Globalization of Religion

The world is not just becoming the same; it is also becoming

more pluralistic. It is almost exclusively under this meaning of
globalization that religion appears as part of the process rather
than as either irrelevant bystander or victim.
This absence can perhaps be attributed to the dominance of
economic and political understandings of globalization,
including among those observers who look at the phenomenon
from within religious traditions. Yet even though a great many of
the works that focus on globalization from below—for instance,
much of the literature on global migration and ethnicity—also
gives religion scant attention, it is among these approaches that
one finds almost all the exceptions to this general pattern,
probably because these are the only ones that, in principle,
allow non-economic or nonpolitical structures like religion a
significant role in globalization.
Consideration of the relation between religion and globalization
involves two basic possibilities. There are, on the one hand,
religious responses to globalization and religious interpretations
of globalization. These are, as it were, part of doing religion in a
globalizing context. On the other hand, there are those analyses
of globalization that seek to understand the role of religion in
globalization and the effects of globalization on religion. They
focus on observing religion in a global society. By far the largest
portion of the literature that relates religion and globalization is
of the former sort, and therefore it is well to begin there.

What they imply, among other consequences, is that religion

and religious sensibilities are at root outside of and contrary to
globalization, that globalization and religion are fundamentally
incommensurate. Another segment of both the religiously
inspired and the secular literature, while often sharing many of
the negative judgments, nonetheless sees a much closer
relation between the two. As noted, these observers almost
invariably share the broader meanings of globalization,
especially the dialogical and from below perspectives.
Religion as Transnational Institution

Of the forces that have in the past been instrumental in binding

different regions of the world together, in creating a larger if not
exactly a geographically global system, economic trade and
political empire have certainly been the most obvious; but in
conjunction with these, it is equally clear that what we today call
religions have also at times played a significant role.
Given that religious institutions, religiously informed worldviews,
and religious practice are so often instrumental in these
processes, the growing number of efforts to understand
religion's role among global migrants is not surprising. Such
contributions have focused on the concrete religious institutions
of the migrants in their new homes, the immigration and
integration policies and attitudes of the host countries, the
transnational links and flows that the migrants maintain, and the
influence of these diasporic communities on the global religions
that are usually involved. Not infrequently in such analyses, the
sorts of transnational religious organizations and movements
just mentioned are salient topics, since the migrant communities
are often instrumental in bringing about, developing, and
maintaining their global character. Thus, for instance, we have
consideration of Senegalese murīd presence in the United
States, Taiwanese Foguangshan establishments in Canada,

Turkish Süleymanli communities in Germany, Tablighi Jamaat

mosques in Great Britain, Japanese Buddhist temples in Brazil,
as well as African or Latin American Pentecostal
churches in North America and Europe. As this illustrative list
demonstrates, the bulk of this literature reflects the fact that it is
people in Western countries that carry out most of such
globalization analyses.

Moreover, the consideration of the role of transnational religious

institutions in the context of global migration already implicates
the second way that religion has been understood as a
significant contributor to globalization processes, and that is as
a cultural, but especially political resource.

Religion as Cultural and Political Resource

As noted earlier, the one phenomenon that has attracted
the most attention to the global significance of religions is
the proliferation of effective religio-political movements in
almost all regions of the world.

Religion and Religions as Globalizing System

It focuses on the degree to which both modern institutional
forms and modern understandings of religion are
themselves manifestations of globalization.
The idea that religion manifests itself through a series of
distinct religions may seem self-evident to many people,
including a great many of their adherents.
The existence of this global religious system,
simultaneously at the global and local levels, therefore
spawns its constant development and the constant
challenging of the way it operates. That idea leads logically
to consideration of the religiousness of the global system
itself