Getting Along in the Age of Religious & Ideological Pluralism

Multiple researchers in sociology of religion, anthropology and political science have recognized that religion is as potent a force today (maybe more so globally) as it was when prophets of modernity and secularization like Max Weber, Durkheim and other proponents of the secularization thesis were writing on the cusp of the 19th century. Briefly stated, the secularization thesis is the claim that political, legal and moral authority would become progressively more rational and secular as a necessary corollary of modernization (for better, worse or neither depending on the theorist). Further, religious belief among individuals was said to be waning, probably irreversibly. Not only have these predictions failed to materialize, but I would add that non-religious identifiers and ideologies of a non-rational and zealous kind have not given way to the "tolerance" and "rational secular morality" associated with the Enlightenment project, as was so often anticipated. More specifically, the aggressive nationalism and ethnic politics of identity that fueled both World Wars in Europe have not been replaced by the triumph of a tolerant and humane liberal world order, as was once commonly thought in the West. But first, l turn to the question of religion today in global context.

The late Peter Berger, arguably the most influential sociologist of religion in recent decades, retracted the claim that modernity has become increasingly secular in the 20th and 21st centuries as predicted by the classical secularization thesis. (https://www.bc.edu/content/... ) As his final book, Many Altars of Modernity, points out, anyone who keeps up with current affairs is made increasingly aware of religious pluralism and conflict as the de facto state of play in late modernity. This pluralism includes atheists and agnostics, but they exist side by side with any number of others in the west and elsewhere who occupy a great variety of religious positions. Further, such pluralism is not simply a matter of individual beliefs and affiliations, but takes the form of conflicts between various religious and anti-religious (e.g. anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Hindu etc.) groups in the social and political arena ranging from small movements to political parties all the way up to whole nation-states. What is true about the secularization theory is that there is no single hegemonic religion in the modern world as there once was in Europe during the age of Christendom. Indeed, if we look at Christianity today we see a multitude of Christianities, the most rapidly growing form being Pentacostalism and other charismatic-- often syncretic-- forms in the global south-- not the solemn assemblies about which 19th century philosophers and sociologists wrote when discussing Christianity and secularism. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, and it is often in conflict or tension with the spreading Christianities of the global south ("global south" here meaning lesser developed countries that once were called "third world" ). Meanwhile, China and Russia are both engaged in massive and expensive state-sponsored religious revival projects designed to foster nationalism through their respective religious traditions, viz. Orthodox Christianity in Russia and Nationalistic Confucianism of some kind in the case of China. (China https://theamericanscholar.... and Russia https://carnegie.ru/comment... ).

When Human Rights issues come up, many of these religions and associated cultural traditions are used to reject "Eurocentric" documents and instruments enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other instruments of International Law. The Russian Orthodox Church does not recognize the rights of women and children to be free of violence by the (male) head of the family, as made evident in their endorsement of Putin's new laws legitimizing domestic violence in the name of "traditional values" ( https://www.bloomberg.com/v... ) Singapore, China,Taiwan and other eastern nations have adopted Confucian-justified "Filial Piety Laws" that legally obligate children to financially and socially support their parents aged 60 or above. In Singapore, parents not supported in compliance with the law may (and sometimes do) file lawsuits against their own children. There is a rejection of notions of "healthcare rights" and "entitlements" in favor of duties of children to their elders-- a completely different ethical standard used to address their own "greying populations." https://china-journal.org/2... and https://blogs.wsj.com/china... In all these cases, it becomes clear that religious and political conflict are increasingly interrelated as secular ideologies such as communism have largely disappeared. It is equally clear, as Berger points out in the video clip below, that the personal (e.g. domestic and family roles) and political (rights and liberties or their suspension) cannot be artificially separated in an increasing number of modern nation-states.

The filial piety legal paradigm also finds wide application in societies steeped in Buddhism, Hinduism, both of which have similar obligations built into notions of dharma which have been codified in, among others, Sri Lanka and India https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... Some forms of Islamic Law contain similar principles and edicts https://www.iais.org.my/icr... which impose legal and moral obligations on adult children.

Romantic conceptions of Buddhist societies in the West are somewhat out of step with the realities of, among others, Myanmar and Sri Lanka where Buddhistic Nationalism has been built into law and policies which entail the abuse of outside groups such as Muslims. https://www.tandfonline.com... It is high time to recognize the historical and contemporary facts of these highly unequal and oppressive regimes, including the theocracy that was Tibet, in which most people remained dirt poor, ignorant even of the Buddhist teachings, and without rights while Lamas lived in relative splendor. Today most of us have some awareness of the Islamic (Rohingyan) refugees who have been literally beaten bloody and chased out of Myanmar (former Burma). Nobel Prize winning Buddhist thought-leader turned national leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, author of Freedom From Fear https://www.amazon.com/dp/B... , has maintained a stony silence as head of state in a country engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims. (See https://www.foreignaffairs....
Also, the following article from Aeon, Monks With Guns, discusses numerous other examples of violence within Buddhist countries https://aeon.co/essays/budd... .

India is currently undergoing a revival in Hindu Nationalism (Hindutva https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... ) spearheaded by President Modhi of the Hindutva touting BJP, and originally a member of the RSS paramilitary group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... One of the group's members was Nathuram Vinayak Ghodse, the man who assassinated Mohatma Ghandi for supporting unity with Muslims https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... . In 2002, riotous violence against Muslims broke out in the state of Gujarat while now-President Narendra Modhi was the Chief Minister of that state. Notoriously, he stood by passively while the death toll mounted to over 1000. Today he is President of India to the delight of many Hindu nationalists there. Of course, the Muslim-Hindu conflict in Southeast Asia is most menacing when considering the chronic, low-level warfare between Pakistan and India, both of which are nuclear states. [Note: since this was originally posted elsewhere in 2018, Modhi and the BJP have stated that they will no longer abide by Article 370 of India's Constitution, which gave semi-autonomous status to Kashmir and Jammu, and parliament passed a measure, in a provocative power grab, states that the regions are now Indian territories largely under the control of India's central government.  https://www.vox.com/2019/8/5/20754813/india-kashmir-article-370-modi-hindu-muslim- ed. 8/15/19  ]

The future of the global south in Africa and much of South America will be informed by fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, both of which are on the rise. Further, demographers expect to see massive waves of climate refugees from Africa to Europe in the coming decades. This will almost certainly accentuate the already-volatile inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts currently plaguing much of the EU today. The future will thus most likely be one of increasing non-tolerant pluralism in the West, unless we see the emergence of an as-yet unrealized modus vivendi..

Western values including Human Rights, are also under attack from within. The recent spate of books on the "death of Liberalism" and the "end of Democracy" foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/0... may trade in exaggeration and overstated warnings, but such books (e.g. How Democracies Die , and The People vs. Democracy, et al.) are based on empirical realities that indicate some unraveling of the Liberal Democratic consensus of the post-war period. (It is worth noting that both books mentioned were written not by alarmist- journalists but rather political scientists at Harvard University. ) The flipside of waning Liberal Democratic norms is the resurgence of aggressive particularism, whether it emphasizes particularities of religion, race, culture or ethnicity. Often, either overtly or in subtle ways, these categories are combined. For example, the Supreme Court has upheld a "Travel Ban" which was quite overtly advertised originally as a "Muslim Ban." Ethnicity, race, religion, culture and politics all intersect in such a case, despite dubious legal analysis. Human rights organizations have been quite vocal on this as well as the recent abuse of undocumented immigrant families subjected to inhumane detentions and forced separations. As I write this, Trump has pulled the US out of the UN Human Rights Council https://www.nytimes.com/201... Reasons offered include an unprecedented defense of Israel's treatment of Palestinians in what has become a de facto apartheid nation-state in which religion and ethnicity determine access to citizenship and more basically to the protection of basic human rights including life and freedom of movement. So much for the US as the "honest broker" between Palestinians and the state of Israel. But much of this is pretext on the part of an administration that has been called out on human rights violations by several prominent NGOs not only for the much-publicized policies towards immigrants here, but the increasingly lax regulations governing US drone attacks in sovereign states, and the US role as an ally in Saudi Arabia's war against Houthis in Yemen which is creating a vast humanitarian crisis there. As American bombs fall in that country, 8.5 million people, many of them children have been left to rot in the grip of starvation and devastation.

So, if the US isn't currently a champion of global human rights and the amelioration of humanitarian crises, then who is? Europe perhaps? Not exactly. In fact, the EU is coming undone as its member states preach about but fail to respect human rights and civil liberties in many cases. Poland has now all but gutted the independent judiciary and imposed censorship via Orwellian "historical truth legislation" forbidding the mention of Polish holocaust-collaborators since it is now official doctrine that there were no Polish collaborators involved in the Holocaust https://www.cnn.com/2018/02... . Violators can face up to 3 years in jail for their "incorrect" historical attributions.The state decides what is true and false, not historians. Poland is, of course, an EU state, and thus officially pro-democratic/human rights. Muslim bashing, anti-semitism , ultra-right wing Catholic falange revivalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... nationalist and n@zi-like groups https://www.google.com/sear... on the rise there and in Hungary as well as Germany, France, Greece, Italy et al. (see in Poland, https://www.theguardian.com... and for a "who's who" list of far right white nationalist inclined parties in Europe see https://www.nytimes.com/int... . The routinization of Muslim-bashing and white-nationalist rhetoric in a plethora of increasingly popular political parties throughout the EU, and here in the US. could be the topic of a lengthy and separate post-- such is the extent of rising illiberalism, intolerance, nationalism, xenophobia and racism in Europe and the US today. But here I want only to add that the allegedly "secular liberal post-Enlightenment West" appears to be as fractured and conflicted as any other region in terms of religion, ethnicity and ideology and their multiple convergences. One doesn't have to invoke Confucian, Islamic, Hindu or any other religious traditions in order to revert to parochial, paranoid, chauvinistic and violent policies and practices.

Indeed that enviable bastion of Social Democracy, Denmark, has been escalating the alarms about the menace of Muslims in their country which has recently come to a head in the passage of new "integration laws" designed to "re-educate" immigrants in "Danish norms." I recommend the below-linked NY Times article for those unaware of events there. We are not the only country, here in the US, to see forced separation of children and their parents among immigrants. In Denmark, official "Muslim ghetto children" (yes, this is official nomenclature despite the shameful legacy of Europe's Jewish Ghettos and the Holocaust) are forcibly separated from their families to be indoctrinated into "Danish Values including the celebration of Christmas , Easter and Danish language." This begins in the first year of the child's life for at least 25 hours per week. Failure to comply costs these families their healthcare and other benefits, and put them at increased risk of being deported. https://www.nytimes.com/201... Here's what a leading "left-wing" newspaper in Denmark has to say about all this, as quoted in the NY Times article:

Critics would say “the state cannot force children away from their
parents in the daytime, that’s disproportionate use of force,” said Rune Lykkeberg, the editor in chief of Dagbladet Information, a left-liberal daily newspaper. “But the Social Democrats say, ‘We give people money, and we want something for this money.’ This is a system of rights and
obligation...Danes have a high level of trust in the state, including as a central
shaper of children’s ideology and beliefs, he said. “The Anglo-Saxon
conception is that man is free in nature, and then comes the state”
constraining that freedom, he said. “Our conception of freedom is the
opposite, that man is only free in society.”

How strange to hear a democratic socialist exclaim, "We give them money, we want something for this money" in the context of human rights violations and enforced nationalism! Deification of the state, one's native culture and demonization of others is not the special province of religions. Secularism as originally predicted did not occur. Religious pluralism accompanied by nationalism and ethnic chauvinism are the order of the day. Atheist or theist, Buddhist or Christian, Left wing or Right wing-- these are less important than the need to address the ethics of pluralism. There is simply no room for these rigid and proud badges of cultural identity in a world as diverse and dangerous as our own.

I believe that our most vexing ethical and political crises are less about which particular belief-systems we hold to than the extent to which we are imprisoned rather than liberated by any of them-- religious or otherwise. I have no answers or solutions to all this but welcome any comments or thoughts as this patriotic day-- July 4th-- unfolds in a country whose policies towards Muslims, undocumented immigrants/families, and millions of devastated Yemenis are nothing about which to be very proud.
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Here is a 4 minute excerpt of sociologist, Peter Berger, discussing the problem of religious pluralism vis a vis the nature of nation-states in late modernity.