed this call.
So they were expressing their own political will as young people of faith to support the leadership of the so-called multilateral world and saying, yes, this is time. This is what we must do. Please let’s do that. So yes, many, many examples. – The next questions, related one comes from Alejandro Williams Becker
From Argentina, who says, thank you, Professor Casanova and Professor Karam. I am a KICE fellow and I am working on proposals to take the G-20 interfaith summit to advance commitments for partnerships involving villages and multi faith organizations towards the achievement of the SDGs. So do you have any particular recommendations in this matter?
– It’s a great initiative. I’m extremely proud that the KEISI the international center for dialogue is doing this work on the G-20 interfaith summit with the leadership of very experienced colleagues like Professor Catherine Marshall and also Professor Cole Durham. So I think it’s a wonderful collaboration.
Yes, I do have a couple of recommendations. I think the key point here is how collaborative can this space be? What are the gaps in collaboration between different inter religious organizations? There are some very serious gaps in collaborations. There are also some wonderful examples of collaboration between different inter-religious efforts.
I think the multi-religious NGO world is just as riddled with challenges as the secular NGO world. And collaboration is not necessarily one of the strengths, but so how do we learn from the positive examples of collaboration between different inter-religious organizations and more critically, how can we enhance the collaboration
Between the multi-religious and the secular civic actors? I think that has to be a very key recommendation. I would also say that what’s absolutely important for this particular initiative is that it law dates and upholds and insists on the need for support to the multilateral world.
I’m all for the G-20 or the G7 or the G8 whatever they’re called these days. I’m all for it, but I’m also even more for the United nations and multilateral system. And I think it’s very, very important that these actors, whether it’s the world economic forum or the G8 or G7
Or whether it’s the G20, I think it’s very important that there’s a deliberate effort to highlight and to support and to uphold the role of the multilateral entity that is Supreme in our date and time, now, that is celebrating its 75th. Now is the time to uplift and to support this organization,
Not to go off in different sub branches to do their own respective areas of work and engagement. This is the time to come together. G20, G7, G8, G10, G whatever, to come together and support the United Nations system, unequivocally, including pooling the resources at their disposal
To serve that which is to serve us all. – The next question comes from John Borrelli from Georgetown University, who of course has been working on inter-religious dialogue for decades. And he asked, Religions for Peace has had to maintain a careful balance. On the one hand for the good reasons you have given,
It can bring to bear religious and moral commitments of religious bodies, churches, and religion, and current issues facing all of us. And on the other hand, Religions for Peace needs to maintain the confidence of religious leaders to exercise that important function of convening such these peace religious groups. How can Religion for Peace
Become more effective in what it does? Do you see any measure changes in strategies? – That’s a beautiful question. And first of all, many warm greetings to John Borelli, who’s one of the original architects of the Religions for Peace structure, infrastructure hierarchy coming together. The nuances of the conversations and the actions.
So yes, very happy to get this question. There is a very short answer to the question about, is there any change in strategies? I’m here today. I’ve been elected to be here. For the last 27 years, we had some amazing leadership within the Religions for Peace movement and system.
Clearly there is a change in that leadership for a consolidation of the best of what Religions for Peace has already done. And I think just being able to give me a chance to show that there is this already a massive change in that appreciation and in that space of leadership shouldn’t be underestimated.
I would say one of the first things that Religions for Peace today is much more committed to doing thanks to convening 250 of the religious leaders around the world in December for a strategic planning exercise, which had never happened before that you convene 250 religious leaders and plan strategically.
What you’re gonna work together, have a strategic plan with 250 illiterates institutions? They did it, they did it, and they came up with some very clear strategic priorities in full alignment with the sustainable development goals agenda, same language, same issues, similar priorities, and the same indicators for this work.
This was done by the religious leaders. This wasn’t done by some of us. This was done by the legislators. They came together to strategically plan and commit to working together with total alignment with an international agenda of 193 governments. Two that actually identified very clearly, gender equality as they are concern,
As something they’re committing themselves to and committing to actions in that space. So, yeah, I think there’s been quite a change in this movement. And it’s manifesting in the way that these religious leaders are working together. I don’t speak for myself. I’m speaking for the service
And in the name of the service to these religious leaders. So what you’re hearing, what you’re seeing and what you will see in terms of more partnerships, more engagement around very difficult issues is the commitment that religious leaders themselves are making and working towards and realizing.
– The next question comes from Samuel Bachner and brings us to the issue of theological dialogue and the role it plays or may play in multi religious collaborations, since I tended to somehow minimize the role of theological dialogue, but obviously there is some room for it.
So what will be the role of theological dialogue in multi religious collaboration? – It’s absolutely foundational. The reason that Religions for Peace and other institutions today that are inter religious in nature are able to realize so much collaborative efforts at so many different levels on so many different issues.
The reason is that this is the fruit of decades of theological engagement and discussion and conversation. There is a continuity that often we miss, but it is very much present. You cannot build it today on what you have not put together the tools and the materials with yesterday. Theological conversation is quintessential
To the relational aspect of that we’re saying today, we’re maintaining today. We’re proving by the very virtue of existence of multi religious collaborative initiatives that we need, that we are building on that relational dynamic, and the relational dynamic comes thanks to in large measure, not just a global pandemic
That forces everybody to work together, but thanks to the fact that we have developed a common narrative of commitment, of service that is built upon the theological foundations. Samuel has been leading, co-leading an incredible initiative with Muslims and Christians for many years, which I’ve had the incredible privilege of being part of
Just for a couple of times. And I have seen, and I have witnessed what it means to actually look at what God said in our respective texts, and then try to unpack it together and understand the deeper. I come out from these conversations with my Muslim,
My Christian and my Hindu and Jewish and so on, theological conversations, I come out feeling like I’m a better believer. I’m a more, slightly wiser believer in my own faith that is so integrally committed to the other, and part of all the other faith traditions. Theological encounter is the basis
Of an inter relational building that we need in turn to be able to work multi-religiously. – We are coming to the end of our session and we have three related questions dealing with religion and geopolitics. So I’m going to present all three of them and you can answer somehow
In any way you think it’s possible. From Flabio Conrado comes the question in different regions of the world, extremist governments are being elected, raising concerns about the human rights agenda in a spaces like a United Nations. This week, we showed the UN general assembly president spreading polarization and extremism using religious discourse.
How are Religions for Peace dealing with these kinds of discourse when it comes from readers who speak with religious rhetoric? The next question comes from AW and says, what are the mental multi-religious impacts of the United States from withdrawing from the UN human rights UNESCO sections
We could that from the World Health Organization? Do you think the scanning will be changed with any of us political administration if the current U S administration their policies remain the same? How can we as individuals and the society make sense to improve and enhance multi-religious impacts. Finally, from Mahamirsa,
Would you say that the global system is a structure to bring about the greater good, or to provide legitimacy through institutions for their own interests while giving the appearance of doing good wherever possible in part through the instrumentalization of religions? Can religions lead us into a better world?
Can they actually lead or do they mainly just follow, helping us manage crisis created by war order primarily secular? So on these three questions, I’m going to let you have the last word in whichever way you want to respond to that. – Gee, thank you. Those are extremely extensive questions
And I’m very grateful for them and then many warm greetings to Mahan and the others who raised these questions. There was no question to me that’s participation and engagement are a scenic one on of any transition, transformation that we need in our global community today. To exit the space under any excuse,
To exit from the opportunity and the challenge presented by actively engaging and working together to exit this space and to assume that you can do it on your own, that you don’t need that the rest of the world to work with you, that in and of itself is very, that is the problem.
That is actually the heart of the problem of what we’re confronting today. We are extraordinarily interdependent and interrelated as a planet. We cannot afford to go it alone. No nation, no community, no religion, no one can afford to go it alone anymore. I’m really sorry.
I don’t know when it was possible to go it alone, but now, especially, and the pandemic teaches us, pandemic 101, we are all connected, equally vulnerable, equally strong if we stay connected. So the idea that any government should withdraw from any particular multilateral space to me is the beginning of unraveling,
Not only that own governance and society structure, but it is unraveling of our interconnectivity. It is posing a serious challenge to the fact that our planet demands we work together and we work as one. So to me, that’s just, there’s no even question about that. Is that harmful? Yes, it’s absolutely harmful.
What do we do about it? And this brings me to the issue of the extremist. And by the way, extremist discourse that is espoused and subtly or implicitly or explicitly by certain governments and or regimes, the fact that this is happening more today is part and parcel of the phenomenon
Of certain government society that they don’t need to be part of this space. They can do it better on their own. That is the same phenomenon by the way. And I think that the issue here is we can lament, we can belabor, we can get very upset or we can actually demonstrate
How it is that working together collaboratively, how that actually does change, how that actually does contribute, how that actually does heal. And I think those, the emphasis on that, on showing that, on seeing it happen because it’s happening, it’s happening all the time. We are alive here today by virtue of the fact
That people work together. We are alive here today by virtue of the fact that people serve institutions serve together. We wouldn’t be here on this Zoom call if we didn’t have that absolute reality. So the idea that we could potentially show, highlight, more, magnify, and that’s one of the reasons
That’s one of my big things with media is when we were in the World Humanitarian Summit, all the faith-based organizations came together and came up with an agreed ethos on serving human rights and upholding international humanitarian law and serving together in humanitarian crisis all over the world.
Nothing emerged from that in the media. Nobody even knew this happened. And I will wager you that if somebody had walked in and exploded themselves, that would have made major news in that space. One loaner in the name of one warped understanding of religion, would have received tremendous media attention.
All the faith communities in that one space coming together and committing to a charter on humanitarian service and collaborations together, no news. I think we have a role to play in being deliberate about seeing that which is working, that which is the collaborative potential of our work. It’s absolutely necessary.
We have to do it. There’s no question about it. And with all due the respect, Mahan, I think the answer is in your question. Your question has the answer to it. Yes, religions institutions can be extraordinarily narrow-minded in their self interest, but we can’t survive without them
Because we’re too many to relate one on one with one another all the time. We need mechanisms to do so. Right now, institutions of various hues are mechanisms. It is up to us to make sure that those institutions are held accountable and responsive. There’s no question that the multilateral order
Requires the government systems. The government systems require the institutions of civil society there to function. That is the order of things. It will never be good. There will be rot here. There will be horrible stuff there, but there’s also a legacy of being able to work together, better.
– Well, the bell has rung. We are past our time, and I thank you very, very much for these wonderful conversation. And I thank you, especially for all your insights, for your courage, for your leadership and commitment to work together for everything that is important for global humanity, especially in leading
These global, religious, secular dialogue. Thank you everybody for participating in our conversation. As we pointed out in a few days, the conversation will be on YouTube at the Berkeley Center website, and you will receive soon notices of the next dialogue. It will be with Peter Vanderveer
From the Max Planck Institute in getting in mid October. We will let you know. Thank you so much and hope to see you next month.
JONES: This second lecture will deal with one of the powerful influences on our culture today, namely I’m looking at the rise and demise of secular humanism. I think it’s important that we understand today’s culture. And I really am so happy that there are young people listening to me because while some
Of you my age will say, “You’re saying what exactly what I understand and have lived through.” Sometimes our young people have difficulty figuring out what’s happening because they have not lived through this kind of thing. So I address them in particular.
And to understand our culture, we need to see that there are two fundamental ideologies that I will show at the end of my lectures possibly are really the same because they’re Oneist, namely secular humanism and revive paganism. They’re very different but at the end of the day, they are in their fundamental orientations
Of the world — Oneist. You know when I first came in 1964, I mention how amazed I was to see Christian America. And the other thing that amazed me was how much people lived in fear of communism. There were commies behind every bush.
And of course the McCarthy investigation of communist agents was just finished and many on the left poopooed that but it’s actually been shown that there were many communist agents in America during that time. But we were worried because this godless system of communism or Marxism was spreading throughout
The world in this sort of a domino effect from the Soviet Union to China, to Korea, to Vietnam, to Cuba. And you know the ’60s revolution was very much a revolution against the Vietnam War whose motivation of course was to oppose communism.
So we have radicals who still actually now have power who were part of those refusing to denounce communism which is sort of interesting. So the threat in the ’60s was not a religious threat but a nonreligious materialism in its various forms. In its political form of course — atheistic Marxism.
But it is also had an intellectual form called secular humanism and that was something that we all realized and perhaps still realize as a fundamental opponent of the Christian faith. Humanism was celebrated in the Renaissance just before the Reformation as the rediscovery
Of the value of the individual human being and his reason over against the power of the church. And many of us have seen the importance of that movement and of course it’s easy to describe the work of Martin Luther as an expression, in a certain sense, of that humanistic understanding
Of the importance of the individual. But of course, like most things, its good parts can be turned to bad. And what you have you see is, from the intelligent use of individual reason which has produced the incredible successes of Western culture through science and technology.
So, that one day human beings would walk on the moon; this kind of thinking became more and more enamored of its own power and felt that it was the only way of relating to the world — that human reason was the source of truth.
And belief in a world created by God and of reason created by God was dismissed as religious superstition and myth. And so for modern man — religion had to go, and this is why we have known and recognized that secular humanism is a massive attack on Christianity.
So from the 18th Century on what’s called “The Enlightenment” — “the age of light” if you like; this view of reason as the ultimate source of authority for human existence developed in a powerful way. Optimism in what mankind could produce, its capacities to bring about a better world took
The minds of intellectuals by storm and of course invaded the university. So that, so many of our intellectuals bought into this system. Bringing about if you like this vision of a kingdom of man on earth, you can already see how Oneist that is, right?
If it’s simply depending on human beings to put the world together, it is a form of Oneism. It was known as the religion of humanism and it was particularly expressed by the French Revolution. I spent eighteen years in France, so I love the French but I see their weaknesses too.
In 1789, the Paris revolutionaries built an altar to the goddess ‘Reason’ in Notre Dame Cathedral, can you believe that? There was an altar right in the center of that incredible medieval church and they celebrated to goddess ‘Reason’. The French philosopher who was part of this French Revolution — Voltaire, was fundamentally anti-Christian.
He was a friend by the way of Benjamin Franklin, who himself was a very conflicted man because some of you know that Benjamin Franklin was fascinated by George Whitfield and helped pay for some of his campaign.
And yet he was also a friend of Voltaire, one of the leading atheists of the 18th Century. Voltaire came up with the famous phrase “écrasez l’infâme,” — “Crush that vile unspeakable thing.” This became the battle cry of The Enlightenment, but it was actually Christianity that was the vile and unspeakable thing.
And so there were thousands of heads of priests and so on that were separated from their bodies through the French Revolution. The Emperor Napoleon asked Pierre-Simon Laplace, — the great French scientist if he believed in God; he was reputed to have said, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”
This is a movement, a very powerful movement in the West, and as western history develops in the 18th and 19th Centuries, you find leading intellectuals actually predicting the end of religion. In the 21st Century, we should be seeing the end of religion according to these predictions.
Ludwig Feuerbach called Christianity a “delusion,” “a gigantic human projection.” You remember Karl Marx described religion as “the opiate of the people,” the sign of a wrongly ordered society. “Man,” said Marx, “is the supreme divinity.” By the way, another expression Oneism.
But these people didn’t want to be called religious by the way; they weren’t religious, they were rational. Of course why did they believe in their own rationality, that was a faith statement by the way. Friedrich Nietzsche declared “Gott ist tot,” “God is dead.”
The tradition of Christianity was now being buried by these leading philosophers. Sigmund Freud in his book “The Future of an Illusion” speaks about religion in particularism his own Judaism as a “mass delusion, a collective neurosis which enshrines our infantile longing.”
He actually describes it as a serious pathological condition from which one needed to be healed. Really massive anti-religious mindset going on amongst the intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries. And that continues to this day in 1976, Richard Dawkins, one of the new atheists, in his book
“The Selfish Gene,” describes faith, quote, “as a kind of mental illness.” So here we have this rationalistic approach to eliminate faith and religion as a form of illness. And of course we saw this kind of thinking invade the church; that’s what liberalism is, you see.
Liberalism is the adaptation of the world’s kind of thinking and trying to make it Christian, that’s what liberals have done all through the ages since the beginning. Christianity, beginning with the Gnostics, who were the original liberals who tried to take pagan notions of the mystery religions and make them Christian.
So that’s the mechanism that liberals use. And when I was studying New Testament at Harvard, of course that was the great goal — to reinterpret the New Testament by demythologizing the supernatural. Demythologizing means taking away the myths and getting to the heart which really the
Heart was sort of a sense of one’s own existential being faced with nothingness; that was the real meaning of Christianity in the New Testament. So there was no miracles and certainly no resurrection of Jesus. And then of course, the mainline churches buy into this kind of thinking.
But of course, someone has said, “If you marry the spirit of the age, you will soon be a widower.” And we’ve seen mainline churches going down in their effect in our culture. And Liberalism thus defined the Gospel as mere social work, and saw Jesus only as an
Example not as a divine Savior, that was myth of course you see, so myth had to go. The Gospel was redefined in terms of Marxist politics. Liberation theology became all the rage, and Jesus was little more than a cake of 20th century revolutionary theory.
On a different level, the secular humanists were greatly influenced by Darwin, who would effectively eliminated belief in “God the Creator,” and proposed in place of “God the Creator” the idea of an unguided and impersonal process of natural selection.
Life came about by mere chance, and man was seen as the result of purposelessness and a mere natural process, that did not have him in mind by the way, and so we are really the result of chance.
It’s incredible to see how far people can go with that as an explanation for the incredible beauty and power of what we represent as human beings. The way our bodies have put together. The way our minds can function. There’s no valid explanation of this in secular humanism and yet so many liberal thinkers
Adopted it. Science was the only way of knowing anything about anything. And so, there was a belief that religion would disappear. When I came to the states in the ’60s, I was asked to read books on ‘the death of God’.
And this was all the rage and we were sort of told that this was the proof (and I wasn’t at an evangelical school and I don’t really blame my professors for seeing it this way, I saw it that way) that the death of God was the proof of the success of secular humanism.
That man no longer needed God as a hypothesis, he was now fine on his own. The final triumph then of secular humanism is to declare in America in the ’70s that God had died. Secular humanism had won. Now in a certain sense, these predictions have come true.
We’re seeing the decline of the Christian faith in the population as a whole. No longer are many people influenced by a Christian way of thinking and I don’t think we should hide our eyes from that. And in that sense we’ve seen the decline of attachment to the Christian faith.
Now, this is a massive change. People no longer actually believe in God the Creator and so they can do anything they want to, but that was not always the case. In 1890, the Supreme Court in United States defined religion as “one’s view of one’s relation
To his Creator, to the obligations they impose of reverence for his being and character and obedience to His will.” That was the statement of the Supreme Court in 1890. There was no other definition of God but of a personal transcendent creator.
But thanks in many ways to secular humanism, this is no longer the case in public discourse. So what is ‘secularism’ or secular humanism? Let me give you a simple definition, it comes in various names. As an intellectual discipline, it is known as “philosophical materialism,” that matter is ultimate. That’s the philosophy of materialism. As a religious expression, it is called ‘Atheism’, the faith belief that there is no God. There’s no — you can’t prove that rationally, right? So an atheist has to be in some sense a religious believer.
As a political form, it is practiced as ‘Marxism’ and various forms of socialism. And for many people, it’s simply a default way of thinking of living without any notion that God exists. That’s probably the way most people practice this kind of thinking.
But in all these expressions of secularism, it’s a consistent rejection as a mere ancient superstition, a sort of a holdover from the Middle Ages and we must refuse that kind of mythology if we want to really do our world good. Now, this kind of a view still dominates the western universities.
Some of you young people that go to schools around here will confirm that your professors — many of them believe in this kind of rationalism or secular humanism. However, this is not the whole story. Just as these philosophers of the 19th and early 20th century were predicting the end
Of the withering away of religion in a kind of ironic turn of events. We are now seeing the withering away of secular humanism, did you realize that? You probably don’t always see it, but this is happening and many people are talking about it.
And the withering away of secular humanism, (oh let me just say it) the proof is, how many people now say, “I’m spiritual but not religious?” In other words, they are making a claim to spirituality which doesn’t fit with secular humanism, right? — That’s superstition. Any kind of faith is superstition.
Well, the reasons why this movement of secular humanism is on the decline and indeed is withering away, is that while it was so optimistic and full of self-confidence; secular humanism produced two devastating World Wars that produced the death of millions. In some of its socialistic expressions it became totalitarian fascism.
And some of its great leader was Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot that produced the murder of countless millions, in the name of secular humanism. That doesn’t give a movement too many honors. And of course from that — you have wild industrialization, ecological disasters; but as I was indicating
Earlier, one of the real problems is that many people have begun to feel that without some kind of spirituality they can’t exist in this world. And that’s what secular humanism does; it leaves us with a soulless materialism without any sense of a meaning in a spiritual way of thinking.
And so secular humanism produced a profound sense of alienation from the rest of the universe. So we human beings, you see, are isolated in this massive cosmos, and we have no real relationship with the outside and so we have a profound sense of alienation. Have you met people like that?
They are looking for a sense of wholeness. “W-H.” (I didn’t say holiness, I said whole-ness) they want to belong somehow to more than a mere physical. But there is another reason why secular humanism is in decline. It is severely weak as a philosophical system. What do I mean by that?
Well, you see, to be a secular humanist, you have to believe in the validity of human reason. But in order to believe in human reason, you have to presuppose it. So to demonstrate that, you have to presuppose it. So it’s a perfectly circular way of thinking, does that make sense?
In order to prove reason, you have to presuppose it. And to presuppose it, that’s a faith statement that the world is rational. You don’t have all the information, right? You don’t sit outside of the cosmos and look down, ‘Oh yeah, that’s rational’. You have to presuppose that.
And some scholars have realized that this is not a ground for establishing secular humanism. The postmodern critique of secular humanism which argued that all major ideas are simply human notions and they are not scientific or philosophical, included the critique of secular humanism oddly.
So postmodernism — the thinkers of whom were probably the sons and daughters of secular humanist turns around and eats up their parents. There are two reasons really why secular humanism is on the decline. The first, is it really cannot stand against true biblical theism.
The conversion of Antony Flew — the great atheist is an example of that. He stated this, “It is simply inconceivable that any material matrix or field can generate agents who think and act. Matter cannot produce conceptions and perceptions such a world has to originate in the living source, a mind.”
The greatest atheist of the 20th century finally has to admit that secularism cannot justify the human mind. Isn’t that beautiful? But then, finally, there’s a new way of thinking. It is the thinking of this new spirituality. David Miller, who was a professor at Syracuse University, and was one of the ‘death of God’
Theologians actually said, “At the death of God, you will see the rebirth of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome.” That’s not secular humanism. That’s a justification of a belief in all the gods. What did Miller know that we didn’t know as we read him in the ’70s?
Well, he was a devout follower of Carl Jung. And that will be the subject of my next lecture. Thank you.
It has become a dogma of progressive ideology that America is a “secular” nation. What do people mean by secular? Their argument goes this way: “Since the Constitution establishes a strict separation of church and state, religion has no place in how the country is to be governed. Religion is
A purely ‘private’ matter and therefore must be kept out of politics or public policy-making.” There is a problem with this claim, however: It’s false. What the Constitution actually does when it comes to religion is, first, ban religious tests of any sort for public office—that’s
In Article 6—and, second, forbid the enactment of any “law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”— those are the words of the First Amendment. The plain meaning of those words is that Congress was forbidden from
One, establishing a national church (on the model of the Church of England); and two, attempting to disestablish or interfering with the established churches that existed in some of the states—in certain cases for decades after ratification of the First Amendment.
But what about the “separation of church and state”? That’s in the Constitution, too, isn’t it? Well, no. Try as you might, you will not find the words “separation of church and state” in the Constitution. The famous phrase comes from a letter that Thomas Jefferson, who was not at the Constitutional Convention—(he
Was in France at the time)—wrote years later to a Baptist community in Danbury, Connecticut. Jefferson in his characteristically eloquent way was simply trying to capture the spirit of the first amendment prohibiting the establishment of a national religion. The author of the Declaration of Independence was committed to an America
Where people were free to practice any faith or no faith, as their consciences dictate. None of the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson who was among the least religious of them (though not an atheist), ever entertained the idea that there was to be a separation of religion from public life or from politics.
The secularist claim that our Constitution consigns religion to the purely private sphere is contradicted by the words and actions of the greatest figures in American history, from Washington, who called for national days of prayer; to Lincoln, who proclaimed a national day of prayer and fasting; to Martin Luther King.
King, of course, was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, a Baptist clergyman, who fought racial segregation and discrimination in the most explicitly Biblical terms. If you believe the secularist understanding of the separation of church and state, Martin Luther King violated that doctrine in almost everything he did.
And so did every president in American history. Every single one invoked God in his inaugural address. For Martin Luther King, as for so many other Americans, racial injustice was not only a violation of the Golden Rule but, first and foremost, a violation
Of the teaching of the Book of Genesis that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. There are in the world truly secularist regimes. France, with its system of “laicite”—religion must be exercised only in the private,
Not the public, sphere—is one. So, of course, are the communist regimes of China, Cuba, and North Korea. In such regimes, secularism is the official public philosophy, and religion is, to the extent it is permitted at all, restricted to the private domain. But that is not an accurate description of the United States—at all.
And how could it be? Although we separate the institutions of religion from those of government, we do that not to make religion subservient to the state, but rather to protect it from the state. We are, after all, a nation which in its very founding document
Acknowledges the Creator—God Himself—as the source of justice owed to all human beings. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are Created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Far from being “secularist,” the American constitutional order holds that our fundamental rights are not privileges conferred by any merely human power; they are, rather, gifts—endowments—from God Himself. And they are “unalienable”—that is, they cannot legitimately be taken away by government
Or any other human authority—precisely because they were not given to us by any human authority. Indeed, we couldn’t give them away even if we wanted to. Why? Because they come from the hand of God. So, is the claim that America is a “secular” nation true? The answer should now be clear.
I’m Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University for Prager University.
Secularism is the political doctrine defined, broadly speaking, by the idea of separation between religion and the state. The secular nature of the state does not imply an anti-religious attitude. The separation between religion and state is meant to preserve religion against political interference as much as it intends
To safeguard the political sphere from religious intrusion. Secularism is not meant to restrict religion, but to provide the legal framework, the religion-state arrangement, which guarantees the free exercise of religion or belief. In our increasingly pluralistic societies,
It is crucial to understand that there is no one ideal model of secularism, but rather a wide variety of historical paths, resulting in different religion-state relations. These include French laïcité, American disestablishment, British and Scandinavian established state churches and concordatarian preferential model as in Italy and Spain.
Each model can lead to a robust legal protection of the right to freedom of religion or belief, but only if the state strives for neutrality and works to combat discrimination based on religion or belief. The core ethical and normative right of freedom of religion or belief
Is universal, but the legal arrangements to protect it can be very different. For example, on the hotly debated issue of religious symbols in the public sphere, from the burqa ban to the presence of crucifixes in public school classrooms, the doctrine of the margin of appreciation
Allows the European Court of Human Rights to take into account the cultural, historic and philosophical differences of the particular national authority in determining when interference with freedom of religion or belief becomes necessary in a democratic society. To build vibrant civil societies, democratic states should include
Not exclude religious and belief voices in public debate, as this can strengthen the common good.
And sometimes asked what I mean when I refer to myself as a secularist. The term secular has different meanings but when I describe my own position as secular I’m referring to a view encompassing two broad principles: firstly the separation of religion from state leaves religious people free to practise their religion
Provided they don’t infringe the freedoms of others and allows the non-religious to live without the imposition of religion through law, education, government, employment or health. This promotes freedom of religion and from religion. Secondly the principle of equality before the law seeks to
Remove all privilege or penalty for having or lacking religious faith, to ensure that no belief – religious or otherwise – receives special protection from criticism. And that inequalities which some support within their religion won’t be supported outside it. Obviously under this principle blasphemy and apostasy are non punishable. When properly understood secularism creates
An environment of equality that benefits us all. Which is why it’s supported by theists and atheists, religious and non-religious people, alike. This is not a Christian nation, it’s not even a religious nation. It’s a nation of many faiths and none. And even within faith groups there can be fundamental
Differences of opinion on important issues. Establishing secular boundaries that prevent any single religion imposing its values on everyone else is as much a protection for the religious as it is for the non religious. Boundaries naturally upset those whose nature is to impose and people who’ve
Got used to privilege don’t like it being removed. Their complaints are to be taken for granted. When Sayeeda Warsi told the Vatican that aggressive secularism is being imposed by stealth, likening it to totalitarianism, and saying secularism denied people the right to religious identity this was shameless
Misrepresentation. Secularism denies no one religious identity. It defends that freedom but not the freedom to impose that identity on others. What secularism says is that having a religious identity does not justify special tax exemption, especially for the already rich, preaching religion in state schools, inserting narrow religious values into common law, having unelected
Religious leaders as legislators or demanding council prayers. Redressing these unjust and inappropriate privileges is not totalitarian nor is it an attack on faith. It’s a recognition of the freedom of all people to live without divisive inequalities. Secular principles supported by theists and atheists alike encourage fairness and mutual consideration and help us all
Within reasonable limits to live together in the way we choose. you
[MUSIC] As foundations for nation states, religious nationalism and secular nationalism are often thought of as polar opposites. Those who value secular nationalism often depict religious nationalism as backward, irrational, repressive, and violent. In contrast, secular nationalism is depicted as modern, rational, liberal, and peaceful.
On the other hand, those who value religious nationalism often depict secular nationalism as immoral, individual, and a vestige of colonialism. While religious nationalism is represented as moral, communal and a form of self determination. All of these depictions perpetuate common misunderstandings of both religion and secularism. In reality, religious nationalism and secular nationalism
Are umbrella terms that include incredibly diverse ideologies. Their values can be overlapping or in opposition, depending on social and historical context. For example, in 1923, the Republic of Turkey was formed as a secular state, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It’s first president, Kemal Ataturk brought in sweeping reforms that
Replaced Muslim rule and culture, with a particular form of secularism. By the 1970s, Turkey was the most secular of all Muslim majority countries. But rampant inequality and the perception of government corruption gave rise to Islamic parties that gained enough power by 1996 to form a coalition government. In response,
Secular officials imposed a public ban on a symbol of Islam, the head scarf. Women who wore the hijab were no longer allowed to study at the university. And a democratically elected member of parliament named Merve Kavakci, representing the Islamic Virtue Party, was prevented
From taking the oath of office by her fellow secular National Assembly members. When she entered the parliament, they stood and yelled out for 30 minutes until she was forced to leave. Two weeks later, she was stripped of her Turkish citizenship. These and related restrictions emboldened members of Islamic political parties.
And the current president, Recep Erdogan, is an Islamist who has held power since 2003. In another example, the United States is a secular nation but its currency is imprinted with, In God We Trust. The pledge of allegiance includes the phrase, one nation under God.
And 42 of the 45 US presidents identified as Protestant Christians. India is also a secular nation but over the past few decades, democratically elected Hindu nationalists have gained power. They enacted reforms in education and culture that promote particular forms of Hinduism that many other Hindus and
Members of other religious and secular communities find troubling. Like all world views, religious and secular forms of nationalism can only be understood in their particular social and historical context. Understanding their rich diversities will enhance our understanding of movements on local, national and international levels.
