TRANSNATIONAL RELIGION AND

MULTIPLE GLOBALIZATIONS

➢ It is focused on two of the many research agendas

of the social –scientific study of religion.

➢ Two research agendas are particular importance

for the problematic of religion and globalization.
FIRST AGENDA: TRANSNATIONAL
STUDIES

➢Emerged gradually since the 1990’s in connection

to the study of post-World War II
➢ New immigrants or trans-migrants who moved
from Third World and developing countries into
developed First World nations
➢ New immigrants no longer assimilated into the
cultures of the host countries but rather openly
maintained complex links to their homelands

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•INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
➢International migration theorize the
relationship between people and religion

➢Peggy Levitt’s 2007 book God Needs No

Passport

➢This book focuses on the United States, the

impact of this research agenda extends into the
situation of other advanced industrialized
countries – Canada, Australia, and UK

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•MIGRATION
➢Migration of faiths across the globe
has been a major feature of the world
throughout the twentieth century
➢ One of the features is
“deterritorialization” of religion.

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•TRANSNATIONAL RELIGION

➢Emerged through the post-World War II

spread of several religions
➢ Most prominent example is the explosion of
Protestantism in the hitherto solidly Catholic
Latin America
➢Transnational religion is means of describing
solutions to new-found situations that
peopleface as a result of migration.

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 RESULTS OF MIGRATION COMES IN TWO QUITE DISTINCT BLENDS:

➢Religious universalism

➢Local particularism

• Religious Universalism

➢A theological doctrine that all human beings will eventually be saved

➢ Religion becomes the central reference for immigrant communities

➢Religious transnationalism often depicted as a religion ‘going global’

➢ Example: Islam would overtake Christianity as the world’s most popular faith

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• Local ethnic or national particularism
➢The principle of leaving each state in an empire or federation free to govern
itself and promote its own interests, without reference to those of the whole.
➢ To gain or maintain the most important place for local immigrant communities
➢Transnational national communities are constructed and religious hierarchies
perform dual
religious and secular functions that ensure the groups’ survival.
➢Example: Diasporas might adopt cultural habits derived from the host country.
A prominent
example is the ‘Protestantization’ of various faith among groups living mostly in
Europe or United States.
➢According to Roy, fundamentalist or more precisely revivalist movements
attempt to
construct ‘pure religion’ that sheds the cultural tradition in which past life
religious was immersed.
•Transnational religion also has been used to describe cases of
institutional transnationalism, whereby communities living outside the
territory of particular states maintain religious attachments to their home
churches or institutions.
➢Use of the term “transnational”, in this case it is applied to institutions
and not groups of people.
• Most importantly, the post-1989, disintegration of the communist bloc
and collapse of Soviet Union led to the overnight constitution of a
Russian Orthodox transnational community of close to 30 millionpeople
residing outside the boarders of the Russian federation.
• This major feature of the post-Soviet era is most often what is meant
when notion of transnationalismis invoked with reference to the post-
Soviet religious landscape.

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SECOND AGENDA: CONCERNS THE INTERFACE
BETWEEN RELIGION AND CULTURE.

➢ Concern with public expressions of religiosity

also brings forth the relationship between religion
and culture.
➢ From within the secularization paradigm,
Martin’s interpretation suggests the employment of
culturein ways that can forestall secularization’s
success.

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• COLLIN CAMPBELL

➢ Campbell has suggested that during the post-World War II era the disenchanted West hasbeen re-
enchanted through imports from the East.

➢This ‘Easternization of the West’ has become a topic of debate and discussion

➢ One of the greatest advantages of Campbell’s line of interpretation is the flexible relationship

between East and West; these are not seen as fixed essences as the Orient and Occident of the past
centuries. Instead of attributing fixed essences to cultural units, then it is possible to concentrate on the
various processed referred to as indigenization, hybridization, or glocalization.

➢ Religion sheds its universal uniformity in favour of blending with locality.

➢ Global-local or glocal religion thus represents a ‘genre of expression, communication, and

legitimation’ of collective and individual identities.

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 • GLOCAL RELIGION

➢ Involves the consideration of an entire range of responses as outcomes instead of a single

master narrative of secularization and modernization.
➢ Based on a survey of the history of Christianity, Victor Roadometer argues that it is possible
to detect four concrete forms of glocalization: indigenization, vernacularizing, nationalization,
and transnationalization.

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•VERNACULARIZATION AND INDIGENIZATION

Vernacularization Indigenization

Involved the rise of vernacular language (such Connected specific faiths with ethnic groups,
as Greek or Latin or Arabic in the case of whereby religion and culture were often fused
Islam) endowed with the symbolic activity of into a single unit
offering privileged access to the sacred

Was often promoted by empires Was connected to the survival of particular

ethnic groups.

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• NATIONALIZATION

➢ Connected the consolidation of specific nations with particular

confessions and has been apopular strategy both in Western and Eastern
Europe.

• TRANSNATIONALIZATION

➢ Has complemented religious nationalization by forcing groups to identify

with specific religious traditions or real or imagined national homelands or
to adopt a more universalist vision of religion

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CONCLUSIONS

➢ This chapter has sought to map some key developments in the relationship between the study of religion
and globalization, while at the same time it also offered both a brief primer of traditional key themes in the
sociology of religion and a critique of the traditional secularization paradigm.

➢This chapter has offered a brief review of scholarship that has specifically focused on the relationship
between religion and globalization. The chapter has highlighted the extent to which some of the contributions
have had broader appeal beyond the field of religion and into the broader social-scientific community of
researchers interested in the topic of globalization.

➢ Religious transnational and cross-cultural connections become increasingly a feature of everyday life in the
twenty-first century, and that almost guarantees that their study is going to continue to attract the attention of
new generations of researchers and scholars

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RELIGION IN GLOBAL
CONFLICT
MARK JUERGENSMEYER

• “The conflicts have been about identity and economics, about privilege
and power – the things that most social conflicts are about.”

• “When these conflicts are religionized – when they are justified in

religious terms and pre-sented with the aura of sacred combat – they often
become more intractable, less susceptible to negotiated settlement.

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