Globalization and Culture, Vol. 2: Globalizing Religions (2010)

When discussing religion in a globalized world, scholars usually proceed from several standard assumptions. First, they proceed from the modern notion that religion should be separate from the state and, therefore, should not participate in public discourse, limiting its sphere of influence to personal faith and spirituality. Second, scholars often discuss established religious traditions that have evolved over the centuries, paying less attention to new religious movements because their numbers are relatively small, as is their influence on the world stage. Third, they focus their analysis on "religious disrupters," that is, those sects and groups that challenge social norms and pose a threat to civilization. In my essay, I challenge all those assumptions and discuss the impact of the Baha'i Faith and its teaching on the unfolding global social order.

Religion Compass, 2011

The buzzword ''globalization'' has dominated academic discussions in philosophy and the social sciences for almost a quarter century now. But what do, or should, theologians have to say? This article first explores the controversy over the general meaning of the term ''globalization'', then discusses the somewhat recent historical tendency of theologians to contribute largely in a reticent or reactive way to the debates, and finally outlines three strategies by which leaders in the field have productively engaged and which chart a significant future for the field. Such strategies reflect involvement in debates about global justice with specific attention to climate change, money and international finance, and the emergent idea of a new ''cosmopolitanism''. At the same time, in light of current global social economic sea changes, such as the decline of the hegemony of the West and the growing political influence of ''developing world'' nations, theologians are beginning to realize that old-style liberalism and self-condemnatory moralizing about the West's exploitations of the world's peoples and resources needs to be replaced with a sense of a multi-cultural and transnational common purpose in facing the common threats to our entire humanity. What Do We Mean by ''Globalization''? The buzzword ''globalization'' has crowded into every educated person's vocabulary over the past quarter century. Even during that brief period it has gone through roller-coaster alterations in meaning. Immediately after the collapse of Communism almost a quarter century ago, the vision of an emerging ''neo-liberal'' democratic world order cemented by a new, dynamic, transnational, market capitalism held sway and largely determined usage of the term. After Al Qaida's surprise attack on September 11, 2001, along with America's immediate military pushback that came to be known as the ''war on terror,'' the focus gradually shifted the question of cultural and religious particularity, specifically the force of militant religiosity in fostering a new faith-based identity politics that resisted the nascent global economic order. Then, as scientific research and international policy pronouncements amassed concerning the long-postulated hypothesis of climate change, spurred by the output of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through carbon-based fuels, the focus was still altered. And, once again, following the international financial debacle of 2008 and the contagious fiscal crises of the more affluent Western countries, the emphasis became economic once again, migrating from issues of identity to questions of debt imbalances and patterns of wealth distribution among regions and nation-states. Finally, with the so-called ''Arab revolt'' of this past year, which precipitously erupted at the very end of 2010 attention tended to shift to the politics of democratic change throughout the world, although this time with an unmistakable stress on essential matters of human rights as well as social justice. Clearly, the larger consensus about what the term indicates, and what the tasks for scholarship are, ebb and flow with the world crisis de jour that lingers in the headlines.

Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2008

W hile the literature on globalization is now quite vast, relatively little has been written-at least directly-on religion and globalization, with the noteworthy exception of Peter Beyer's own earlier work. As the editors correctly note in their introduction to this significant collection of essays, analyses of religion rarely factor into discussions of globalization. When they do, the discussion is limited largely to a consideration of fundamentalism (Christian, Islamic, or otherwise) as a reaction to the forces of globalization. This volume is predicated on the alternative notion that "[l]ike capitalism and the nation-state, religion and religiousness are an integral aspect of whatever we mean by globalization. .. and have been since its inception, wherever and whenever this is located" (p. 5). Consequently the focus of attention is on the mainstream traditions across the world, as well as other forms of religious innovation and adaptation, and religious developments are treated as the creative sources, carriers, and consequences of the cross-cultural processes of social change that are identified with globalization. This is a substantial volume, both in size, range, and depth of coverage. The twenty-seven chapters are likely to be used selectively by most readers, but it provides a good balance of theoretical and empirical materials dealing with everything from the instrumental role of religion in new cultural configurations (e.g., alternative and immigrant religious groups in Europe) and forms of social action (e.g., religious NGOs) to the specific manifestations and implications of attendant religious changes in different regions and cultures (e.g., Japan and Korea, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America). The chapters are divided into four parts: Theoretical and Global Perspectives; Religious Institutions and Globalization; Key Issues in the Relation of Religion, Globalization and Culture; and Regional Particularizations. Only a selection of themes and specific arguments will be treated here, in part because of the sheer volume and diversity of material covered, but also because the book lacks a sufficiently delineated and overarching conception of "globalization." The authors' sense and application of this concept are too variant, a problem most readers would anticipate. But the editors could have mitigated the

Economic and demographic changes associated with globalization significantly alter the relations between religion, state and society. This workshop proposes a comparative study of globalization's impact on religious change and the evolution of new identities, struggles and political arrangements. The chief theme is globalization because the economic changes it carries are often associated with a process of sustained secularization, unleashing market forces that are said significantly to undermine previous arrangements involving religion, state and society. Recent accounts of secularization open the way for more nuanced and empirical research of the declining role of religion in society vis-à-vis other systems (political and economic), the role of religion in individual lives (beliefs, practices and values) and the re-assertion of religion in political life. Accordingly, this workshop will engage with different accounts of religious belief and secularization as they relate to economic and demographic changes, associated with globalization, and the way they are translated into political agendas, in the overall context of deepening globalization. Specifically, papers in this workshop will focus on: (a) Effects of globalization-including, economic, demographic, political and cultural ramifications that affect on religious institutions and belief systems; (b) secular struggles related to globalization that affect religion's status in state and society; (c) religious struggles within and against globalization and associated attempts to reassert religion's status in society; and, (d) new political arrangements involving religion, society and state.

(Co-Author, Galina Lindquist) In, Religion, Politics, and Globalization: Anthropological Approaches, New York: Berghahn, 2011, pp. 1-66

This book offers a range of case-studies from around the globe-India, Indonesia, the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, the United States-that take up the tangled relationships between religion and politics in the presentness of this globalizing age. Mostly by anthropologists, the chapters exemplify how a relevant anthropology concentrates especially on the ethnographic and the factual. The case-studies illuminate the fi ner details of confl icts in the entanglement and the diffi culties of resolving these. They add to the current understanding in the social sciences of just how mistaken were the claims of a generation and more ago that with modernization, religion withered away while much of the world's people secularized, thereby becoming heirs of the Western Enlightenment. Such claims maintained that as heirs of the Enlightenment, people should have a greater appreciation of the very metaphysics of science-based knowledge, and not only of the uses of technology. This appreciation should inspire confi dence in rational decision making whose premises and outcomes are transparent and explicitly accountable for in terms of linear cause-and-effect relationships, without any irrational, mystifying mumbo-jumbo. 1 Nonetheless, states that can best be called "theocratic"-religious-political systems that modernity sought to relegate to history-proliferate all over the globe and claim their say in international affairs. In avowedly secular states including those that Notes for this chapter begin on page 55.

This article is a response to Thomas Friendman's thesis that Globalization flattened the world. This essay systematically dismisses and also rebuttals that globalization has thus fragmented and thus widened and also created widening disparity between the continents, nations, societies and communities and even among individuals.

Arena Journal, 2013

Is religion an anachronism in an intensely globalizing and secular world? Despite commonplace assumptions that the world’s religions are anachronistic, examples of the intertwining of religion and globalization abound. A low-budget Islamaphobe film called Innocence of Muslims was recently posted on You Tube, picked up by an opportunistic TV host in Egypt, and set off a US Embassy attack in Cairo. It led to a global controversy with demonstrations in over 20 countries and internet argument around the world. Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Egypt and the Catholic Pope entered the debate. Soon after that, the increasingly frail Vatican leader decided to abdicate because his body was failing him. The subsequent period to replace the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church was attended to by millions around the world, including the 2.5 million who follow his Twitter account. The central themes of the present essay can thus be expressed in two propositions. Firstly religion and globalization have been intertwined with each other since the early empires attempted to extend their reach across what they perceived to be world-space. Processes of globalization carried religious cosmologies—including traditional conceptions of universalism—to the corners of the world, while these cosmologies legitimated processes of globalization. This dynamic of inter-relation has continued to the present, but with changing and sometimes new and intensifying contradictions. Secondly, contemporary religion needs to be understood in the context of a globalizing world in which given meanings have become radically destabilized and old ontological securities have been shaken to the core. Under these conditions, religion—as a relatively closed and ordered system of symbols, values, and moral purpose—is both fundamentally challenged and begins to take on a new appeal either as a radical critique of the mainstream world (through, for example, emancipatory theologies) or as mainstream reassertions of neo-traditional religiosity, such as in the examples of contemporary Pentecostalism.

Pratidhwani the Echo, 2014

The history of mankind shows that religion is one of the deepest and most intimate urges of mankind which, in one way or another, is found everywhere. There was a widespread assumption that the trends toward industrialization, urbanization, secularization and globalization which world had pioneered in the twenty-first century had led to the complete displacement of religion from any central role in public life. Experts once predicted that as the world grew more modern, religion would decline. Precisely the opposite has proven true. The so-called "information age" is gradually spreading its influence to the realm of religion. The twenty-first century is witnessing a resurgence and globalization of religion. Around the world, religion has become an increasingly more vital and pervasive force in both personal and public life. So this article will focus on the globalization of religion. It connects today's religions to their classical beliefs and practices but also shows how they have been transformed by globalization and by their contact with one another. To highlight, in what way globalization has contributed to the revival and resurgence of religion, is the major theme of this article.

2011

International Journal of Public Theology, 2009

The fourth and final volume in Max Stackhouse series on 'God and Globalization invites to consider more deeply the realities of globalization. In particular, questions of imperialism and post-colonialism are related to questions concerning the place given to religion and faith by nation-states. China and India, while both experiencing rapidly changing economies, have diverse approaches to the role of religion in the public sphere. Globalization forces 'the west' to engage with the differing economic and religious circumstances of 'the east', and to reconsider the appropriateness of Christian mission in the face of the plurality of faiths and their competing truth claims.