Professional Documents
Culture Documents
GLOBALIZATION
OF RELIGION
OVERVIEW
WHAT IS RELIGION?
LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
1. explain how globalization affects religious practices and
beliefs;
2. identify the various religious responses to
globalization; and
3. discuss the future of religion in a globalized world.
Religion much more than culture, has the most
difficult relationship with globalism.
First, the two are entirely contrasting belief system.
Religion is concerned with the sacred, while
globalism places values on material wealth.
Religion follows divine commandments, while
globalism abides by human-made laws.
Religion assumes that there is “the possibility of
communication between humans and the
transcendent.
Globalism’s yardstick, however, is how much of
human action can lead to the highest material
satisfaction and subsequent wisdom that this new
status produces.
Religious people are less concerned with wealth and
all that comes along with it.
They are ascetics precisely because they shun
anything material for complete simplicity from their
domain to the clothes they wear, to the food they eat
and even to the manner in which they talk.
religious person’s main duty is to live a virtuous, sin-
less life such that when he/she is assured of a place
in the other world.
On the other hand, globalists are less worried about
whether they will end up in heaven or hell. Their
skills are more pedestrian as they aim to seal trade
deals, raise profits of private enterprises, improve
government revenue collections, protect the elites
from being excessively taxed by the state and
naturally enrich themselves.
Religious aspires to become saint; the globalist trains
to be a shrewd business person.
Religious detects politics and the quest for power for
they are evidence of humanity’s weakness; the
globalist values them as both means and ends to
open up further the economies of the world.
Finally, religion and globalization clash over the fact
that religious evangelization is in itself a form of
globalization. The globalist ideal, on the other hand,
is largely focused on the realm of markets.
Religious is concerned with spreading holy ideas
globally, while the globalist wishes to spread goods
and services.
Religions regard identities associated with globalism
as inferior and narrow because they are earthly
categories.
In contrast, membership to a religious group,
organization, or a cult represents a superior
affiliation that connects humans directs to the divine
and the supernatural.
These philosophical differences explains why
certain groups “flee” their communities and create
impenetrable sanctuaries where they can practice
their religions without the meddling and control of
state authorities.
Priest and monks led the first revolts against
colonialism in Asia and Africa, warning that these
outsiders were out to destroy their people’s gods
and ways of life.
Realities
In actualization, the relationship between religion
and globalism is much more complicated. Peter
Berger argues that far from being secularized, the
“cotemporary world is … furiously religious fervor,
occurring in one form of another in all the major
religious traditions- Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Confucianism and in
many places in imaginative syntheses of one or more
world religions with indigenous faiths.
Religions are the foundations of modern republics
The Malaysian government places religion at the center
of the political system. Its constitution explicitly states
that “Islam is the religion of the Federation,” and the
rulers of each state was also the “Head of the religion of
Islam.”
The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini,
bragged about the superiority of Islamic rule over its
secular counterparts and pointed out that “there is no
fundamental distinction among constitutional, despotic,
dictatorial, democratic, and communistic regimes.”
To Khomeini, all secular ideologies were the same-
they were flawed- and Islamic rule was the superior
form of government because it was spiritual. Yet,
Iran calls itself a republic, a term that is associated
with the secular.
Moreover, religious movements do not hesitate to
appropriate secular themes and practices.
The moderate Muslim association Nahdlatul Ulama
in Indonesia has Islamic Schools where students are
taught not only about Islam but also about modern
sciences, modern banking, civic education, rights of
women, pluralism and democracy.
King Henry VIII broke away from Roman Catholic
and established his own Church to bolster his own
power.
In United States, religion and law were fused
together to help build this “modern secular society”.
Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote, “not only do the
Americans practice their religion out of self-interest
but they often even place in this world the interest
which they have in practicing it.
Jose Casanova confirms this statement by noting
that “historically, religion has always been at the very
center of all great political conflicts and movements
of social reform.
From independence to abolition, from nativism to
women’s suffrage, from prohibition to civil rights
movement, religion had always been at the center of
these conflicts, but also on both sides of the political
barricades.
Religion for and Against Globalization