Globalization of Religion

Introduction
Citizenship is associated with rights and obligations, for instance, the right to vote
and the obligation to pay taxes. Both rights and obligations link the individual to state.
Cecilia Johanna van Peski
Learning Outcomes
1. Articulate a personal definition of global citizenship
2. Appreciate the ethical obligations of global citizenship

Content
As Obadia (2010) argues, theorizing religion and globalization has been subject to
two different lines of interpretation: globalization of religion versus globalization and
religion.
Globalization of Religion
In this, the fundamental research question pertains to the spread of religions and
specific genres or forms or blueprints of religious expression across the globe. Beyer
(2006) proposes that the very notion of what constitutes a ‘religion’, as commonly
understood, is the product of a long-term process of inter-civilizational or cross-
cultural interactions.

Globalization and Religion

In this second, the position and place of religion is problematized within the context of
globalization. This problematic concerns the relations and the impact of globalization
upon religion. From this point of view, even religions that are not conventionally
considered ‘global’ such as Eastern Orthodox Christianity ; are nevertheless influenced
by globalization; These face up to the global condition and reshape their institutional
practices and mentalities (Agadjanian and Roudometof, 2005). In so doing, religious
institutions generally tend to adopt either strategies of cultural defense or strategies of
active engagement with globality (Roudometof, 2008). Although a religion can reject
globalizing trends and impulses, it is nevertheless shaped by them and is forced to
respond to new-found situations. This problematic incorporates notions of resacralization
as a response to secularizing agendas and views instances of transnational nationalism
cloaked in religious terms as cultural expressions stimulated by globalization (for
examples, see Danforth, 2000; Zubrzycki, 2006). This second problematic does not
necessarily address the historicity of globalization; in large part because it is concerned
with theorizing contemporary events and trends
Transnational Religion and Multiple Glocalizations
Transnational studies emerged gradually since the 1990s 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, thereby constructing, reproducing and preserving their
transnational ties. International migration has provided the means to theorize the
relationship between people and religion in a transnational context (Casanova, 2001;
Ebaugh and Chafetz, 2002; Hagan and Ebaugh, 2003; Levitt, 2003, 2004; van der Veer,
2002).
Concomitant with the movements of peoples, the migration of faiths across the globe has
been a major feature of the world throughout the twentieth century. One of these features
is the ‘deterritorialization’ of religion (Casanova, 2001; Martin, 2001; Roy, 2004); that is,
the appearance and, in some instances, the efflorescence of religious traditions in places
where these previously had been largely unknown or were at least in a minority position.
Transnational religion emerged through the post-World War II spread of several religions;
of which perhaps the most prominent example is the explosion of Protestantism in the
hitherto solidly Catholic Latin America. The extensive and widely publicized debates over
the public presence of Islam in Europe are but the most visible manifestation of this
process (see Bjorgo, 1997; Raudvere, Stala, and Willert, 2012). As Modood (1997: 2)
notes, ‘Muslims are now emerging as the critical ’“other” in various nationalist discourses
and in definitions of Europe in Western Europe', even in Scandinavian countries, where
there is hardly any historical encounter with Muslims.
To the extent that the very label of transnational religion is a means of describing solutions
to new-found situations that people face as a result of migration, it comes as two quite
distinct blends of religious universalism and local particularism. First, it is possible for
religious universalism to gain the upper hand, whereby religion becomes the central
reference for immigrant communities. In such instances, religious transnationalism is
often depicted as a religion ‘going global’. Jenkins (2007), for example, has noted the
rapid growth of Christianity in the global south, countering arguments that Islam would
overtake Christianity as the world's most popular faith. In cases in which immigrants share
the same vernacular or are members of a church with a centralized administration (such
as the Catholic Church), the propensity for such a pattern inevitably increases. Migrants
participate in religious multi-ethnic networks that connect them to their co-religionists
locally and globally. Their main allegiance is not to their original homeland but to their
global religious community; religion offers a means for ‘transnational transcendence’
(Csordas, 2009) of identities and boundaries.
Second, it is possible for local ethnic or national particularism to gain or maintain the most
important place for local immigrant communities. In such instances, transnational national
communities are constructed and religious hierarchies perform dual religious and secular
functions that ensure the groups' survival (for examples, see Danforth, 1995;
Roudometof, 2000). The above distinction obviously represents two ends of a continuum
of a variety of combinations observed among transnational or immigrant or diasporic
groups (see McLoughlin, 2010). For example, diasporas might adopt cultural habits
derived from the host country. A prominent example is the ‘Protestantization’ of various
faiths among groups living mostly in Europe or the United States. But other groups might
shed cultural elements in favour of a more globalist orientation; as suggested by Roy
(2010) in his ‘deculturalization of religion’ thesis. According to Roy, fundamentalist or
more precisely revivalist movements attempt to construct ‘pure religion’ that sheds the
cultural tradition in which past religious life was immersed.
Transnational religion also has been used to describe cases of institutional
transnationalism, whereby communities living outside the national territory of particular
states maintain religious attachments to their home churches or institutions. This is quite
a distinct use of the term ‘transnational’, and in this case it is applied to institutions and
not groups of people.
The second major research agenda concerns the interface between religion and culture.
Concern with public expressions of religiosity also brings forth the relationship between
religion and culture (Besecke, 2005).
Instead of attributing fixed essences to cultural units, then, it is possible to concentrate on
the various processes referred to as indigenization, hybridization or glocalization (Burke,
2009; Pieterse, 2003; for specific examples see Altglas, 2010). These processes register
the ability of religion to mould into the fabric of different communities in ways that connect
it intimately with communal and local relations. 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
(Robertson, 1991: 282; Robertson and Garret, 1991: xv). Groups and individuals use this
religious tradition symbolically as emblematic of membership in an ethnic or national
group.
Based on a survey of the history of Christianity, Roudometof (2013, 2014) argues that it
is possible to detect four concrete forms of glocalization: (1) indigenization, (2)
vernacularization, (3) nationalization and (4) transnationalization.
Vernacularization involved the rise of vernacular languages (such as Greek or Latin or
Arabic in the case of Islam) endowed with the symbolic ability of offering privileged access
to the sacred, whereas indigenization connected specific faiths with ethnic groups,
whereby religion and culture were often fused into a single unit. Vernacularization was
often promoted by empires, whereas indigenization was connected to the survival of
particular ethnic groups. It is important to stress that this is not an exclusively
contemporary phenomenon. The creation of distinct branches of Christianity; such as
Orthodox and Catholic Christianity; bears the mark of this particularization of religious
universalism. Nationalization connected the consolidation of specific nations with
particular confessions and has been a popular strategy both in Western and Eastern
Europe (Gorski, 2000; Hastings, 1997; Roudometof, 2001

Religion in Global Conflict

The contemporary conflicts with which religion has been associated are not solely about
religion, however, if one means by ‘religion’ a set of doctrines and beliefs. 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 presented with the aura of sacred combat – they often
become more intractable, less susceptible to negotiated settlement. Thus although
religion is seldom the problem, in the sense of causing the tensions that produced the
conflicts in the first place, it is often problematic in increasing the intensity and character
of the struggle (Juergensmeyer, 2004b).
An abundant number of new studies argues that this is the case, that religious conflict
is a byproduct of the global age (see Crockett, 2006; Hassner, 2009; Kippenberg, 2012;
Lincoln, 2002; Ter Borg and Van Henten, 2010; Toft, Philpott and Shaw 2011; Wellman,
2007; and Juergensmeyer, 2003, 2008).

Global development of religious conflict in five stages

First Stage: Revolt against Global Secularism
The first stage of the encounter was characterized by isolated outbursts. It began in the
1970s by a variety of groups – Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, and Muslim – that were revolting
against what they regarded as the moral failing of the secular state. One of the first of
these religious rebellions was nonviolent – the Gandhian movement in India led by
Jayaprakash Narayan, who called for a ‘Total Revolution’ in 1974 against the corruption
of the Indian government.
1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini led a revolt against the secular regime of the Shah of Iran
Buddhist activists violently resisted attempts by the Sri Lankan government to appease
the growing movement of Tamil separatism that had arisen in that island nation in the
1970s
the Khalistani movement of Sikh separatism gained momentum and unleashed a reign of
violence in the north Indian state of Punjab throughout the 1980s
The gathering power of Muslim extremists in Egypt led to the brutal assassination of
President Mohammad Anwar al Sadat in 1981.
The common element that ran through all of these otherwise isolated nonviolent and
violent incidents of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim rebellion in the 1970s
and early 1980s was an implicit moral critique of secular politics.
By that time a revived anti-colonial mood had developed against the cultural and political
legacies of European modernity in the Middle East and South Asia that gave the
movements a new force.
Secular authorities treated these rebellious religious movements simply as attempts to
usurp power. The secular leaders left unchallenged the moral critique that the movements
conveyed.
In some cases, they regarded the new religious activists as versions of the legendary
Robin Hood – extra-legal though virtuous challengers to the political status quo
Second Stage: Internationalization of Religious Rebellion
The next stage of the developing warfare between religious and secular politics was the
internationalization of the conflict in the 1980s. This stage is best represented by the ad
hoc international coalition of jihadi Muslim radicals that developed in the Afghan war. It is
hard to underestimate the formative power of their experience, shared by thousands of
volunteer soldiers in the Afghanistan struggle against the Soviet regime in the 1980s. In
one central theatre of involvement activists were brought together from throughout the
Muslim world. The fighting force of mujahadin included erstwhile jihadi soldiers who came
from Muslim countries from Pakistan to Northern Africa. It also included some of the
Egyptian militants linked to Sadat's assassination and Saudis who would later be
identified with the al Qaeda movement of Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan became the
crucible for creating the international Muslim political networks that would infuriate global
politics for the next two decades.
Third Stage: Invention of Global Enemies
The third stage in the gathering cold war between religious and secular politics was
characterized by a growing anti-American and anti-European sentiment in the 1990s. In
this stage the target of the religious activists' wrath shifted from local regimes to
international centres of power. Increasingly the political and economic might of the United
States and Europe became regarded as the source of problems both locally and
worldwide.
The 1990s constituted a decade of social dissent linked with religious traditions of various
kinds: Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism as well as Islam of both Sunni and Shi'ite
varieties. America was regarded as the fount of secularism and hence often the target.
Many who attacked it were incensed by what they regarded as its economic, cultural and
political oppression under the ‘new world order’ of a secular, America-dominated, post-
Cold War globalized world. Some of the fiercest opponents of the United States' secular
power were themselves Americans. The venom of the Christian militia and other extremist
Christian groups in the United States led to a series of terrorist acts on abortion clinics,
gay and lesbian bars, and individuals perceived as being Jewish or immigrant.
Many radical Muslim groups saw American military and economic power the same way,
but with a more realistic basis for their critique. The United States' economic interests in
the oil reserves of the Middle East, and its unchallenged cultural and political influence in
a post-Cold War world led many Muslim activists to see America as a global bully, a
worthy target of their religious and political anger. It appealed especially to those whose
resistance methods had been honed through the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan
which also was seen as a fight against enemies of Islam.
Third Stage: Global War
Originally jihadi leaders like Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and bin Laden had been fixated
on local issues – in bin Laden's case, on Saudi Arabia. He was concerned especially
about the role of the United States in propping up the Saudi family and, in his mind,
America's exploitation of the oil resources of the country. He then adopted a broader
critique of Middle Eastern politics, following the general jihadi perspective of Maulana
Maududi, Sayyid Qutb and other Muslim political thinkers who rejected all forms of
Western political and social influence in the region. Increasingly the goal of bin Laden's
and the other jihadi activists was not just to get American influence out of Saudi Arabia
but out of the whole Muslim world. This meant a confrontation of global proportions on
multiple fronts.
Though bin Laden had declared war on the United States in his famous fatwa of 1996 it
was largely an invisible conflict, a great confrontation that lay largely.
within the imaginations of the jihadi activists, until 11 September 2001 brought it to public
attention. The response of the American political leadership following the 11 September
was dramatic and historically transformative. The televised pronouncements of President
George W. Bush on both 11 September and even more decisively on the following day
made clear how he and his administration were going to interpret the attack: they adopted
the jihadi terms. Rather than viewing the terrorist acts as criminal deeds by a gang of
thugs, the US leaders adopted some of the major elements of bin Laden's view of the
world and saw them as skirmishes in a global war. The simmering new Cold War of the
1990s had become hot and exploded into a real war, the first of the twenty-first century.
The new Cold War also received a new name. It came to be known as the ‘Global War
on Terror’ by US officials and the American news media. The war was also characterized
as the ‘struggle against radical Islam’, and indeed the Muslim aspects of the religious
encounter with the secular state became the single concern of Western policymakers,
despite the persistence of Christian militants in America, Hindu and Sikh activists in India,
Jewish extremists in Israel, and violent Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Thailand. Yet only the
Muslim activists shared an ideological perspective that was global in its encounter with
the West and transnational in its network of activists. Its actions were brutal and violent.
So too were the American attempts to suppress it, and the heavy-handed approach
created further cycles of violence in response.
Terrorist acts associated with jihadi Muslim activists increased dramatically around the
world in this decade. The arena of terror became transnational.

Many of the Muslim activists in Europe were inflamed not only about European countries'
support for the US-led military coalition in Iraq but also about European attitudes toward
the Muslim immigrant community. The resentment of some elements of the expatriate
community boiled over into violence. Among the more incendiary moments were the
tensions following the assassination of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh in November
2004; the rage of violence by North African and Arab youth in France that left over 1,000
automobiles torched across the country in 2004; and the protests earlier that same year
over the French government's attempt to ban the wearing of headscarves by Muslim
women living in France.
In the twenty-first century, the Internet provided a whole new arena for radical religious
activism. The new Cold War was waged not only on a geographical battlefield but also on
the intellectual terrain of cyberspace. Yet, like the old Cold War, the ideological
confrontation always carried the threat of bloodshed.

The era of globalization brought with it three enormous problems. The first was identity,
how societies could maintain a sense of homogeneity when ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
communities were spread across borders, in many cases spread across the world. The
second problem was accountability, how the new transnational economic, ideological,
political and communication systems could be controlled, regulated, and brought to
justice. The third problem was one of security, how people buffeted by forces seemingly
beyond anyone's control could feel safe in a world increasingly without cultural borders
or moral standards. Religion provides answers to all three of these problems. Traditional
definitions of religious community provide a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging to
those who accept that fellowship as primary in their lives. Traditional religious leadership
provides a sense of accountability, a certainty that there are moral and legal standards
inscribed in code and enforced by present-day leaders who are accorded an unassailable
authority. And for these reasons, religion also offers a sense of security, the notion that
within the community of the faithful and uplifted by the hands of God, one has found safe
harbor and is truly secure.

Teaching and Learning Activities

Personal concept map of global citizenship: Students will engage in a free association
exercise of ideas they associate with “global citizenship.” Based on this, they will
synthesize a personal definition of the concept. Afterwards, they

References
Aldama, Prince Kennex R. (2018). “The Contemporary World”. Rex Book Store,
Sampaloc, Manila.
Alporha, Vernonica and John Lee Candelaria (2018) Readings in Philippine History. Rex
Book Store Inc., Sampaloc, Manila