Religion, Globalization and Secularization

Moderator: Doris Donnelly

Panelists: José Casanova, Gilles Kepel, Tomáš Halík, Grace Davie

 

 

 

José Casanova began with a “bird’s eye view of global processes” regarding religion, globalization, and secularization. Social and political scientists were wrong in thinking that religion was a thing of the past and that the rest of the world would follow the modern process. Instead, the world is becoming simultaneously more religious and more secular. “All world religions are being transformed radically today in diverse and manifold ways,” said Casanova.

 

Mr. Casanova defined secularization in three fundamental ways: as a separation of state and religious spheres, the decline of religious beliefs and practice, and the privatization of religion. The trajectory of secularization is uncertain, but what it has translated into is a more individualized practice. Today, secularization means that there are more options for any type of fulfillment to be found or created. “Anyone can be initiated into any ancestral cult,” he asserted. The individualist factor in secularization is a symptom of modernity. Religions today have become more secular through a growing global trend of mutual recognition of cultures and universalistic praise, declared Casanova. Today denominationalism, the “system of mutual recognition of groups within society,” both deters and encourages the rise of religion. The definition of religion is changing as the secular and the religious continue to grow dependently within the changing world. 

 

Gilles Kepel, sociologist and political scientist, framed his remarks within the rhetoric of both religion and the search for collective identity. He opened with the example of the World Cup, which France lost due to what many believed was “communalist fragmentation based on diverging identities.” Today, class stratification of society has been unable to accept the changes in the post-industrial world, making it difficult for many communities to find their identity within the changing system. This is historically a drastic change: “What made a Greek a Greek was not where he was born, but that he went to the Palaestra.” explained Kepel. Instead of nationality, inclusion was associated with culture and values, of which religion was a part. The change in religion today is part of the attempt to create a certain identity in order to relate with the nation state.

 

Tomáš Halík spoke of the interconnectedness of Christianity and secularism in European society. He found it significant that “traditional Christianity has led a symbiotic existence for two thousand years with the only culture that seems to be secular – European modernity.” Father Halík pointed out that faith is intermixed with western culture, and remarked that “it is only Christianity that stops the secular culture from turning into a religion.” He mentioned the tension that exists between the two ideologies, which could lead to either thoughtful discourse or “trench warfare”, depending on the context. Religion and secularism cannot and should not go their separate ways, despite what extremists on both sides of the spectrum would have the world believe. To both, the “greatest threat comes from mutual demonization.”

 

Finally, Grace Davie, sociologist and religious analyst, sought to emphasize the difference between the perception of religion and the reality of it. She did not believe that “God is back” since that would necessarily imply that God went away. In disabusing the audience of the notion that the arrival of Muslims is a relatively new phenomenon in Europe, she pointed out that they have been here for decades, but were then known as Algerians and Pakistanis. Ms. Davie questioned “why political, economic, and social science got it wrong for so long,” and believed that the perception of religion in academia may still be wrong. Various disciplines will have to reexamine their thinking with regard to religion, which may constitute a “radical revolution in social scientific thinking.”