CHAPTER 9: THE GLOBALIZATION OF RELIGION

The conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating civilizations.
- Samuel Huntington

Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of this chapter, learners must be able to:
1. Understand how scholars have approached the relationship between religion and globalization;
2. Grasp the nuances, strengths, and weaknesses of the theses on secularization and the resurgence
of religion;
3. Unravel the relationship between conflicts and religions;
4. Apply the theoretical tools discussed in the real-world contexts; and
5. Equip students with 21st century learning and develop higher order thinking skills that will lead
towards a deeper understanding of the Globalization of Religion.

How has globalization transformed the role of religion within societies. Two images can be conceived
about this question: one in highly-industrialized a Western society where religious affiliation and engagement
are in decline another in non-Western societies where religions guide politics and all other aspects of life, also
in extreme cases where groups would instigate violence in the name of religious beliefs. It is easy to make
conclusions from this dichotomy but it also a huge mistake to disregard the complexity and the underlying
ideological biases of such reduction. This chapter aims to explore the complicated relationship between
religion and globalization by revisiting theoretical analyses provided by classical and contemporary scholars.
The concept of religion has been defined by Haynes (2006) in the context of international relations into
two distinct but related meanings. In its spiritual sense, he refers to religion in the three ways of how social
and individual behavior of believers are organized: 1) it involves the idea of transcendence, referring to
supernatural realities; 2) it relates with sacredness or holiness and system of practice and language which is
organized and defined as such; and 3) it concerns ultimacy, on how "it relates people to the ultimate
conditions of existence" (p. 538). In the material sense of defining religion, he states that religious beliefs are
capable of motivating individuals and groups to collectively mobilize to achieve political goals and
consequently, suppress mass actions as a tool of repression.
With this understanding in mind on the two aspects of how religion is defined, we proceed to the two
broad and main arguments about the state of religion in the context of globalization. First is the secularization
paradigm where religion has been viewed to have lost its influence to some extent with the advent of
modernization, and the religious resurgence thesis where modernization has caused a backlash and urged
society to seek refuge in religion due to the imposition of liberal and Western values that are incompatible with
people's culture, beliefs, and identity.

Secularization: The Consequence of Modernization

 The paradigm of secularization refers to the belief that religion would lose its significance with
economic development and modernization. The thesis can be traced back to the classical works of Auguste
Comte, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx who posited that modernization involves a decline of
religiosity among societies and providing different explanations as to why this will occur. Comte, one of the
first theorists of secularization, posited that society undergoes three stages: theological stage, metaphysical
stage, and the positivist/scientific stage. Weber argues that the Men will undergo modernization which is a
process of the disenchantment of the universe with the replacement of bureaucratization, rationalization, and
secularization over the magical, the metaphysical, and the religious. For Emile Durkheim, he argues that the
individualization of the societies breaking the bonds of community. Karl Marx, on the other hand, views
religion as the opium of the people created by the material conditions. Marx believed that religion would have
no place in a communist society where all individuals are treated equally with the eradication of class division
and the existence of the state.

Figure 7.1 Map of the Least Religious Countries in World's least religious countries
Percentage of respondents in each country claiming to be either not religious or atheist.

WIN/Gallup International as cited in Noack (2015)

(Source of Photo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/14/map-these-are-the-
worlds-least-religious-countries/)

The classical theories of secularization have significantly influenced scholars in the modern era who
would forward more complex and at times contradictory variants of secularization. Tschannen (1991), Gorski
(2000) and Goldstein (2009) present general overviews of the development of the secularization paradigm
and the convergences and divergences of the theories.
Tschannen (1991) provides a systematic overview of theories that would constitute the secularization
paradigm since 1963 (see Figure 7.2). The secularization paradigm is based on three core "concepts":
differentiation, rationalization, and worldliness which he draws from the theories of Thomas Luckmann, Peter
Berger, Bryan Wilson, David Martin, Richard Fenn, Talcott Parsons, and Robert Bellah. He argues that
religion becomes differentiated and autonomous from other institutions, "which thus loses its power of social
control and guidance over the rest of society," as seen in the differentiation among the relationships of the
church, the state, and education (p. 402). Religion reorganizes itself in terms of location and function within
the society as it becomes privatized as a personalized religion, generalized to pervade secular (economic or
political) institutions, pluralized into several competing denominations, or as religion declines in practice.
Tschannen (1991) views the process of rationalization in the following aspects: 1) scientization which
is related to the emergence of science that would compete with religious worldviews, and 2) sociologization
where social life is determined in a scientific and rational fashion that is free from religious influence.
Rationalization is concomitant to the weakening of religion which manifests in the societal level where there is
the collapse of the worldview, and in the individual level where people no longer believe in God. The impact of
the processes of differentiation and rationalization on religion is its loss of specificity and shift to worldliness
where religious organizations begin to cater to their members' psychological needs. Furthermore, in its
entirety, Tschannen (1991) views the secularization paradigm as standing under two preliminary assumptions:
that some roots of the secularization process can be found within religion itself and that religion is related to
human conduction and thus will not completely disappear.

Figure 7.2 Tschammen's (1991, p. 401)

Basic Structure of the Secularization Paradigm

C p
a s (religious roots) (no dissapperance)
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o collapse
c privatization generalization i
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unbelief s
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autonomization

decline of differ
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scientization sociologization
worldl

(Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1387276)

Gorski (2000) follows the same emphasis on differentiation as the uniting concept across the paradigm
of secularization. He provides an understanding of theories into four basic positions: 1) the disappearance of
religion thesis as espoused by Comte where religion is supplanted by science; 2) the decline of religion thesis
as advocated by Weber where there is the decline of the religious but not the complete triumph of the
scientific worldviews, thus the possibilities of revival of new gods or religions; 3) the privatization thesis as
argued by Luckman where institutionalized religions are replaced by new and personalized faiths; and 4) the
transformation thesis as set forth by Parsons where religion is viewed to undergo generalization across social
systems, with the sacred becoming more fragmented but not less public. Gorski (2000) argues that the
secularization paradigm comprising of a variant of theories revolve around the core theory of differentiation,
that branches out to different arguments of the direction of individual religiosity in the modern era (see 7.3).

Figure 7.3 Gorski’s (2000, p. 142) Schematic View of the Secularization Paradigm

(Source: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Historicizing-the-secularization-debate-%3A-Church%2C-
Gorski/767ead489528b5525221759c9c6b52d6a14774c2)

Goldstein (2009), on the other hand, focuses on and questions the unilinear conception of the
secularization process. He identifies three different camps within the old secularization paradigm: the
functionalists namely Talcott Parsons, Robert Bellah, and Niklas Luhmann, the phenomenologists such as
Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, and Alfred Schutz, and the dialectic theorists involving Bryan Wilson, David
Martin, and Richard Fenn, whom he associates himself with. Goldstein challenges Stephen Warner's narrative
of the old paradigm as "secularization" and the new paradigm as "revival and routinization." He argues that
the secularization theories in the old paradigm do not follow a linear process and may even follow other
patterns that are spiral, dialectical, and paradoxical. Goldstein offers a dialectical understanding of the
secularization process that is marked by contradictions, progress, and reversals where "religious movements
in the direction of rationalization, and social movements in the direction of secularization, spawn religious
counter-movements in the direction of sacralization and dedifferentiation" (p. 175). From a dialectic
understanding of secularization views, the tensions brought by the contradictions between the sacred and
profane and the religious and the secular, as viewed as factors that drive further rationalization of religion and
the society.
The secularization paradigm is a family of theories that vary in terms of the extent of the decline or
displacement of religion, the direction of the process, and the driving forces they ascribe to the secularization.
The paradigm, however, has confronted challenges in its relevance and validity especially due to the
emergence of armed conflicts fought under the banner of religious beliefs as seen in the key events such as
the Iranian Revolution, the Solidarity and the Polish Revolution, and the September 11, 2001 tragedy
(Thomas, 2005). This brings us to the field of inquiry on the resurgence of religion in the era of globalization.

The Resurgence of Religion in the Context of Globalization

 One of the most prominent works on the resurgence of religion is the clash of civilization thesis of
Samuel Huntington (1993). He argues that the fundamental source of conflict that will dominate the global
politics will be cultural and not primarily economic or ideological. In the post-Cold War era, international
politics has moved towards the interaction and confrontation between West and non-Western civilizations.
Huntington describes the politics of civilizations where the peoples and governments of non-Western
civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western colonialism but join the West as
movers and shapers of history (p. 23). He defines civilizations as cultural entities which are differentiated from
each other by culture, tradition, language, and history, and divides the world into the Western, Confucian,
Japanese, Islamic, Hindi, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and African civilizations. In his thesis, civilizations
will clash due to the processes of economic modernization occurring across the world that are separating
societies from longstanding cultural identities, which is in line with the "unsecularization of the world" thesis of
George Weigel and Gilles Kepels' "the revival of religion" (as cited in Huntington, 1993). With the
predominance of the Western world in global politics, reflective of the control they hold in international security
and economic institutions, international conflicts have been reduced between "the West versus rest" (p. 39).
Moreover, the imposition of the "universality" of Western values such as liberalism, individualism, and
secularism that do not resonate with the Islamic, Buddhist, Japanese, Hindu or Orthodox cultures will only
induce protective reactions of reaffirming and strengthening of indigenous cultures (Huntington, 1993).
Azzouzi (2013) reaffirms the clash of civilizations thesis and argues the revival and resurgence of
religion as a consequence of globalization. Religion acts as a resistance against the adverse effects of
globalization, especially how Islam constituted a challenge due to the incompatibility of Islamic norms and
beliefs to the liberal aspects of globalization. Globalization and its defining feature of hybridization or world
cultures and world religions, he argues, failed to be actualized and have even strengthened religious identities
that cannot intermingle or hybridize - such as in the case with Islam and Christianity, also with Islam and
globalization, thus inclining them towards competition and clashes. The globality and universality of Islam with
the aspiration of establishing the Umma, a community of believers, is greatly contradictory to the
westernization, rationalism, consumerism, and liberalism associated with globalization. The hegemony and
dominance of these processes particularly on developing world "make religions-related cultures and identities
take defensive measures to protect themselves" (Azzouzi, 2013, p. 153).

The 1979 Iranian Revolution was marked with popular protests to overthrow the Shah of Iran and establish
the Islamic Republic

Source: CNN as cited in Saba, 2011 (https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/to-those-who-have-perished-since-

the-iranian-revolution/)
 Huntington's (1993) thesis primarily featured the notion that Western security and global order were
being challenged by sustained attacks from international Islamic militancy, which would be given credence by
the anti-Western Islamist regimes in Sudan and Afghanistan in the mid-1990s (Haynes, 2006). Several
arguments, however, were made against the clash of civilizations thesis for generalizing the acts of
fundamentalism and extremism to the entire religion of Islam. Sharp criticism has been made by Edward Said
(2005) who problematized the conceptualization of "civilizations" and "identities" of Huntington into what they
are not:
shutdown, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents
that animate human history and that over centuries have made it possible for that history to
contain not only wars of religion and imperial conquest but also exchange, cross-fertilization,
and sharing.

Amartya Sen (1999) shares the same criticism of the inadequate recognition of Samuel Huntington of
the heterogeneities with cultures. He emphasizes diversity as an essential feature of most of the cultures in
the world, including Western civilization. The tendency to over simplify the differences through the
dichotomies between the "West and the rest," to treat non-Western cultures as monolithic, and to contrast it to
the Western traditions that are distinguished by modernity and democracy, is a huge mistake. Sen's criticisms
are in line with his arguments against the "Asian values" thesis that Asian societies traditionally value
discipline over political freedom and democracy. He emphasized the lack of real basis for the claim as well as
the particular reference to East Asia which is often generalized as "Asian values" in its entirety. Such
generalization exposes the failure to recognize the diversity and variation among Asian cultures and even
within East, South, and Southeast Asian cultures where "there is no homogenous worship of order over
freedom in any of these cultures" (p. 14).
While Norris and Inglehart (2011) espouse the secularization thesis, they also predict that the role of
religion would eventually be raised on the international agenda. However, they do not refer to the clash of
civilizations as the cause of it. Rather, it is caused by "the accommodation of divergent attitudes toward moral
issues found in traditional and modern societies" (p. 26) These issues refer to the women and gay rights,
divorce, abortion, sexual liberalization, and other similar issues that i challenge social tolerance.
The clash of civilizations thesis is also contradicted by Thomas (2005 as cited in Haynes, 2006) who
defined the global resurgence of religion in the following way: the global resurgence of religion is the growing
saliency and persuasiveness of religion, i.e., the increasing importance of religious beliefs, practices and
discourses in personal and public life, and the growing role of religious or religiously-related individuals, non-
state groups, political parties and communities, and organizations in domestic politics. (p. 26) He argues that
this has been brought by the "political mythology of liberal modernity" where religion is viewed as something
that must be privatized, restricted, and marginalized (p. 26). The global resurgence of religion indicates not an
end of the belief in reason but the belief of secular reason - it is not "anti-modern" but a rethinking of the
relationship between modernity and religion, and the search for other ways of being "developed", "modern" or
"making progress" that are anchored on the different religious and cultural traditions of the developing world
(pp. 44-5).
The arguments of Thomas (2005) and Azzouzi are both in opposition of Scholte (2005) who refers to
religious revivalism as anti-rationalist faith in which "trans-planetary relations have helped to stimulate and
sustain some renewals of anti-rationalist faith, but global networks have more usually promoted activities
involving rationalist knowledge" (as cited in Ibid., p. 153). Azzouzi (2013) states that while anti-rationalism can
be ascribed to religions, this would refer to the characteristics of extremist and fundamentalist religions. He
also asserts that "we cannot consider religion as anti-rationalist since many religious people reconcile reason
and faith and make moderate trends within their religions" (p. 153). Similarly, Thomas (2005) cautions that it
may be very misleading to see the global resurgence of religion as the "clash of civilizations,"
"fundamentalism" or "extremism." Doing so would imply that the instances of religious revivalism we witness
are aberrations in what is an otherwise "modern" world (p. 45). From a postmodern perspective, what is being
formed is a multicultural, international society reflecting religious pluralism in pursuit of "multiple modernities" -
aside from the one single path of Western, secular, and "rational" modernity imposed on the developing world
(Thomas, 2005, p. 45).
 Edward Said cites Eqbal Amad and his articles in (1999 as cited in Said, 2005) who criticized the
religious right constituted by fanatical and absolutists tyrants promoting "an Islamic order reduced to a penal
code, stripped of its humanism, aesthetics, intellectual quests and spiritual devotion." This, Amad argues, is a
distortion meaning of religion and debasement of traditions to justify despotic rules and violent actions It is a
stark departure from the pluralist meaning of jihad, rooted in the "determined effort" or "striving" that may be
"may be an inward struggle (directed against evil in oneself) or an outward one (against injustice)" (Streusand,
1997).
This chapter presented the complexity of the contradicting paradigms on the state of religion in the
context of globalization brought about by the varying and opposing understandings of the concepts of culture
and modernity. There are dangers in arguing in dichotomies and generalizations regarding the interpretations
of religion's role in armed conflicts and political movements. In doing so, we become complicit in reinforcing
racism, Islamophobia, exclusion, and marginalization. We must be mindful of the problems and ideological
implications of employing a singular definition and understanding of modernization. Culture is neither static
nor monolithic. Whether we refer to either Western, Islamic, or East Asian civilizations, the complexity and
diversity among and within identities must not be dismissed.

Reference Book:
Coronacion, D. & Clilung, F. (2018). Convergence: A College Textbook in Contemporary World. Books Atbp.
Publishing Corp.