“The main world trend is toward ‘globalization’ in spiritual forces and religion.”
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Globalization
Editor’s Note: Bow-tie dapper Martin E. Marty, 78 (then 77), met with the Editor to talk about globalization of religion and war and peace. He had come to Milwaukee in July, 2003, as banquet speaker at the NACCC Annual Meeting. In March, 2004, he reviewed his 2003 answers to questions. Little changed. “Wars and rumors of wars” remain the world’s modus operandi.
JBP: What significant religious trends do you see in the U.S. and in the world?
MEM: The main world trend is toward “globalization” in spiritual forces and religion. Not many years ago, one could study religion in Africa or North America or Asia, or, closer up, in Tyrol or Iowa and be done with it. Now we are aware of the interconnection on all fronts.
Take the Christian world, for example. What I call the “spiritual ice belt” stretches from west of Poland across Western Europe, the British Isles, Canada, the Northern U.S. to Japan. There is a slight decline in religion and a strong trend toward complex patterns of secularization. (Though we are no longer sure quite what “secularization” means in a world that I have to call “religio-secular!”) In that northern world demographers will tell us that there are 3000 fewer Christians than there were 24 hours ago. In the southern world it is different, thanks to population explosion and conversion. Thus in sub-Saharan Africa alone there are 16,000 more per day.
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“The main world trend is toward ‘globalization’ in spiritual forces and religion.” |
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Growth is in Africa, Latin America, the sub-continent of Asia, and that growth changes some of the dynamics of world Christianity. The tension between the Episcopal bishops in North America and their Anglican kin in the Anglican Communion is an example. The Pope does well in Manila, Bogotá, or Johannesburg, among the poor. He is less favored and he favors less the “rich church” that is waning in Europe and filled with turmoil and dissent in the United States. Much of the growth in the poor world is pentecostal; if only the southern world were involved, we would speak of a pentecostal/catholic future, but, of course, there are many other kinds of Christian, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant, elsewhere.
These churches are somewhat more interconnected than they were. No longer is the missionary the main agent of interaction; now influence goes both ways. Many a formerly staid North American church will now include chants from South Africa, songs from the Caribbean, and preaching styles from anywhere.
Paradoxically, as philosopher Stephen Toulmin1 and others have shown, while the opportunity for cosmopolitanism has never been stronger, lay people also tend to accent the local. They mistrust bureaucracy and remoteness, and like to feel that they are in on making decisions. There are up sides and down sides to the new localism, of course.
Religion? Alongside Christianity, we have to speak of unforeseen revivals and renewals among Hindu and Buddhist peoples, and most of all, of Islam. Fifty years ago, every seventh person in the world was a Muslim and now every fifth is. On the question of fundamentalism, before I speak of fundamentalist churches I have to refer to fundamentalist religion. Much of the growth in the Islamic world is among the harder-line Islamists, usually called as fundamentalist and bearing the marks of fundamentalism.
JBP: What’s the appeal of fundamentalism?
MEM: In general, people who turn to fundamentalism are people who cannot tolerate paradox, contradiction, ambiguity, and choice. They rebel against a world of many competing signals and build figurative walls around themselves. The one word that most characterizes them is “re+act.” The modern world comes at them in commerce, enterprise, international interactions, often corollary relativism, and pluralism, and they close the door on as much of these as they can and gather into enclaves. They are not “the old time religion.” They are modern or post-modern, selecting as they do in each religion some of the features of conservative, traditional, and classical faith. But they are selective. Then they are sure that their God is calling them to be militant in defending their own faith and keeping all others at a distance. The appeal cuts across boundaries of young and old, male and female, educated and not, elite and populist, wealthy and not. Fundamentalism has an open future, full of promise to members, but it is not “the only game in town,” and there are counter forces to these counter forces.
JBP: Is there any religious justification for war?
MEM: Certainly, the holy books of the faiths include many justifications for war. One of the books on my shelves is titled Yahweh is a Warrior. If Christians and Jews draw on the biblical books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and the like, they will find justifications for and even commands genocide: Yahweh wants all men, children, women, and animals to be killed in God’s name and for God’s cause. I am afraid that such texts in the Scriptures, in the Qur’an, and in most holy books call on God’s people to wage war on God’s enemy as they conceive them.
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“I do not know of a time when both sides in a war did not find texts that legitimized their side.” |
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The Christian history that I read finds that in many epochs Christians were probably the most warring peoples, among themselves and against each other. Awareness of this history should limit finger-pointing today. Now, of course, we are not living with Joshua and Judges. We live by choice with Second Isaiah and the vision of shalom, of the Sermon on the Mount and the sayings of Jesus. So, like other faiths, we have “peace” in our vocabularies, as in “Prince of Peace,” and shalom. One hopes that the clear voice against killings and for peace in Jesus will mean an unfolding of tendencies to end violence.
Justification for war is not only in the holy books. Different faiths have invented sets of criteria to measure when to engage in war and when not to. Thus, America found leaders using some just war theorists to justify preemptive attacks in Iraq. I do not know of a time when both sides in a war did not find texts that legitimated their side. It’s not an encouraging note.
JBP: What do we need to do to overcome the Muslim hatred toward our country? It seems to me that the fundamentalist militants will still hate us regardless of what we do.
MEM: First of all, as your question makes possible a division, we have to make a division between the individual and the collective Muslim, as in your phrase, “the Muslim hatred.” There are myriad forms of Islam, and the vast majority of people named part of Islamdom are not making war or describing the West in only negative terms. The militants can and do ask about Western and Christian “hatred” toward their world. It’s not a pretty picture.
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“We have to make a division between the individual and collective Muslim.” |
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As for hating us no matter what we do: the vast majority are “on the fence.” One of my mantras has always been, “woo them, don’t whomp them!” You will never get a member of Al Qaeda of the Muslim Brotherhood to chuck it all, say, “I was wrong,” and start living in peace. But most people are not in such movements; they are potential converts for them, and acts by us that can look aggressive or are so, pushes many into conversion. At the same time, there are good reasons for hundreds of millions of Muslims not to join the movements and strike out at us. I do not think we have done well on that front, though there are some gains in understanding in the U.S. Keep your spiritual fingers crossed!
JBP: Why is the Muslim clergy so powerful in so many countries?
MEM: Once upon a time the Christian clergy was powerful and, in locales, the Jewish leadership. Modern Israel had few practicing and theistic Jews, but ultra-Orthodox rabbis set the terms, controlled marriages and child ceremonies, etc. Christian clergy in some countries have been powerful for good and evil, but often repressive. Overall, we lucked out, thanks to dissenting religions and “Enlightenment” modern thought, as in the formation of religion-friendly but not religion-establishing America.
Muslim clergy tend to be powerful in countries with great and sudden political change, when tensions are high, when citizenries are “placing their bets” for the future.
JBP: What can be done to reduce the hatred of Israel?
MEM: Unfortunately, where anti-Israel forces have confirmed themselves and hardened, there is little that can be done. But we cannot abandon efforts. We can take courage from those times when the language of peace did advance through various accords and the example of some Israeli leaders, such as Mr. Rabin2. But Islamic militants exploit discontent and work to bring about revolt, and Israel often counters with drastic measures that inspire more hatred.
We can do some things, such as build ties wherever possible, educate, face anti-Israel issues head on. Militants will continue to hate Israel. But some of its members (e.g., concerned about limited water supplies in the Middle East) know that they must work toward a different future. Unfortunately, many of Israel’s actions and expressions, often backed by the United States, inspire agitated reaction.
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“My hope for peace is that what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’ get put to work consistently.” |
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JBP: What is your hope for peace?
MEM: As Hans Kung3 likes to say, “There can be no peace on earth without peace among the religions.” That’s an important element, since religious voices and symbols often inspire war. Of course, that cannot be the whole deal. It is my hope that we provide more leadership toward more “generous” policies toward poor nations, more enlightened foreign policy. But the whole future is not in our hands. Here God comes in, but God works through humans. It is my hope that we do not engage in “preemptive” wars, do not continue to describe ourselves, as we officially do, as the most powerful military and economic force the world has ever seen; that we have a right to determine all aspects of foreign policy; that whoever is not with us is against us; that we need pay little notice to alliances and concordant moves; that we will decide alone what is in our best interests; in other words, to built resentments against our imperialism.
That paragraph suggests an ugly United States, but in history and in the present, we have many better sides to present to the world, all of them promoting peace. Abraham Lincoln once spoke of “the better angels of our nature.” My hope for peace is that they get put to work more consistently, and that the God of shalom will bless our efforts at peacemaking.
An ordained Lutheran minister, Martin Marty taught chiefly in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago for 35 years. Author of more than 50 books, Marty has served as a columnist on the staff of Christian Century since 1956. He holds more than 60 honorary degrees and contributes to Sightings, a bi-weekly electronic editorial published by the Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Footnotes:
Cover, T of C, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20