The Public Significance of Religion (Empirical Studies in Theology)

The Public Significance of Religion

Empirical Studies in Theology Editor

Johannes A. van der Ven

VOLUME 20

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/est.

The Public Significance of Religion Edited by

Leslie J. Francis Hans-Georg Ziebertz

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data International Society for Empirical Research in Theology. Conference (4th : 2008 : Würzburg, Germany) The public significance of religion / edited by Leslie J. Francis, Hans-Georg Ziebertz. p. cm. – (Empirical studies in theology, ISSN 1389-1189 ; v. 20) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-90-04-20706-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Religion and sociology–Congresses. 2. Christian sociology–Congresses. I. Francis, Leslie J. II. Ziebertz, Hans-Georg, 1956- III. Title. IV. Series. BL60.I583 2008 201'.7–dc22 2011012795

ISSN 1389-1189 ISBN 978 90 04 20706 6 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Dispute about the Public Significance of Religion: An Opening Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hans-Georg Ziebertz

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Conservative Christianity in the USA: Interpretive and Normative Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Richard R. Osmer Religious Capital and Public Accountability: Challenges to Empirical Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Hans Schilderman A Sociological Perspective on the Public Significance of Religion: From Secularization to ‘Publicization’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 David Herbert Framing the Gods: The Public Significance of Religion from a Cultural Point of View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 R. Ruard Ganzevoort Separation of Church and State and Freedom of Religion: Left to the Gods? An Empirical Study among Dutch Young People . . . . . . 121 Johannes A. (Hans) van der Ven Varieties of Religious Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Hans Schilderman Church, Public and Bioethics: Religion’s Construction of Public Significance through the Bioethical Discourse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Ulla Schmidt Factors Predicting Engagement with Society among Anglicans in England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Andrew Village

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Maintaining a Public Ministry in Rural England: Work-Related Psychological Health and Psychological Type among Anglican Clergy Serving in Multi-Church Benefices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Christine E. Brewster, Leslie J. Francis, and Mandy Robbins The Changing Public Face of the Church of England: The Changing Experiences of Clergywomen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Mandy Robbins The Public Significance of Religion and the Changing Context of Family Life in Britain –: An Examination of Marriage, Cohabitation and Divorce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Emyr Williams and Leslie J. Francis Interpreting God’s Activity in the Public Square: Accessing the Ordinary Theology of Personal Prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Tania ap Siôn How Christian Students in Tamil Nadu Think about Power-Driven Religious Conflicts: A Meaning System Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 Chris A.M. Hermans, Francis-Vincent Anthony, Carl Sterkens, and William van der Veld Cross-Religious Participation in Rituals and Interpretation of Religious Pluralism: A Comparative Study among Christian, Muslim and Hindu Students in Tamil Nadu, India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Francis-Vincent Anthony, Chris A.M. Hermans, and Carl Sterkens Plurality in Unity: A Comparative, Quantitative Study Analyzing How Catholic Teachers of Religion from Five European Countries Perceive Other Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Ulrich Riegel A Public Issue Still Denied: Religion in German Preschool Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 Friedrich Schweitzer The Significance of Religion for Adolescents: Conception of and First Results from the VROID-MHAP-Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 Christoph Käppler, Sabine Zehnder, Aristide Peng, Taylor Christl, and Christoph Morgenthaler Subject Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493

PREFACE

The International Society for Empirical Research in Theology met for their first conference at Nijmegen in , then at Bielefeld in  and at Bangor in . The present volume of essays developed from the fourth conference of the Society convened in Würzburg in . Following in the footsteps of the earlier conferences, the Würzburg conference drew together empirical theologians from North America and a number of European countries and in so doing consolidated academic friendships, extended collaborations between nations, and confirmed the Society as a significant international forum working at the cutting edge of theology and the empirical social sciences. The theme of the fourth conference in Würzburg was designed to examine the contemporary dispute about the public significance of religion and to do so in ways that were both theologically and empirically informed. Within the present volume the theme is introduced in the opening chapter by Hans-Georg Ziebertz, who served in  as both host for the conference and as President for the Society. Having been introduced, the theme is developed in a variety of illuminating ways. We are grateful to colleagues in Würzburg who helped to organize the conference and to extend a warm welcome to visitors to Germany from nine European countries, the USA, India and South Africa. We also wish to express our appreciation to those who offered support and financial sponsorship to facilitate the conference. Our work in organizing and editing this volume has been greatly helped by our colleagues Sylvia Scheller in Würzburg and Sandy Hughes in Wales. We appreciate the support given by Diane Drayson with copy editing and proof reading and by Johannes Geis with compiling the indices. Collaboration in editing this volume marks for us a fitting culmination to the period during which we have valued working together, HansGeorg Ziebertz serving as President and Leslie J. Francis serving as VicePresident of the International Society for Empirical Research in theology. Leslie J. Francis Hans-Georg Ziebertz

CONTRIBUTORS

Francis-Vincent Anthony is Associate professor of Fundamental Practical Theology, and Director of Institute of Pastoral Theology at the Salesian Pontifical University, Rome; Visiting professor at Scalabrini International Migration Institute, Pontifical Urbaniana University, Rome; at Institute of Religious Sciences, St. Thomas Pontifical University, Rome; and at Kristu Jyoti College, Bangalore, India. E-mail: [email protected] Tania ap Siôn is Executive Director of the St Mary’s Centre for Religion and Education, Wales, Senior Lecturer at Glyndwr ˆ University, Wrexham, and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. E-mail: [email protected] The Revd Christine E. Brewster is Priest-in-Charge of Llanwnnog and Caersws w Carno, Senior Tutor at the St Seriol Centre in Bangor, and Research Fellow in the St Mary’s Centre for Religion and Education, Wales. E-mail: [email protected] Taylor Christl is a Research Associate in the department of social and emotional development in rehabilitation and education / mental health and behavioural problems, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] The Revd Leslie J. Francis is Professor of Religions and Education, University of Warwick, England, Canon Theologian in Bangor Cathedral, Wales, Visiting Professor at York St John University, and Visiting Professor in Glyndwr ˆ University, Wales. E-mail: [email protected] R. Ruard Ganzevoort is Professor of Pastoral / Practical Theology at Vrije University Amsterdam, Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]

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contributors

David Herbert was a lecturer and researcher at the Open University, UK. E-mail: [email protected] Christoph Käppler is Professor for social and emotional development in rehabilitation and education / mental health and behavioural problems, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Christoph Morgenthaler is Professor of Practical Theology / Pastoral Care and Pastoral Psychology, University of Bern, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected] Richard Osmer is the Thomas W. Synnott Professor of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. E-mail: [email protected] Aristide Peng is a Research Associate in the Department of Practical Theology, University of Bern, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected] Ulrich Riegel is Professor of Practical Theology/Religious Education, University of Siegen, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Mandy Robbins is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Glyndwr ˆ University, Wrexham. She is an Associate Fellow at the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, University of Warwick. E-mail: [email protected] Hans Schilderman is Professor of Religion and Care at Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]. Ulla Schmidt is Senior researcher, Centre for Church Research, and Adjunct Professor of theological ethics, University of Oslo, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]

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Friedrich Schweitzer is Professor of Practical Theology / Religious Education, University of Tuebingen, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Johannes A. van der Ven is an Associate researcher in Religion and Human Rights at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] The Revd Andrew Village is Senior Lecturer in Practical and Empirical Theology at York St John University, England. E-mail: [email protected] Emyr Williams is a Lecturer in Psychology at Glyndwr ˆ University, Wrexham. He is an Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick and a Research Fellow at the St Mary’s Centre for Religion and Education, Wales. E-mail: [email protected] Sabine Zehnder is a Research Associate in the Department of Practical Theology, University of Bern, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected] Hans-Georg Ziebertz is Professor of Practical Theology/Religious Education, University of Wuerzburg, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]

DISPUTE ABOUT THE PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION: AN OPENING REFLECTION

Hans-Georg Ziebertz

Introduction The title of this book, The public significance of religion, can be read either as a statement or as a question. The statement could be interpreted as: ‘religion has public significance’ or ‘religion has public significance as it ever had’. The title can also be read as a question: ‘Does religion (still) represent something significant in the public realms of society?’ or ‘Does modern society (again) refer to religion and give religion public significance?’ The statement that the public significance of religion is an obvious fact was made strongly by many scholars during the last decade. Others who are less convinced prefer to use the question. However, this question is on the agenda of academic research programmes, it is present in political debates and it is part of controversies in societies around the globe. The discussion dealt with the empirical facts about the phenomena that can be understood as evidence of the correctness of this statement and whether this process should be evaluated as positive or negative. It is obvious that different players and different interests shape the debate on the public significance of religion. In the following sections we will reflect on the topics that are discussed and on the academic questions that stand behind them. Does Religion Regain Public Significance? There is an ongoing academic debate about the question whether or not the diagnosis is correct that religion is publicly significant. José Casanova starts his book Public religions in the modern world with the statement ‘Religion in the s went public’ (Casanova, , p. ). In his analysis he shows that since the s religion has entered the public sphere after a period of marginalization. During this period, the public (media, politics,

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etc.) paid more attention to religion. Casanova recognizes four developments as causes for increasing public relevance: the Islamic revolution in Iran, the solidarity movement in Poland, the role of Catholicism in liberation processes in Latin America, and the re-emergence of Protestant fundamentalism and its influence on politics, especially in the USA. In all four cases religion was involved when societal changes took place. In Iran religion conquered the political system, in Poland religion functioned as legitimation for resistance, and in Latin America religion functioned as ideology for transformation processes. Conservative Protestantism in the USA mobilized people with traditional value patterns to vote for Bush and at the same time exerted enormous influence on the order of the private family life. With these four case studies Casanova wanted to underline the view that the privatization of religion was not the infallible diagnosis of religion in modern times. In all cases religion and religious convictions have been used for public interests. From the outside perspective religion was seen as a power useful for political transformation processes; and from the inside perspective religious people and groups agreed that their belief has not only a private but also a public dimension. Ten years after Casanova’s book, Norris and Inglehart (, p. ) likewise observed a ‘turn to the public’. They point as indicators to the continuing vitality of the Christian Right in the USA, to the evangelical revival in Latin America, to the new freedom of religion in postcommunist countries (including the increasing public relevance of the Christian Orthodox Churches), and to the resurgence of Islam in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Especially after  September , the role of Islam was taken for granted as showing that religion is back on the public agenda. Norris and Inglehart state that ‘since the September  terrorist attacks, and their aftermath in Afghanistan and Iraq, public interest in cultural and religious differences around the world has grown tremendously’ (, p. ). Both authors reflect this observation and connect it with the mainstream theory about the relation between religion and the modern world: the secularization theory. According to their perception the debate about this theory has become increasingly relevant to contemporary concerns. A well-known self-critical quote of a former protagonist of the theory of secularization, Peter L. Berger, goes as follows: ‘My point is that the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false. The world today, with some exceptions . . . is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever’ (Berger, , p. ). Norris and Inglehart continue five years later: ‘The publics of virtually and advanced industrial

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societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past fifty years. Nevertheless, the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before—and they constitute a growing proportion of the world’s population’ (, p. ). The analyses of conflicts all over the world lead to the conclusion that many conflicts were stimulated and caused by religious agendas. Conflicts are not significant for the Arab world or Asia. Within the socalled Christian-biased Europe, conflicts between religious groups in Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland and Russia took place. It is not always easy to say if religion must be seen as the stimulus or if religion is used for political interests (see Herbert, ). We remember, related to Islam, the public outcry in  when Salman Rushdie was forced to live underground, as well as more recent events, like the occasion when Muhammad cartoons were published in a Danish newspaper. In reference to the last-mentioned events, the role of religion is not gratifying. Here religion very clearly shows its two faces: religion is not only a social force supporting development for a better life but also a force of destruction. This ambivalence must be taken into account in the discussion about the public significance of religion. Within theology and among religious groups the public concern about religion is often evaluated positively. Political regimes and the public recognize that religions have the power to ignite revolutions and upheavals. Religions on their part are corruptible: they can be used as an instrument of power for non-religious purposes. The observations of many contemporaries from very different sectors (such as politics, economics, art and media) agree that religion is an influential factor at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It still is, or is it again, or is it more than ever? The relevance of religion seems not to be restricted to the sphere of individual spirituality: its establishment in the public sphere is obvious (Woodhead & Heelas, ; Lambert, ). Public Meaninglessness of Religion in Traditional Concepts of Secularization The strong version of secularization (that religion will undergo a linear decline) was already weakening when the role of religion was seen as a cultural archive (Assmann, ) providing symbols and opinions, at least latently, for textual and pictorial symbols in music, literature, film, architecture and so forth. Although this archive successively

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disappears from the public sector, it remains in the private sector. Then on this account secularization is privatization of religion, but not its disappearance. Hervieu-Leger () and Davie () created the term ‘amnestic societies’, religious memory roots in a culture whose religious references are no longer obvious. Religious contents do not play a role in European politics and integration, but remain present in the individual practice. Theories of secularization have influenced thinking in the social sciences and have also considerably influenced theology (Martin, ; Dobbelaere, ; Bruce, ; Pollack, ). Differences aside, one can say that a certain understanding of secularization has been widely prevalent since the s, suggesting that the public relevance of religion would decrease in the process of modernization. Of course the basis of this thinking was laid earlier. Max Weber is a prominent representative of this position and he names in his book, The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (Weber, ), the triumphal procession of rational world explanation as the main reason why religious metaphysical world interpretation loses relevance. He claims that, with the explosion of technological knowledge, religious world explanations are no longer plausible. Shortly after Weber, Émile Durkheim () published his book, The elementary forms of the religious life. In it, he develops the concept of a functional understanding of religion. Authors from the middle of the twentieth century could build on his theory, working with concepts like ‘functional differentiation’ and ‘de-traditionalization of modern society’. The assumption was that religion in modern societies loses its umbrella-function. Some adhered to the idea that religion would gradually shift into insignificance, whereas others reckoned that religion would be ‘banned’ into its own sector of society. In this, religion would perhaps still hold importance for some religious people, but would lose its public relevance. This idea of secularization contained the view that religion would be ‘individualized’ or even ‘privatized’. As a consequence of this process, religion only matters privately. It is obvious that scholars who are convinced that there is a continuous or even growing significance of religion in the global world must disagree with all variations of secularization theories. Based on these theories the public relevance of religion is not explainable. As an alternative, Norris and Inglehart () develop a market frame of reference. They differentiate between two groups of theories. Theories in the first group (demand-side) claim that there is religion, because there is a need for it. Religion expresses a human desire. If this desire decreases—regardless for

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which reasons—the religious awareness erodes and religious indifference spreads. Secularization theories can be combined well with the agenda of the ‘demand-side’. Religion has private relevance, because there is an individual necessity. Theories in the second group (supply-side) claim that religious desire arises, because the need for it is created. In other words: individual persons (e.g. charismatic ones) or organizations promote religious groups and religious offers, through which a demand for religion is created and maintained respectively. Rational-choice theories and the ‘religious market model’ come under the ‘supply-side’ theory. Religious pluralism in these concepts is no longer a reason for the erosion of religion, but a reason to stimulate religious activities, to sharpen religious profiles, to develop a religious market, and so on. These concepts seemed to have some support in the USA when analyzing the effects of evangelical mission on traditional mainstream churches. In general the criticism is that the market orientation cannot sufficiently explain phenomena around the world, it does not even work in all Western capitalistic countries, and therefore its approach is limited to some contexts. Supply-side theories have their bases in concepts derived from economics, particularly in the interplay between supply and demand. They do not, or hardly, reflect the political power of religion, religions or religious groups pursuing political goals. In such cases, religion is not only religious anymore, meaning not only focused on the individual spiritual life or the life in a religious community, but it combines political, nationalistic and ethnic interests, it serves the in-group to reassure itself of its identity and serves as separation from the out-group. Cultural and religious sciences barely anticipated that religion could become public again in that way. In this regard the statement of Stark and Finke seems justified: ‘What is needed is not a simple-minded theory of inevitable religious decline, but a theory to explain variation’ (Stark & Finke, , p. ). A descriptive understanding of secularization includes two perspectives. The first is a historical perspective that reflects the emancipation of state, politics, economy, law, etc from religious dependency. The second perspective is that a modern society is a differentiated society that is built on different autonomous subsystems. Differentiation and pluralization are one side of the coin, with individualization and privatization the other side. In the following two sections we will focus on the concepts of privatizing and functional differentiation, since from both concepts consequences can be drawn suggesting that the public relevance of religion decreases.

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hans-georg ziebertz Public Meaninglessness As a Consequence of Privatization?

The main objective of Casanova’s work is to confirm the thesis that religion is in ‘a process of de-privatization’. The term ‘in a process’ suggests that religions have been privatized in the past and that now they are back on the tracks to public significance. Is the object of our academic observance on the move or did we fail with our theoretical framework that made us believe that religions have lost their public significance? What Casanova defines as de-privatization is the refusal of the idea that religious traditions fulfil the role that mainstream theories in the social sciences had assigned them—which was a privatized role. Religions work for public recognition, they enter public debates, they influence politics and the economy, and they question the legitimacy of social structures and contents. Religious institutions do not only focus on pastoral care and on defending their existence. Casanova calls deprivatization of religion an interrelated process of re-politization of the private sphere and a re-normativization of the public sphere—caused by religious convictions and missions. ‘What I call the “de-privatization” of modern religion is the process whereby religion abandons its assigned place in the private sphere and enters the undifferentiated public sphere of civil society to take part in the ongoing process of contestation, discursive legitimization, and redrawing of the boundaries . . . religion continues to have and will likely continue to have a public dimension’ (Casanova, , pp. –). The observation that ‘religion went public’ was evaluated by the social sciences as a surprise and as an unexpected process. For the academic mainstream it was apparently contested that religion would be best understood as being on a pilgrimage from public significance to private meaning—and not the other way around. The phenomena of the privatization of religion and the loss of public significance are directly linked. A characteristic argument in the social sciences runs as follows: First, religious beliefs have become subjective as a result of the rise of alternative interpretations of life, which in principle can no longer be integrated into a religious world view. ‘Significant for the structure of the modern world is the fact that this quest for subjective meaning is a strictly personal affair’ (Casanova, , p. ). Second, institutionalized religion has been de-politicized as a result of functional differentiation of society. Religion was becoming increasingly irrelevant and marginal to the functioning of the modern world. Public institutions have no need for main-

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taining a sacred cosmos, and—other than Durkheim believed—modern societies have no need to be unified by a shared system of beliefs. What remains is that the individual has to patch the fragments into a subjectively meaningful whole. If this proposition is empirically valid, what conclusion can we draw from it? Do we not need to realize that religiously motivated people and religious institutions mobilize opposition against privatization—and that they are successful? Although religion in the modern society continues to become ever more privatized, there are several indicators of religions gaining increasing public relevance. The limitation of the concept of privatization is obvious when explaining the public presence of religion: religious institutions refuse to accept their assigned marginal place in the private sphere; political parties debate religious symbols and values; the different but substantial roles of the churches within the national educational systems, etc. In a European youth study (Ziebertz & Kay, , ; Ziebertz, Kay, & Riegel, ) with about , respondents in ten countries we found that nearly all students valued the public meaning of religion higher than the private meaning—except Muslim youth in Turkey (see Table ). Private meaning was operationalized as ‘existentially and spiritually important’, ‘religion offers directions for personal life’, ‘donates consolation’, etc. Public meaning was operationalized as importance that ‘churches have a public voice’, ‘religion represents values in society’, ‘religion stimulates common sense’, etc. Table . Religion—privately and publicly meaningful? N

Religion is privately meaningful

Netherlands Sweden Germany United Kingdom Ireland Finland Croatia Israel Poland Turkey

815 746 1922 1063 1052 586 1062 802 797 901

2.63 2.71 2.72 2.95 2.99 3.14 3.17 3.23 3.42 3.57

Total

9746

Country

Note:  = very negative,  = very positive.

Religion is publicly meaningful < < < < < < < < < >

2.86 2.81 3.08 3.08 3.20 3.19 3.36 3.47 3.55 3.48

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For respondents in The Netherlands and Sweden, religion is neither privately nor publicly meaningful, both mean values are in the negative half of the scale. Nevertheless, in these two countries the public dimension is evaluated less negatively than the private dimension. In Germany and the United Kingdom, the public dimension is just in the positive half of the scale; in Ireland and Finland this value is a bit higher. Except for Finland, youth in Western and Northern European countries evaluate the private importance of religion negatively. We find positive reactions on both dimensions in Finland, Croatia, Israel, Poland and Turkey. This limited analysis can of course neither prove nor disprove a theory. It is noticeable, however, that almost all adolescents are of the opinion that religion has and should have public relevance. Only the Turkish adolescents assess differently. The reason could possibly lie in the heated discussion that is taking place in Turkey at the moment, concerning whether the public influence of Islam should be extended. The assertion that the privatization of religion is connected with a loss of public relevance is not maintainable without reservations. Public Meaninglessness As a Consequence of Differentiation? The concept of functional differentiation is related to the concept of privatization. As was mentioned earlier, some scholars deduce from functional differentiation the consequence that religion loses public relevance. In particular Luhmann () said that religion establishes a subsystem by itself, wherein it could survive. Some scholars have maintained that the transformed role of religion from an overarching power in the past to a segment of society in modern times must be interpreted as loss of power and meaning, a loss of public significance. Religion, once imprisoned in a societal substructure, would be publicly negligible and attributed to the private life. These conclusions are of interest below and we do not need to prove if the theory of functional differentiation is overall applicable or not. What are the implications of the diagnosis that functional differentiation leads to a situation in which subsystems are autonomous and independent from each other? Independence means that the rules of action emerge from and are assessed by the rationality of the subsystem itself. Sometimes, independence of subsystems from each other is interpreted as if a subsystem could not have or would not want to have an influence on another sub-

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system. Luhmann would probably state that there is no hierarchic order between the subsystems, which means no system is directly superior over another. Although subsystems function autonomously and based on their inherent rational criteria and values, their interests go beyond the border of the subsystem. More than this: all subsystems show absolutely an interest in exerting their influence. Politics, for example, tries to influence developments in economics in the context of globalization (more or less successfully). Religious groups try to prevent certain laws (politics) or boycott the consumption of certain products (economics). However, this influence does not work directly anymore, for example through arrangement, but much more subtly. One can even go so far as to suggest that each subsystem has the tendency to make universal demands, even though no single subsystem represents the whole societal universe. If one claims that in a differentiated society, religion is now only of relevance within its own subsystem, it leads to the consequence that religion is forced to practise introspection and to deal solely with religious questions (whatever kind of questions that might be). Ultimately it lies in the self-conception of religions to move beyond their subsystem. In this respect when Judaism and Islam see themselves as a way of life, this claim has not only private significance, but also aims toward public influence: in the organization of work, public holidays, jurisdiction, family life, educational system, the evaluation of modern technologies, moral questions and so forth. Similarly, Christianity is not only a pure inner and spiritual religion, but it makes statements to shape the lives of individuals and to shape the world. Therefore, it is in the interest of religion itself to take part in deciding public questions. Functional differentiation and segmentation thus do not necessarily lead to the public irrelevance of religion. In what ways is it possible for religion to gain public relevance? In expansion of Liebman’s () proposition, five models are conceivable. The first one is isolation, meaning that a religious community evaluates the changes in society negatively and therefore withdraws from it. If the community is a cognitive minority, it can show signs of a cult. Isolation does not need to go along with public meaninglessness. A religiously motivated minority can be perceived by the majority as a threat, and therefore it is given public relevance. Adaptation describes running alongside the pluralistic world. In doing so, the advantages for the religious group are maximized and the disadvantages minimized. In this case religion can be used for various non-religious goals. Expansion aims to gain back step by step a lost monopoly on world interpretation. This can

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hans-georg ziebertz

happen, for example, through influence on the public system of values, or through a competition with other worldviews and religions to gain predominance. Compartmentalization means that a religion acknowledges its role as a part next to other parts in the system. Of course, it can form coalitions if necessary and operate across system borders. The model of the critical dialogue moves beyond compartmentalization. Even though society assigns a certain sector to religion, it does not behave in a sectarian way, but seeks critical dialogue with the public sphere, wants to participate in public life, and wants to be acknowledged as a partner in questions regarding the shaping of life and the world. In other words, the formation of societal subsystems does not necessarily mean that the individual subsystems neutralize each other and that the establishment of a religious subsystem has to go hand in hand with public meaninglessness. I would like to pick up the model of expansion that in the Western context will more than likely not evoke positive reactions. Media in Germany continuously supply the public with information about the growing relevance of Islam. Islam can therefore easily be perceived as a religion that expands in Germany and in other European countries. Detlev Pollack () analyzed data concerning the image of Christianity and Islam among Germans from between  and  (see Table ). Within two years, opinions on Islam became more negative, but the opinions on Christianity became more positive. Table . Images of Islam and Christianity among German population. 2004 %

2006 %

Negative images of Islam Discrimination of women in Islam Islam is fanatic Islam is backwards Islam lacks democratic awareness

85 75 49 52

91 83 62 60

Positive images of Christianity Christianity stands for charity Christianity values human rights Christianity gets involved with the disadvantaged Christianity is peaceful

70 61 63 57

80 71 71 68

Note: Source: Allensbach, quoted by Pollack

dispute about the public significance of religion

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Pollack concludes that the results can be read inversely. The more Islam is assessed negatively, the more positive is the opinion of Christianity. The majority of Germans see religion as a major reason for conflict. The appreciation for Christianity does not result in a stronger individual religious engagement. Pollack sees this appreciation as a representation of the desire that cultural and religious diversity not expand further. To avoid misunderstandings: the disposition for tolerance is strongly pronounced among Germans and the majority support Islam lessons in public schools. The problem is a different one: the way of life in Germany should not be put at risk through the influence of foreign cultures and religions. In this perspective, Christianity is seen as a surety for a certain lifestyle, or to put it in a milder way, it is seen as more compatible with the Western lifestyle. The public relevance of Christianity is growing the more this lifestyle—in the perception of people—is questioned. Asking about the public relevance of religion, we have to distinguish between state, political society and civil society. Most of the Christian Churches in Europe have accepted disestablishment from the state and the political society. That is not the case in all parts of the world. Since a modern Western society is characterized by the separation of state and religion, public religion had to identify the civil society as the public sphere, which is independent from the state (Cohen & Arato, ; Keane, ). An example is the Catholic Church: after the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church went forward to an aggionamento from ‘centred in the state’ to ‘centred in the civil society’. Civil society is ‘that part of social life which lies beyond the immediate reach of the state’ (Douglas & Friedmann, ). Civil society then represents a public sphere that is realized whenever individuals or non-governmental organizations discuss issues of collective relevance like values and norms. The concept refers to matters of common interest, to a space where communication takes place that is at least intended to achieve common goals. Civil society mediates between the individual, groups and the state. Following Gill (), for Antonio Gramsci civil society is the means by which the state secures authority through consent rather than coercion; and at the same time it is the sphere of effective resistance to the state. In Europe (and the Western world) the legal foundation of the civil society is based on Human Rights (freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and so on). This legal foundation guarantees a plurality of lifestyles that feed the public discussion. Furthermore, it demands a democratic procedure of participation. The means of public



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discourse are communication and reasoning (Münkler & Fischer, ). However, civil society relies on socio-moral sources (Galston, ). The intention to participate does not emanate from the civil society itself. Religions use this public space to propose their worldview, norms and values. Religions potentially represent an answer to the societal quest for common goals and shared values. Religions can arouse spiritual commitment and charity, motivating individuals to play an active part in civil society. To some extent civil society values the contribution of religions. However, religion also can be seen as dysfunctional when it mobilizes resistance or legitimates undesired behaviour. More than this, religion can be experienced (at least from a Western perspective) as a dangerous power when the tendency is observed for religion to re-enter the state and to control the (political) society. The current ‘Western solution’ is that civil society is that space of interplay where the state secures authority through consent rather than coercion and where individuals, groups and religions participate via support or via organizing effective resistance. Public Significance of Religion in a Global Perspective The reflection on the public significance of religion has to include a global perspective. Peter Beyer () rightly recalls that the West conducted imperial expansion successfully for  years. Until the end of the last century, it was the predominant opinion that progress and modernization is a one-way street. This conviction has shown cracks. The West can rely less and less on the dominance of its economic, political and military power to exert cultural hegemony. Also the export of the highest good, the Western democracy, meets its limits globally. By now, many opinionleaders in culture and religions in the non-West are experimenting with the idea of reaching modernization without Westernization. A crucial global problem is economic inequality and different living conditions. According to the Human Developmental Index, the differences between poor and rich countries continuously grow:  countries are poorer today than in  and in  countries the life expectancy has dropped in this period of time. Experiencing inequality creates an elementary necessity for safety. This necessity displays in underdeveloped countries especially in environmental issues, weather, pollution, and as claim for survival: hunger, housing, standards of living, health care, and so on. Together with the more developed countries, security, as well as

dispute about the public significance of religion

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freedom from risks and danger, requires (military) strength to ensure the territorial integrity and security of a nation state. Norris and Inglehardt () are of the opinion that the experience of living under conditions of human security shapes the demand for religion and therefore the priority that people give to religious values. They see empirical evidence that growing up in less secure societies heightens the importance of religious values. The global importance of this finding is that ‘the expanding gap between the sacred and the secular societies around the globe will have important consequences for world politics, making the role of religion increasingly salient on the global agenda’ (Norris & Inglehart, , p. ). To what degree the religious gap will lead to greater ethno-religious conflict and violence is an open question. Peter L. Berger writes: ‘It would be nice to be able to say that religion is everywhere a force for peace. Unfortunately, it is not. Very probably religion in the modern world more often fosters war, both between and within countries’ (, p. ). However, Western secular countries feel the consequences through the moving in of migrants and the increase in minorities from underdeveloped countries. Some of these ethno-religious migrant groups pass through a process of assimilation, others are offered by the democratic context the possibility to greater autonomy and self-determination in contrast to the majority. These groups perceive that their cultural convictions and basic values are under pressure by rapid cultural changes. Some feel motivated to missionary political activism. The consequence is not that Western societies are becoming more religious in general, but that migrant and ethnic groups are re-invigorating religious life. The majority of society is not unaffected by this and several counter-movements have evolved, for which some examples have been given above. Against this background, the combination of politicization and religious manifestation is not only a problem of some non-Western countries or a problem of Islam, but it has also reached the Western countries. Therefore it seems reasonable to deal with the question of the public relevance of religion not only from the point of religions and their theologies. In fact, the necessity to connect religion, culture and politics and to discuss them in an inter-disciplinary manner seems obvious. It is hard to decide to what extent the Western cultural dominance holds religious implications, especially because the European West (at least) is said to be a secular society. Norris and Inglehardt voice considerations that the importance of Christianity in the cultural definition of Western countries can not only be interpreted as a historic fact. They think:



hans-georg ziebertz Distinctive world-views that were originally linked with religious traditions have shaped the cultures of each nation in an enduring fashion; today, these distinctive values are transmitted to the citizens even if they never set foot in a church, temple or mosque . . . Today, these values are not transmitted primarily by the church, but by the educational system and the mass media, with the result that although the value systems of historically Protestant countries differ markedly and consistently from those of historically Catholic countries . . . Even in highly secular societies, the historical legacy of given religions continues to shape worldviews and to define cultural zones. (Norris & Inglehart, , p. )

This fusion of religion and culture does not make it easy to identify what can be considered religion. It is probably achieved more easily when people experience their civilization as under threat. In that case, it is expected that recourse to the familiar religion can prevent changes. One defends a culture through defending a religion and by standing for a religion one implicitly defends a familiar culture. This even applies to people who otherwise are not practising members of this religion. An especially enlightening example in this context is the public efficiency of Christian-conservative groups, especially in the USA. The Western influence in the world also could not solve some grave problems. Here we have to mention first and foremost economic inequality and different living conditions. Public Religion—A Normative Perspective A descriptive approach to the phenomenon of the public significance of religion is, from the theological and cultural perspective, incomplete. Peter L. Berger points out a decisive reason when he writes: ‘It would be nice to be able to say that religion is everywhere a force for peace. Unfortunately, it is not. Very probably religion in the modern world more often fosters war, both between and within countries’ (, p. ). In addition to this we can briefly address a proposition of Jürgen Habermas (Ziebertz & Riegel, ). In his writings, Habermas was for a long time a representative of the idea that modern societies would be de-traditionalized societies—the dissociation of the influence of religion being a part of that. Today, Habermas admits that religion is always relevant when it comes to existential questions (Habermas, , ). Therefore, it would be wrong to ignore or suppress religion. Furthermore, modern societies should develop rules as to how religion should exert its public face effectively. Habermas thinks it is possible to overcome the antagonism of

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

secular and religious statements and he assumes their compatibility. He states three demands of religion without claiming completeness. First, religion is required to accept and tolerate the societal presence of various cohabiting confessions and religions. The diversity of different, but in principal equal, perspectives is one of the characteristics of modernity, originated from the social unfolding of modern rationality. Second, religion must acknowledge the rationality of arguments as a form of discussion. In science, reason and method act as a guiding form of gaining knowledge, and science claims this to be the exemplary expression of its discipline. Third, religion is obliged to obey propositions of the constitutional state. Due to their democratic orientation, the principles of autonomous rationality find their political expression and form the framework with which to unfold common goods in a society. Those three exemplary claims of autonomous rationality toward religion indicate that not every religion is suitable for cooperation. Collaboration is only possible if religion accepts the rationality of the social sectors, in which autonomous rationality is concretized. Forms of religion that deny these rationalities cannot be considered for cooperation with autonomous rationality. Habermas’ position is in discussion. From a theological point of view, Ratzinger stated that first rationality has to accept that it cannot be the ultimate authority and second that rationality is asked to recognize its cultural boundaries and to broaden them (Habermas & Ratzinger, ). The area of rationality is in itself polyphone and cannot be confined to its Western or European shape. Nevertheless, these counter-statements did not reject Habermas’ approach but can be understood as a challenge to develop the concepts and criteria, according to which public religion can collaborate in the modern world. Looking Forward It is a common good among empirical researchers in theology, that normative questions cannot be excluded. To research what public religion is and how it functions implies an expressed or non-expressed vision, how it should function best. This is again a cooperative task for discourse across the boundaries of disciplines: religious, political, and cultural frameworks are needed. Further intense research is needed and some research questions are: How is the public significance of religion experienced and evaluated by different groups in society? What are the motives of religious groups and churches to re-enter the public domain and are they

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effective? What is the importance of religious truth claims in participating (consulting, steering and dominating) in public debates? How do different religious and non-religious groups evaluate the impact of religion on its public environment, and under which conditions can it be regarded to be functional or dysfunctional? How does our current empirical research in theology already clarify answers to these questions, and what research do we need to pursue in order to examine the implied issues from a theological or religious studies perspective in the near future? References Assmann, J. (). Das kulturelle Gedächtnis (The cultural memory). München: Beck. Berger, P.L. (Ed.). (). The Desecularization of the World. Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center. Beyer, P. (). Religions in global society. Abingdon: Routledge. Bruce, S. (Ed.). (). God is dead: Secularization in the West. Oxford: WileyBlackwell. Casanova, J. (). Public religions in the modern world. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Cohen, J., & Arato, A. (). Civil society and political theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Davie, G. (). Religion in modern Europe: A memory mutates. New York: Oxford University Press. Dobbelaere, K. (). Secularization: An analysis on three levels. Brussels: Peter Lang. Douglass, C., & Friedmann, J. (Eds.). (). Cities for citizens: planning and the rise of civil society in a global age. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Durkheim, E. (Ed.). (/). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: The Free Press. Galston, W. (). Liberal purposes: Goods, virtues and diversity in liberal state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gill, S. (). Power and resistance in the New World Order. Palgrave: Macmillan. Habermas, J. (). Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates? In Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Philosophische Ansätze (pp. –). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Habermas, J. (). Religion in the public sphere. European Journal of Philosophy, (), –. Habermas, J., & Ratzinger, J. (). The dialectics of secularisation: On reason and religion. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press. Herbert, D. (). Religion and civil society: Rethinking public religion in the contemporary world. Aldershot. Ashgate.

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Hervieu-Leger, D. (Ed.). (). Religion as a chain of memory. Oxford: Rutgers University Press. Keane, J. (). Civil society: Old images, new visions. Cambridge, MA: Stanford University Press. Lambert, Y. (). A turning point in religious evolution in Europe. Journal of Contemporary Religion (), –. Liebman, Y. (). Neo-traditional development among Orthodox Jews in Israel. Megamot (Trends), , – (Hebrew) Luhmann, N. (). The differentiation of society. New York: Columbia University Press. Martin, D. (). A general theory of secularization. Oxford: Blackwell. Münkler, H., & Fischer, K. (). Gemeinwohl und Gemeinsinn. Thematisierung und Verbrauch soziomoralischer Ressourcen in der modernen Gesellschaft. In Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Ed.), Berichte und Abhandlungen , (pp. –). Berlin: BBAKdW. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (). Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pollack, D. (). Säkularisierung—ein moderner Mythos? Studien zum religiösen Wandel in Deutschland (Secularisation-a modern myth? Studies about religious change in Germany). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Pollack, D. (). Welche Auswirkungen hat die Globalisierung der Religionen auf die Gesellschaft in Deutschland? (Consequences of globalization of religions on the German Society). Zur Debatte (), –. Stark, R., & Finke, R. (). Acts of faith. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press. Weber, M. (Ed.). (). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London: Courier Dover. Woodhead, L., & Heelas, P. (Eds.). () Religion in modern times: An interpretative anthology. Oxford: Blackwell. Ziebertz, H.-G., & Kay, W.K. (Eds.). () Youth in Europe I: An international empirical study about life-perspectives. Münster: LIT-Verlag. Ziebertz, H.-G., & Kay, W.K. (Eds.). (). Youth in Europe II: An international empirical study about religiosity. Münster: LIT-Verlag. Ziebertz, H.-G., Kay, W.K., & Riegel U. (Eds.) (). Youth in Europe III. An international empirical study about the impact of religion on life orientation. Münster: LIT-Verlag. Ziebertz, H.-G., & Riegel, U. (Eds.). (). Europe: secular or post-secular? Reflections on religion and societal cohesion. Münster: LIT-Verlag.

CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANITY IN THE USA: INTERPRETIVE AND NORMATIVE PERSPECTIVES

Richard R. Osmer

Introduction It is not difficult to see the many ways religion is present in contemporary public life, from politics to public religious symbols and to contributions to civil society. In the USA, religion has been especially important over the past three decades in political culture. This chapter begins by examining empirical research on religious affiliation and voting behaviour, giving special attention to conservative Protestantism. It then explores two interpretive frameworks to explain these patterns, offered by two prominent American sociologists. It places these frameworks in a model of practical theology that involves four distinct, but interrelated tasks: the descriptive-empirical, interpretive, normative, and pragmatic (Osmer, ). While giving special attention to competing understandings of evangelicalism in American public life, it raises normative questions that flow from these different interpretations. The Religious Factor in American Politics In recent decades, a great deal of attention has been given to the religious factor in American politics, one of the most prominent modes of religious participation in public life in the USA. Following the  presidential race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, the media highlighted the importance of the ‘God gap’ and ‘values voters’ in Bush’s re-election. In an election that Bush won by only one percent of the two-party vote, the overwhelming support of white evangelical Protestants for Bush was the subject of highly charged rhetoric (Green, , pp. –). Liberal New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, wrote: The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule . . . W. ran a jihad in America



richard r. osmer so he can fight one in Iraq—drawing a devoted flock . . . to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

Conservative New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, saw things differently: America is driven today by a ‘God gulf ’ of distrust, dividing churchgoing Republicans from relatively secular Democrats. A new Great Awakening is sweeping the country . . . All this is good news for Bush Republicans, who are in tune with heartland religious values, and bad news for Dean Democrats who don’t know John from Job.

While differing sharply in their evaluations, Dowd and Kristof both draw attention to the religious factor in Bush’s re-election. The descriptiveempirical task of practical theology asks the question: What is going on in a particular context? Then it uses the methods of empirical research to answer this question. Here, I simply draw on two tables (see Tables  and ) that summarize research by John Green, a senior fellow in Religion and American Politics at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (Green, , pp. –).1 Table . Religious belonging and the  two-party vote. Bush Kerry % %

Electorate %

White Evangelical Protestants White mainline Protestants Black Protestants Latino Protestants

78.8 53.3 13.5 56.6

21.2 46.7 86.5 43.4

21.8 19.7 7.6 2.5

Non-Latino Catholics Latino Catholics

55.3 31.9

44.7 63.1

22.7 3.8

Other Christians Other faiths Jews

74.0 17.6 23.4

26.0 82.4 76.6

3.8 2.5 2.4

Unaffiliated

27.1

72.9

12.7

All

51.0

49.0

100

Source:  National Election Pool (NEP).

1 In addition to the research cited in these notes, some of the more important research includes Kohut (), Lakoff (), Greeley, A (), and Lindsay ().

conservative christianity in the usa

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Table . Religious affiliation and attendance, and the  two-party vote. Bush Kerry % %

Electorate %

Weekly attending Evangelical Protestants Less observant Evangelical Protestants Latino Protestants

82.5 71.9 56.6

17.5 28.1 43.4

14.3 7.5 2.5

Weekly attending mainline Protestants Less observant mainline Protestants

57.3 52.1

42.7 47.9

4.5 15.2

Weekly attending black Protestants Less observant black Protestants

16.9 8.5

83.1 91.5

4.4 3.2

Weekly attending Catholics Less observant Catholics Latino Catholics

59.9 51.4 36.9

40.1 48.6 63.1

10.3 12.4 4.3

Other Christians Other faiths Jews

74.0 17.6 23.4

26.0 82.4 76.6

3.8 2.5 2.4

Unaffiliated

27.1

72.9

12.7

All

51.0

49.0

100

Source:  National Election Pool (NEP).

At first glance, these tables appear to underscore Maureen Dowd’s point: the evangelicals did it! White Evangelical Protestants voted overwhelmingly for Bush, reaching as high as   among those attending church weekly. But a closer look complicates the picture. Bush pieced together a coalition in which he received a majority of the votes by Latino Protestants, Mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics who are not Latino, and Other Christians (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Scientists, etc.). As the second table indicates, moreover, in every one of these constituencies, Bush’s support was higher among those who attend church weekly. Operationalizing Strategies This sort of highly charged debate over the role of religion in American politics is not new, and consequently social scientists have carried out quite a bit of research on conservative Christianity since the election of Jimmy Carter, a self-avowed, born-again evangelical. Important methodological issues are at stake in how this research is carried out. Social

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scientists have operationalized and thus measured the population of evangelicals in very different ways, resulting in remarkably diverse findings and interpretations. Much of this research has relied on social surveys. As Conrad Hackett and Michael Lindsay () note, almost all of this survey research has used one of three methods: sorting by denomination or tradition, self-identification, or belief affirmations.2 Perhaps the most common method until recently has been to classify people as evangelical (or fundamentalist or conservative Protestant, depending on the umbrella category used by the researcher) on the basis of denominational affiliation. Tom Smith (, pp. –) devised a classification method, FUND, that aggregates all  denominational groups in the General Social Survey into three groups: fundamentalist, moderate, and liberal. Smith’s classification was criticized by Guth, Kellstedt, Smidt, and Green in the mid-s and, more recently, by Steensland as imprecise.3 They argue for a model of religious traditions based on traditionalist, centrist, and modernist categories and distinguish subgroups on the basis of religious history and race. Their classification method, RELTRAD, locates conservative Protestant denominations under the label of evangelical Protestants and separates African-American denominations into a separate black Protestant category. Acknowledging this sort of variation is important, for it allows us to see the differences between white evangelical Protestants (who voted overwhelmingly for Bush) and African-American Protestants (who voted overwhelmingly for Kerry), even though both traditions share many features of conservative Protestantism. Sorting by denomination or tradition has one major disadvantage. It fails to capture variation across and within denominations. Thus, a second method has come to be used by social scientists: self-identification. This has the advantage of allowing the members of different denominations to classify themselves as evangelical, born-again, or conservative, depending on the sorting category used. Starting in , for example, the Gallup Organization began using the question ‘Would you describe yourself as a born-again, or evangelical Christian?’ to identify evangelicals. Aggregating Gallup polling data between  and , Hackett

2

See also Kellstedt and Smidt (). For an overview of these issues, see Steensland () and Green’s discussion (, chs – and The American religious landscape and political attitudes: A baseline for — accessed via the Internet). 3

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and Lindsay (, p. ) find that   of all Protestants self-identify as evangelical,   of Catholics, and   of the members of Orthodox churches. This method, thus, has the advantage of identifying conservative Christians across denominations. It also has the advantage of capturing variation within denominations. The Presbyterian Panel, which is the research unit of my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), regularly carries out survey research on a broad range of issues. Using the method of self-identification in a  survey,   of PCUSA members identified themselves as evangelical, over   as theologically conservative, and   as born again.4 One of the problems with self-identification is that people commonly do not understand religious categories in the same way as social scientists. For example, Gallup equates born-again and evangelical. Yet other research indicates that only   of respondents who describe themselves as ‘born-again’ also describe themselves as evangelical (Hackett & Lindsay, , p. ).5 This has led to the use of a third method to identify evangelicals: belief affirmations. George Barna, for example, of the Barna Research Group, conceptualizes evangelicals as a subset of bornagain Christians (Hackett & Lindsay, , p. ). Respondents are classified as born-again if they have () made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today, and () believe that after they die they will go to Heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their saviour. To be classified as evangelical, born-agains must agree with seven belief affirmations, historically important to evangelical Protestantism. These include such beliefs as the importance of sharing the faith with non-Christians, the existence of Satan, the accuracy of the Bible in all that it teaches (inerrancy), and so forth. Using a particular set of belief affirmations, Barna found that nearly   of the adult population can be classified as born-again but only   as evangelical. One of the problems with this method is the adequacy of the belief affirmations used to identify evangelicals. Using the criterion of biblical literalism, or inerrancy, to sort out evangelicals, for example, excludes better educated evangelicals, who often believe that the Bible is God’s true Word but is not to be read literally.6 It is no surprise, thus, 4 Markum, J. How Many Evangelicals? PC (USA) , [Online] Available at: www .pcusa.org/tody/department/go-figure/past//gf-.htm, [Accessed July ]. 5 Hackett and Lindsay were provided this information by David Kinnaman, senior vice president of the organization. 6 Nancy Ammerman (, ) argues that the debate over biblical inerrancy among Southern Baptists has left many unwilling to use this category.

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that when evangelicals are identified in this way, they end up being characterized as having less education, as holding poorer-paying jobs, and, in general, as situated in social locations furthest removed from modernity. To summarize, three different methods have been widely used by American social scientists in recent decades to identify and describe evangelicals. Given the strengths and limitations of each method, some social scientists have begun to combine these methods.7 Some also have begun to combine survey research with in-depth, face-to-face interviews in order to explore the meaning of beliefs for individuals in ways that survey research cannot.8 Others have noted that more qualitative research is needed to understand better the variation among conservative Christians—the differences, for example, between white conservative Catholics and conservative Pentecostal Latinos or between evangelical Southern Baptists and evangelical mainline Protestants.9 Robert Wuthnow’s Restructuring of American Religion Thesis Practical theologians who are committed to empirical research are sensitive to the sorts of methodological issues raised above, but they also are aware that research is not self-interpreting. As we have seen, theoretical decisions (like the historic belief affirmations of evangelicals) inform research, and theory, in turn, is shaped by findings. In this section and the next, I move to the interpretive task of practical theology, in which practical theologians enter an interdisciplinary dialogue with social scientists to develop theoretical understandings and explanations of why certain patterns or actions are taking place in a socio-historical context. In this section I describe the widely influential theory of Robert Wuthnow () (Princeton University) on the realignment of American religion since World War , found in The restructuring of American religion.10

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Green, for example, (). This is the method used by Christian Smith and his colleagues (, ). 9 One of the best in-depth, qualitative studies of an American congregation remains Warner (). Nancy Tatom Ammerman () uses mixed methods of research, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. 10 See Wuthnow () for a discussion of the struggles between evangelicals and liberals during this period. 8

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Wuthnow’s theory sets the stage for the examination of two quite different theoretical interpretations of evangelical Protestantism during this period, offered by James Hunter and Christian Smith in the section that follows. Hunter and Smith portray and evaluate the contribution of conservative Protestants to American public life quite differently. Wuthnow situates his interpretation of recent religion in the USA in the longer story of denominationalism across American history (, ch. ). In , there were about three dozen major denominations in the USA; by , this had risen to more than , as a result of immigration, schism, regionalism, and revivalism. Between  and ,  million immigrants arrived in the USA, swelling the ranks of Roman Catholics to . million by  and increasing the number of Lutherans as well. Between  and ,  million Jews immigrated to the USA, mostly from Eastern Europe, swelling their membership to . million. Denominations, moreover, continued to grow internally throughout this period and into the twentieth century. Between  and the end of World War , the number of congregations grew from around , to over ,. Only the Great Depression brought a halt to this growth. Wuthnow tells this story to underscore the importance of denominationalism in the structuring of American religion. H. Richard Niebuhr () gave classic expression to this pattern in The social sources of denominationalism, which described (and criticized) the ways American denominations were rooted in the social divisions of class, race, region, and ethnicity. All this was to change after World War . Although denominations grew rapidly during the s, social changes already were beginning to unfold that would undercut denominationalism from the s forward. Wuthnow’s description of these changes is rich, and I can only offer a summary here. First, he describes the shift to a post-industrial economy, eroding the manufacturing base of the American economy and heightening the importance of higher education for professionals, managers, researchers, and other participants in the newly emerging knowledge industry. Second, he notes the Cold War, prompting large investments by the USA government and corporations in scientific research and technology. Third, he draws attention to the USA government’s enormous investment in higher education immediately after World War , through the G.I. Bill, land grants, and university-based research funding. Fourth, he notes expansion of the functions of the national government, particularly in areas of welfare, education, equal rights legislation and judicial decisions, all of which affected the day to day activities of citizens.

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These and other social changes were to have a lasting impact on the structuring of American religion. Here again, Wuthnow’s story is complex, and I will only trace the impact of the expansion of higher education and the functions of the state. Between  and , enrolment in higher education rose from . million to . million (the latter represented   of young people age  to ) (Wuthnow, , pp. , ). One of the most important consequences was a sharp reduction of the ‘education gap’ separating denominations. In the s, fewer than one Baptist, Lutheran, or Catholic in seven had ever been to college and only one Methodist in five and one Presbyterian in three. By the early s, at least one person in four had been to college in most denominations, and this percentage would have been even higher if so many college graduates had not stopped participating in the church. By , a very substantial minority of most denominations were college educated. Even as the ‘education gap’ between denominations was diminishing, it was growing within denominations. A consistent finding of studies during the s and s was the liberalizing impact of higher education on young people on a wide range of issues, including divorce, premarital sex, religious tolerance, abortion, interracial dating, and so forth. College graduates who remained involved in organized religion brought these attitudes with them, creating an ‘education gap’ between less educated laity holding more conservative views and college educated, more liberal laity. Higher education impacted denominationalism in other ways. Many college goers stopped participating in organized religion during these years and, often, never returned or only did so after marriage and the arrival of children. Moreover, college graduates no longer felt compelled to return to the denomination in which they were raised and felt freer across adulthood to shift from one denomination to another, commonly known as religious switching. In short, the expansion of higher education following World War  impacted the structuring of American religion in a number of ways: reducing the ‘education gap’ between denominations, increasing the ‘education gap’ within denominations, and lessening the importance of affiliation with a particular denomination during young adulthood and beyond. This led to another social change noted by Wuthnow, the expansion of the functions of the national government. Arguably, this began during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat the effects of the Great Depression and to mobilize the country for World War . Generally, the expanded role of the state by Roosevelt was

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approved by most Americans, and even many political conservatives viewed it as a necessary emergency measure. More controversial and socially divisive, however, were legislative and judicial actions during the s, which expanded entitlement programmes, made abortion legal and prayer in school illegal, and guaranteed civil rights through court-ordered desegregation of public schools, voter registration, and affirmation action. Many Americans viewed these actions as the state’s intrusion into their local cultures and everyday lives. Cultural cleavages began to appear that had a major impact on the structuring of American religion and politics. One response to these emerging cultural divisions was the growth of what Wuthnow calls special purpose groups. He uses this concept quite broadly to refer to a wide range of organizations, not only in religious communities but also in civil society. They range from Bird-watching groups and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to politically activist organizations like the National Organization of Women and The National Right to Life Committee. These are voluntary associations oriented toward a specific, limited objective that mobilizes members and resources to meet this objective. Wuthnow describes their impact on religion: In a complex, highly diverse, highly specialized society such as the USA, therefore, special purpose groups constitute a valuable way of sustaining religious commitment. People can participate in these organizations for limited periods of time. When their interests change, or when a more pressing issue emerges, they can switch to a different organization . . . The same kind of adaptation has occurred in almost all sectors of social life. In the marketplace occupations and products have become more specialized . . . and political interest groups have learned the value of organizing around single issues. (Wuthnow, , pp. –)

As denominations have become more alike (in terms of education, income level, social status, etc.) and their identities less important in affiliation, they ‘have become to a greater extent diverse federations of special purpose groups rather than monolithic, homogeneous structures’ (Wuthnow, , p. ). The result has been a major restructuring of American religion in which denominationalism has not disappeared but is far less important along a number of dimensions (i.e. individual affiliation, congregational identity, the role of denominational bureaucracies, etc.). Wuthnow’s restructuring thesis has implications for some of the empirical issues raised above. At a minimum, it rules out identifying conservative or evangelical Christians exclusively by sorting them into

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denominations or traditions. Moreover, the rise of special purpose groups that bring people together across denominational lines appears to call for new ways of identifying what conservative Catholics, evangelical Mainliners, Pentecostals, and Evangelicals have in common, as well as what distinguishes them. The sort of belief affirmation criteria used to this point are either too narrow (Barna) or too broad (Gallup) for this purpose. My primary reason for sharing Wuthnow’s restructuring thesis, however, is to set the stage for an examination of two different interpretations of American evangelicalism during this period, which are found in the writings of James Hunter (University of Virginia) and Christian Smith (University of Notre Dame). Hunter and Smith portray evangelical Protestantism’s contribution to public life along very different lines. After Restructuring: Two Interpretations of Evangelical Protestantism One way of reading Wuthnow’s theory is to view it as an account of the impact of late modernity on American religion. The social changes he notes (post-industrialism, the spread of scientific research and technology, the expansion of higher education, and a broader role of the state) have undercut denominationalism and given rise to new patterns of religious identity and affiliation in which special purpose groups are more prominent. It also has led to different forms of participation in public life. Yet how this participation is interpreted and evaluated is remarkably different, as we see in the writings of James Hunter and Christian Smith on conservative Protestantism. James Hunter and the Culture Wars Thesis James Hunter (, ) was one of the first sociologists to examine American evangelicalism during the period of restructuring described by Wuthnow. In American evangelicalism, Hunter () draws on a  Gallup study conducted for Christianity Today. He limits evangelicals to Protestants and identifies them through belief affirmations along three lines: the inerrancy of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, and a confessional or conversional Christocentric soteriology.11 Using these criteria, 11 The confessional category includes belief that ‘the only hope for heaven is through personal faith in Jesus Christ’ and the conversional category includes affirmation of four items about religious experience: () having a ‘particularly powerful religious insight or

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Hunter estimated evangelicals as   of the American adult population and as disproportionately female, older, rural, with low education and income, and located in the Southern and Midwestern parts of the USA. Drawing on the theory of Peter Berger, among others, he argues that the functional rationality, cultural pluralism, and structural differentiation of modernity erode the plausibility of religion. Evangelicals are able to maintain their doctrinal orthodoxy only because they are located ‘furthest away from modernity’ (Hunter, , p. ). Even here, however, Hunter detects some accommodation to modernity as evangelicals deemphasize offensive aspects of their belief system (e.g. sin, hell, damnation), focus on subjectivity, and adopt modern marketing and selling techniques. Hunter () explores this sort of accommodation more fully in Evangelicalism: The coming generation. In this book, he studies evangelicals who are not on the edges of modernity but are students in the best evangelical liberal arts colleges and seminaries and, as such, are in the very midst of encountering modernity. These are the future leaders of evangelical Protestantism and, as such, serve as a leading indicator of the emerging contours of evangelicalism as a cultural system. Hunter finds that the ‘coming generation’ of evangelicals are actively engaged in ‘cognitive bargaining’ with modernity, even though they remain far more orthodox theologically than the secular university students of a comparison group. Their theological orthodoxy is more open and diverse, as is their moral stance on politics, the family, and education. In , Hunter () published Culture wars: The struggle to define America. Hunter’s thesis in this book was widely discussed and, commonly, misrepresented in the media. Hunter views this book as an ‘extension’ of Wuthnow’s description of the restructuring of American religion, focusing primarily on the cultural realignment taking place in religion (and more generally) during this period.12 With the decline of denominational identity and the rise of special purpose groups, American religion and culture generally has polarized around two markedly different worldviews: Orthodox and Progressive. This has resulted in what Hunter calls the new ecumenism of American religion: alliance-building among the orthodox and progressive members of different traditions, awakening’, () involving Jesus Christ, () that is ‘still important’ to them in everyday life, and () entailing ‘an identifiable turning point that included asking Jesus Christ to be [one’s] personal savior’. 12 See his comments in Ibid, endnote , p. .

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bringing together people from traditions that historically have been antagonistic toward one another (e.g. Protestant fundamentalism and Roman Catholicism). Orthodox and Progressives across different religious traditions often find they have more in common with one another than with other members of their own denomination or congregation. Hunter argues that at the heart of the worldviews of Orthodox and Progressives are very different understandings of moral authority (, ch. ). The Orthodox in their various forms share a commitment to an external, definable, and transcendent source of authority, revealed in texts or tradition. From this authority, they derive a measure of value, goodness, and identity that is consistent, definable (often in propositional terms), and absolute. All other forms of truth (be they personal experience or modern science) are secondary in relation to external, transcendent authority. Progressives in their various forms view authority as residing in the process of resymbolizing traditional ideas and norms in ways that are relevant to the contemporary world. Moral and religious truths are neither static nor propositional; rather they are dynamic and emergent, and, as such, conditional and relative. Progressives ascribe authority to science and contemporary experience and seek to reinterpret traditional doctrines and norms in ways that take these authorities into account, along with traditional sources of religious authority. Hunter contends that these understandings of moral authority commonly are vague among ordinary people. It is elites—which include academics, political activists, media pundits and newscasters, and the leaders of politically-oriented, religious special purpose groups—who tap into these impulses and polarize them in public rhetoric, often, for partisan political gain.13 Accordingly, he distinguishes the ‘politics of culture’, in which elites and interest groups polarize public discourse for political purposes, and the ‘culture of politics’, which are the symbolic frameworks shaping how people interpret and engage political institutions and contests, as well as other spheres of life like the family, education, and work (Hunter, , pp.  ff.). Throughout Culture wars, Hunter portrays Protestant evangelicalism as the paradigm case of the Orthodox worldview. He does not discuss his earlier research on evangelicals, however, and we are left to speculate whether he maintains or revises his earlier portrait. It may be that he

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See Hunter () where he has further clarified his argument.

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continues to view evangelicalism as a defensive reaction to modernity, which is maintained in enclaves distant from modernity or must engage in cognitive bargaining as its members enter modern spheres like higher education and the professions, which will have a secularizing impact in the long-run. But it may be that Hunter has changed his mind. In Culture wars, he appears to portray evangelicalism and progressivism as two distinct ways of engaging late modernity, which draw on very different cultural systems embedded in different institutions. Evangelicalism resists certain features of modernity, even as it accommodates others, revising its traditions in the process. Religious Fundamentalism and the Culture Wars While Hunter focuses entirely on the American scene and explores the tensions between Orthodox and Progressives, his description of symbolic warfare by elites, which polarize the cultural frameworks of their loyal followers, may have broader implications. It is not difficult to detect analogues to the American culture wars across national and religious borders. Especially worrisome is the sort of conflict emerging when religious fundamentalists (which are not to be confused with American evangelicals14) set their sights, not only on the progressive elements in their societies, but also on one another. The intensity of symbolic warfare between the Christian fundamentalism of the American Religious Right and various forms of Islamic fundamentalism preceded and accompanies the actual warfare of terrorism and the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. It makes the title of Hunter’s  book, Before the shooting begins, appear prescient. The Fundamentalism Project, a research project conducted under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, helps us to understand better the rise of religious fundamentalism around the world during the twentieth century, studying fundamentalist movements in a variety of religions and regions. In the final book of this five-volume series, Almond, Sivan, and Appleby (, ch. ) attempt to identify the formal properties of modern fundamentalism as a distinct type of religion. They identify nine such characteristics.

14 Wuthnow, Hunter, and Smith all distinguish American evangelicals from American fundamentalists, a split taking place in the s when a new generation of conservative Protestant leaders broke with the older leaders of the fundamentalist/modernist conflict of the s.

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The first five characteristics are ideological: – reactivity: a defensive reaction toward secularization and modernization, especially the erosion of religion and its proper role in society; – selectivity: the selection and reshaping of particular aspects of a tradition, particularly those distinguishing the fundamentalists from the mainstream; – dualism: projecting a symbolic framework that divides the world into good and evil; – absolutism and inerrancy: basing their moral and religious claims on an ‘inerrant’ text which can only be correctly interpreted using certain strategies; – millennialism and messianism: history has a culmination in which good triumphs over evil, ushered in by a messiah or elect group. The remaining four characteristics are organizational: – an elect, or divinely called membership; – sharp boundaries, separating the elect from the sinful, which are established symbolically and in practice; – authoritarian organization, commonly organized around a charismatic leader; – behavioural requirements, which distinguish members from others (especially the compromising mainstream) and create a powerful sense of in-group identity. Even a cursory glance at these ideological and organizational properties of religious fundamentalism reveals the potential for mutual demonization that may occur when religious fundamentalists begin to wage symbolic or actual warfare on one another. It raises the ominous spectre of global culture wars outside the moderating effects of democratic institutions and cultures. If this is the context in which we find ourselves, it raises important questions for practical theology. How do practical theologians best conceptualize the tasks of political theology in a context of extreme cultural polarization? Do the older approaches to political theology, which drew heavily on Marxism, provide an adequate account of cultural and religious difference? Does the American example of polarization of Orthodox and Progressive perspectives during a time of social change hold true in other parts of the world and, if so, what sort of religious postures ought practical theologians commend in such contexts? These normative questions are raised by Hunter’s culture wars thesis,

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although they cannot be answered on the basis of his sociological theory alone. They are profoundly important, however, for practical theology’s evaluation of the positive and negative contributions of religion to public life. Christian Smith: Subcultural Identity Theory and Evangelical Protestantism Chris Smith (, p. ) strongly disagrees with Hunter’s culture wars thesis. As he puts it: ‘Culture wars is a myth. The conventional wisdom that Americans are divided into two warring camps slugging it out over abortion, prayer in schools, and homosexuality is greatly exaggerated. Growing empirical evidence suggests it just is not true.’ The empirical research to which Smith refers here is a major study of American evangelicals carried out by a team of twelve sociologists, which he led over a three-year period, called the Evangelical Identity and Influence Project.15 His criticism of Hunter’s thesis receives further support from research by the sociologist Alan Wolfe () and political scientist Morris Fiorina ().16 Smith’s national study of evangelicals used a variety of research methods at different points, but relied primarily on self-identification to sort out evangelicals (after screening a theologically diverse sample of Protestants to include only people who attend church at least – times per month or who regard religion as ‘extremely important’ in their lives). While   of the American population self-identify as conservative Protestant, only .  self-identify as evangelical. In Christian America? Smith draws on the Evangelical Identity and Influence Project to charge advocates of the culture wars thesis like Hunter with committing four fallacies: – the representative elite fallacy: presuming that evangelical leaders represent the views of ordinary evangelicals and that evangelicals have a single elite; – the factual survey fallacy: assuming that public opinion surveys alone accurately and adequately capture the views of ordinary people; – the ideological consistency fallacy: assuming that people hold ideologically consistent worldviews when, in fact, cultural identities are internally contradictory and loosely integrated; 15 16

For a detailed description, see Smith (, ). See also their contributions to Hunter ().

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richard r. osmer – the monolithic bloc fallacy: treating conservative Protestants as a monolithic social group and, thus, failing to acknowledge the diversity and historic tensions between Pentecostals, fundamentalists, evangelicals, and charismatics.

Smith draws on his research to paint a picture of evangelicals as theologically diverse and as holding a range of moral stances on sexuality, the family, education, and politics. Most evangelicals, he notes, are unfamiliar with the so-called culture wars. The issues they care about most are jobs, quality education for their children, economic pressures on the family, and the rise of violent crime. Particularly noteworthy is Smith’s contention that evangelicals, like the members of all cultural groups, hold beliefs that often are in tension with one another. Many evangelicals, for example, bemoan the diminished importance of America’s Christian heritage in the public square and commonly vote for candidates who hold traditionalist positions on moral issues. Yet this is counterbalanced by beliefs that are central to evangelical subculture: for example, the root of the human problem is in the human heart and can only be overcome by conversion and spiritual transformation which cannot be coerced; belief in the power of personal example and relationships, not political systems, leading to ambivalence about what really can be accomplished through electoral politics. In short, it is misleading to interpret the voter preferences of evangelicals as indicative of a culture war, for evangelicalism is characterized by ‘an enormous amount of diversity, complexity, ambivalence, and disagreement’ (Smith, , pp. –). In American evangelicalism: Embattled and thriving, Smith () draws on the same body of research to portray American evangelicalism as the paradigm case of how religion can adapt successfully to late modernity, calling into question the secularization thesis that Hunter used in his early writings on evangelicalism. In comparison with mainline, liberal, and fundamentalist forms of Protestantism, Smith’s research reveals that evangelicalism is stronger along six dimensions: adherence to beliefs, salience of faith, robustness of faith, group participation, commitment to mission, and retention and recruitment of members (Smith, , pp. –). He explains its strength with a subcultural identity theory of religious persistence. Smith summarizes his argument as follows: ‘Religion survives and can thrive in pluralistic, modern society by embedding itself in subcultures that offer satisfying morally orienting collective identities which provide adherents meaning and belonging’ (Smith, , p. ). He unpacks this

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thesis in the form of eight propositions (Smith, , ch. ). I will offer them here and then comment briefly. – Proposition : The human drives for meaning and belonging are satisfied primarily by locating human selves within social groups that sustain distinctive, morally orienting collective identities. – Proposition : Social groups construct and maintain collective identities by drawing symbolic boundaries that create distinction between themselves and relevant out-groups. – Proposition : Religious traditions have always strategically renegotiated their collective identities by continually reformulating the ways their constructed orthodoxies engage the changing sociocultural environments they confront. – Proposition : Because the socially normative bases of identitylegitimation are historically variable, modern religious believers can establish strong religious identities and commitments on the basis of individual choice rather than through ascription. – Proposition : Individuals and groups define their values and norms and evaluate their identities and actions in relation to specific, chosen reference groups; dissimilar and antagonistic out-groups may serve as negative reference groups. – Proposition : Modern pluralism promotes the formation of strong subcultures and potentially ‘deviant’ identities, including religious subcultures and identities. – Proposition : Intergroup conflict in a pluralistic context typically strengthens in-group identity, solidarity, resources mobilization and membership retention. – Proposition : Modernity can actually increase religion’s appeal, by creating social conditions that intensify the kinds of felt needs and desires that religion is especially well-positioned to satisfy. The force of Smith’s theory is best seen by contrasting it with Hunter and Berger. The latter portray modern rationalization, institutional differentiation, and cultural pluralism as destroying the sacred canopy of traditional societies and as creating cognitive quandaries at the individual level, which necessitate the heretical imperative, in Berger’s famous phrase (each individual must choose and piece together their own faith). In contrast, Smith locates the problems of human meaning and belonging within the larger problem of collective identity, especially at the level of subcultural groups. Such groups may not provide a ‘sacred canopy’ for American society as a whole, but they do provide a ‘sacred umbrella’

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for their members (Smith, , p. ). American evangelicalism has thrived precisely because its congregations, parachurch groups, and special purpose organizations serve as reference groups in which their members can establish strong religious identities. What may appear as polarized culture war rhetoric among evangelicals, moreover, actually is not directed toward out-groups but is primarily in-group talk designed to strengthen subcultural identity boundaries. In short, many features of late modernity which are commonly interpreted as having a secularizing impact, actually create social conditions that may increase religion’s appeal, intensifying ‘the felt needs and desires that religion is especially well-positioned to satisfy’ (Proposition ). The key is whether religious communities, be they evangelical or not, can foster subcultural identities that satisfy the human need for meaning and belonging by serving as reference groups with which people identify affectively and by forming religious identities among their members strong enough to shape their engagement of modern institutions. This theory and Smith’s research on American evangelicals raises two set of issues, both of which are important for our understanding of their role in public life. First, if American evangelicals are not best viewed as willing participants in a culture war but as theologically and socially diverse, are there more possibilities than is commonly recognized for meaningful discussion of contemporary social issues across theological lines? If this is the case, then should not more attention be given to the forms this sort of conversation might take both within and across denominations? While denominational debate over issues like abortion and the ordination of gay and lesbians has looked very much like a culture war, is this necessarily the case? What if other issues are in view, like global warming, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and commitment to more egalitarian forms of marriage and family? Moreover, should not more attention be given to the complexity of centrist perspectives, which too often are ignored or shouted down in the midst of polarized debate?17 Perhaps there is more room for meaningful debate and discussion of public issues across theological lines than is commonly perceived, if Smith is correct. It is political elites who high-jack issues and polarize them for partisan political gain.

17 Two interesting attempts to define centrist positions are Weston () and Gushee ().

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Second, if Smith’s subcultural identity theory is correct, what implications does this hold for mainline Protestant congregations, which commonly are so loosely-bound that they play a minimal role in shaping the cultural identities of their members? Would it be helpful if practical theologians began to reflect theologically on subcultural identity theory with the concept of the church as a contrast society? What are the implications of the very different understandings of this concept found in the writings of Stanley Hauerwas, Jürgen Moltmann, and Gerhard Lohfink, to name but a few? While Moltmann portrays the church as a contrast society, for example, he does so in ways that leave it open to learning from other religious and non-religious groups, which contribute to the common good. Concluding Reflections We now have before us two interpretations of evangelicalism in the context of the restructuring of American religion. Practical theologians will take careful note of the empirical research strategies on which they rest, especially the way they operationalize evangelicalism. They also will attend to the social science traditions in which these interpretations are located, which make assumptions about modernity, secularization, culture, and religion. Such traditions are open to the findings of empirical research, but they are never completely derived from or falsified by such research. The processes of justifying, comparing, revising, and falsifying traditions of interpretation take place at a different level, which frequently includes discussion of the nature of social science. Hunter’s and Smith’s interpretation of evangelicalism raise different normative issues, which I have noted in passing. Addressing such issues more fully is the normative task of practical theology in which constructive theological and ethical proposals are developed about what ought to take place in response to cultural polarization, for example, or in light of the importance of religious subcultures in late modernity. Such proposals open out to pragmatic guidance about how to embody such norms in a particular social context. What I have done in this chapter, thus, is only part of what I consider to be the full research programme of practical theology. But it is a starting point that opens out to future discussion.

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richard r. osmer References

Almond, G.A., Sivan, E., & Appleby, R.S. (). Explaining fundamentalisms. In M. Marty, & R.S. Appleby (Eds.), Fundamentalisms comprehended: The fundamentalism Project, Volume  (pp. –). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ammerman, N. (). Operationalizing evangelicalism: An amendment. Sociological Analysis, (), –. Ammerman, N. (). Bible believers: Fundamentalists in the modern world. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Ammerman, N. (). Congregation & community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press. Fiorina, M. (). Culture war? The myth of a polarized America. New York: Pearson Longman. Greeley, A. (). The truth about conservative Christians: What they think and what they believe. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Green, J. (). The faith factor: How religion influences American elections. Westport, CN.: Praeger Publishers. Gushee, D. (). The future of faith in American politics: The public witness of the evangelical center. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Hackett, C., & Lindsay, S.M. () Measuring evangelicalism: Consequences of different operationalization strategies. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, (), –. Hunter, J. (). The new class and the young evangelicals. Review of Religious Research, (), –. Hunter, J. (). American evangelicalism: Conservative religion and the quandary of modernity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Hunter, J. (). Evangelicalism: The coming generation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hunter, J. (). Culture wars: The struggle to define America. New York: BasicBooks. Hunter, J. (). Before the shooting begins: Searching for democracy in America’s culture war. Toronto; New York: Free Press; Maxwell Macmillan Canada; Maxwell Macmillan International. Hunter, J. (). Response to Davis and Robinson: Remembering Durkheim. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, (), . Hunter, J. (). Is there a culture war? A dialogue on values and American public life. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center; Brookings Institution Press. Kellstedt, L., & Smidt, C. (). Measuring fundamentalism: An analysis of different operational strategies. In J. Green (Ed.), Religion and the culture wars: Dispatches from the front (pp. –). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kohut, A. (). The diminishing divide: Religion’s changing role in American politics. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Lakoff, G. (). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think nd ed. Chicago, ILL: University of Chicago Press.

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Lindsay, D. (). Faith in the halls of power: How evangelicals joined the American elite. New York: Oxford University Press. Niebuhr, H. (). The social sources of denominationalism. New York: H. Holt and Co. Osmer, R. (). Practical theology: An introduction, Grand Rapids, MI.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. Smith, C. (). American evangelicalism: Embattled and thriving. Chicago, IL.: University of Chicago Press. Smith, C. (). Christian America? What evangelicals really want. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Smith, T.W. (). Classifying Protestant Denominations. Review of Religious Research, (), . Steensland, B. et al. (). The Measure of American religion: Toward improving the state of the art. Social Forces, (), –. Warner, R. (). New wine in old wineskins: Evangelicals and liberals in a smalltown church. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Weston, W. (). Leading from the center: Strengthening the pillars of the church. Louisville, KY: Geneva Press. Wolfe, A. (). One nation, after all: what middle-class Americans really think about: God, country, family, racism, welfare, immigration, homosexuality, work, the right, the left, and each other. New York: Viking. Wuthnow, R. (). The restructuring of American religion: Society and faith since World War II. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Wuthnow, R. (). The struggle for America’s soul: evangelicals, liberals, and secularism, Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

RELIGIOUS CAPITAL AND PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY: CHALLENGES TO EMPIRICAL THEOLOGY

Hans Schilderman

Introduction This chapter offers a conceptualization of the public significance of religion in terms of religious capital. It starts by clarifying the metaphor of religious capital as it has been conceived in theories of rational choice and social stratification. On the basis of a distinction of scope and form of social capital, a basic scheme is developed that contains institutional, cultural, social and personal domains of society and religion. Each of these domains is governed by different types of validation that assume different criteria for religious assent: conformity, authenticity, coherence and certainty respectively. These criteria should be taken into account when discussing the different ways in which the public significance of religion is raised and discussed in various issues for which religion is said to be relevant. After these conceptual explorations have typified the material object of religion’s public cause, an empirical-theological perspective is taken into account. Here, it is argued that results of empiricaltheological research contribute to a clarification of the investment of religious capital in public causes, since it clarifies basic facts regarding investment motives, means and ends of religious capital. It thus offers a basic requirement for answering the problem in socio-political philosophy of how religion as a more or less sectional interest in the private sphere, may transparently and critically contribute to a common good in the public sphere. Results of empirical-theological research offer insights into basic characteristics of religious accountability in various domains of society. The chapter is concluded by a short discussion of theological warrants that need to be addressed in this public account of aims and conditions of religious capital investment.

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hans schilderman Religious Capital

I would like to start the first part of my chapter with the observation that religion itself is a challenged notion. That is indeed obvious when we observe the increasing frequency and growing intensity with which the daily media discuss religion publicly in connection with controversial moral and political issues. On a wider scale, one observes that controversies over religion cohere with the plural spiritual composition of the world population. An apparent lack of understanding seems to drive secularized and religious regions of the world apart, a process that we can also observe within regions themselves due to processes of migration and globalization. For some groups religion still represents a vital spiritual lifestyle based on cultural or institutional ascription. Others dispute religious beliefs because of a scientific worldview that they cherish: be it intellectually polite or with cynical disinterest, while all too often failing to identify their own conviction qua conviction. A latent religious discordance also seems embedded in what, according to some, is a deplorable decomposition of established traditions, whereas others observe an exciting spiritual revolution. I am pointing at the tendency of religion to develop into a matter of hand-picked spiritual convictions, endorsement of alternative religious practices, or a development of new types of public ritual. Thus, while religion grows into a plural notion it simultaneously acts as a threat, a quest, a heritage, an obscurity, a scandal and a lifeline, depending on the various audiences to which it appeals. Religious vocabularies seem to have developed into multilingual, multireferential and interactive lexica that increasingly fail to generate univocal meanings that allow for a shared understanding of religion’s public position. It is hardly surprising that religion proves to be contested among its researchers as well, as is nowadays probably most obviously illustrated in the controversies between secularization sociologists and rationalchoice theorists over the socio-cultural commensurability of religion and modernity. Established ways of defining religion, be it those of confessional, substantial, and ‘emic’ relevance, or those of generic, functional and ‘etic’ importance, may very well fail to account for the complexities that underlie the problem of religious pluralism and public discordance. Since this problem of religious definitions displays a rather obvious elective affinity with the indisputable fact of religion being publicly contested, it will probably benefit from an effort to exchange descriptive for stipulative definitions. This requires that we give the existing terms in which

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religion is framed a new meaning to clarify the problem at hand. Thus, I will describe religious traditions in terms of a religious heritage that is given to us as the testimony of previous generations to gain relevance for our own lives today and to be invested for future times. An apt metaphor that describes the meaning of this literary description in more theoretical terms is the notion of religious capital, which offers an excellent opportunity to develop our study of the public significance of religion. We can define religious capital in various ways. Obviously, religious capital is a subset of social or human capital, a term that dates back to Adam Smith’s economic theory in which it refers to the benefits of labour division in terms of talents, skills and abilities that are conducive to society (Smith, , p. ). In the course of theory development, human capital was elaborated in terms of various social dispositions that represent both economic and socio-cultural benefits, as is especially highlighted in the classic and foundational study by Gary Becker (). One observes the shift from human capital to social capital best in the work of James Coleman, who takes the latter as the social structure that acts to increase the human capital of individuals. Thus, social capital is present in obligations, expectations, information, norms, sanctions, authorities, and social organizations (Coleman, ; Karner, ). Political scientist Robert Putnam has addressed the issue of social capital in terms of mutual commitment, membership of associations and trust, in which he identified religion as the major constituent of social capital in the USA (Putnam, ). As far as the specific term of religious capital is concerned, it seems proper to identify Pierre Bourdieu as the scholar who coined it. In close consideration of his terms, cultural and symbolic capital, one can define religious capital as a commodity that is located in the political economy of ideal goods and interests, which is put at service in symbolic practices to benefit certain fields of action. Religious capital thus can be embodied in terms of spiritual knowledge, abilities, skills, tastes and other dispositions. However, it is also evident in religious art, texts and objects of devotion, or institutionalized in churches, convents, seminaries and the like. Whatever the form is, in Bourdieu’s understanding it always acts in certain fields or arenas as an object of struggle between defenders of orthodoxy and advocates of heresy. Here the cultural aspects of religious capital refer to the available skills and abilities to direct and control ideal goods and interests, whereas its symbolic aspects legitimize (and in a sense ‘disguise’) the social power source of the status attributes that are connected to these goods and interests (Bourdieu, ; Swartz, ; Rey, ).

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Bourdieu’s definition of religious capital has been criticized as too narrow in its analogies with the prevailing institutional hierarchies and in its identification with the high-key abilities of professional religious specialists (Verter, ). The political definition by Bourdieu shares an economic metaphor (‘the economy of salvation’) with the way rational choice theorists define religious capital, but it differs in the strong emphasis that the latter scholars put on the dispositional characteristics of religious capital and on the market dynamic to explain for religious allocation. In rational-choice literature, the term religious (or spiritual) capital is primarily conceptualized as a discrete ability to act as a specific commodity in the exchange mechanisms of the religious market. Thus, Rodney Stark has taken it as the personal investment in a religious conviction, both in terms of time and energy and in the pursuit of religious beliefs and participation in ritual practices (Stark, , ). Alternatively, in a study together with Roger Finke, Stark says: ‘Religious capital consists of the degree of mastery of, and attachment to a particular religious culture’ (Stark & Finke, , p. ). Definitions by rational choice theorists tend to emphasize the resource-character of religion: it is primarily something to gain from, be it spiritually or socially, but always depending on proper investment as fuelled by rational calculation. However, in the emphasis on personal choice as the allocation mechanism of religious capital, the relevance of status characteristics, social struggle, power-balance, and tacit ideologies (so important to Bourdieu) are easily overlooked. The stipulative character of our definition thus will not limit religion to its character as commodity in exchange but take into account its social and political constraints and opportunities as well. Thus, religious capital relates in rather broad terms to those personal dispositions, sociocultural associations and institutional facilities that contribute to a better religious self-understanding, improve interaction of its adherents, and enhance their spiritual development. In order to be more analytical, I will adapt an available World Bank distinction of social capital to religion with regard to scope and form (Boekaert & Bastelaer, , pp. –). The scope of religious capital relates to the various levels of study. Religion has characteristics of religious dispositions of persons and their associations in groups and communities at the micro-level, but it also manifests itself as mediated by organizations and institutions at the meso-level, and additionally in a socio-cultural and political environment that offers the norms and orientations for religious capital exchange at the macro-level. Moreover, at these levels of scope, religious capital may manifest itself

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Fig. . Domains of religious capital.

formally or informally. In formal shape, it pertains to the structures, procedures and roles of religious control, whereas in an informal way it manifests itself in spiritual trust, values, norms, and beliefs. Figure  displays the scope and forms in four fields that in my view represent domains of religious capital. Although this definition is still obviously broad, it allows for a more comprehensive view of religion in terms of allocation functions within and between the domains. The concept of religious capital avoids wholesale descriptions of religion in which all of its dimensions by definition represent fixed and continuous properties of population majorities. These latter definitions suffer from the anomalies to be traced in secularization theories that are good at describing religion’s decline but fail to account for its continuation, innovation, adaptation or interaction in different socio-cultural contexts and historic circumstances. The inescapably more fluid conception of religious capital is likely to be more successful in interpreting the modern development from what I would like to call a ‘hands-on-religion’ (that aims for institutional control and invariable spiritual services for large audiences) toward a ‘hands-offreligion’ (that fosters religious autonomy and spiritual choice while it

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offers personal support and faith development). In that framework, our notion of religious capital may be helpful to stipulate new meanings of public significance. Validation Regime The term ‘religious capital’ stipulates its character as a commodity that has a certain value in exchange, and therefore may contribute to some shared or common good. The issue to what extent religion indeed contributes to a public cause I will discuss later on in my chapter. For now, I will confine myself to the question to what extent religion has a public significance in its own right. Moreover, I will address a specific aspect of this question only, namely the issue of the dynamics in which religion satisfies or persuades itself as legitimate before a public audience. This question is by no means new. For instance, social constructionists inform us that the act of giving meaning always has characteristics of explanation and justification. Giving meaning is a social process of maintaining a symbolic universe of conventions, be it by smoothly sharing it according to accepted norms or by a sophisticated conceptual repair whenever its plausibility is threatened. Thus, the act of signifying always has characteristics of legitimizing as its assumption and objective (Berger & Luckman, , pp. –). What then are the conditions that determine these dynamics of significant gain or loss for religion? My observation that religion is a contested notion should draw our attention to the setting of enlightened modernity in answering this question. No longer is religion taken for granted, an observation that is not only applauded by its cultured despisers but (though likely more implicit or inarticulate) also acknowledged by its adherents. French sociologist Hervieu-Legér (, p. ) employs the notion of régimes de validation du croire to interpret the tendency of belief ascription that characterizes conventional religion, to develop into achievement types of religious self-validation that are typical for modern times. Hervieu-Legér distinguishes four validation regimes that each depend on different referents, agents and feedback procedures in checking if a religious faith is orthodox, proper, meaningful, true, right, etc. These regimes not only characterize different social expressions of religion; they also may explain the intra-religious dynamics of religious change and account for the major shifts in religion’s histories and contexts.

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The first and institutional regime has institutionally qualified authority as its referent with its validation criterion of conformity. Here, the public self-validation of a religion refers to a loyalty toward rules and norms that offer stable benchmarks for the organized assembly of believers or its included ‘spiritual families’ (orders, congregations, movements, cults). Clear-cut institutional representatives define the boundaries between religion and non-religion, battle over orthodoxy and heresy, and demarcate denominational differences of adherence. Second, a regime stressing mutuality has the fellow man as its referent with whom one shares a culture and for which the validation criterion is authenticity. Here, an experienced sense of social and spiritual proximity, affinity and mutual comprehension offers a valid base to express one’s religious identity. Public scrutiny of one’s personal appropriation of a spiritual identity attests its validity and counts as a valid criterion for group membership. Third, a communal regime has the group as such as its referent with its validation criterion of coherence. One attests religious validity by living together in more or less distinct communities characterized by common goals, joint action and mutually scrutinized conduct. Egalitarian representatives give voice to the identity of the group. Finally, there is a regime of self-validation in which the referent is the individual to herself with its validation criterion of subjective certainty. Here, the individual (but by all means public) expression of religious identity comes to be expressed in a personal and autonomous quest for meaning that private ritual, books, and virtual sites communicate. Self-assurance is the sole basis for public expression of one’s religious identity, which is mirrored in the fluid entry in and exit from loose networks of kindred spirits. When we locate these validation-regimes in the four domains according to which I have elaborated the notion of religious capital, the overview results as presented in Figure . The validation regimes can indeed be easily located in our framework of religious capital and they make more explicit why a distinction of domains in religious capital is necessary. Without denying the possibility of a coherent dynamic of these domains within one religion, timeframe and socio-cultural context, the different types of validation are likely to generate conflicts within or between religions. These strategies or (when deployed) regimes act as the arsenal in Bourdieu’s arenas where proponents of orthodoxy and heterodoxy battle over the public scope and form in which religion is expressed. Or, to put it in positive terms, differences in the conditions and effects of validation strategies may explain the dynamic of religious development, interaction and adaptation. An illustrative example for contemporary

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hans schilderman

Fig. . Validation regimes.

Christianity in secularizing regions of the world is the growing dependency on subjective certainty, which explains both reacting against conformity as required by institutional authority and fragmentation of religious networks that depend on social coherence. I have now elaborated our definition of religious capital in terms of scope, form, and validation-regimes. In principle, these analytical distinctions enable us to describe religion’s public form and formulate hypotheses that explain the varieties of religious capital in its context of social interaction. In this definition, the notion of capital not so much refers to religion as a self-enclosed religious heritage but to its capacity for social investment. The question to what extent this investment actually succeeds in terms of contributing to a public cause will be my next topic, in which I will address a final notion, namely religion’s public issues. Public Cause What then are the issues that define religion’s public cause? To answer this question I will once again employ the scheme with which by now you

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Fig. . Public cause.

will have grown familiar. If our definition of religious capital holds water, we should not only be able to identify the major issues in their public complexion but we should also be able to indicate why they appear and how they interact. In our scheme, each domain of religious capital refers to a characteristic modern dichotomy in which religion’s public cause requires adaptive mechanisms to satisfy its allocation-function while maintaining its public legitimate position. I present these dichotomies as examples of tensions that are typical to each domain and highlight a distinctive problem in which religion interacts with public cause (Figure ). The institutional domain represents the state-church distinction as an example that typically deals with the decisions about religious capital. The cultural domain refers to public and private display of religious capital. The social domain typically relates to tendencies toward local and global affiliation of religious capital. Finally, the personal domain harbours an inevitable tension of religious freedom and control in the personal investment choices over religious capital. I will now elaborate these four issues as a field-typology of religion’s public cause that entail different allocation mechanisms. These ‘allocation mechanisms’

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hans schilderman

in my view correspond to Bourdieu’s notion of field, which according to him is to be understood as an organized public setting in which agents invest their (religious) capital—and expose their beliefs and dispositions (habitus) in the act—to pursue and safeguard their interests. This matches Bourdieu’s terminology of field as an arena of the play of intellectual forces and power relationships (Bourdieu, , pp. – ). The first exemplary issue in studying religion’s public cause is the demarcation of church and state as a major inheritance of Western civilization. Religious and government institutions have an autonomy of their own, resulting from constitutional agreements that sharply delineate the competencies of church and state. These agreements are historically connected to the tensions and brushes of the religious wars, as they for instance characterized sixteenth-century France when Catholics and Huguenots battled over their religious identities (Holt, , pp. – ). However uncontested the dichotomy of church and state autonomies may seem nowadays, it may also cover up their actual interaction and dependencies in real life and blur a strong validation regime in which conformity to both church and state authority merge. Firm historical and juridical ties still exist between church and state and they deeply influence society, be it in state-churches of Britain and the Scandinavian countries, in the concordats of France, Spain and Italy, in the Kirchenverträge of Germany, in the corporatist associations and regulations of Belgium and the Netherlands. The phrase ‘separation of church-state’ actually disguises various forms, frequencies and intensities according to which church and state interact following institutional norms on the one hand and constitutional rights on the other. For instance, Brugger distinguishes six models of church-state relationships: a) aggressive animosity; b) strict separation in theory and practice; c) strict separation in theory and accommodation in practice; d) division and cooperation; e) formal unification of church and state; and f) material unification of church and state (Brugger, ). Far stronger are mutual dependencies whenever churches or religious associations provide for care and welfare on a spiritual basis and thus interact with the state’s responsibilities toward promotion of a nation’s common good. Many European countries have firm historic ties in this respect and several still display strongly intertwined institutional responsibilities. What is more, confessional political parties organize majorities in several European countries and exert strong influence on issues of public government. That applies as well (and even in a considerably stronger manner)

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to other democracies with firm church-state distinctions like the USA and Turkey or those with far more complex provisions like Israel. More principally and significantly still, there is the obvious fact that large parts of populations are both citizens and members of religious institutions; they depend on authorities of both state and church; and they represent an experienced blend of both political and religious compliance. The rigid consensus over the separation of church and state in Europe to some extent dissolves when looked upon from the fluid notion of religious capital that is invested in political movements, goals and policies of social government and state facilities and responsibilities. If the constitutional dichotomy of church and state is at odds with the actual and multiple interactions of church and state in real life, the question of its apparent ideological priority in public debates arises. One of the explanations of the official divergence of church and state contrary to mergers in society pertains to the interest of warranting constitutional bedrock for both secular (political) and religious (church) interests. The polarity in fact functions as an allocation mechanism in which both state and church affirm their secular and religious authorities by responding to mutual opportunities and filling up bilateral deficiencies whenever public issues facilitate this. A second typical issue in studying religion’s public cause relates to the distinction of private and public domains, where a current tension in the cultural expression of religious capital is illustrative, namely secularism as a typical modern case of a failing allocation of religious capital. In modern Western contexts, secularist and spiritual ideologies clash in the debate over the ‘cultural interior’ and the ‘cultural exterior’ of religion. The interior or private aspects of religion relate to claims of noninterference, autonomy, personal intimacy, individual ownership and private control, whereas the exterior or public aspects refer to claims of interference, heteronomy, social reputation, shared ownership and public control. In current debates, the church state dichotomy that characterizes the secular state easily transfers to the cultural realm of religious capital in the form of a secularist ideology that denies religion its publicity while it dispels it to the private sphere. Examples of this typical cultural tension surface in the public opinion of almost every single European country over the last decade. Thus, we have encountered threats over the publishing of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in Britain and were confronted with the Muslim cartoon controversy in Danish newspapers; the controversy over headscarves in the French Republic; the discussion over crucifixes in German

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public schools; the religio-political murders and threats in Dutch film enterprise. In Europe, and probably in all Western countries, the constitutional appeal to human rights is the salonfähige way to deal with these conflicts that actually are of a spiritual and symbolic nature. Thus, the cultural expressions of religious authenticity display are transformed or at least tend to be misinterpreted as a conflict over constitutional issues of rights and duties. The transposition of these conflicts to the juridical domain disregards the socio-cultural mechanisms that mark the social balancing of private and public identity display that for instance German sociologist Georg Simmel studied in his notion of Geselligkeit, namely Takt in which an individual takes care of a group and Diskretion in which the group takes care of an individual (Simmel, ). Tact and discretion that mark sociability take care of the cultural dialectic between the private and the public domain and thus refer to propriety and decorum, the disposition for which religion (especially as highlighted in its ritual form) has always been considered foundational. To deal with this religious affirmation of social identity primarily in juridical terms of rights and duties represents a dangerous ideology that is likely to proliferate into severe cultural conflicts in the years to come. The third exemplary issue in studying religion’s public cause relates to the local and global orientation that characterizes a dynamic of religious networks and established church communities alike. Established religions represent trans-geographical, trans-cultural and often trans-ethnic networks that in each local setting share more or less similar generic and universal beliefs. This facilitates a ‘glocal’ drive of religious capital, namely a spiritual willingness and ability to think global and act local in public matters. One can expect differences between Roman-Catholic and Protestant countries in this regard, where the latter countries display strong historic and political similarities. Contemporary contexts reflect a tendency toward globalization, an increase of cultural knowledge, growing mobility and broad access to fast media. Civil society, to which religious networks and local churches belong, increasingly develops into a ‘global village’ that may have detrimental or beneficial effects for the ‘social glue’ of a community (MacLuhan, , ). Local and global orientations depend on the geographical context and will probably display differential effects for believing and belonging dimensions of religious capital (Davie, ). In countries where churches have a religious monopoly and maintain traditions of intervention in civil society, religious networks and communities may suffer from globalization more strongly. After all, according to the mind-

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set of these groups, globalization may turn religion into a plural entity with multiple values and norms to guide social interaction and safeguard cohesion. One effect is an inevitable challenge of the authority and powerbase of religious traditions, a process that can only be ignored at the expense of fideism or fundamentalism, so it seems (Giddens, ). In many Western contexts where local religious communities decrease in size and fragment, church institutions reinforce their doctrines, laws and regulations in order to safeguard the challenged treasures of belief. The believing dimension of religious capital is at stake here. In countries where churches are historically accustomed to religious plurality and local diversity, globalization exerts an already familiar tendency toward proliferation, differentiation, mobilization and intensification of the local as opportunity for reproduction and transmission. Here globalization increases opportunities to invest religious capital to the benefit of local communities, although it still may furnish their members with uncertainty as far as the sharing aspect of their beliefs is concerned. When looking through the cultural kaleidoscope of spiritual and moral alternatives, the basic issue here is not so much what to believe in but especially: can I indeed appropriate a particular network as my habitat of kindred spirits and commend myself to this local group as a congenial form of moral and spiritual life? If—and even regardless what—I do believe, does my pursuit of it offer social comfort and challenge, support and friendship or does my voice merely resonate in an anonymous audience of loosely associated fellow-believers? At least this question seems to fuel the American ‘communitarian’ discussions on the religious factor in ‘identity politics’ (Taylor, ). Here, obviously, the belonging dimension of religious capital is affected. This issue of the double effect of globalization mirrors a basic allocation mechanism in religious capital that refers to the fact that believing and belonging are crucially though subtly linked: religious capital in whatever form requires a ‘habitat of meaning’, a ‘form-of-life-frame’ where the global feels at home (Hannertz, , pp. –; Schuerkens, , p. ). Community strength and network coherence will depend on the success of innovative strategies that connect local and global forms of religious capital in viable mergers of believing and belonging. Finally, a fourth typical issue in studying religion’s public cause concerns the religious profile of beliefs and practices, of church values and norms, as it is characterized by a tension of religious freedom and control that steers the quest orientation with regard to meaning. Religious freedom is not only a constitutional achievement of the democratic state

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in the domain of law; in the social domain it is also and foremost a practised liberty of personal choice to invest religious capital, a preference to join, confess, practise, criticize, adapt, leave, or change one’s religion. However, one engages in these investments not without a personal persuasion regarding the particular meaning that religions offer. There is growing consensus in philosophy and in the social sciences that one of the major functions of religion is control over life’s contingencies (Kaufmann, ; Dalferth & Stoellger, ; Pollack, ). Contingency is anything that escapes the direction of our lives and that exposes the openendedness and uncertainty of human experience. It displays the relativity of human capacities in realizing primary objectives of life and by reducing its risks. Religious capital assumes and represents a Kultur des Verhaltens zum Unverfügbaren (‘a behavioural culture toward the unavailable’) and reflects the human capacity not to resign one’s self to coincidence or fate but to accept it as an opportunity to give meaning to a destiny of human kind or as one before God (Lübbe, , pp. –). Freedom of religion is not to be assessed here as a principle of law, as control is not to be only understood as a principle of constraint. Both act as a dialectic principle of allocation that determines when, why and how religious capital is invested in the personal domain. The fact that values and beliefs refer to the personal domain must not be misinterpreted as an individual concern only; it has public significance as well. For instance, it may gain significance in regard to the fact that modern societies produce contingencies in the form of problems, conflicts and risks. These contingencies relate to the production of scientific knowledge and physical or social technologies that in a quasi-democratic way affect everyone regardless of social position and increasingly undermine the belief in the project of modernity (Giddens, ). Consequently, the state is inclined to provide protection and offer control in a society that increasingly develops into a Risikogesellschaft (Beck, ). Religious capital thus not only has a public significance in coping with the traditional contingencies of biography and nature; it also has a strong potential to deal with the predicaments of modernity. Empirical Accountability Up until now, we addressed the notion of religious capital merely as a material object in an attempt to redefine religion by freely exploring how we may properly understand a specific issue, namely religion’s public sig-

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nificance. In the second part of this chapter, I turn to the question of the formal object. Here, I raise the question how to interpret religious capital from the discipline of empirical theology. One can regard the contest and nature of religion’s public significance for the pursuit of a common good to represent merely one of the objects of study among many. This, however, would disregard problems of theology’s own public accountability in especially this respect. If religious justification claims are not warranted in the public domain of modern states, then that also affects the status of the theological discipline. If religion is indeed a ‘conversation stopper’ in the discourse of modernity as Richard Rorty () has argued, how can our discipline of empirical theology contribute to the academic discourse on issues of religious capital investment? The underlying problem has been discussed in social and political philosophy. John Rawls has elaborated the issue from a liberal perspective. He argues that in a context of a plural society that aims for fairness, particular life views such as those of religious parties cannot offer legitimate foundations for a public type of reason that aims for consensus. Or, as Rawls puts it in a more nuanced way, a religious discussion of public reason suffers from ‘burdens of reason’ like the complexity of religious arguments, their conflicting nature, lack of clarity about the weight of arguments, the vagueness of implied concepts, the experiential varieties that are referred to as evidence, differences in normative reasoning, and the subtle force toward cherished priorities. These burdens of judgement hinder an overlapping consensus, especially when metaphysics, essentialism or other foundational strategies come into play (Rawls, ; Larmore, ). Not only Rawls, also Jürgen Habermas argues for discursive opportunities for a free and transparent exchange of opinion to clear the intermediary realm between the private sphere of autonomous conviction and the authority sphere of the state (Habermas, ). One can argue with Habermas that religion is a matter of the private sphere due to the implied metaphysical foundations of morality that are not open for scrutiny in the public sphere. In later publications, Habermas credits religion for its motivational impetus, the Judeo-Christian variant of which underlies the basic egalitarian elements of modern publicity itself (Habermas, , ). Following Habermas, the discourse on religion’s public significance should be held within the public realm itself where publicity orders the exchange of due arguments between citizen and state. Such a public account of religious views would, however, entail limiting criteria such as a potential inclusion of those affected by the practices accounted for, the rational and sincere renouncement of

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personal interest or preference, and an autonomous reasoning based on equal participation in open discussions (Dahlberg, ). Modernity (so it is said) does leave room for public significance only if religions contribute to a consensus shared by all, even though the private realm may leave a safe haven for the curious diverging views that religious parties entertain. Enlightened regulative ideas like these of Rawls and Habermas are not without opposition, especially when applied to religion. Thus, it is maintained, for instance by Roger Trigg, that public accountability is itself marked by the monism of liberal or quasi-scientific claims which champions public neutrality and denies religious truth claims a legitimate contribution in public discourse. Trigg especially argues against Robert Audi, whose position (in his view) contributes to relativism, a breakdown of mutual understanding and the undermining of the significance of belief comparison (Trigg, , pp. –; Audi, ). One may observe that there is a certain tension between normative claim and empirical assumption here. The philosophical proclamation of the enlightened public’s religious immunity is somewhat at odds with our definition of religion as capital. This definition assumes a public presence of religion in the institutional, cultural, social and personal domain, validated by various referents and criteria and each reflecting different public causes. Religion is publicly present at various levels of public discourse, in different ways of persuasion and addressing numerous issues of discourse. Arguing from the elaborated notion of religious capital, the normative claim that distinguishes religion’s public from private participation in public discourse may be too indiscriminate. Therefore, a first formal perspective that is relevant here would entail a clarification of the empirical assumptions that underlie the normative claims about religion’s public role by far more elaborated notions of religion and its ingrained presence in public discourse. The necessity of this empirical clarification can be argued from the very notion of public discourse itself, namely by assessing its aim to contribute to public opinion (Öffentlichkeit), understood as the free access to the attitudes and beliefs of people in their communication of a common good that they pursue. Public accountability thus requires empirical study of the dispositional conditions of public discourse, the contexts in which it takes place, and the normative ambitions that motivate and steer it. If our definition of religious capital holds water, one can and should argue a special expertise in the study of religion that typically deals with the interaction of empirical and normative issues that are at stake here. For this task empirical theology is an excellent candidate.

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To illustrate the case that I presented so far, an exemplary empirical research programme could be drawn up. Its aim would be to clarify a public account of religious capital investment by studying the four domains that I indicated in this chapter, for instance by elaborating the following programmatic research questions: . How do national variations in church-state relationship interact with conformity to the authorities of secular government and religious institutions? . What are the social characteristics of personal and public identity display in religious beliefs and practices, and under what conditions do its private and public expressions come together or drift apart? . To what extent do the socio-cultural characteristics of modernity affect the community strength of local religious networks? . How do experienced contingencies of personal life, nature and technology influence the plausibility and personal certainty of religious beliefs and practices? In a more elaborated form, one can study the four domains of religious capital with regard to their contextual and longitudinal characteristics. Alternatively, in a still more detailed setup, one may offer a description of the internal dynamic within and between the domains due to their allocation functions. Additional studies can put the interaction between the domains at focus, while other inquiries may offer descriptive insight into the specific issues that define religion’s public cause, the validation regimes that interact in that, and the comparative characteristics of the domains. Apart from the question how one evaluates the viability of such an ambitious programme, it avoids dichotomies between the public and the private sphere and it may offer a more nuanced and informed position of religion in public debate. Therefore, first and principally, empirical theology can account for the public significance of religion in terms of explicability. Theological Accountability Even if a research programme like the one indicated above would be feasible, there are still major questions left that relate to the formal perspective of empirical theology. Does a research initiative match the typical theological requirements and objectives of our discipline? This question emerges indeed from the indicated philosophical debate and raises an

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issue concerning the formal perspective of theology as reference discipline for a specific religious position, in effect the Christian religion in its Western socio-cultural history. By simply engaging in empirical research, we may overlook the fact that religion has grown into a plural and contested notion that does not naturally reflect a consensus within a religion, between religions, let alone with regard to religion. We can empirically study this plural expression of religion in terms of a decreasing overlap of institutional, cultural, social and personal domains of religion; by pointing at the interplay of validation strategies within each domain; and by questioning the religious allocation mechanisms of a public cause. However, how do we conceptualize and interpret the insights from such a study? Where does theology come in and is it still capable of taking a normative stance in its pursuit of a common good? In addition, to the extent that we introduce theological points of view, how can we impartially contribute to public discourse? These questions focus on a theological justification for a researchbased empirical explication as the one indicated above. Here, epistemological issues are at stake, in the debate of which one can take various positions. One position is to argue from propositions within the symbolic universe of faith itself, in a commitment to a specific religious persuasion that favours certain beliefs and neglects others that are outside its own creed. Here, theology mostly reflects a foundationalist approach in epistemology that assumes more or less realistic foundations for our knowledge that are based on basic and self-evident beliefs, as for instance ascertained by means of logical introspection. Following this position, religion’s contribution to public discourse can hardly be consensus oriented as Rawls and Habermas would have it, due to the realistic warrants that a foundationalist approach requires. A second position in epistemology shares an apologetic objective with the former, but allows for revisionism. Here, theology is the academically informed way to maintain and repair the symbolic universe of a religion. Religion needs to be adapted to its environment and, if new warrants are needed, a kind of coherentism may very well suit the philosophical demarcation formula to include only consensus oriented arguments in public discourse in order to safeguard religion’s public presence. Finally, a third position matches an epistemology of scepticism that doubts the possibility to gain any real knowledge about religion. Here doubt functions to underpin relativism in matters where theology would act as a justification for specific public interests, even in its consensual pursuit of a common good. Here, the academic stance is non-apologetic as it

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simply studies religions side-by-side without a specific principle concern for their public significance, unless perhaps pragmatic reasons require research questions to facilitate this aim. Both the idea of religion’s public significance as a means to pursue a common good and the fact of religious plurality as a problem to realize this objective are by no means new. In fact, questions like these are rife in systematic theology. In recent history, comparative theology frames the main problem often as one of reconciling pluralism and truth. Comparative theology originated in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and developed into a broad acknowledgment in modern theology that religious plurality is constitutive for systematic theology itself, be it in terms of the significance of inter-religious dialogue (Langdon Gilkey and Hans Küng), the reformulation of basic tenets in Christian belief (John Hick and Hans Knitter), or social transformation (John Cobb and Raimon Panikkar), just to mention a few topics and authors. They emphasize that established religions can no longer afford to take a monist position in public debates. However, their commitment to religious plurality in theological thought raises a number of issues that bear an explicit relevance to the discipline of empirical theology in that it harbours a tension between normative principle and empirical fact. The normative principle relates to notions of meaningfulness and truth that in most cases seem to act as the tertium comparationis in paralleling different religious phenomena. Against this enormous comparative ambition, criticism can be raised, for instance related to the implicit adaptive, democratic or civic assumptions that seem to be dormant in it. Or, as George Lindbeck has strongly advocated, regarding the need to readdress the uniqueness of religions and their basic incommensurability (Lindbeck, ). Knitter has therefore labelled Lindbeck’s approach as ‘acceptance model’ along the existing comparative theological modes of ‘inclusivism’, ‘exclusivism’ and ‘pluralism’ (Knitter, , pp. –; see Adiprasetya, ). Or, according to still another critique: any method of comparison that searches for something as crucial as ‘meaningfulness and truth in plural situations’ may very well underestimate the interrelationship of varieties between and within religions. The insight that context influences religion in the act of religion influencing its context can be attributed to Troeltsch, who can be said to have founded comparative theology in his Göttingen Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (Troeltsch, ). Troeltsch advocated the integration of sociological insights and empirical research of religion’s context into systematic theology (Bernhardt &

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Pfleiderer, ). His research programme of a century ago is still surprisingly modern, and reflects characteristics and concerns of a religious studies discipline avant-la-lettre. According to him, religion should be studied empirically as an autonomous dimension of our socio-cultural context to be based on rational epistemology. Definitions of religion have to be integrated in a comparative study of religions and any universal or revelatory claim should be related to the actual progress of religion in the world as we know it (Troeltsch, , pp. –; Graf, ). To the extent to which comparative theologians wholeheartedly accept pluralism, they should do so while distinguishing the philosophical pursuit of ‘truth of religions’ as principle of assent from comparative research-based empirical notions of ‘truth in religions’, even though we have to recognize also that normative and empirical notions of plurality are to a large extent intertwined in comparative research (Ellis, ). Does this latter statement leave us with a sceptical epistemological position in the debate about religion’s public significance? This is not necessarily so in a study of religion from a theory of religious capital. The notion of religious capital identifies its accounters and accountees in terms of their distinct responsibilities and it unveils their interests as they interact with non-religious agents and contexts. Bourdieu holds this interaction as the touchstone for understanding the dynamics of religious capital. Public discourse is the arena where agents each according to their habitus struggle to invest social and religious capital. They do so in such a way that their own interests match a common good, not by principle but by competition. To the extent that parties are transparent they nevertheless contribute to public opinion. Theologian David Tracy can be said to have addressed this concern in his idea of the publicness of theology. Publicness accounts for the radical openness that theology requires in and for the pluralist religious setting in which it operates. Taking pluralism seriously requires a public orientation toward society, the church and the academy, a multiple loyalty that Tracy more or less shares with many of his systematic theological colleagues (Tracy, ). Vis-a-vis these three publics, the reinterpretation of one’s religion should be pursued, not only toward other religions, but also toward secular or reductionist explanations of religion, and while giving an account of religious dysfunctions and of the conflicts and suffering that religions have caused. Tracy’s notion of ‘the classic’ assumes a plural notion of truth that can be ascertained in a method of ‘analogical imagina-

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tion’ that highlights harmony of meaning against the dialectics of difference (Tracy, , ). Tracy’s approach requires elaboration in order to address the philosophical problems raised. For this, one needs to address specific theories on public accountability. For instance, public accountability has been defined as a social relationship that is qualified by the following elements: the account itself is publicly accessible; it explains and justifies the corresponding conduct; it is directed at a specific forum; on the basis of a felt obligation; and is provided with an opportunity for debate, judgement and sanction (Bovens, , p. ). However one deals with these notions, it may demonstrate that religion is not necessarily a ‘conversation-stopper’ and that religious plurality can be publicly addressed, not only in critical self-examination but especially by interpreting its historical and contemporary contribution to a common good. For this, both the concept of religious capital and the method of empirical research act as indispensable conditions. References Adiprasetya, J. (). George Lindbeck. In W. Wildman (Ed.), The Boston collaborative encyclopedia of modern western theology. Retrieved from http:// people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/mwt_themes__lindbeck.htm Audi, G. (). Religious commitment and secular reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beck, U. (). Risk society. Towards a new modernity. New Delhi: Sage. Becker, G. (). Human capital. A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Berger, P., & Luckmann, Th. (). The social construction of reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Bernhardt, R., & Pfleiderer, G. (). Christlicher Wahrheitsanspruch, historische Relativität. Auseinandersetzungen mit Ernst Troeltschs Absolutheitsschrift im Kontext heutiger Religionstheologie (Christentum und Kultur, Bd. ). Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Boekaert, C., & Bastelaer, T. van (). Understanding and measuring social capital. A synthesis of findings and recommendations from the Social Capital Initiative. Maryland, MD: IRIS Center. Bourdieu, P. (). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook for theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. –). Westport, NY: Greenwood Press. Bourdieu, P. (). The intellectual field: A world apart. In P. Bourdieu et al (Eds.), Other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology (pp. –). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Bovens, M. (). Public accountability. In E. Ferlie, L. Lynn, & C. Pollitt (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public management (pp. –). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brugger, W. (). On the relationship between structural norms and constitutional rights in Church-State-Relations. In W. Brugger, & M. Karayanni (Eds.), Religion in the public sphere: A comparative analysis of German, Israeli, American and International Law (pp. –). Berlin: Springer. Coleman, J. (). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Dahlberg, L. (). The Habermasian Public Sphere: A specification of the idealized conditions of democratic communication. Studies in Social and Political Thought, , –. Dalferth, I., & Stoellger, P. (Eds) (). Vernunft, Kontingenz und Gott. Konstellationen eines offenen Problems. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Davie, G. (). Religion in Britain since : Believing without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Ellis, R. (). Pluralism. In M. Smelser, & P. Balthes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. –). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Giddens, A. (). Consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Graf, F. (). Troeltsch, Ernst. In L. Jones (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion.  (pp. –). Detroit, MI: Thomson Gale. Habermas, J. (). Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Berlin: Neuwied. Habermas, J. (). Zeit der Übergänge. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Habermas, J. (). Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Hannertz, U. (). Transnational connections: Cultures, peoples, places. London: Routledge. Hervieu-Léger, D. (). Individualism, the validation of faith, and the social nature of religion in modernity. In R. Fenn (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to sociology of religion (pp. –). Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Holt, M.P. (). The French Wars of Religion, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karner, T. (). Social Capital. In Encyclopedia of Sociology (pp. –). New York: Macmillan. Kaufmann, F.X. (). Religion und Modernität. Sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. Tübingen: Mohr. Knitter, P. (). Introducing Theologies of Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Larmore, C. (). Public reason. In S. Freeman (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Rawls (pp. –). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindbeck, G. (). The nature of doctrine: Religions and theology in a postliberal age. Louisville & London: Westminster John Knox Press. Lübbe, H. (). Religion nach der Aufklärung. Graz: Styria.

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MacLuhan, M. (). The Gutenberg galaxy: The making of typographic man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. MacLuhan, M. (). The medium is the message. An inventory of effects. New York: Bantam. Pollack, D. (). Was ist Religion? In W. Schreiber, W. (Hrsg.), Die religiöse Dimension im Geschichtsunterricht an Europas Schulen. Ein interdisziplinäres Forschungsprojekt (pp. –). Neuried: Ars Una. Putnam, R. (). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rawls, J. (). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Rey, T. (). Marketing the goods of salvation: Bourdieu on religion. Religion, , –. Rorty, R. (). Religion as conversation stopper. In R. Rorty (Ed.), Philosophy and social hope (pp. –). London: Penguin Books. Schuerkens, U. (). The sociological and anthropological study of globalization and localization. Current Sociology, (/), –. London, Sage. Simmel, G. (). Grundfragen der Soziologie. Individuum und Gesellschaft. Berlin: G.J. Göschen’sche Verlagshandlung GmbH. Smith, A. (). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Retrieved from http://www.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/adam-smith/ Wealth-Nations.pdf. Stark, R. () The rise of Christianity: A sociologist reconsiders history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stark, R. (). The victory of reason: How Christianity led to freedom, capitalism, and western Success. New York: Random House. Stark, R., & Finke, R. (). Acts of faith: Explaining the human side of religion. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Swartz, D. (). Bridging the study of culture and religion: Pierre Bourdieu’s political economy of symbolic power. Sociology of Religion, (), –. Taylor, C. (). A secular age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tracy, D. (). Comparative theology. In L. Jones (Ed,), Encyclopedia of Religion  (pp. –) Detroit, MI: Thomas Gale Tracy, D. (). The Analogical imagination. Christian theology and the culture of pluralism. New York: Crossroad. Tracy, D. (). Plurality and ambiguity. Hermeneutics, religion, hope. London: SCM Press. Trigg, R. (). Religion in public life: Must faith be privatized? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Troeltsch, E. (). Wesen der Religion und der Religionswissenschaft. Berlin: Teubner. Troeltsch, E. (). Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen. Tübingen: Mohr. Verter, B. (). Spiritual capital: Theorizing religion with Bourdieu against Bourdieu. Sociological Theory, (), –.

A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION: FROM SECULARIZATION TO ‘PUBLICIZATION’

David Herbert Public Religion in the Twenty-First Century [T]he marked articulation of religion in the public realm destabilizes the narrative of modernity as defined by the decline of the public role of religion, and this urges us to critically rethink the nexus of religion and media in regard to (trans)national politics and the modern nation state. (Meyer & Moors, , p. )

In their collection Religion, the media and the public sphere, Meyer and Moors () describe a growth in the public circulation and visibility of religious symbols and discourses in many post-colonial societies in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Asian subcontinent. The authors argue that this proliferation is linked closely to changes in media production, regulation, and (relative) political liberalization. In this process, the ties which have linked religious symbols and discourses to the traditional contexts and institutions through which they have been transmitted, and which have sought to control their use, become loosened. Thus, it becomes necessary to distinguish between ‘religion’ as ‘the distinctive way of life of communities of followers shaped by their particular system of beliefs and practices that are oriented towards the supernatural’ (Smith, , p. vii), and ‘the religious’ as ‘more diffuse articulations of religious symbols and discourses’ (Meyer & Moors, , p. ). The effects of this redistribution of what might be called ‘religious capital’ are, they argue, profound, and as yet little understood in mainstream social science. Not least, they present challenges to the postEnlightenment understanding of modernity as marked by a decline in religion’s public role, an understanding based largely on Western European experience and which informs policy-makers and academic discourse among educated elites globally, and secularization theory in particular.

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There is also some evidence that the renewed public visibility of religion is not confined to the post-colonial world. In Eastern Europe for example: In Hungary, religion has become truly de-privatized during the last decade. Following Casanova’s terminology, public religions are not only present in civil society, but also have a presence in political society and the state. (Enyedi, , p. )

Enyedi’s comment reflects the growth in the public presence of religion in post-communist societies following their forcible exclusion under communism (Borowik & Babi´nski, ). This increased public presence (e.g. commenting on public issues and securing state administered funding in the Hungarian case) does not necessarily correspond to growth in religious observance (church attendance dropped in Hungary from   once monthly or more in  to .  in ), although in some cases, such as Romania, it does (World Values Survey, ). Such complexity suggests the need for an explanatory framework which can deal with both growth and decline in different aspects of religious public presence and vitality. This need is underlined by evidence of religious vitality in the public sphere even in Western Europe, including France where there is a strong public culture of laïcité militating against the intrusion of religion into public life: In France as in other Western societies . . . [a] new socio-cultural configuration is emerging in which the religious, far from appearing in the form of a tradition resisting modernity, appears instead in the form of a tradition that prevents ultra-modernity from dissolving into a self-destructive critique. Increasingly, religion provides identities and offers to individuals the possibility of social integration and direction within individualistic and pluralistic societies. . . . It is equally clear however, that the traditional distrust of religion undoubtedly continues in France. (Willaime, , pp. –)

Willaime’s article observes an increasing visibility of religion (witnessed by growing attention to religion by the academy, media, and public authorities, including recent government intervention to ban religious symbols in public schools) in French public life. Here the struggle of state and society to be free of religious influence still lingers in collective memory, in spite of the very different contemporary conditions where religion is largely a matter of personal choice. The re-emergence of religion in public debate relates in part to France’s Muslim community and to use of religious discourses internationally to legitimize political violence; but also to ‘ultra-modernity’s’ reflexivity, such that French laïcité has become

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self-critical and uncertain of itself, allowing questions about the public role of religion to re-emerge. Together, these cases suggest that religion has ‘gone public’ in very different kinds of global contexts, which are themselves increasingly interconnected by diaspora communities and other global flows of people, goods and information, as part of the multi-layered process of globalization. Meyer and Moors () suggest the centrality of the media to this process. National boundaries are largely porous to electronic media: satellite television and the internet have created trans-national audiences and networks. While there are still many zones of exclusion from the global information economy, increasingly we inhabit social worlds in which knowledge, including knowledge of the religious self and others, is strongly media influenced. The religious self, like other social identities, is produced through a dialogical process with others perceived as different in salient respects. Thus, whether we live in a global city or a remote village, much of our knowledge of religious ‘others’ comes through media discourses (Poole, ), as does that of our own imagined religious communities (the ummah, the Catholic Church, etc.). We contend that such developments are likely to have implications for empirical theologians, since the role of articulating faith, reason and empirically informed research may be very different if the global empirical reality is one which includes publicly assertive forms of religion and the widespread (including political and commercial) appropriation of religious symbols and discourses, rather than the (albeit uneven) retreat of religion from public life anticipated by secularization theory. However, the purpose of this chapter is not to work out those implications, but rather to map the contours of this dynamic religious landscape and something of the ‘tectonics’ of the social processes that produce it. So, how is it possible to make sense of these developments, given that the established paradigm of secularization theory engenders opposite expectations? It is suggested that there is a need for a distinctive sociological theory of ‘religious publicization’ that seeks to map the conditions under which religions become active in the public sphere, and to identify those processes that shape variations in the public form and significance of religion over time and across diverse societies. Such an exercise needs to begin by delineating the field of ‘the public’, and then dialectically by critique of the existing paradigm of secularization and its latest reformulation in neo-secularization theory.

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david herbert The Public and the Social The usage of the words ‘public’ and ‘public sphere’ betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a . . . society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. (Habermas,  [], p. ) The public sphere is not an empty space for carrying out debates. It is constituted by the sensibilities—memories and aspirations, fears and hopes, of speakers and listeners, and also by the way they exist (and are made to exist) for each other. (Asad, , p. )

The word ‘public’ is so commonly used that we rarely notice its range of meanings. Many uses have a sense of something shared or open to participation (e.g. public house or public debate), others connote something that exists for the public good (public authority, public buildings) and still others imply display or visibility (public reputation, public profile). Both of the quotations above suggest that such meanings and domains are historically and culturally constructed, and the latter that they are also contested, emotionally charged and constrained, the public sphere a space in which groups are ‘made to exist’ for one another through ways imposed, recognition and opportunities presented by the state, the media, and local institutions and cultures. However, while the range of meanings of ‘public’ are diverse (in English let alone the range of cognate terms in other European and more distantly related languages), this range is different again (though overlaps with) those of ‘the social’, the usual field of sociological enquiry. Thus ‘public’ often seems to imply some sense of shared or open space where things are displayed or performed or contested, and hence some separation between viewer and viewed. In contrast, the social is constructed between individuals and constitutes groups, but without the necessary connotation of display or struggle. Perhaps this reading overemphasizes the influence of the functionalist tradition on meanings of the social, conflict is after all at the heart of Marxist and post-Marxist traditions of social analysis. However, this tradition has played a less prominent role in the recent history of sociological thinking on religion, where secularization theory with its functionalist orientation has been the dominant if increasingly contested tradition. One problem with this tradition (and what is often of most interest to society) is public religion, and the controversies surrounding it, rather than simply levels of religious belief and practice, or even how religious groups are internally

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sustained. Hence, if one is seeking to account for the public significance of religion, there is a need for more than a secularization narrative (even if that were correct for the domain that it addresses), a need for a theory of religious publicization to explain also how religions are ‘made to exist’ as well as project themselves in the public sphere. The term ‘publicization’ is used in place of ‘deprivatization’ (Casanova, , p. ) or ‘desecularization’, because both of the latter terms imply that religion has already been privatized/secularized to some extent, which is not necessarily the case, for example in many post-colonial societies. Publicization, understood as the range of processes which shape the extent and form of religion’s public presence in society, is also a helpful term because it frames debate in a way which is open to analysing variations in religion’s public role rather than implying any particular trajectory of change, whether toward decline (e.g. secularization) or growth (e.g. deprivatization). Secularization Theory in the Context of the Sociological Thought on Religion Sociological thinking on the public significance of religion remains marked by the legacy of the founders of sociological tradition, Marx, Durkheim and Weber, each of whom described in powerful ways how religion influenced historical and contemporary societies. Yet each also predicted a weakening of religion’s grip on society in the face of advancing industrialization and urbanization. The decline of religious practice across much of Western Europe, at least since the second world war and, as Christian Smith () has recently argued, the triumph of secularist elites in American higher education and other professions (if not in the wider society) since the late nineteenth century, meant that religion became increasingly peripheral to mainstream sociology in Western Europe and America in the latter half of the twentieth century. Sociology was not unique in this respect, but rather reflected broader trends in intellectual culture both in and beyond the West in the post-war period. Indeed, decline of religion was widely assumed not only by elites in the Communist world, but also, perhaps more remarkably, across much of the Arab world, and in the Asian subcontinent, even though popular religiosity showed little sign of diminishing in these regions. So at least until the mid s some version of the secularization theory dominated the sociology of religion, and even the emergence in the

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late s of new religious movements did not seriously challenge this view, since these movements were predominantly viewed as ephemeral cults formed on margins of society. Olivier Tschannen () has shown that there is sufficient coherence to the different versions of secularization theory current in the late s for these to constitute a paradigm in the Kuhnian sense (Kuhn, ). From the work of seven theorists publishing in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion up to  he argues for the existence of a paradigm as ‘based on a core of three elements: differentiation, rationalization, and worldliness’ (Tschannen, , p. ). Building on Tschannen’s argument, for simplicity’s sake we shall here use just one influential theory that corresponds closely to Tschannen’s core paradigm. Steve Bruce and Roy Wallis’ () ‘orthodox’ model also has the advantage that it is explicit about why secularization sometimes fails, and hence is useful for our interest in both the decline and growth of public religion. Bruce and Wallis argue that: the social significance of religion diminishes in response to the operation of three salient features of modernization . . . namely, () social differentiation, () societalization, and () rationalization. It recognizes, however, that social change is a multiply contingent process and that ideal-typical conditions may not be met. There may be countervailing factors, sometimes generated by the same modernization process. We believe that two such processes, which we call cultural defence and cultural transition, are especially relevant. (Bruce & Wallis, , pp. –)

This still remains a representative case because, while debate on secularization theory has developed since  (Chaves, ; Yamane, ; Swatos & Christiano, ), these three elements remain central, with social differentiation widely identified as the core element (Tschannen, , p. ; Casanova, ; Smith, , pp. –; Martin, , p. ). The account identifies two factors that produce a stalling or even reversal of secularization. Cultural defence refers to a situation where religious identity (and the institutions which support it) becomes a bulwark against a hostile force, for example Polish Catholic identity against Soviet influence (–, Kubik, ), or Ulster Protestant/Catholic identities against the Republic of Ireland/United Kingdom respectively. Cultural transition works in a similar way, except that the challenge to the group is not from a negative external force or factor in society, but rather from pressures to adapt to a new environment, usually brought about by migration (Bruce & Wallis, , pp. – ).

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A number of problems have been identified with secularization theory (Hadden, ; Casanova, ; Stark, ; Herbert, , pp. – ), but our starting point here is the observation that the processes ‘cultural defence’ and ‘cultural transition’ do not seem at first sight to do justice to the dynamism, complexity and self-sustaining character of some contemporary religious mobilizations. For example, the proliferation of religious symbols and discourses across the range of post-colonial societies identified by Meyer and Moors () refers to shifts in the location of the power of religion (away from traditional elites, spread across a range of discourses and platforms, used by a variety of actors), which simply does not register in conventional accounts of secularization. In particular, there is a complete absence of recognition that the processes through which religious symbols and discourses are circulated and reproduced within cultures may have their own autonomous dynamic (and mutating) patterns. If such processes register at all within the broader paradigm, it would probably be as an increase in ‘worldliness’ or ‘internal secularization’ (Wilson, ), processes wherein religious symbols are retained but their meaning becomes increasingly worldly (as the performer Madonna’s use of a crucifix in her stage show retains little of its original Christian meaning). However, such a conceptualization assumes a one way flow of meaning from secular to religious domains, whereas the Meyer and Moors’ volume suggests that such flows may be more complex, and that religious meanings may equally spill over into supposedly secular domains. Moreover, such ‘seepage’ is suggestive of more profound difficulties with secularization’s conceptual scheme. Indeed, evidence exists that each of the processes which secularization identifies as instrumental in reducing the social significance of religion occurs alongside precisely the opposite process. Thus differentiation co-exists with de-differentiation. The evidence shows [that] the generalized tendency to corral religion [into its own sphere] in no way excludes its presence in areas of social activity outside its control. . . . This fluid quality in religious and nonreligious processes criss-crossing the frontiers of institutional spheres is all-pervasive. . . . religion . . . has fragmented across the social spectrum. (Hervieu-Léger, , p. )

Societalization—the process in which bounded rural communities are broken up and replaced by the anonymous (but still limited) mobility of urban (and, in classic and still mainstream sociology, national) societies—co-exists (thanks to new transport and communications technologies and economies) with the extension of intense communal

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identifications and religious and kinship networks across space and time, in a process which might be called ‘diasporic intensification’: the sustaining of close communicative, affective and economic bonds amongst globally dispersed communities. Beck and Lau () describe something of the phenomenon, and its challenge to conventional sociological thinking, bounded by the nation-state and the singleness of belonging. Individuals and groups who choose transnational TV channels and consume transnational programmes live both here and there. How, though, can sociologists conceptualize Turkish and German speaking transmigrants who, while they may live in Berlin, are living out their expectations, ambitions and cultural disruptions elsewhere as well, namely in transnational networks? In methodological nationalism, German-Turkish both/and ways of life and identities are located and analyzed within one or the other national frame of reference and thereby robbed of their ‘both/and’ character. Thus, they are described in terms of being ‘uprooted’, ‘un-integrated’, ‘lacking a homeland’, ‘living between two cultures’—all of which are attributes of lack and negativity that presuppose the mononational unitary perspective. What this fails to recognize is difference, including the challenges and the richness involved in being positioned transnationally. The national perspective, in line with its strategy of marginalization, suggests that this is the exception. But it is precisely this which is empirically dubious, since what we are dealing with are different forms of internal transnationalization of zones of action and experience, in which the exception is increasingly becoming the rule. (Beck & Lau, , pp. –)

This is not to say that national boundaries and institutions are no longer important: they are, but technology and mobility enable other forms of sociality, forms which to some extent counter the anonymizing tendencies of the modern city by enabling new forms of transnationally located community, some of which are religious. Thus we may say that societalization co-exists with de-societalization, in the sense that other forms of identification, only partly territorially rooted, co-exist with the nationstate. Secularization theory recognizes this to an extent in its concept of cultural transition; but it envisages this process as a phase en route to national integration. However, it may be that we are moving to a period in which the stable end point of national integration is never reached or even approached; instead we rather depend on other forms of social cooperation and co-ordination, which co-exist with various transnational religious and ethnic loyalties. Third, rationalization co-exists with re-enchantment, or more precisely there is evidence both that rationalized modes of thought can coexist comfortably with supernatural modes within individual and com-

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munal worldviews or lifeworlds, and that modern institutions and technologies can heighten rather than attenuate a sense of the sacred. Thus Martin () provides evidence among Latin American Pentecostals of individuals and groups combining technological proficiency and scientific understanding with belief in an active and interventionist supernatural. We shall consider the capacity of modern technology and institutions to heighten a sense of the sacred below (Kaur, ). While such examples do not by any means prove that secularization theory is false, they do suggest that more is going on than it can account for. Publicization theory seeks to investigate this ‘more’ with respect to the public mobilization and visibility of religion in contemporary societies. Where might such a theory begin? In response to criticisms of secularization, neo-secularization theorists have sought to refine the model (Chaves, ; Yamane, ). In particular, Casanova () has sought to provide an account that recognizes both the importance of processes of social differentiation (central to the secularization paradigm), and the ongoing and developing significance of religion in the public sphere of civil society. Casanova’s Deprivatization Theory By the mid s the role of religion in a series of globally visible public events, as well as the persistent vitality of American popular religion, had produced deepening scepticism about the validity of secularization theory. Religions were playing a powerful role in political mobilization in contexts as diverse as the Iranian Revolution, the Solidarity movement in Poland, liberation theology in Latin America and conservative politics in the USA. Comparing the USA in particular with Western Europe, it seemed that broadly parallel modernization processes were having very different effects on popular religiosity. Thus, while by the s it was clear that Christian congregations were shrinking everywhere in Western Europe where religion was not intimately connected to a popular nationalist cause (e.g. Ireland, Poland), they were holding up well in the USA. This cast doubt on the main mechanisms through which secularization theory proposes that the decline of religion’s influence on social systems occurs, for American society seemed to be just as socially differentiated, urbanized and rationalized as Western European society, yet popular religion had not declined; at least not to the same extent. These two problems for secularization theory (the re-politicization of religion in the s and the discrepancy

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between Western European and American evidence) provide the context for José Casanova’s Public religions in the modern world (), which seeks to re-think the secularization paradigm in the light of such evidence. A key part of Casanova’s argument is that, in most contexts other than Western Europe, as social differentiation has progressed, religion has actually re-emerged from the private sphere, as part of a process he calls ‘deprivatization’. He defines this as ‘a dual interrelated process of repoliticization of the private religious and moral spheres, and renormativization of the public economic and political spheres’ (, p. ). In other words, religious beliefs cease to be a matter of purely personal preference, but again become the subject of public argument, while concurrently public matters, like the economy and politics, are re-moralized, partly by challenges from religious groups. Casanova’s book provides an important resource for thinking sociologically about the public significance of religion. One key contribution is to differentiate between fields of public life (between the state, political society and civil society) that enable different forms of public significance to be distinguished. These distinctions may not be new (they go back at least to Hegel), but they have not tended to be used in sociological accounts of secularization. They are useful because they open up the possibility of providing a more nuanced account of the public significance of religion than simply more or less significance; and hence the possibility that mobilization in different spheres of society may follow different trajectories, for example increasing its influence in political society while declining in civil society. Casanova’s main contention is that public religion can survive social differentiation and even thrive in democratic modernity, if it mobilizes in civil society, but not in political society or the state. Hence religion’s decline in Western Europe, where there is a long history of the religious establishment allying with the state in various forms, but not in the USA, where religion and state were separated from the outset, and religious mobilization has taken place largely in civil society. He supports his contention using five case studies from the s and s: Poland, Brazil, Spain, and American Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. In these cases, where religion mobilizes in civil society to oppose a repressive state (as in Poland and Brazil), or to re-moralize public discourse (American Catholicism, and in part, Evangelicalism), it may succeed, at least in the sense of increasing its public presence and popular support. However, where religion has been allied with the state and fails suffi-

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ciently to re-articulate with civil society (Spain) or attempts to impact on political society (aspects of American Evangelicalism), it has lost popular support. Casanova succeeded in broadening debate in sociology of religion to include the public dimensions of the social significance of religion, rather than to focus simply on levels of religious observance and belief. His account also introduces human agency into secularization theory by seeing institutions as significantly responsible for their own public impact, depending on their response to the challenges of modernity, rather than as inevitably ground down by structural change (an argument subsequently broadened and deepened by Smith, , ). Casanova’s case studies also demonstrate that religions can have significant public impacts of different kinds in a range of modern societies, and that these impacts can be politically progressive or pro-democracy, in contrast to the historical association of religion with resistance to progressive causes and democratization in Western Europe. Thus this is a model with which the theologian can positively engage, not only because it highlights the politically progressive potentialities of religion, but also fundamentally because it reads history as an open process in which accident, human agency, institutional momentum and social forces interact, in contrast to the deterministic tendencies within secularization theory. However, one may question whether religion is really empirically (as opposed to normatively) more compatible with civil than political society, as Casanova contends. Revisiting his own case studies, it would seem that Evangelical Christianity’s impact on American political society has been greater under the George W. Bush presidencies than Casanova’s model would suggest, and remains a significant factor in American politics, while the Catholic Church has struggled to make ongoing impact on public debate in American civil society, especially in the wake of the various paedophile priest cases. In the post-communist period the Polish Catholic Church has arguably proven more capable of mobilizing at the level of political society (and even the state) than civil society, culminating in the Law and Justice administration of –. These examples complicate the thesis that religious mobilization in political society cannot succeed in democratic modernity, although it may be too early to judge fully. Further problems arise if one looks beyond the Christian or post-Christian world. Islamist political parties have claimed electoral success in non-Arab Muslim majority societies from Turkey to Indonesia, and attract significant support in the Arab world where democratic

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elections are not generally permitted. Furthermore, the success of the Hindu nationalist BJP in success in India until  suggests that the Muslim world is not unique in its susceptibility to the political mobilization of religion. In other words, in the global perspective it is not obvious that religion cannot mobilize successfully at the level of political society within modern democracies. In addition to the empirical problem that religious mobilization in political society does in fact seem, quite often, to succeed, Asad () argues that there is a further and deeper problem with Casanova’s thesis. He contends that once religion goes public, the spheres of life in which it wishes to be heard and to exert an influence cannot be readily contained within the sphere of civil society, but that religious influence is likely to spill over into all kinds of policy areas. When religion becomes an integral part of modern politics, it is not indifferent to debates about how the economy should be run, which scientific projects should be publicly funded, or what the broader aims of a national education system should be. The legitimate entry of religion into these debates results in the creation of modern ‘hybrids’: the principle of structural differentiation, according to which religion, economy, education, and science are located in autonomous spaces—no longer holds. (Asad, , p. )

This is not to say that the process of differentiation does not occur, since modern social systems are indeed both increasingly specialized and global in their reach. However, this process also tends to be accompanied by cultural flows across these systems, including flows of religious values, symbols and discourses, which can profoundly affect their local operation. In this process, for example in many post-colonial contexts: [Religion] is significantly transformed as it spreads throughout the surface of social life, disseminating signs yet having to accommodate to given formats. (Meyer & Moors, , p. )

This contemporary redistribution of religion is a key phenomenon that publicization theory seeks to examine and explain. Casanova’s account sheds some light on the phenomenon by highlighting the diverse roles of Christian religion in the public spheres of civil society in several established and new democracies; but his insistence that it is separation from the state and political society that enables religion to thrive in civil society means that he cannot account for cases where religion continues to mobilize at those latter levels. Furthermore, his theory does not consider the diverse forms that religious symbols and discourses take in different communicative media, nor the implications that their

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communication through the media may have for religious traditions. So do other varieties of ‘neosecularization’ theory shed more light on these phenomena? First, it is worth outlining the scope and achievement of neo-secularization theories. Chaves () and Yamane () respectively define neo-secularization in terms of the declining scope of religious authority (Chaves, , p. ), and the result of ‘institutional differentiation at the societal level’ (Yamane, : ). Casanova’s theory fits this description as it limits the scope of religious authority to one voice among many in civil society, as a result of social differentiation. Such carefully qualified re-workings of secularization theory fit well with evidence from a range of post-industrial societies. Thus ongoing religious vitality, and religious activity in civil society (e.g. in the voluntary sector and as a vocal contributor to public debates), is compatible with a thesis centred on ‘the declining capacity of religious elites to exercise authority over other institutional spheres’ (Chaves, , p. ). This picture also fits with the post-materialist aspect of Inglehart’s () security-oriented theory (which predicts growth in interest in individualized or voluntary religion and continued decline in religion as a disciplinary system as a function of increasing human security). Such theories can make more sense than ‘orthodox’ secularization theory can of the discrepancies between European and American evidence, where high levels of modernization in both contexts are combined with contrasting levels and trajectories of religious activity. They are also compatible with orientations that see social change as the contingent outcome of political struggles (e.g. Smith, ), because they reject any implicit social evolutionary undercurrents in secularization theory, recognizing the ‘political, conflictual and contingent nature of relations among societal institutions in general and between religion and other spheres in particular’ (Chaves, , p. ). However, they are less successful in capturing the ways in which the circulation of religious symbols and discourses through media systems may transform the nature of religious authority, and in explaining why religion can retain and indeed attain new significance at the level of political society and the state. Regarding the former, the focus on religious elites is problematic, and specifically their assumption that the influence of religious authority on other social systems is mediated primarily through those elites. This is because it fails to get to grips with the impact of mass and new media on the mediation of authority (including religious authority). In particular, it will be argued that religious authority

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is better understood in terms of the influence of religious discourses on policy and practice in other social systems, rather than that of specific institutional religious actors. Such an understanding allows that part of the effect of the social differentiation process may indeed be a decline in the authority of religious elites over a range of areas of social life; but that this does not necessitate the decline of religious authority as such, which may instead become vested in communicative systems and deployed by a range of social actors, rather than focused in persons or institutions. The process of Islamization in Egypt will be used to illustrate how religious authority may be reconfigured in this way. It therefore provides a good starting point from which to generate further resources needed to develop a theory of religious publicization. Toward a Theory of Religious Publicization: The Functionalization of Religion in Egypt The logic of the secularization account of cultural defence and cultural transition is that when the threat to culture diminishes or the transition has been successfully managed, religious mobilization should subside to a level proportionate to the degree of modernization in a given society. However, this account neglects the complexity and relative autonomy of cultural systems, including the way that culture may shape the workings of even core modern functional systems. Starrett () describes such an approach as ‘barometric’, because it assumes that religious mobilization rises in response to certain challenges within a social system, which drop again once the challenge has passed. [T]he barometric approach ignores the institutional frameworks and social processes through which culture is created and transmitted. Like other institutions, religious . . . ones fill not only a social need, but a social space. They take on a very real life of their own with interests, dynamics and potentials that are only incompletely determined by the intersection of forces that brought them about. (Starrett, , pp. –)

Starrett’s argument is made in the context of Egypt in the s. Here, he argues, precisely the intensification of modernization processes (industrialization, mass education and literacy, urbanization, the dissemination of communication technologies) which secularization theory contends will result in the declining social significance of religion is in fact associated with the opposite. Instead, in what he calls a process of ‘function-

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alization’, religion has penetrated ever more deeply into other social systems, including law, education, health provision, social welfare and (in spite of official prohibitions) politics. All this is intimately related to a massive publicization process, such that: Egypt’s public environment is swamped with the signifiers of religion: on signs, billboards, murals, advertisements, radio and television programs, public events, the covers of books and magazines for sale on every street corner, and in the style of public dress and grooming. (Starrett, , p. )

Furthermore, this is clearly a case of republicization: in the mid-s scholars were still confident that ‘Islam in the contemporary Arab World has simply been bypassed’, and wrote of ‘a withering away of its position and effective power in social and political life’ (Sharabi, , p. ). Of course, Egypt’s economic problems and political system provide plenty of evidence on which to construct a counter-argument within secularization theory on the grounds of cultural defence and lack of (political and religious) choice. However, the reasons that Starrett advances for Egypt’s trajectory of re-publicization are different, and should give secularization theorists pause for thought. Starrett () argues that religion has become functionalized within modern Egypt’s social systems because of a complex interaction between politics, culture and social processes. In an effort to enable Egypt to compete with European powers, nineteenth century Ottoman reformer Muhammad Ali imported Western (specifically British) models of religious education that harnessed religion in the service of the creation of a functional workforce. As in the British Sunday school, practice shifted from the memorization and recitation of sacred texts to the learning of short passages with a moral message, usually emphasizing the virtues of hard work, cleanliness and honesty. This functionalization of religious discourse stressed the ‘use-value’, accessibility and ‘plain meaning’ of the text, and continues in the Egyptian state school to the present. It influenced the thinking of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, and it was given an opportunity to spread in a higher education context by Sadat’s support for the Islamic student movement (as a counter to the Communists) in the s. In the context of late twentieth century media developments, this way of thinking about Islam led to the creation of an unofficial public sphere of functionalized Islamic discourse consisting of a mass of competing interpretations of religious texts expressed through a range of media (see also Herbert, ).

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Mobilized by this discourse, private Islamic voluntary organizations, often connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, back up their claim that ‘Islam is the solution’ by supporting a dense network of ‘Islamic’ education, health and welfare services, paralleled by the growth of Islamic financial and business sectors (Sullivan & Abed-Kotob, ). In competition, the government also increasingly appeals to religious discourse to legitimize its actions, thus deepening the Islamization of public discourse so that the ‘Islamic Trend’ has ‘moved beyond the level of a movement to become one of the most important contexts in which everyday life is lived’ (Starrett, , p. ). In this account structural differentiation (the spread of specialized functional systems) has two main effects: it shapes the form of religious discourse (functionalizing it), and it enables its dissemination through the proliferation of media systems. Political actors play an important role too, mostly through unintended consequences: together structure and human agency have produced a culture in which religious discourse has become ever more embedded in modern functional systems. Arguably this account is suggestive of an alternative general model for thinking about the articulation between religion and social differentiation in modernity to the short causal arrows from functional systems to religious marginalization drawn by secularization theory. Instead, social differentiation may be seen as a second order causal factor enabling certain kinds of possibilities to be enacted at the level of culture,1 which is conceived of as having its own dynamic not reducible to structural forces. Such a model allows human agency back into theorization, answering the criticism that secularization theory reduces to surface phenomena the agonistic struggles through which religion is sometimes excluded from or forced into the public sphere (Smith, ). Let us now consider some arguments and processes that can help us to assemble further building blocks of a theory of religious publicization.

1 National cultures and the institutions that transmit them are particularly important here. For example, Soper and Fetzer () have shown how church-state relations in France, Germany and the UK have impacted on the integration opportunities of Muslim communities. Again in Europe, Poland and East Germany show how national cultures very differently shaped the impact of Communist policies on religion, with Poland emerging from Communism as one of the most religious societies in Europe, East Germany as one of the most secular.

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Reproduction of Religious Subcultures: Smith’s Subcultural Identity Theory First, there is evidence that, partly through active engagement with media and other commercial markets, religious communities are able to create and sustain thriving subcultures. The structural conditions that permit such developments vary, but it would seem that the commercialization and deregulation of media markets is favourable to this kind of development, as indicated above in cases as diverse as Ghana, Mali, South Africa, India and Brazil (Meyer & Moors, , p. ). Smith () has proposed a subcultural identity theory of religious persistence and strength based on his analysis of American Evangelicalism. Smith argues that: Religion can survive . . . in pluralistic, modern society by embedding itself in subcultures that offer morally satisfying collective identities which provide adherents with meaning and belonging. [Under such conditions], . . . those religious groups will be relatively stronger which better possess and employ the cultural tools needed to create both a clear distinction from and significant engagement and tension with other relevant outgroups, short of becoming genuinely countercultural. (Smith, , pp. –)

Key amongst the ‘cultural tools’ required is the ability to produce and disseminate literature, music, television and film that can compete for their audience’s attention in a competitive commercial market place. With these tools, American Evangelicals have been able to create a subculture that exists in creative tension with the dominant entertainment ethos of mainstream American culture, both resonating with it in values and aesthetics, and articulating their distinctiveness from it. The popularity of religious images and narratives in the mass-mediated popular culture of the range of post-colonial settings considered in the Meyer and Moors volume suggests that far from being a distinctively American phenomenon, conditions which favour the reproduction of religious subcultures are quite widespread. The Cultural Work of Religion: Reconciliation in Northern Ireland Starrett’s account of the functionalization of religion in Egypt suggests that religion avoids marginalization under conditions of social and structural differentiation when it finds work to do in reconfigured social

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systems (such as education, health or welfare provision), or becomes discursively embedded in such systems (as in law or, again, education). This functionalization process should be understood in a purely utilitarian sense. For example, while religion is mostly associated with conflict in Northern Ireland, there is also evidence that it is important to peace-building, both at an institutional and at a broader discursive level. Thus certain religious discourses continue to strike a note with broader publics, and are perhaps capable of articulating things that secular vocabularies struggle to express. In  the author commissioned a telephone survey of a representative sample of , people from across Northern Ireland, primarily to investigate the relationship between doing voluntary work, meeting people from other religious communities in such settings, and attitudes to political forgiveness, defined in this case as whether those in your community who have been harmed by members of the other community should be willing to forgive those who had harmed them— unconditionally, if recognition and apology have been offered, depending on circumstances, or ‘no’. Remarkably, out of , respondents, only one refused to answer this question, indicating the wide currency and acceptance of the language of forgiveness, a term which, while not the property of a specific religious tradition, has strong religious connotations. While nominal religious belonging was only weakly associated with forgiveness (positively for Catholics and negatively for Protestants), active religious participation (demonstrated in volunteering for a Catholic or Protestant organization) was strongly and positively associated with forgiveness responses. Other findings were also intriguing; those in caring voluntary roles, whether baby-sitting or visiting the elderly, were significantly more likely to favour unconditional forgiveness than average, a finding that held for carers of both genders, suggesting a connection between caring practices and the social practice of forgiveness. Volunteering for a group organized on a cross-community basis, on the other hand, was not a predictor of attitudes toward forgiveness; only helping a member of the other community on at least a regular basis produced a positive association. Such examples suggest that religion continues to shape cultural attitudes and to provide ways of articulating social relations (such as forgiveness) that purely secular vocabularies struggle to communicate. As with Egypt, secularization theory can easily locate factors which mean that religious mobilization is boosted by cultural defence; but such an account does nothing to reveal the complex ways in which religious dis-

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course continues to do powerful cultural work in contemporary societies, something which publicization theory strives to capture. Diasporic Intensification and the Reshaping of Religious Identities We have already mentioned the concept of diasporic intensification as a kind of counter-societalization effect in Western societies. However, it is also worth pointing out that it is not only migrants who are affected by transnational flows, but the societies that they leave and enter. This section will briefly present evidence that media developments can be instrumental in the reconfiguration of religious identities among both minorities and majorities. Thus, whereas Smith demonstrates the evolution of a religious subculture in reaction to and engagement with changes in media production and form, evidence from Muslim communities over the last fifteen years suggests that the media’s circulation of images and discourses can produce some quite radical reconfigurations of religious identity. Specifically, images of (and discourse on, Hirshkind, , p. ) Muslim suffering in different parts of the world (especially Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq, Kashmir, and Chechnya) made available through the electronic media since the s have arguably transformed the historically diverse meanings of the Arabic term ummah (Ayubi, , p. ), politicizing and inflecting it to invoke a suffering community, much more akin to the Shi"ite theology of martyrdom than the Sunni theology of ‘Manifest Success’ in which the concept first developed (Geaves, , pp. –). While the initial disseminators of these images (transnational, Western based broadcasters such as CNN) produced this effect unwittingly, the advent of Arab satellite broadcasting (e.g. Al-Jazeera) significantly altered the semantic framing of their dissemination, and jihadi websites self-consciously promote it (Awan, ). There is evidence that this sense of being part of a suffering ummah is now very widespread, both from studies of Muslims in the West (Mandaville, ; Cesari, ; Al-Ghabban, ) and in the Middle East (Hirshkind, ). In this case, then, structural change (e.g. the advent of media technologies enabling instant transnational broadcasting, and lower access costs enabling wider transnational dissemination) is implicated in the increased political salience (and semantic transformation) of religious discourse, in turn producing a change in an aspect of religious

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identity. Such a process cannot be reduced to ‘cultural defence’, because it is not simply a defence of tradition, but rather may entail its radical re-interpretation. Arguably then, to use Castells’ terms, such identities are not merely reactive but potentially at least project identities, that is identities which are potentially socially transformative, formed ‘perhaps on the basis of an oppressed identity, but expanding toward the transformation of society as the prolongation of this project of identity’ (Castells, , p. ). Reconfiguration of Religious Authority It has already been argued that neo-secularization theory does not take sufficient account of the changing form of religious authority, and may therefore misread change as decline. In particular, it is important not to conflate the declining authority of religious elites with the declining scope of religious authority as such, because religious authority may be exercised in other ways, the product of other processes. Here we return to the Egyptian case that was used to develop this argument, adding some caveats. In Egypt in the s the authority of the state sponsored ulama was weakened (Starrett, , p. ), yet the authority of religious symbols and discourse has arguably been strengthened through the competition between state and Islamist opposition (a kind of supply-side struggle, stimulating public interest). In this process, religious authority has arguably been transformed, such that, as Starrett argues: [A]uthority is now more a characteristic of products themselves . . . than productive processes . . .. Who the producer is—when that can be determined—is less important than the marketability of what he (sic) has to say. (Starrett, , p. )

Through this process authority is also arguably democratized in a broad sense, in that the discourses through which religious authority is mediated become open to wider public participation. Such processes are not unique to Egypt, but rather characteristic of many societies across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Asian subcontinent, where media change and de-regulation have produced a popular religious public sphere largely disembedded from historic religious institutions and distributed (uncomfortably from a liberal perspective) across political, commercial and entertainment social fields (Meyer & Moors, ; Rajagopal, ).

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It is important to note, however, that this reconfiguration is not generally one that simply bypasses or over-rides existing authority structures, but rather interacts with them. Rather, as Cesari argues: It is . . . rare that anyone becomes an authority . . . for Islam . . . simply by setting up a website. To truly achieve the status of religious authority in Islam, one must be acknowledged . . . in various . . . milieus and by different age groups; this usually requires a method of communication that goes through either transnational networks, political institutions, or local community structures. (Cesari, , p. )

Thus, it would appear that the balance may be shifting from traditional means of legitimizing authority from those who have completed a lengthy formal institutionalized training to a wider range of opinion formers who are able to read the sources for themselves and make effective use of the means to disseminate their views. But this does not mean that the weight attached to opinions posted on the internet is the same as that ascribed to more established authorities. Rather, one effect of the increase in the quantity and circulation of religious opinions in Muslim majority societies seems to be to force state authorities who use religious scholars to legitimize their actions to provide more public justifications, using religious discourse. The consequence of this is to embed religious discourse ever more firmly in the public realm. In societies where Muslims are a minority the effect is different, though also a product of heightened reflexivity: here those who have previously relied on tradition are forced to become increasingly reflexive to counter Islamist arguments; for example Sufi heritage groups in Britain are increasingly forced to legitimize their actions with reference to the Qur"¯an and hadith, to counter Wahabbi arguments, which are developed from textual premises. So, here again, contrary to secularization theory, we have an example of a structural change transforming and in some ways increasing the social significance of religion, rather than marginalizing it in a private sphere. The Power of The Image: Gods in The Age of Electronic Reproduction Another process (through which media re-publicize religion) is one in which the sensory qualities of new media mean that they not only facilitate the communication of religious symbols and discourses, but also intensify devotion to them by emotionally engaging the viewer, listener,

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or participant. In the case of the re-publicization of religion in Egypt, one of the ways in which the public sphere has become ‘Islamized’ is through the circulation of audio cassettes that capture and make accessible to a wide audience the powers of oratory of radical preachers (Hirshkind, ). Some commentators have argued that these cassettes have revived practices of ‘secondary orality’ (in which the written word is mediated through oral performance—Qur"¯an, after all, means ‘recitation’), which had been de-emphasized in the rationalized print dominated media economy of the industrial age (Starrett, , p. ). Whereas some have argued that the potency of religious symbols would be diluted or undermined through their mass mediation (Benjamin,  []), a range of evidence now suggests that the increasing availability of voice and image through their electronic reproduction seems in practice to restore or amplify rather than dilute the ‘aura’ of the original. For example, Pinney () analyses the use that Hindu devotees make of postcard reproductions of deities, which serve as a focus of domestic devotion, and through this process magnify the perceived value of the original. The mass dissemination of postcard reproductions serves to reinvest originals with a new aura. The original artwork now comes to embody what the reproduction lacks and must be enclosed in shrine-like security structures to protect them from the admiring, and sometimes hateful, gestures of their devotees. (Pinney, , p. )

Pinney argues that darshan, the core Hindu devotional practice of ‘eye contact’ with the deity achieved through sight of the image (murti) and reproduced in Hindi cinema and photography, offers an example of a cultural practice that taps into an optical unconscious, ‘a visceral domain in which objects become sensorily emboldened’ (Pinney, , p. ), to create a powerful bodily aesthetic sensibility. Darshan, while culturally specific, is ‘not strikingly unlike a whole range of culturally diverse practices that stress mutuality and corporeality in spaces as varied as those of religious devotion and cinematic pleasure’ (Pinney, , p. ). In such cases then, new (or newly available) technologies interact with existing cultural practices to magnify the communicative potency of religious images, thus serving to ‘publicize’ religion, making such images publicly available for a variety of social uses. The next process we shall consider suggests that this power extends beyond engagement of the individual viewer and into the collective construction of the public sphere.

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Vernacularization of the Public Sphere: The Trans-Subjective, Religion and Mass Media in India Commentators such as Jain () have gone further than Pinney in arguing that the interaction of Hindu conceptions of the efficacy of images, modern notions of the public sphere and mass media practices can result in the mutual transformation of all three (Jain, , p. ). Jain’s work is useful because it can help us to see how the interaction of modern technologies and sensibilities with vernacular traditions (in this case Indian bazaar culture) can create new hybrids rather than emptying or displacing the vernacular. In this case the impact on religion extends beyond a sensorily heightened relationship between the source and the receiver, invoking a ‘trans-subjective’ realm highly relevant to our concerns with the public sphere and the public significance of religion (Jain, , p. ). Jain comments as follows. Post-Enlightenment conceptions of publicness, privacy, egalitarianism and subjecthood . . . have in fact entered circulation in postcolonial arenas only to undergo a process of vernacularization. . . . [In this process] bourgeois modernity is neither simply accepted nor rejected, but . . . come to be sacralized and libidinalized in terms other than those associated with its post-Enlightenment European avatar. (Jain, , pp. –)

Jain begins her discussion of the efficacy of Hindu images by referring to a newspaper interview with the artist S.M. Pandit, in which Pandit describes his decision not to paint any more large scale paintings of a particular battle scene from the Mahabharat, because on two previous occasions his completion of such works was closely followed by outbreaks of inter-communal violence. Pandit’s reason for this reluctant abandonment came not from his fear that his images would inspire violence in his viewing subjects, but that his pictures would actually in some sense cause the violence. This may be easily dismissed as artistic eccentricity or ‘primitive superstition’, were it not for evidence that views like those of Pandit appear to be widely shared and socially influential, for which Jain () provides a range of evidence from newspaper and interview sources. Jain () argues that there is a collective dimension present in reception of Hindu images that is not readily grasped using a Cartesian view of the viewer as an individual self-constituted subject. Rather, something like the Durkheimian understanding of the sacred as a transsubjective realm in which ‘the subject’s experience is constitutively caught up with that of others’ (Jain, , p. ) is needed. She argues that such

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trans-subjective experiences are in fact quite common in contemporary mass media culture, indeed are central to the construction of modern notions of celebrity: iconic figures in the mass-cultural public sphere are situated at the intersection between politics and consumerist desire, taking on their own distinctive logic of appeal through the peculiar value embodied in publicity itself. . . . Publicness generates a meta-popularity that imbues the iconic image with a kind of surplus value. There is a triangulation at work here between the image, the viewer, and the viewer’s sense of what others see, think and feel. (Jain, , p. )

In its articulation with Hindu visual devotional practices, this ‘imagining the gaze of others’ (Jain, , p. ) has a dangerous side: [It] is not solely tied in with fostering . . . solidarity; it can also become the ground for registering and negotiating difference or asserting power, often in violent ways. (Jain, , p. )

Jain goes on to describe how the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena has mobilized these processes to inspire violence against artwork and film representations of Hindu deities. Arguably, such practices are a key aspect of the reproduction of religion in media-saturated contemporary societies, and again exemplify structural change (in this case the development of new, sensorily rich media forms) tending to increase and transform the social significance of religion. Conclusions This chapter has sought to reframe sociological debate about the public significance of religion. First, it presented evidence that religion is having a significant public impact in a diverse range of contemporary societies, and in particular that its images, symbols, narratives and discourses are being widely circulated in contemporary media systems, rather than ‘corralled’ into a private religious sphere, as some versions of secularization theory might lead one to expect. Second, it was argued that, while sociological theory has focused on the ‘social’, there is a need for sociological theory focused on explaining the public, in this case the factors that shape the public significance of religion, which might be called a theory of religious publicization. Third, it was argued that, while secularization theory correctly identifies key social processes as having a significant impact on the social significance of religion, its account is partial both because these processes do not necessarily cause a decline in the social significance of

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religion (as secularization theory predicts), and because contrary processes can be identified to each of the major secularization processes. Thus in the Egyptian case structural differentiation was accompanied by the functionalization of religious discourse rather than the confinement of religion to a private sphere, and the same process produced not just structural differentiation (of a specialized education system from more informal and traditional modes of learning) but also its opposite de-differentiation, as religious discourse became, through its functionalization in mass education, available for use across other social systems (politics, law, etc.). Similarly, while secularization theory emphasizes the disintegrative impact of modernity on traditional forms of solidarity, for example through urbanization, modernity also provides ways of rearticulating solidarity, as in the development of transnational networks of communication which enable the creation and sustaining of globally dispersed affective communities (familial, ethnic and religious). Secularization theory, then, captures some aspects of the impact of modernity on religion, emphasizing those aspects that limit its scope and attenuate its power to sustain social bonds and sustain cognitive and affective communities; but modernity is janus-faced, and can also disperse religion across its social systems, and multiply its affective powers and mobilizing effects. Thus, differentiation is accompanied by de-differentiation, societalization by diasporic intensification and other transnational flows, rationalization by vernacularization. Through these processes the character of religious traditions is altered, the location of religious authority shifts, and the public sphere of modern societies is transformed, becoming both more open to participation by a wider range of social groups, but also more chaotic and unpredictable. What might be the implications of this kind of account of the processes that make religions public in contemporary societies for the practice of empirical theology? If this account of the impact of changing media technologies and economies on the circulation of religious signifiers is correct, then especially in post-colonial societies such changes often widen access to religiously conservative groups previously excluded by secularized elites. The negative side of this is that it is likely to increase media focus in the West on religion as a divisive and reactionary phenomenon, a problem exacerbated by media (especially television) which tend to favour the adversarial and short, simple message, not an environment in which nuanced interventions on the public role of religions are readily digestible. The furore following Archbishop Rowan Williams’ recent comments on sharia in a UK context illustrates this: it seems to

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be almost impossible in the present climate to have a reasoned debate about the recognition of Islamic religion by British institutions, because of the framing of media reaction. However, the increased public presence of religion may also have its advantages—religious commentators and commentators on religion are more likely to be taken seriously and given a greater hearing. The age of the on-line fatwa is also the age of liberal self-criticism (to an extent) and, therefore, there are opportunities to present theology as a tradition alongside others in a way that would not have been possible when religion was assumed to be a marginal and declining phenomenon. New media developments have impacted on the public sphere by providing spaces for the contestation of religious authority. While the relationship of this to more traditional forms of authority is complex, the overall effect seems to be to pluralize sources of authority and to encourage independent interpretation—which can be dangerous where radical politics are involved. One effect of this pluralization may be to undermine the monopoly, if not the authority, of religious professionals and indeed secular professionals such as academics—part of a broader process of a decline of cultures of deference. Pluralization, however, does not necessarily weaken the authority of religious texts or other sources; rather their public mobilization may intensify respect for and devotion to them. Heightened attention to ‘the religious’ also brings secular opposition and cynicism; and with the more publicly assertive forms of religiosity often being the more counter-cultural, there are dangers of a growing religioussecular divide. In this context empirical theologians can perhaps play a mediating role in explaining religious concerns to secular audiences in a language that articulates with the secular academy and broader intellectual spheres, but which is also sensitive to the internal dynamics of faith perspectives. Finally, the chapter suggests that openness to an eclectic range of methods, from the social survey to the observation of the articulation of devotional practice with modern media systems, can help us to understand more fully the public significance of religion. In building our understanding of this, we need to consider at least how states, institutions and discourses position religion, and the janus-faced potential of structural change, both to undermine and create new modes of religious influence.

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References Al-Ghabban, A. (). Global viewing in East London: Multi-ethnic youth responses to television news in a new century. Journal of European Cultural Studies, , –. Asad, T. (). Religion, Nation-State and secularism. In P. van der Veer, & H. Lehmann (Ed.), Nation and religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (pp. –). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. Awan, A. (). Virtual jihadist media: function, legitimacy and radicalizing efficacy. Journal of European Cultural Studies, , –. Ayubi, N. (). Political Islam. London: Routledge. Beck, U., & Lau, C. (). Second mortality as a research agenda: Theoretical and empirical explorations in the ‘Meta-Change’ of modern society. The British Journal of Society, (), –. Benjamin, W. ( []). The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (pp. –). New York: Schoken. Borowik, I., & Babi´nski, G. (Ed.). (). New religious phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe. Kraków: Nomos. Bruce, S., & Wallis, R. (). Secularization: the Orthodox Model. In S. Bruce, & R. Wallis (Ed.), Religion and modernization: Sociologists and historians debate the secularization thesis (pp. –). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Casanova, J. (). Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Casanova, J. (). Global Catholicism and the Politics of Civil Society. Sociological Inquiry, , –. Castells, M. (). The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell: Oxford. Castells M. (). The Information Age, Vol. . Oxford: Blackwell. Cesari, J. (). When Islam and democracy meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Chaves, M. (). Secularization as declining religious authority. Social Forces, , –. Enyedi, Z. (). The contested politics of positive neutrality in Hungary. West European Politics (), –. Geaves, R. (). Aspects of Islam. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Habermas, J. (). Theory of communicative action Vol. : Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason. Cambridge: Polity/Blackwell. Hadden, J. () Toward desacralizing secularization theory. Social Forces, (), –. Herbert, D. (). Representing Islam: The Islamization of Egypt –. In G. Beckerlegge, (Ed.), From sacred text to internet (pp. –). Aldershot: Ashgate. Herbert D. (). Religion and civil society. Aldershot: Ashgate. Hervieu-Léger, D. (). Religion as a chain of memory. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Hirshkind, C. (). Cassette Ethics: Public Piety and Popular Media in Egypt.

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Wilson, B. (). Religion in sociological perspective. Oxford: OUP. World Values Survey. (). Retrieved from www.jdsurvey.net/bdasepjds/ QuestionMarginals.jsp Yamane, D. (). Secularization on trial: In defence of a neo-secularization paradigm Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , –.

FRAMING THE GODS: THE PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION FROM A CULTURAL POINT OF VIEW

R. Ruard Ganzevoort Introduction: Framing the Gods It is hard not to think of the media or, broader, the realm of popular culture when we want to assess the public significance of religion. It may not be the only sphere where religion plays a major role in contemporary societies, but certainly in this sphere religion emerges in a vibrant, eclectic, and often innovative way. Whereas our societies struggle with the place and role of religion and try to keep its more radical and dangerous forces at bay through different models of state-church separation, the cultural sphere remains loaded with religious themes and images. In this cultural sphere the public significance of religion is not contested as much as in the political or educational sphere. It is unclear, however, how religion functions and is depicted in popular culture in general and in the media in particular. It is not necessarily the same kind of religion, let alone the same religious content or function as could be found in the religious traditions, even when sometimes traditional images or words are being used. Precisely this will prove to be an important challenge for contemporary theologians and other scholars in religion (Ganzevoort, ). How are we to understand and evaluate Madonna’s performance in her  Confession tour, in which she sings about secrets, truth, and the writing on the wall, while hanging on a large mirror-plated cross and wearing a crown of thorns? Surely these are religious forms, but what do they mean? Is there a religious intention in the artist? Is there religious experience or perception in the audience? Is there a religious function? The questions abound and call us to reconsider the very concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘religious’, because it is not clear that our traditional concepts, well-suited perhaps for the study of traditional or institutionalized (and especially Christian) religion, are still meaningful when we try to understand religion in these non-religious

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spheres.1 How should we distinguish between religious and non-religious contents and functions when such a distinction may not be that central or even possible anymore? How can we even begin to define the very concept of ‘religion’? A clear definition from the start will blind us to new variations, modulations, and emanations, but a lack of definition easily results in dissolution of the whole study of religion. I will return to this issue of defining religion in our changing context near the end of this exploration, but my starting point will be to take religion as transcending patterns of meaning arising from and contributing to the relation with what is held to be sacred. What we are looking for then, when we try to establish and understand the public significance of religion in contemporary popular culture, are the many forms of religious presence, their meanings and functions, and the ways in which audiences engage with these forms and appropriate them as material for their individual and collective stories of meaning. What we are looking for is how religion is ‘framed’, to use the expression coined by Ervin Goffman () and among others applied by van Ginneken () in his study of global news coverage. Media do not simply portray or represent a reality existing elsewhere. In a way the media themselves create the world they purport to present. One important mechanism in this process is the effect of agenda-setting. The choice of topics and viewpoints that appear in the news media is to a large extent influenced by a limited number of people, especially government officials. In entertainment media we may expect a similar influence of network officials, marketing executives, and trendsetting opinion leaders. What is ‘hot’ and what is not ‘hot’ is not so much the autonomous tidal wave of the audience’s preferences, but rather the effect of a sophisticated orchestration of media attention aiming at commercial or political success. The response to the  anti-Islam movie Fitna by Dutch politician Geert Wilders is a case in point. Both Wilders (willingly) and his opponents (unwillingly) have hyped the release of the movie and were partially successful in doing that. They were able to mobilize extensive media attention at least in the Netherlands and the response in other parts of the

1 In retrospect, our explorations in the changing faces of contemporary religion and our conversations in comparative and post-colonial study of religion should make us wary to assume that our concepts were ever completely adequate; perhaps they too were more a ‘backwardly directed projection’ than a historical past, as Hent de Vries () points out in his enticing introduction to the audacious volume Religion beyond a concept.

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world (especially in the Muslim world) is unthinkable without the media. Even when it is not one single party interested in this agenda setting, we should still be aware that media attention influences the factual developments as much as it reflects them, as the  financial crisis showed: continuous exposure exacerbated the loss of trust that is one of the main causes of the crisis. This process of agenda setting has a major impact on the attention for religion. One could argue that, in countries like the Netherlands, religion seems obsolete to many mainly because of a lack of media attention, even though religious organizations are still among the most salient and powerful contributors to society, if only for the inspiration many members of society find through their membership of such organizations. As it has been quipped: God is not dead, he is just not on TV. The second mechanism in this process is framing per se: we look at the world through the lens of the media. We see what reporters and networks want us to see. The choice of images and words to cover a particular event determines how the audience will perceive that event. This involves even more than the precise wording or imaging. It also refers to the frame in which a theme or subject is presented, the setting in which (for our topic) religion occurs. This frame defines the meanings and subconscious associations elicited in the audience and connected to the topic. The fact that, for example, Islam and violence regularly occur in the same headlines, probably has more impact on readers than the possibly nuanced contents of the articles. This should make us question how religion features in the media, or, as I would like to put it, the ways in which the Gods are framed in our contemporary media culture. But I am moving ahead of my story. The field I want to explore is the public significance of religion, or, more precisely, the ways in which religious forms appear in popular culture and particularly in non-religious media settings. To do so, I will take my starting point in the perspective of the deinstitutionalization of religion. From that perspective, I will look at how non-religious institutions take over religious functions, serving as sources and media of meaning, consolation, and community. The next step will be a discussion of the religious patterns we can find in popular culture, digging up as it were the religious material needed for a cultural exegesis. And finally, I will reflect on the meaning and function of religious forms in non-religious media: What happens when religious forms are framed in the setting of global news, entertainment, or commerce?

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r. ruard ganzevoort Deinstitutionalization or Secularization?

It is probably fair to say that the dominant perspective from which religion has been studied in the past decades is that of secularization theory. José Casanova () may be right that this is the only theory in modern social sciences that has acquired the status of a paradigm. The many differences between secularization theories notwithstanding, the central tenet is the idea that the world will become increasingly a-religious as a direct corollary of modernization. As the Western world, or in fact Europe, spearheaded these developments, it was expected that the rest of the world would follow suit and show a similar kind of secularization. In retrospect, the almost paradigmatic status of the theory was at least partly due to a European bias, overlooking how religion and modernity amalgamated in the USA and how religion continues to flourish in many non-Atlantic societies, even when certain shapes of modernization and globalization can be witnessed. Grace Davie () even calls Europe ‘the exceptional case’ and Philip Jenkins () describes ‘the next Christendom’ as coming from the South, and infusing our Western European world with charismatic influences and non-Western cosmologies, a development we already witness in the growing number of migrant and Pentecostal churches (Ganzevoort, ). Most sociologists of religion by now agree that the theory of ongoing secularization does not do justice to the actual developments in the field of religion. Modernity has indeed brought about differentiation and rationalization, and that has resulted in a less visible and less powerful position of religion in some countries. In other instances, we see a resurgence of religion in the public domain, but that is not simply a ‘revanche de Dieu’ (Kepel, ). The Netherlands may be a case in point. For quite some time it counted as one of the more profoundly secularized countries in the world, but in the past few years we have witnessed religious extremism to the point of murder, a government with a strong faction of clearly religiously inspired politicians, new selfconfidence on the part of the main churches, and fierce discussions on blasphemy, religion, and multiculturality. Religion is back on the public agenda in ways unimagined by proponents of secularism. At the same time, recent Dutch surveys show that organized Christian religion is still in decline: two out of three consider themselves not to belong to a church, and of church members only   are frequent worshippers (Becker & de Hart, ). We can observe an ever-increasing kind of religious analphabetism, first of course among the youth, but spreading

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rapidly. Indications are that although the number of Muslims is growing in our country, many of them are secularizing in their own ways, mainly through privatization and detraditionalization and much less through apostasy (Phalet & ter Wal, ). In all these studies we do not see a clear transition from religion to spirituality (Heelas & Woodhead, ). Even when people are interested in spiritual matters, they usually devote only a limited share of their time and energy and rarely organize their lives around it. That means that Peter Berger’s proposal to speak of ‘desecularization’ is also beyond the point, because we do not witness the development of a new sacred canopy (Berger et al., ). Revised secularization theories address these shortcomings and account for different trajectories in different contexts. Charles Taylor () in this vein defends the thesis that we live in a secular age, by which he means not only that the state is no longer based on religious beliefs, or that religious institutions are in decline. The most important meaning of ‘secular’ for Taylor is that religious beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours have lost their self-evident ‘truth’ by becoming just one alternative among many. We have moved ‘from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others’ (p. ). Admittedly, his approach again is limited to an Atlantic perspective, but his focus on the cultural level makes his work important for our explorations. Rather than speak of ongoing secularization or of desecularization, both of which can be corroborated by data yet fail to grasp the overall picture, I find it helpful to speak of the deinstitutionalization of religion (Streib, ), especially when we speak of the public significance of religion from a cultural point of view. Deinstitutionalization, together with institutionalization and reinstitutionalization, focuses on the collective dimension in which religion becomes organized and embedded in normative structures that are preserved in traditions and granted selfevident authority or value. This is a constantly changing dynamic process in which structures come and go and values and meanings move to the centre or to the periphery. Religion, like other aspects of life, has been institutionalized in structures and organizations in various ways and in different times and contexts, while other times and situations show a decline of those structures. The starting point for this perspective is not the historical anomaly of a hegemonic churchly Christendom (Stoffels, ), a situation found only during a limited time in a few societies, nor in a modernist rejection of religion, but in the fluid religiosity that my

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colleague in sociology of religion, Hijme Stoffels (), has dubbed ‘wild devotion’. This is not to be read as a normative term as if ‘wild’ would be in any sense less developed or profound (the way the term ‘savage’ was used by colonizers and early anthropologists). Instead, it begs to interpret institutionalized religion as ‘tamed’, controlled to follow the calibrated pathways and incorporated into a religious community strong enough to become a societal force of any importance. If a normative approach were to be ventured, it should take into account that institutionalization is indispensable if we want to preserve a religious tradition for a future generation, and yet inevitably compromises the authenticity of religion as apparent in its ‘wilder’ forms (Ganzevoort, ). For our topic this perspective of deinstitutionalization helps us interpret the steady decline of the churches’ institutional power, the rather small-sized spiritual revolutions, and the increasing deviance that church members permit themselves from the church teachings as examples of one and the same process. Moreover, it draws attention to the shapes of reinstitutionalization, in which other than traditional religious structures and organizations become the main agents for carrying, channeling, and calibrating religion. One of these is, paradoxically perhaps, the state. In recent years the Dutch parliament has become engaged in several discussions on how freedom of religion should be interpreted in relation to national security, general welfare, and so on. The main question seems to be how we can accommodate religious differences and yet preserve the normative perspective that dominates our culture and society. For that reason the government has a keen interest in how Islamic or orthodox protestant groups deal with women and homosexuals, because it is feared that the principle of equal regard may be jeopardized on the basis of freedom of religion. In effect, the state here determines normative benchmarks that religious groups have to accept. Another shape of reinstitutionalization, and one that is more central to my topic, is found in the realm of media and popular culture. Here of course the focus is not so much on legal structure, but more on content, experience, and culture. It is to that shape that we now turn. Religion and Popular Culture One of the major shifts in the past decades regards the fact that the public significance and visibility of religion no longer depend exclusively or primarily on churches and similar religious institutions. Other cultural

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agents and institutions have taken over the role of churches in offering frames of reference and meaning, including (quasi-)religious ones. My focus here will be on the various forms of mediated and commercial popular culture, like music, cinema, television, and advertisements. This sphere of popular culture has always existed alongside the more highbrow elitist culture and the realm of folk traditions, but in the past century its influence rocketed, thanks to technological and economic developments that brought television sets to the houses of billions, making it more wide-spread in many countries than refrigerators. The World Wide Web adds a new dimension to this global sphere of media culture by allowing interactive participation and open access to a wide variety of texts and images, making it a tremendous source of information for many. Many, but not all. There is still a major ‘digital divide’ worldwide. In developed countries .  of all inhabitants have a mobile phone subscription against .  in developing countries.2 In the G countries   of all inhabitants use the Internet compared with   of all people in Africa. Even when technological access is available, most people in the world would not be able to use the Internet freely, given the fact that the majority of its content is in English. These differences are fading away slowly but surely, and it is safe to say that globalized media culture will continue to be one of the most powerful spheres in contemporary societies. Kelton Cobb () reminds us that until the invention of woodblock printing the only place where our ancestors would see visual imagery was in church, whereas our world today is inundated with images: advertisements, wrapping papers, printed T-shirts, bill boards, calendars, mobile phone displays, and so on. The same can be said for the ubiquitous popular music, filling our houses, shopping malls, elevators, and, thanks to Walkman, iPod and their rivals, most of our public space. Popular culture is in sum the air we breeze. We have moved from a society in which one would encounter expressions of popular culture on an irregular basis, to one in which it is virtually impossible not to encounter such expressions. Despite (or because of?) its ubiquity, the term ‘popular culture’ is not necessarily clear. Both elements in the term are in need of reflection, because of their history and many possible meanings (Lynch, ). The word ‘popular’ refers primarily to the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow art as discussed by Walter Benjamin as early as  (Benjamin,

2

Statistics , source www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk, retrieved ...

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). The main element in this distinction seems to be the uniqueness and aura of the highbrow piece of art vis-á-vis the reproducibility of popular art. This implies that popular art is also not the same as folk art, because the latter is supposed to be produced by ordinary people or by especially traditional subcultures. Popular art and popular culture, on the contrary, originate from the already globalized production and reproduction of art through the media. Meanwhile, the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow has lost most of its meaning due to the commodification of high art in contemporary designer goods and merchandized reproductions of classic works of art. Since Mona Lisa can be found in many a household, she has lost much of her elitist aura, even to the point that it can only be a disenchantment to see the real painting as a visitor among the masses plodding through the Louvre hallways. The term ‘popular’ in ‘popular culture’ thus focuses on the common life as opposed to elite art and on the mediated and global influences as opposed to local traditions. In terms of religion, it focuses on lived religion as the religious phenomena of ordinary life, Alltag, as opposed to formal religious traditions (Luther, ; Failing & Heimbrock, ). Like other forms of popular culture, there is a lively exchange between the formal traditions and popular religion. The term ‘culture’ is equally ambiguous. Clearly we cannot speak of popular culture as one coherent field of symbolic meanings, structures, customs, and artifacts. Unlike other ‘cultures’, popular culture cannot be delineated or summarized with any kind of precision. By its very nature, popular culture is different for every sub-cultural group, even when we can identify certain global trends and influences. But when we focus on these larger phenomena, we soon find ourselves in an extremely complex field of contradictory meanings, mutually exclusive structures and ideas, and conflicting behaviours. One could argue that this is the case for every culture. It holds true at least for every modern culture, in comparison with traditional cultures still present in smaller and relatively isolated groups that can be described in a more monolithic way. Modern cultures are inevitably multifaceted, complex, and hybrid, probably because they draw upon global as well as multiple local sources. Insofar as this makes sense, the relationship between religion and culture is by definition much more complex than classic theories like Niebuhr’s can accommodate. His model was based on a dichotomy of culture on the one hand and religion (or better: Christ) on the other. The only variable is how these two interact. Something like this may even be true for Tillich, although he saw religion and culture as part of each other.

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Newer theories, like Robert Schreiter’s (), focus on inculturation and acknowledge that religion is not separate from culture but deeply embedded in it. If we add to that the view that religion itself is a cultural system (Geertz, ), then the relationship is one of coalescing cultures. These cultures themselves differ from one context to another, so that in fact a general theory of the relationship is virtually impossible. There is no clear cultural system called religion that we can find in popular culture as a global system. What we do have is much more fluid and much more intriguing: in many expressions of popular culture we find religious images, themes, and issues (Lyden, ). Pop singer Alice named her  album God is my DJ; the supernatural and religious thrive in contemporary blockbuster and arthouse cinema; Harry Potter’s magic world and struggle against evil has attracted many millions; Islam has become a major topic in cartoons, news programmes, city planning debates, and tourist excursions; and department stores shamelessly tap into religion as a powerful market by selling Buddhist meditation sets. The last example underscores the commodification of religion in popular culture. Religious forms are taken up in a different context where the intentions are probably not religious. This is also the case when artists use religious imagery or themes in a non-religious frame, like Lars von Trier’s movie Dogville. The clearly religious aspects in the movie serve in a narrative and visual frame that is probably better understood as political allegory or critique of ideology. The main question that still lies before us to be answered then is: What is the meaning, intention, and effect of religious material in nonreligious popular culture and how is this exchanged between producers and consumers? In other words, what is the religious function of nonreligious institutions working with religious forms? Lynch () summarizes three main functions that may be relevant for religious forms in popular culture as well. First, there is a social function in that religion provides people with an experience of community and mutual consolation, grounded in shared beliefs and values. Second, there is an existential or hermeneutic function, providing people with myths, rituals, and so on that help them live with a sense of identity, meaning, and purpose. Third, there is a transcendent function, providing them with a means to experience or encounter God, the numinous, or the transcendent. This third function taps into the aesthetic dimension of religion that is gaining attention from practical theologians (Ballard & Couture, ). These functions can be found in popular culture, but cultural phenomena will differ in the degree to which they perform each one of these functions.

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Major events like concerts will be strong in their social function and perhaps also in a transcendent function, whilst Internet-based collections of religious images and texts will be more important in their hermeneutic function. Television shows portraying human misery and Internet sites bringing together fellow-sufferers are an important source of consolation and building community. We should, however, not overlook the fact that these religious functions are often set and/or exploited in non-religious, commercial or political contexts. Although religious forms may perform these functions, the overarching goal of the provider may be simply to make money or to orchestrate religious energy in support of a political case. In other contexts, like education or hospital care, religion is seen as a field of needs that should be catered for, but the overarching aim is defined by the techno-economic rationality of the institution. One may ask whether these non-religious settings do not make for an inevitable perversion of religion. If answered affirmatively, the next question clearly has to be whether this is any different in the realm of traditional religion over the centuries. There have always been issues of power, money, and vested interests. Not every religious form of course is equally tainted, neither in traditional religion nor in popular culture. We also find relatively ‘authentic religion’ unaffected by such powers, but even then those probably draw upon the religious material provided by these ecclesial, political, or commercial powers. Patterns of Religion in Popular Culture The complex question thus remains: How does religion occur and function in popular culture? Obviously, I will not be able to exhaust that question in the confines of this chapter, but I will try to trace some of the patterns of religion we find in popular culture and reflect on the meaning of these patterns. This is easier said than done, because the categories in which we try to organize and understand the patterns of religion in popular culture are often derived from traditional religion. Cobb (), for example, devotes chapters to Images of God, Human Nature, Sin, Salvation, and Life Everlasting. And Wilhelm Gräb () concludes his book on religion in a media society, named after Schleiermacher’s catchphrase Sinn fürs Unendliche, sense for the infinite, with a major chapter on the theological doctrine of justification. Meaningful as these are in a reflection on religion in popular culture, they do not seem to be categories

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emerging from the material itself. That means we are at risk of misinterpreting the material and reading too much or too little or the wrong things into our analyses. We will have to look for the explicit and implicit forms of religion (Bailey, ) in their own right. This is the approach that Jörg Herrmann () has taken in his study Sinnmaschine Kino, cinema as a producer of meaning. Vanhoozer et al. () likewise try to understand the intrinsic meanings of the grocery store checkout line, Eminem, and fantasy funerals. Following a similar approach, the patterns of religion that I will present here are heuristic at best, personal taste at worst. However any reader may judge it, it is intended as an invitation truly to start investigating religion in popular culture not as something derived from the religious tradition, but as a new field of religious meanings and expressions, using, subverting, and reinventing older traditions. The patterns I will discuss in this chapter are: Romantic love, Thrillseeking, and More between heaven and earth.3 Romantic Love The first pattern I see is that of romantic love stories. According to Jörg Herrmann’s () analysis of blockbuster movies from the nineties, this is probably the most important theme in contemporary cinema. His view is not completely supported by box office figures of (primarily Western) films.4 Among the fifty most lucrative movies, the only ones explicitly about romantic love are the Shrek movies, Forrest Gump, and top selling Titanic.5 In many other movies it may be secondary, but still plays an important role. We also encounter the theme in pop music, novels, sitcoms, opera, dating sites on the web and dating programmes on television, and an ever-increasing attention for Valentine’s day, by now the top selling day for flowers. In popular culture, weddings have become major events for which people are willing to burden themselves with large loans. Many couples struggle to organize the perfect wedding, preferably on a tropical beach or in a medieval castle, and if possible topped off with a solemn yet undemanding wedding service in a serene and photogenic chapel. It seems then that Cupid has moved toward the centre of the

3 Given space, I would also discuss themes like Back to our roots, Heroes in dark and dangerous times, Caring for the tragic, and Nature as truth and mystery. 4 It is possible that Bollywood movies have a larger number of romantic stories, but most of these are not included in IMDB-statistics. 5 www.imdb.com. Retrieved ...

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pantheon, as is testified by the regular appearance of his image on many items for home and garden decoration. So what does this mean? On the whole, it seems that the romantic story is governed by the belief that true love conquers all. Strange couplings like in Shrek, finding the love of your life and celebrating it, the idea running through all this is that we are meant to find our soul partner and live happily ever after. Romantic love as depicted in this pattern is the experience of being unified. It means overcoming barriers and experiences of being divided. Moreover, romantic love involves ecstasy, losing oneself to find oneself, and discovering some kind of eternal bliss. This true love saves us from our social and legal confines and allows us to start a new and different life. In Pretty Woman, Herrmann () analyzes, the prostitute is saved from the gutter and the lonely manager is saved from freezing to death in a world dominated by money. In Titanic, upper class girl Rose is saved from the deadly world of money, and Jack is saved from his lower deck prison. Their newfound life is so profound that even death cannot end that. This is nothing less than metanoia, being born again, or rebirthing. It feeds the awareness that this life is not real unless we come to see it in the new light of love, and by consequence, real death is not the fact that our physical existence may terminate, but the state of being without love. This kind of reversing the meanings is of course very close to the Gospels, even when both filmmakers and viewers don’t perceive it as a religious dimension. Some stories present the tragic version in which the lovers cannot be together, like Brokeback Mountain, or lose each other, like Love Story. This tragic version, however, underscores that it actually should be otherwise. True love bridges gaps between persons, even when they come from different backgrounds, even when their families or cultures clash. In some cases, it is spelled out that even death cannot come between lovers. The challenge then is to find true love and overcome all the barriers. Such a story is evidently a modern one. The idea that relationships should be based on romantic love emerged parallel to the individualization that was part of modernity. Structures of race, class, age, and gender are critiqued for barring true love. A hedonistic element is not alien to this story in the sense that this true love is primarily one of the senses, being overwhelmed by love rather than choosing to invest in a relationship that may be stable but relatively dispassionate. True love is passion. We can interpret this pattern as a religious one, but not in the sense that there is a divine power behind this experience of true love. In some stories (like A Life Less Ordinary) this may be the case, but usually there is

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no mention of anything like it. Rather, love itself is almost divine. The experience of being loved unconditionally, traditionally interpreted as something only God could give, is now something that lovers have to give to each other, which places a new burden on their relationship. Romantic love, unlike religion, Ulrich Beck () notes, has no ‘extra nos’ and is therefore deinstitutionalized par excellence. This self-referentiality of love, however, makes it in the end subject to the same contingency from which it has to save the lovers. In terms of the public significance of religion, we do well to acknowledge the fact that religious traditions, at least the Christian ones, have often been ambivalent about this kind of romantic, ecstatic love. On the positive account, it was and is accepted in its more conventional shapes, facilitated by sentimental wedding ceremonies in beautiful churches. At times it was even venerated and spiritualized in its wilder shapes, like in bridal mysticism. In that case, however, the interhuman version of romantic love was actually rejected in favour of the relationship with God. This marks the more negative, or at least more restrictive account in which romantic passion was seen as a risk factor rather than as an opportunity to experience something divine. Especially unconventional love is usually disapproved of, even though it is regularly heralded in biblical stories. This ambivalence has contributed to the image of the Church as being repressive and out of tune with contemporary human relationships. Even though the first letter of John equates love with God, the Church by and large has distanced itself from such a view and propagated instead that love is the gift of God and should be structured, domesticated, that is, according to God’s laws. The understanding of romantic love in popular culture therefore can be seen as a form of reclaiming the divine nature of love itself. Religion as proclaimed in popular culture is freed from the restrictive messages of traditional religion, freed also from the notions of law, guilt, and sin. What is left is a positive view of human desire for romantic love. When this desire is not realized, it is not because of our wrongdoings or sins, but because of tragic circumstances or a repressive social context. The personal experience of romantic love can be understood as popular religion that may be at odds with the religious tradition’s perspective and regulations. Sometimes these two levels of religion can be negotiated and popular religion can be incorporated into traditions, at other times the two are that much different that accommodation seems impossible. To grasp the full meaning of this pattern, we should also pay attention to the evangelical depiction of Christian faith in which faith itself is

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defined as a living and loving relationship with Jesus Christ. This depiction usually includes metaphors and images directly derived from the discourse of romantic love, sometimes through references to the Song of Songs. Jesus, the story goes, loves us so deeply and passionately that he has gone through every ordeal needed to make a relationship with us possible. Moreover, he stalks the people he loves until they surrender to his love. When they do, they find that he is their perfect soul mate, overwhelming them and fulfilling their every desire and saving them from the meaninglessness and loneliness they are in. For that reason, believers desire to be close to him, share their most intimate thoughts with him and make time for intimate conversations as one would do with a human lover. Again this love is one of the senses, not of cognitions. The tension between affirming and rejecting stances toward romantic love is exemplified by recent debates in the Dutch Roman-Catholic Church, where priests and bishops have become more restrictive in how weddings can be performed. By now only official hymns and texts can be used and non-participating or interdenominational couples are discouraged from having their marriage blessed in a formal church setting. Here we see the gap between institutionalized religion and popular religion widening to a degree where the Church risks becoming alien to many. This is not necessarily because the Church upholds moral or spiritual standards, but primarily because the fundamentally religious meanings of love are misunderstood and not taken seriously. Other churches see weddings as a wonderful opportunity to develop a (temporary maybe) relationship with people who want somehow to include the church symbolism in their celebration of love. These efforts to christen the religion of love may serve to embed the self-referential love in a larger, more fundamental, and less contingent divine presence. Whether that will be successful depends in part on how the changing perspectives on love and religion are acknowledged. What is at stake here, then, is the question of how romantic love functions as a religious theme in popular culture versus traditional religion. Thrillseeking A second pattern in popular culture with possible religious overtones and references is what I would call thrillseeking. Extreme sports like bungee jumping and survival trekking have become mainline pastimes. The Dutch television programme Try Before You Die features its hosts in extreme situations like joining a military boot camp in arctic Norway,

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Base jumping in Macau, having your hand bitten by a snake, taking a bath filled with mealworms, eating dogshit, being hit by a car, or playing in a porn movie. Similar and somewhat earlier examples can be found in NBC’s Fear Factor (also a Dutch format), MTV’s Jackass and in some of the stunts of UK’s Brainiac. Apparently there is a market for the extreme and it is not limited to professional TV programmes or to aberrant individuals on the fringe of society. It has in fact become socially quite acceptable. Many contributions to YouTube represent similar extreme moments that were already exploited in the painful experiences filmed accidentally and then submitted to America’s Funniest Home Videos and its international offspring. Outside of the media, vacationing is a case in point. Although journeys to Antarctica or into space are not yet ordinary, our regular holidays are way beyond what people two generations before us dared to imagine. Even our entertainment parks have evolved from relatively calm and child-friendly playgrounds into exciting rollercoasterworlds. This love of thrills is well understood by marketeers who create slogans like ‘live life to the max’ or use the word ‘extreme’, preferably with a double or triple x to symbolize its extraordinariness. Thrillseeking has a strong neurological aspect. The experience of extreme sensations and the accompanying fear and pain stir our biopsychological system in ways that are to a degree similar to traumatization. The overwhelming experience overrides our everyday functioning and destabilizes our physiological balance. The difference of course is that in traumatization the experience is not sought or initiated by the person but inflicted upon him or her, which adds dramatically to the experience of powerlessness. In thrills as discussed here, the person surrenders himself or herself under controlled circumstances to ensure safety. This reduces the negative effects, while the sensation and the biopsychological processes are still activated. The experience may even lead to a kind of addiction, in which the body asks for recurring amounts of adrenaline. Probably equally important as the biopsychological is the social aspect. Thrillseeking is commonly shared with others either directly or mediated. Hence the popularity of YouTube contributions. Without an audience, the thrill is not as interesting because part of the experience is the fact that one is observed, admired, or even taken for a fool. Whatever the evaluation by others, at least it proves that one is not ordinary. In that sense, the thrill is not only an extraordinary moment, it also transforms the participant into an extraordinary person. Obviously, this search for thrills tends to require ever more extreme experiences to satisfy the desires. The ‘been there, done that’ attitude

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of blasé young people who have seen it all demands providers of new experiences to search and cross the borders time and again. All this deepens the divide between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between the everyday world of work, school, and family, and the other world of holidays, dance events, and special occasions. It is not enough anymore to spend a Sunday afternoon with the in-laws; one should do something special. The warning ‘Don’t try this at home’ serves not only to protect innocent viewers from dangerous experiments, it first of all emphasizes that these experiments and experiences are not a part of ordinary life but belong to the extraordinary. This divide between ordinary time and experiences and extraordinary time and experiences is a traditionally religious structure. It is a central feature of religion to separate the secular from the profane and from the sacred. Certain times, places, people, words, gestures, and objects are set apart, distinguished from the ordinary. Friday afternoons, Saturdays, and Sunday morning are for Muslims, Jews, and Christians respectively sacred times as compared with other days of the week. The religious building differs from other places in its sacred meanings. The religious official can be identified by special garments that prove him or her to be different from ordinary people. It is by creating such differences that we can experience anything as beyond the ordinary and thereby transcend our routine life. This separation of the extraordinary from the ordinary thus makes it possible to experience the sacred at all. Henning Luther () has identified two modes in which religion relates to the everyday world, Alltag. The first he calls Unterbrechung (interruption), the second Unterhaltung (conservation).6 In the mode of conservation, the everyday world is sustained and protected by the meanings and by the structures that religion provides. This is the social function of religion on which, for example, Durkheim focused. Religious customs, regulations, rites and myths help to prevent the social world from falling apart. This social function of conservation seems to be less effective in our societies due to the deinstitutionalization of religion. When religion is no longer granted the authority to play this conserving role, its effects wither away. The mode of interruption, by contrast, thrives in this Erlebnisgesellschaft (Schulze, ), this experience-driven society we live in. Central to our society, Schulze maintains, is the search

6 This distinction parallels Thomas Tweed’s () description of religion as dwelling and crossing, creating specific spaces through boundaries and crossing those boundaries.

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for happiness and self-actualization. In terms of religion, then, it is especially the religious events and experiences that interest seekers. Traditional Sunday morning services, routinely sustaining everyday life, tend to be less attractive, especially when they are designed to be as accessible and low profile as possible. It may be the case that the everyday conservation mode of religion is catered for adequately in popular culture itself with all its implicit religious overtones and references so that a specific religious realm is less appealing. When people turn to religion, it is often because they seek or experience something like an interruption, something beyond the ordinary. Religious healing services (with their promise of miracles), religious events, and traditional high liturgy (with a stronger performance of the sacrosanct) seem to appeal more. Probably this is because these religious modes are more firmly based in the distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary. More between Heaven and Earth The third pattern may seem more overtly religious. It is the plethora of expressions of the belief that there is more to human life than meets the eye. Whereas the modern world was characterized by disenchantment, there seems to be a resurgence of the magic, occult, and spiritual (Heimbrock & Streib, ). I am referring here to the intermediate sphere between the earthly rationally explainable and the absolute transcendence of the divine. This intermediate sphere is populated by angels, demons, ghosts, and forces that derive their existence and power from the Gods and exert their influence in our reality. One of the most prominent and traditional features of this pattern may be the appearance of angels in movies (Jaspers & Rother, ), but there are also more implicit examples. From ‘the force’ in Star Wars to the aliens in War of the Worlds and including the whole genre of horror, zombie, and many adventure movies including the Indiana Jones series, there is a recurring symbolization of this intermediate sphere that affects our life. This is not only the case in cinema. Crystal-gazers, palm-readers, and other fortunetellers have made their way from a fairground attraction to a respected consultant for those uncertain how to navigate their lives. Psychics offer their services on television and in private practice to communicate with the dead and to trace missing persons. The world of alternative medicine in part assumes this intermediate sphere that cannot be proven or disproven by traditional scientific measures. Usually the ideas behind alternative medicine do not contain a traditional notion of a God or Gods but

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something more concrete and yet more nebulous like cosmos or nature. Among younger people there is a fascination for the occult that taps into the same intermediate sphere (Streib, ). Moreover, in our days of globalization the non-Western religious world is merging with the Western, bringing a cosmology with it that is much more populated with entities, forces, and spirits (Ganzevoort, ). Problems in health or relationships are treated as not just that, but as symptoms of a spiritual problem that needs to be addressed. Christian versions of this pattern include angels, saints, demons, and the Holy Spirit. It is especially in its more charismatic currents that this intermediate sphere is acknowledged and negotiated. There is an abundance of spiritual warfare literature swallowed by believers who are convinced that their life circumstances are influenced by good and evil entities, that their and others’ eternal fate depends on how they engage in this battle and that they are called to reclaim this world and the people in it for Christ. In this spiritual war, adversities and miseries are not seen as contingencies, but as deliberate inflictions carrying spiritual meaning. Coping with such adversities therefore implies spiritual strategies and a search for faith healing. Even when there are hardly any medically confirmed physical healings, for the believers the performance of faith healing is a means of positioning oneself in the spiritual warfare and the relationship with God (van Saane, ). Testimonies of healing serve to prove the reality of God’s existence and intervention in this world, usually through gifted preachers and attributed to the Holy Spirit. All these examples question the rationalistic version of modernity in which only the empirically verifiable would count as true. Over against this reductionist tendency, it is claimed that some things may not be open for empirical measurement but still are true and real. Sometimes a quasiempirical approach is ventured in which the experience of the religious believer and/or some alternative science is propagated as evidence, competing with the rationality of modern science. Obviously this debate on the limitations of contemporary scientific approaches in religious matters needs to be taken beyond easy stereotyping (van Huyssteen, ). More central to our discussion here is the theological question of what it means to speak of divine intervention, spiritual realities, and so on vis à vis the empiricist nature of most of our knowledge. If one denies the plausibility of divine intervention in this empirical reality, the meaningfulness of a religious perspective seems to be downgraded to the level of illusion or imagination. If on the other hand one claims the reality of this intervention, the question is how to negotiate the scientific view of truth

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and reality. This seems to be the ultimate dilemma for theological reflection on the relation between God and reality in which it seems that either God or reality is at risk of being marginalized. Interestingly, in this third pattern of popular culture we do not find this tension between faith and rationalistic modernity. The possibility of spiritual intervention in our world is assumed and not refuted, which relates more to the cosmology of non-Western culture and of the culture in which the Bible was written than to the dominant reasoning in contemporary Western society. Sometimes the latter is in fact interpreted as an illusionary world, a virtual reality. Bram van de Beek () interprets the world of faith, liturgy and Spirit as the actual reality (the indicative or ‘as is’) and the empirical world as imagination (the conjunctive or ‘as if ’). Similarly, in The Matrix, reality as it is experienced turns out to be a virtually created world, used to keep humans prisoner. In Existenz, there is even a range of levels of reality in which every level is the virtual reality of a computer game on a deeper level, so that in the end it is not clear if there is an absolute level of reality. In this perspective, one should not be surprised to learn that external forces from another ‘world’ or ‘level of reality’ enter into ours and define what happens to us. The taken for granted rationality of our modern Western thinking is challenged in favour of one that leaves room for forces and influences that we cannot comprehend from within the limits of this worldly empiricism. Religious Forms in Non-Religious Media In all brevity, the examples I have elaborated here may suffice to start addressing the question of the public significance of religion from a cultural point of view. My point is that, given the deinstitutionalization of religion, religious forms re-emerge in the public domain in different locales and cultural guises. This transformation, however, has important ramifications that need to be teased out and debated if we want to further our understanding of the public significance of religion. The first one of them involves the discussion of the notion of religion per se, because it is not self-evident that my examples are really religious. In the opening pages I described religion as a transcending pattern of meaning arising from and contributing to the relation with what is held to be sacred. With this approach, I try to avoid both the Scylla of an overly substantive definition that rests on traditional forms of religion and easily excludes newer forms and the Charybdis of functional

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definitions that easily include everything and lose their definitive power. I want to highlight some aspects of this definition that are pertinent to the topic of this chapter. The term ‘transcending pattern of meaning’ should not be mistaken for transcendence. As my examples may make clear, it is more about the processes of transcending the boundaries of our human existence than about some Being or Space or Reality beyond our life world. To speak of religion implies at least that we move beyond our existence in some form of yearning or openness for what may overwhelm us (Ford, ). When that condition is not met, I would hesitate to speak of religion, even when material from religious traditions is used. This process of transcending, however, is not enough to speak of religion. I would claim that it should be embedded in and contribute to a relation with what is held to be sacred. Again, one should note that this does not necessarily refer to the Divine. People and groups may hold many different things and beings to be sacred, but not everything would count as such. To hold a thing or being as sacred implies at least that it functions as a centre of meaning and that the person or group structures his, her, its life accordingly. In this approach, romantic love can become sacred for a person (or in a society), but it need not be so for all. This, obviously, is not a complete theory of religion, but only a starting point from which we can try to address the changing religious forms. The second point for further discussion regards the fact that religious forms in popular culture often come in the shape of non-religious symbolization of formerly religious themes. My interpretation of romantic love, for example, as a religious form may seem like an overinterpretation to the non-religious lover or observer. I would contend that these new forms at least offer a meaning structure analogous to religious traditions, and that for many they qualify as religious in the sense of the definition used here. They are, at least for some, a transcending pattern of meaning, and romantic love seems sacred to many. To go one step further, in the symbolization we often find implicit or explicit references to religious traditions. Herrmann () for example highlights the taglines of Titanic: ‘Collide with destiny’ and ‘Nothing on earth could come between them’. Many pop songs contain references to prayer, angels, and so on. In that sense, the central meaning structures we encounter in popular culture should be scrutinized for their religious overtones and references. Third, the fact that we find meaning structures with religious references or analogies does not imply that the forms encountered have the same meanings as their parallels in religious traditions. We should expect subtle or overt changes of meaning, sometimes amplifying the tradi-

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tional meanings, sometimes contradicting them. In the religious traditions romantic love could be interpreted as gift from God, but in contemporary popular culture it is self-referential, even when it is experienced as divine. This may be interpreted as deterioration; it may also be read as a critical response to religious modes of dependency that run against individual responsibility. Modern romantic love does not defer responsibility to God but assigns it to the lovers themselves. More important, however, than how these old and new forms should be evaluated is the fact that the meanings are not necessarily identical, so that we first have to develop an in-depth understanding of the religious forms inside and outside the religious traditions. Fourth, in the different spheres, religious forms are introduced and circulated with quite different intentions. Producers of advertisements may incorporate religious forms to symbolize a particular desire or experience that they want to associate with the product at hand. This may be seen as a vulgarization of religious forms from the perspective of the religious tradition or as a profound way of articulating such desires and experiences. But whichever interpretation we would venture, it is quite likely that the producers will have a much more pragmatic approach to the matter. Likewise, artists like Madonna or von Trier may use religious forms to express or symbolize non-religious perspectives. Traditional critical criteria, then, of truth, virtue, and beauty (the Platonic notions of verum, bonum, pulchrum) crumble under the weight of commercial or ideological success and religion itself becomes commodified. What is more, the non-functional or gratuitous dimension of religion dissolves when religion is being used this way. As discussed earlier, the same risks can be observed in the religious traditions, where religion has often served to further political or economic aims and thus came to be conflated with power, oppression, and a similar kind of perversion. Religion is always, at least in part, shaped by non-religious intentions, so we should probably investigate this dimension more seriously. Fifth, if we look at how participants and audiences perceive and process religious forms in non-religious spheres, we should be aware that the meanings they can attribute to these forms depend on their own backgrounds and on the non-religious framing in which the religious forms are presented. Many people, even those with a religious upbringing, have only limited knowledge of religious traditions, including their own. They draw upon religious elements from popular culture more than from the official traditions (Clark, ). They do not have a well-developed frame of reference from which they are able to recognize, interpret, and

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evaluate the meaning of religious forms in connection to the tradition from which it emerged. That implies that their assessment of the religious forms will most often not be as dense and informed as possible. Film audience research shows that the religious interpretations offered by viewers, if present at all, are immanent, subjective, and focused on authenticity, autonomy, and ‘small transcendence’ (Gräb & Herrmann, ). Because of that, their interpretation will be even more defined by the kind of framing that is offered, one that is usually defined by liberal market politics or their radical fundamentalist opponents. While the symbolization of divine presence in angels, for example, may function in a church service to facilitate the experience of an encounter with God, in a home decoration catalogue they will most probably not be able to do so, even when a quintessential reference to the divine is maintained. Religious forms in non-religious settings then aren’t the same as in religious settings, because they are framed and perceived differently. Conclusion: Framing the Gods I am nearing the end of my explorations. Let me conclude by saying that the public significance of religion from a cultural point of view lies in the potential of religious forms to be reconfigured in new ways beyond their original context in religious traditions. In this reconfiguration they lose much of their previous content, meaning, and function, but they may gain new vitality and critically engage with the tradition from which they originated. To assess that, however, we need to learn to recognize and interpret these new configurations in their own right. This effort steers theology into the relatively new waters of cultural and media studies, but the empirical theological perspective cannot be missed if we want to understand the truly religious dimension. One way of articulating this theological perspective is by asking how the Gods are framed in different configurations of popular culture and of religious traditions. Bergesen and Greeley () have taken this question literally in studying God in the movies, analyzing how Gods and God-like figures function in quite diverse popular movies. They conclude that the God of the movies is framed as much more positive and life-affirming than the God of the Christian tradition, who is framed in more ambivalent terms. Other have hinted at this question in the study of religion and radical fundamentalist groups, like Mark Juergensmeyer

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() in his book Terror in the mind of God. His book may be read as a portrayal of how God is framed as being exclusivist and violent by both radical believers and news media covering religiously inspired violence. Even though the latter may in fact advocate a modern tolerant version of religion, the fact that many headlines tie the word violence to words like religious, God, or particularly Islam, creates a frame in which God becomes violent. The questions surrounding the public significance of religion ultimately relate to how the Gods are framed, what meanings evolve from this framing, how these meanings are perceived by audiences, and how that affects the ways in which people can or cannot live together in salutary ways. These are theological questions par excellence and we should not hesitate to bring our theological expertise to the task of unravelling these complex issues and maybe contribute to more constructive framing of the Gods. References Bailey, E.I. (). Implicit religion in contemporary society. Kampen: Kok Pharos. Ballard, P., & Couture, P. (Eds.) (). Creativity, imagination and criticism. The expressive dimension in practical theology. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press. Beck, U. (). Die irdische Religion der Liebe. In U. Beck, U. & E. BeckGernsheim (Eds.), Das ganz normale Chaos der Liebe. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Becker, J., & De Hart, J. (). Godsdienstige veranderingen in Nederland. Verschuivingen in de binding met de kerken en de christelijke traditie. Den Haag: SWP. Benjamin, W. (). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (). Illuminations. London: Jonathan Cape. Berger, P., Sacks, J., Martin, D., Weiming, T., Weigel, G., Davie, G., & An-Naim, A.A. (). The desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world politics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Bergesen, A.J., & Greeley, A.M. () God in the movies. New Brunswick: Transaction. Casanova, J. (). Public religions in the modern world, Chicago, ILL: University of Chicago Press. Clark, L.S. () The funky side of religion. An ethnographic study of adolescent religious identity and the media. In J. Mitchell, & S. Marriage (Eds.), Mediating religion: Conversations in media, religion, and culture (pp. –). Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Cobb, K. (). The Blackwell guide to theology and popular culture. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Davie, G. (). Europe: the exceptional case. Parameters of faith in the modern world. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. De Vries, H. (). Introduction: Why still ‘Religion’? In H. de Vries (Ed.), Religion. Beyond a concept (pp. –). New York: Fordam University Press. Failing, W.-E., & Heimbrock, H.-G. (). Gelebte Religion Wahrnehmen. Lebenswelt—Alltagskultur—Religionspraxis. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Ford, D.F. (). Theology. A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ganzevoort, R.R. (). De hand van God en andere verhalen: Over veelkleurige vroomheid en botsende beelden. Zoetermeer: Meinema. Ganzevoort, R.R. (). Staging the divine: A theological challenge for the churches in Europe. In M.M. Jansen, & H.C. Stoffels (Eds.), A moving God: Immigrant churches in the Netherlands (pp. –). Münster: LIT. Geertz, C. (). Religion as a cultural system. In M. Banton (Ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the study of religion (pp. –). London: Tavistock Publications. Goffman, E. (). Frame analysis. An essay on the organization of experience. London: Harper and Row. Gräb, W. (). Sinn fürs Unendliche: Religion in der Mediengesellschaft. Gütersloh: Kaiser. Gräb, W., & Herrmann, J. (). ‘Irgendwie fühl Ich mich wie Frodo!’ Eine empirische Studie zum Phänomen der Medienreligion. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Heelas, P., & Woodhead, L. (). The spiritual revolution: Why religion is giving way to spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell. Heimbrock, H.-G., & Streib, H. (Eds.) (). Magie. Katastrophenreligion und Kritik des Glaubens. Eine theologische und religionstheoretische Kontroverse um die Kraft des Wortes. Kampen: Kok Pharos. Herrmann, J. (). Sinnmaschine Kino: Sinndeutung und Religion im populären Film. Gütersloh: Kaiser. Jaspers, K. & Rother, C. (Eds.) (). Flügelschlag. Engel im Film / A Beat of the Wings. Angels in Film. Berlin: Bertz. Jenkins, P. (). The next Christendom: The coming of global Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Juergensmeyer, M. (). Terror in the mind of God. The global rise of religious violence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kepel, G. (). La Revanche de Dieu: Chrétiens, juifs et musulmans à la reconquête du monde. Paris: Seuil. Luther, H. (). Religion und Alltag. Bausteine zu einer praktischen Theologie des Subjekts. Stuttgart: Radius. Lyden, J.C. (). Film as religion: Myths, morals, and rituals. New York: New York University Press. Lynch, G. (). Understanding theology and popular culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Phalet, K. & ter Wal, J. (). Moslim in Nederland. Een onderzoek naar de religieuze betrokkenheid van Turken en Marokkanen. Den Haag: SWP.

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Schreiter, R.J. () The new catholicity: Theology between the global and the local. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Schulze, G. (). Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Stoffels, H.C. (). ‘Wilde devotie’ als doe-het-zelfreligie: een terreinverkenning. In M. Barnard, & N.A. Schuman (Eds.), Nieuwe wegen in de liturgie (pp. –). Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum. Stoffels, H.C. (). Opkomst en ondergang van de buitenkerkelijke. Enige historische ontwikkelingen. In G. Heitink, & H.C. Stoffels (Eds.), Niet zo’n kerkganger (pp. –). Baarn: Ten Have. Streib, H. (). Entzauberung der Okkultfaszination: Magisches Denken und Handeln in der Adoleszenz als Herausforderung an die Praktische Theologie. Kampen: Kok. Streib, H. (Ed.) (). Religion inside and outside: Traditional institutions. Leiden: Brill. Taylor, C. (). A secular age. Cambridge, MS: Belknap (Harvard University). Tweed, T.A. (). Crossing and dwelling. A theory of religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vanhoozer, K.J., Anderson, C.A., & Sleasman, M.K. (). Everyday theology. How to read cultural texts and interpret trend. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Van De Beek, A. (). De wereld als verbeelding. Theologisch Debat, , –. Van Ginneken, J.V. (). Understanding global news: A critical introduction. London: Sage. Van Huyssteen, J.W. (). The shaping of rationality: Toward interdisciplinarity in theology and science. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Van Saane, J. (). Gebedsgenezing: Boerenbedrog of serieus alternatief. Kampen: Kok.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION: LEFT TO THE GODS? AN EMPIRICAL STUDY AMONG DUTCH YOUNG PEOPLE

Johannes A. (Hans) van der Ven Introduction Of late the Dutch Humanistic League (Humanistisch Verbond) has been advertising under the slogan: ‘Without your support humanism is left to the gods’. The ambiguity is plain. Traditionally the expression ‘left to the gods’ refers to the chaos that is said to have characterized tribal ‘pagans’ and their gods. But now it is suggested that without the Humanistic League (secularized ‘pagans’, with no gods) the Netherlands is in danger of being overrun by groups ‘with gods’, like Christians and Muslims. The irony conceals a diagnostic question: In our increasingly multicultural Western society, who carries most weight? Is it secularized ‘pagans’? Or are believers on the up and up once more? In this chapter I relate the question to two constitutional principles: the separation of church and state and religious freedom. The latter is one of the most fundamental human rights and the first functions as its necessary condition. Together they form one of the cornerstones of Western society. Perhaps Christians and Muslims are more or less against the separation of church and state, for example, because it leaves them politically powerless, and in favour of religious freedom, because it gives them autonomy. Conversely, perhaps nonreligious people are in favour of the separation of church and state and against freedom of religion. Or perhaps are both principles supported equally by religious people (Christians and Muslims) and by nonreligious people? The question I would like to study is three-fold. The first part is descriptive of character: What are the attitudes of these three groups (Christians, Muslims and nonreligious people) toward the separation of state and the freedom of religion? The second one is descriptive of character as well: What are their religious beliefs and participation in religious rituals? The third is causal in nature: To what extent have these

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groups’ beliefs and ritual participation an effect on their attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion? The empirical study I conduct in order to answer both questions is based on data collected in the Netherlands in – among three groups in this multireligious society, comprising Christian, Muslim and nonreligious young people at the end of secondary school and the start of their tertiary education. These are the groups where the separation of church and state as well as the freedom of religion pose most problems for mutual relations and who, in the near future, will be the leaders at the micro and meso levels of society. The (continued) support for the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion depends on them. First, I inquire theoretically into identifications processes within a multicultural society, because the attitudes in which I am interested (the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion) can be considered as indicators of the extent to which the three groups identify with these two constitutional themes, which belong to the cornerstone of any multireligious democratic society. Then I explore the function of the separation of church and state and religious freedom. Further I elaborate on the meaning of religious beliefs and rites. On this basis I posit certain expectations about the influence of religious beliefs and ritual participation on the attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion. Then I turn to my empirical, exploratory study, which I will do in three steps. The first step is to measure the attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion among the three groups of Christian, Muslim and nonreligious young people. The second step is to measure their religious beliefs and ritual participation. The third step is to measure the effects of religious beliefs and ritual participation on their attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion. Finally I will reflect on the empirical finding.1 Identification Processes in a Multicultural Society In Western society the notion of tolerance is on the way down. The majority is less and less inclined to put up with the languages, cultures and religions of minorities. What will take its place is not cut and dried. 1

For an extensive elaboration on this article see van der Ven, , chapters –.

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Some groups want to replace tolerance with assimilation: in their view minorities must adapt, for they are not descendants of ‘our’ nation. The operative criterion here is kinship (jus sanguinis).2 Others feel that descent does not count; the sole criterion is people’s actual presence in the host country (jus soli). Among these people, too, the notion of tolerance has had its day, since they assume an asymmetry between majority and minorities. The latter are only tolerated as a lesser good or even an evil; and the favour can in any case be revoked at any time (Forst, ). Tolerance is replaced by a positive attitude toward multicultural diversity, and its many-hued variety is embraced as a good thing. The question is: how do we get past the dilemma of assimilation versus diversity?3 Theoretically the question may easily be answered by invoking the principle of integration. It refers to a combination of a cultural orientation to the country of origin and to the host country (Berry, ). Research shows that in this respect there is a distinction between two contexts: many members of minorities would like to preserve the culture of their country of origin in the personal context of family life and the relations with their own cultural group, whereas in the professional context a substantial proportion want to adapt to the culture of the host country in their school and working lives (Dagevos & Gijsberts, , pp. –). Seen from the latter context, a full and equal multilevel participation by minorities is very important: participation in the job market, education and social security on an equal footing (WRR, , pp. –). This is a necessary condition for eventual identification with the host country, thus erasing the disparity between ‘us’ and ‘them’. In general, identification entails two distinctions. The first is between primary and secondary identification (WRR, , pp. –). Primary identification refers to types of identification and belonging that one inherits ‘naturally’: gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, kinship. It emerges in childhood and early youth, is not really a matter of choice and not easy to change. It may range from slight to strong (Parsons, , pp. –). Secondary identification pertains to other social contexts in which people participate and with which they identify to a greater or lesser extent, or not at all as in the case of dis-identification (Jenkins, ). Whereas primary identification is, so to speak, determined by 2 That is forbidden by the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, art. ,. 3 In the USA there were three successive phases: tolerance, assimilation and diversity (Friedman, , pp. –), although that is obviously not a ‘social law’.

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birth (ascription), secondary identification arises on the basis of personal responsibility and choice (achievement). Secondary identification develops mainly in a functional context (functional identification), that is to say in institutions by virtue of fulfilling certain functions, for instance in one’s neighbourhood, education, labour organizations, voluntary associations and the recreational sphere. Running through both primary and secondary identification one finds two other forms. The first is normative identification, which relates to observance of rules governing social relations, such as moral traditions, customs, codes, norms and values. Again identification may range from slight to strong, and it may manifest as dis-identification when people either withdraw (retreatism) or resist (rebellion), resulting in either lawlessness (anomie) or deviant, even criminal behaviour (Merton, , pp. –). The second form cutting across both primary and secondary identification is emotional identification, whereby people seek each other’s company not simply on account of descent, functionality or common norms but for emotional reasons: because they feel at home there. Although this is the most profound kind of identification, it does not exist independently: ‘An approach demanding emotional identification . . . with no regard to and/or in the absence of underlying normative and functional identifications will have few adherents and ignores the importance of shared experience and practice’ (WRR, , pp. ; my translation). I still need to mention two forms of identification based on the last two mentioned above: constitutional identification and religious identification. Constitutional identification is a form of normative identification, entailing identification with the principles of the constitutional state, parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, the recognition of religious pluralism and, not the least, human rights (WRR, , pp. –). But it also has emotional aspects deriving from the development of empathy with victims and a sense of justice in primary and secondary identification. This applies equally to religious identification, which is emotionally rooted in the development of basic trust and justice in primary identification and elaborated on in secondary identification. It is normatively reinforced and put in a broader perspective of ultimacy and transcendence in religious communities, thus contributing to religious identity. The question in this chapter is to what extent religious identification contributes to constitutional identification. There are three reasons why the question is important for multicultural societies. First, constitutional values and norms can only exist in a constitutional and human

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rights culture entrenched in people’s hearts and minds, otherwise they exist only on paper (Hastrup, ). This in fact applies to all legal rules: without a legal culture the law in general is ultimately a dead letter (Friedman, , ). Religions can contribute greatly to such a constitutional and human rights culture by drawing on their moral traditions, which may be regarded as the infrastructure of constitutional principles and human rights. Further, for religions this contribution to a constitutional and human rights culture presents an opportunity to engage in dialogue with constitutional and human rights organizations. The resultant mutual critical reflection will not only benefit those organizations, but also the religions, even if only by teaching them to apply constitutional principles and human rights in their own domains. Finally, constitutional principles and human rights can help religions to thrash out their disputes in a civilized fashion without resorting to violence. To be sure, all this could happen, but do religions like Christianity and Islam in fact contribute to a constitutional human rights culture? Some authors say they do. From the Christian side it is averred that constitutional principles and human rights are rooted in Judaic and Christian tradition. But they forget the innumerable atrocities, nowadays known as crimes against humanity and genocide, like those perpetrated during the ‘conversion’ of European nations to Rome’s state religion (Christianity) from the Constantine era onwards; the slaughter during crusades against Muslims, Cathars, Albigenses and the Baltic nations; the extermination of indigenous American people despite the opposition of Spanish Dominicans; the Christian apartheid regime in South Africa; and the rope round the neck of a Jewish child dangling from gallows in Nazi camps, which provoked the intense outcry: ‘Where is God? Where is He? Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here, on this gallows’ (Wiesel, , pp. –). Others, while not blind to these events, maintain ‘dry eyed’ that constitutional principles and human rights are grounded (if not historically, then fundamentally) in Christianity, to wit in the twin concepts of human dignity and God’s creation of humans in God’s image (Bucar & Barnett, ; Newlands, ; Ghanea et al., ). Twin concepts? The concept of human dignity is non-Judaic and originally external to Christianity, since it originated among the Stoics; and the concept of imago Dei, though stemming from Jewish scriptures, underwent some amazing metamorphoses. Not human being per se (and hence not every human being) is the image of God, as in Genesis , but, it is said, only Christians

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who believe in Jesus, the Son of God, or in the Trinity. Besides, this text is not about the intrinsic dignity of human beings as modern constitutional and human rights theory says. It is an ethical appeal for just relations in a twofold sense: between humans and God, and among humans (Assmann, ; Van der Ven et al., , pp.  ff.). Most serious of all is that such claims disregard the profound conflict between constitution and religion ever since the Enlightenment, especially on the part of the Catholic Church. In a cultural era when Voltaire was passionately calling on the church ‘écrasez l’infame’, Pope Pius VI called the clause in the French constitution of  prohibiting persecution on religious grounds an absurd liberal lie. In  Pope Pius IX declared civil liberties utter insanity and the heresy of the age. In  Pope Leo XIII, while proclaiming the need for dialogue, condemned freedom of conscience and cult. Real change came only  years later during the Second Vatican Council (–), when the constitution Gaudium et Spes roundly embraced democratic principles and human rights and a declaration of religious freedom was issued (Wuthe, ). But that is on paper. It is a moot point whether the Catholic (or any other) Church supports human rights, not merely in official statements but in actual fact. That this cannot be taken as read is starkly illustrated by Charles Taylor, who regards human rights as a typical product of the deistic, atheistic, even anti-theistic Enlightenment, when God’s revelation and the ecclesiastic hierarchy related to it made way for human autonomy and ‘self-authorization’ (Taylor, ). In short, the positive effects of religious identification on constitutional identification cannot be taken for granted; it may equally well have negative effects or none at all. Is it any different in Islam? Publications dealing with the relation between human rights and Islam are few and far between. Often it is said that there is a gulf between the two, in that human rights are Western in nature, while the Muslim world is non-Western; they are a tool to impose Western hegemony that Muslims should combat; or they are a fruit of Christianity (!), whereas Islam has its own, unique, irreplaceable sharia; they are a product of Western individualism, which contradicts Islamic communitarianism. At the UN Vienna Conference on Human Rights (), for instance, human rights were denounced as Western and insensitive to non-Western cultures. Prior to that a group of Asian states issued the Bangkok NGO Declaration on Human Rights (), which explicitly highlighted their own rich cultures and traditions.

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On the other hand, there are a few documents that seek to bridge the divide—treaties such as the Charter of the Organization of Islamic Conference () and the Arab Charter on Human Rights (), and declarations such as the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (), the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights Education and Dissemination (), the [Revised] Arab Charter on Human Rights (), and the Charter of the Organization of the Islamic Conference ().4 There are also a growing number of scientific publications supporting the thesis that human rights and Islam are in principle reconcilable (Arkoun, ; Kamali, ; Runzo & Martin, ; Baderin, ). But that does not mean that the gulf between the two views of humankind, respectively perceived as humanistic and Islamic, has been closed. In Europe there is no more than a beckoning prospect of a potential future ‘European Islam’ (Kepel, ). The gap could not be pinpointed more starkly: as if non-European Islam is by definition inimical to human rights. In short, among Muslims too one cannot be sure that religious identification has positive effects on constitutional and human rights identification; it could equally well have negative effects, or none at all. That makes the question asked in this chapter, and its importance for a multicultural society founded on constitutional principles and human rights, all the more pertinent. Can we expect Christianity and Islam to contribute to identification with these constitutional principles and human rights with a view to social cohesion, harmony and peace? Separation of Church and State and Freedom of Religion Having outlined the relation between constitutional and religious identification in general terms, I now need to look at it more concretely in the context of the separation between church and state and freedom of religion. Separation of Church and State The separation of church and state started with the Peace of Westphalia in . The underlying cause was the process of institutional differentiation that had been under way in Western society as a whole for several centuries, leading to the gradual collapse of the threefold medieval 4

See: Van der Ven, , chapter .

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worldview. Until then whatever conflicts there were between church and state, they were always understood to fall under a single religious canopy: spatially under heaven, politically under the city of God (civitas Dei), and ecclesiologically under the invisible church (communio sanctorum) (Casanova, ). The implosion of this system put an end to their struggle for rank, status and reputation and resulted in two separate institutions, each with its own function, codes and rules, the church’s applicable to religion, the state’s to politics (Luhmann, ). Apart from this underlying cause, the proclamation of a separation between church and state had an immediate cause. This was the disastrous religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which innumerable soldiers and civilians lost their lives, if not on the battlefield, then as a result of failed harvests and epidemics. Following the Treaty of Augsburg (), the Peace of Westphalia stipulated that the choice of the rulers of individual German principalities to recognize either Catholicism or Lutheranism was binding on their subjects (cuius regio, eius religio). This ruling was extended to the Reformed churches as well, and indeed to all countries that were parties to the treaty. From the perspective of the present-day interpretation(s) of the separation between church and state the Peace of Westphalia offered a purely one-sided solution: politics cast off the yoke of religion and emancipated from religion, through which the emerging autonomous state made religion into the subject of political control. In the period between  and  (the American constitution) and  (the French constitution) this one-sidedness made way for mutual non-intervention; at any rate in principle, since it still took a long learning process before the two key variations of the separation of church and state emerged: a pluralistic and a separationist variant (cf. Durham, ). A striking example of this learning process is French legislation. In  the Code civil was enacted, which espoused a positive attitude toward religion, in this case the Catholic Church. A century later, in , the separation of church and state act came into force, which stipulated equal treatment of all religions, thus introducing a pluralistic interpretation. In  the wearing of conspicuous religious insignia by school pupils was conceded by education minister Jospin in the face of displeasure about the relation between Islam and the ‘indivisible republic’. But in  under president Chirac a new law on laïcité forbade it.5 The act was based on two

5

The French Act  of  is entitled Loi encadrant, en application du principe de

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(maximally) separate circuits (of church and state), thus representing a kind of separationist interpretation of the separation of church and state. Not separate but maximally separate circuits: that is the legal situation in France as well as in several other Western countries, including the Netherlands, hence midway between pluralism and separationism. Pluralism implies that the amenities the state provides for one religion are to be provided for all (equal treatment). There are two models. The first is the cooperation model, in which state and church collaborate to achieve social cohesion and peace, to which end the state provides financial support as in the case of state churches in countries like Norway and Denmark, or in Germany where churches are institutions of public law. Second, in the accommodation model the state accommodates religions in regard to, for instance, their religious calendar and/or offers them fiscal exemptions, but no direct financial subsidies. Both models are found in many countries, the Netherlands among them. It is evident in funding of religiously-affiliated schools, health-care institutions and broadcasting stations, as well as pastoral care in the army and prisons (cooperation). It is also evident in concessions regarding, for example, labour law (accommodation). In contrast to pluralism, there are political groups in various countries, including the Netherlands, that seek to replace it with a maximally separationist approach on the French model. Again there is a choice between two versions. The first is open laicity (laïcité ouvert), in which the state recognizes religions as purely private law institutions while accepting them as important (moral) organizations alongside others in civil society, but without subsidizing or accommodating them apart from some concessions, for instance as regards their religious calendar. In the second version, combatant laicity (laïcité en combat), politicians are insensitive to religion, sometimes manifesting in condescension and ‘civilized’ hostility. Whatever model one opts for, the essential principle is mutual nonintervention. It is not as simple as it seems, however, especially where church and state affect each other ideologically and cross swords—the area of morality, that of the res mixtae (Martin, ). Here religions tend to claim authority and demand that politics should heed, respect and, if possible, accommodate them. Naturally the state should be prepared to listen to the individuals, groups and institutions that make up laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics.

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civil society, but the laws passed by its own institutions—government and parliament—are ultimately independent of the convictions of religious leaders, also in the moral sphere. To clarify the principle of the separation of church and state, the rest of the empirical study in this chapter focuses on two themes that are fiercely debated at present: ultimately independent political decision-making on euthanasia and abortion. Freedom of Religion Religious freedom is no less complex a theme than the separation of church and state. Its main dimensions are freedom of religious choice, the forum internum and the forum externum. Freedom of choice entails prohibition of being forced to choose, freedom to stick to an earlier choice, freedom to make a new choice (i.e. the right to ‘apostatize’ from one’s old religion and ‘convert’ to a new one), and freedom to give up religion altogether and live one’s life as an agnostic or atheist. There is a major difference between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (, art. ), which speaks of ‘changing’ one’s religion, and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (, art. ), which refers to the freedom ‘to adopt’ a religion. The latter reflects a compromise, since Muslim countries objected, not to adherents of other religions converting to Islam, but to Muslims apostatizing and joining another religion. According to the most tolerant approach to such apostasy, Muslims are completely free to embrace another religion or become atheists, without incurring counter pressure, criminalization or sanctions, especially not the death penalty, at any rate in cases of apostasy simpliciter, as it is called, in the sense of individuals privately giving up their faith. It is a different matter if public safety is jeopardized, or morality, or the rights of others, or even the survival of the state (Baderin, , pp. –). The forum internum protects individuals against having to declare their religious views, the imposition of sanctions in the case of deviant ideas, indoctrination, or coercion to perform religious activities that conflict with their personal religious convictions. The forum externum pertains to manifesting one’s religion. It has individual and collective aspects. It offers legal protection for the manifestation of one’s religion, both individually and collectively, both in private and in public. It includes protection of the individual’s right ‘to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching’ (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, , art. , ).

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The last four terms (worship, observance, practice, and teaching) have all sorts of implications when interpreted in terms of other documents like the UN Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion and Belief (, art. ) and the General Comment  of the erstwhile UN Human Rights Committee (Taylor, , pp. –). Thus freedom to participate in worship implies the right of religious communities, organizations and ministries to exist, as well as to have buildings in which to worship. Freedom of observance entails the right to a religious calendar with holidays and religious feasts, observance of dietary rules and wearing special clothing or headdresses. The right to practise pertains to the performance of acts that are manifestations of religious beliefs. The right to teach implies the right to preach during worship, religious teaching in appointed places, religious propaganda, missionary activities, etc. In the case of teachers, however, the right to manifest their faith is restricted by the views of the school concerned (Taylor, , pp. ). Each of these dimensions is fraught with problems and issues that call for more detailed jurisprudence. For example, what are the boundaries between teaching and mission, between mission and proselytism, between proselytism and indoctrination? What is the difference between freedom of expression and (deliberate) incitement to religiously informed hatred? What is the difference between expressing negative religious views on gender or sexual orientation and discrimination against women and homosexuals? To what extent is parents’ freedom to educate their children violated when religious or religiously-related themes, such as sex education, are presented in ways that conflict with their beliefs? Apart from these questions there is a further, ostensibly easy one: When are practices manifestations of religious beliefs, in other words, can one see a difference between religious and nonreligious practices, and if yes, what is it? In this debate one encounters diverse interpretations, such as: religious practices are actions that are ‘motivated’, ‘influenced’, ‘necessitated’, ‘dictated’ by or ‘inwardly linked with’ religious beliefs (Taylor, , pp. –). However, such interpretations are rather vague, because what is religiously motivated, influenced, necessitated, dictated and inwardly linked, all together? Are they enough to make practices into religious ones? Is it enough when it is said that wearing a veil is religiously ‘motivated’? What if it is only partly motivated by religion and partly by ethnic, cultural or even emancipatory considerations, the latter when it concerns fashionable, chic veils? Or, to take a completely different example, is the resistance to inoculation, for instance

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johannes a. (hans) van der ven

against polio, that one finds in some Christian sects (in the Netherlands, for example,   of the Staphort congregation remains un-inoculated for this reason) ‘inwardly linked’ with religious convictions, or just with a conservative, pre-modern mind set? These are tricky issues. One question that judges have no difficulty in deciding is that of protest against paying taxes on grounds of religious convictions that are claimed to lead to exemption. They make short shrift of it. Underlying all these examples is the question of what religion is. Because of the requirement of interpretive restraint, judges, if they can possibly avoid it, do not offer their exposition of religious precepts. When obliged to do so they should be aware that, in terms of the decree of the Dutch Supreme Court (Hoge Raad) of , exposition of theological texts to settle legal issues is not the judge’s task (de Lange, ). However complex interpretation of religious freedom may be, the principle is clear: politics may not intervene in the religious sphere, nor may it violate the rights of religious individuals and communities but must protect these. That does not mean that religions can do as they please. They may not overstep the limits of public safety, health, morality or other people’s fundamental rights (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, , art. , ). The stipulation that politics may not intervene in religious matters is a general rule; its more detailed applications are no less interesting. I cite a theme that will feature in this empirical study further on: praying in public schools. The premise is that the state is not entitled to provide religious education in public schools insofar as it affects religious freedom, since that would amount to interference. The quite extensive literature on the subject makes a distinction between historical and cultural aspects of such education and confessional and kerygmatic aspects. The former fall within the state’s jurisdiction, the latter belong to that of religions. Does that imply that there can be no prayer at public schools (Ravitch, )? Some authors feel it could be permitted, provided the prayers either juxtapose the tenets of different religions or transcend these and then ask the students to reflect on them. However, juxtaposing religious tenets in the same prayer is offensive to religions that endorse exclusivism (theirs is the only true way to salvation) or inclusivism (recognition of other religions inasmuch as they contain elements of one’s own religion). Prayer texts that transcend religious tenets end up presenting vague, religiously vacuous images and concepts that not only lack the richness and depth of religion but actually cause them to evaporate. Besides, reading a text with no divine addressee or realization that it is spoken in the presence of

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

‘the’ divine disregards the ritual performative act that prayer essentially is. From the point of view of the religions, ‘prayer’ without its ritual performative character becomes simply reading and pondering a text, which falls short of what religions understand prayer to be and even violates its true character, and is hence an intolerable interference.6 Religious Beliefs and Practices The two religions that relate to the Christian and Muslim groups I research in this chapter, Christianity and Islam, belong to the so-called axial religions, here understood as a typological construct rather than a purely historical phenomenon.7 They can be described in terms of religious beliefs and participation in religious rites. Religious beliefs are marked by variations on the continuum of a vertical axis pertaining to immanence and transcendence, a horizontal axis pertaining to inclusion and exclusion, and a longitudinal axis pertaining to time and history.8 Participation in religious rites is characterized by variations in frequency. To start with the vertical axis, axial religions do distinguish between beliefs regarding immanence and transcendence. Immanence is seen as only relatively valuable and meaningful, although axial religions also contain many themes portraying the world as imperfect, deficient, illusory, bad, even sinful. At all events, the transcendent surpasses the immanent and refers to a real, meaningful, perfect, pristine, beautiful world, which was there from the beginning and will or can happen again in the future. Transcendent reality can be seen as metaphysical or cosmic, anthropomorphic or non-anthropomorphic, monotheistic or 6

From a psychological perspective similar processes probably occur in the reading and pondering of a text (Bänziger, ), but from a religious studies perspective a ritual performative act is essential for prayer. 7 Historically the axial religions date to the th century bce, with some strands going back to the th century and forward to the rd century bce, with a secondary breakthrough of axial religions in Christianity and Islam (Eisenstadt, , ; Arnason et al., ; Hick, , pp. –; Taylor, , passim; Habermas, ). The classification into pre-axial and axial religions is only one of many typologies in philosophy and religious studies, such as those of I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, R. Bellah, C. Kolpe, and N. Luhmann (Kött, , pp. –). 8 The spatial categories of height, breadth and length are among the primitive concepts underlying the semantic structures of many languages, referring to ‘above’ and ‘below’ (vertical), ‘nearby’ and ‘far away’ (horizontal) and ‘ahead’ and ‘behind’ (longitudinal) (Wierzbicka, , ).

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polytheistic. In some beliefs the emphasis is on the immanent, without absolutely ignoring the transcendent, in others the emphasis is on the transcendent, without absolutely ignoring the immanent, and in still others there is a combination between the two, the immanent transcendent or the transcendent immanent. Then the immanent is said to imply the transcendence, but not exhaustively, in that it is not absorbed into it, and the transcendent is said to shows traces of and references to it in the immanent, opening up angles on the transcendent. On the horizontal axis there are beliefs with varying boundaries of inclusion and exclusion of social groups and other religious groups. In principle, axial religions like Christianity and Islam are structured universally, although historically and empirically there is always a continuum between particularity and universality. The latter implies that by their very nature they address all human beings as individual subjects, since they cut across tribal and national contexts.9 That does not rule out inclusion and exclusion, but these come in forms that transcend tribe and nation. The limit of inclusion is peripheral groups that are still relevant to the religion, and that of exclusion is groups that are treated with indifference, disregarded or rejected (Luhmann, , p. ). There are many variations. In the Catholic tradition, for instance, the limits of exclusion and inclusion were extremely narrow, based on the third century axiom of Origen and Cyprian of Carthage: no salvation outside the church (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). Vatican II replaced the dichotomy this entailed with a system of concentric circles reflecting decreasing inclusion and increasing exclusion of the following religious traditions: Eastern Christianity, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Judaism, Islam, Asian religions and indigenous religions.10 In the work of Edward Schillebeeckx the dichotomy mentioned, ‘no salvation outside the church’, is replaced by another one, being loaded with a substantively open meaning, while encapsulated in a summons to societal orthopraxis: ‘no salvation outside society’.11 These examples show that inclusion and exclusion affect two 9 The term ‘universal religions’ refers to religions that cut across tribal and national contexts, addresses all human beings, regards them simply as individual subjects and therefore allows for doubt and unbelief (Mensching, , pp. –; Kött, , pp. – ). They are also called soteriological religions (Hoheisel, , pp. –). 10 Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (); Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (); Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (). 11 E. Schillbeeckx (, pp. –) speaks of ‘outside the world no salvation’, of which ‘outside society no salvation’ forms a part.

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domains: inclusion and exclusion of both other social groups and other religious groups (Luhmann, , p. ). On the longitudinal axis there are varying beliefs regarding time and history. They refer to the way they deal with past, present and future. If the emphasis is on the past as such they deal with texts from the past in a literal way and if the emphasis is on the meaning of the texts of the past from the perspective of their meaning for today, they deal with them in a hermeneutic, contextual way. This led to the influential doctrine of scriptural meanings of Augustine of Denmark, who, following earlier introductions such as that of Origen, laid down the rule in the thirteenth century: ‘The literal meaning informs us about what happened, the allegorical meaning about what to believe, the moral meaning about what to do, and the anagogic meaning about what to hope for’ (Walter, , pp. –).12 A contextual interpretation of texts of the past takes account of the meaning of texts in the interaction between the variety of contexts in the course of the time in the past and between these and present-day contexts. Lastly, rites are characterized by a personal, communicative relationship with God as intrinsically valuable in itself, without pre-eminently aiming at instrumentally securing God’s favour on the basis of do ut des. The dichotomy between an intrinsic and instrumental relationship with God is by no means absolute, for axial religions contain many pre-axial elements, for instance Christian folk religiosity in the West (Taylor, , p. ) and the syncretism of Christianity and African traditional religions (Mbiti, ; Appiah, , ). Rituals transform the identity and status of the participants. On the one hand, they performatively enact the presence of the transcendent; on the other hand, they do so realizing that they are being given this presence and are receiving it. In ritual they construct their own receptiveness to transcendence, so that they regard that which they are enacting in the rite as something bestowed on them, a gift. This dialectic of active doing and passive receiving is reflected in their standing and kneeling postures and in feelings of independence and dependence, joy and reverence, which give participants a sense of salvation (James, ). Lastly, rituals may be distinguished into individual and collective rituals, both of which may aim at both personal and social salvation.

12

‘Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quid speres anagogia.’

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johannes a. (hans) van der ven Expectations

To my knowledge there have been no empirical studies of the effects of religious beliefs and rites on attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion. Neither has there been any robust theory construction about such effects. Hence I cannot at this stage formulate any hypotheses for empirical testing. The research I report on below, therefore, is exploratory rather than a test of hypotheses. It means that I formulate a number of expectations about these effects, explore their validity empirically and afterwards formulate some hypotheses at the end of this chapter for future testing. From the reflection so far one can infer five expectations. The first pertains to the overall effect of religious beliefs and rites on attitudes toward the two constitutional themes, the other four concern the unique effects of particular beliefs and rites. Expectation : the overall effect of religious beliefs and rites on attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion is weakest among the nonreligious group, strongest among the Muslim group, with the Christian group falling in between. The reason is that the nonreligious group is most highly secularized, the Christian group less so, and the Muslim group least secularized.13 Expectation : religious beliefs on the vertical axis about God, Jesus and Muhammad with the accent on transcendence have a negative effect on attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion, and those with the accent on immanence or immanent transcendence have a positive effect. The reason is that an emphasis on transcendence distracts attention from the importance of religiously informed moral ‘orthopraxis’ to improve society, and more particularly from human rights that relate to the two constitutional principles. Conversely, an accent on immanence and immanent transcendence allows for such a focus. Expectation : religious beliefs on the horizontal axis about inclusion and exclusion of other social and religious groups with an accent on exclusion have a negative effect on attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion, and those with the accent on inclusion have a positive effect. The reason is that a religio-centric emphasis on exclusion prevents concern about the challenges faced by 13 In terms of Luhmann (, pp. –) secularization may be seen as the effect of functional differentiation that proceeds differently in different population groups.

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other social and religious groups. Conversely, an open style of interaction and inclusion reveals these challenges, which helps to promote the two constitutional principles that are based on the ideals of freedom and equality of all social and religious groups. Expectation : religious beliefs on the longitudinal axis about literal or contextual interpretation of religious source texts with the accent on literal interpretation have a negative effect on attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion, and those with the accent on contextual interpretation have a positive effect. The reason is that a literal understanding ignores present-day societal problems. Conversely, a contextual interpretation hermeneutically bridges the divide between the original and the current situation, which is necessary for support of the two constitutional principles. Expectation : rites may be distinguished into personal and social rites, of which the first aims at personal salvation and the second at social salvation or liberation. From there two conflicting expectations may be formulated. Rites with an accent on personal salvation take away any commitment to social ‘orthopraxis’ in support of the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion and have a negative effect on them. Rites with an accent on social salvation or liberation may have a positive effect. This expectation conflicts with a lot of the literature, including that of liberation theology, which propounds the all too harmonious notion that personal and social salvation are mutually reinforcing (Müller, ; Weber, ). Separation of Church and State and Freedom of Religion in an Empirical Perspective The Dutch research population from which I collected the data in –  consisted of , Dutch young people at  schools, of which  are public, six are Catholic, four Protestant, two interconfessional and two Muslim. Three quarters of the young people have Dutch as their home language, and the rest represent  different languages. According to their own religious self-attribution,  young people may be considered Christian (of whom   called themselves Catholic,   Protestant, and   Christian, including a group of Catholics by birth),  Muslim and  nonreligious (N = ).14 14

See Appendix IV.

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johannes a. (hans) van der ven

First, we look at the attitudes toward the separation of church and state among these three groups. To highlight the theme of political independence which is crucial for the separation of church and state we chose two topics from public debate that illustrate this most vividly: state autonomy in regard to euthanasia and in regard to abortion. After all, from a religious perspective, religion and politics may meet in the area of res mixtae, morality, but even there the state, being the legislator, has the final say, provided no citizen forfeits her freedom in these areas and is not compelled to act counter to her religion or belief. Item (i) relates to politicians’ autonomy vis-à-vis religious leaders in the case of euthanasia. Item (ii) relates to their autonomy in the case of abortion (Appendix I). The scales refer to the Means indicating decreasing rejection and increasing agreement plus Standard Deviations (SD).15 Table . Means and standard deviations of attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion. Christian

Muslim Nonreligious

Mean SD

Mean SD

Mean SD

Eta

Separation of church and state i. Political autonomy regarding euthanasia ii. Political autonomy regarding abortion

3.1a 1.1 3.0a 1.2

3.0a 1.2 2.9a 1.1

3.4b 1.2 3.3b 1.3

.12* .16*

Freedom of religion iii. Political interference forbidden iv. Prayer at public school not forbidden

2.9a 1.0 3.7a 1.0

3.7b 1.1 4.0b 1.3

2.6c 1.0 3.5a 1.2

.37* .16*

Note: a b c marked indices in the rows (a, b and c) indicate statistically significant differences between Means * p < .

The first rows in Table  present the data. The Means for political autonomy regarding euthanasia among Christian young people (.) and Muslim young people (.) are around or in the middle of the five-point scale, indicating ambivalence, while the Mean among nonreligious young people indicates agreement (.). The Means for political autonomy regarding abortion among the Christian group (.) and the Muslim

15 Scale:  = I totally disagree;  = I disagree;  = I am not sure;  = I agree;  = I fully agree. The Mean scores on this scale may be interpreted as follows: .–.: total disagreement; .–.: disagreement; .–.: negative ambivalence; .–.: positive ambivalence; .–.: agreement; .–.: full agreement.

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group (.) are again around or in the middle of the scale, while that of nonreligious young people almost indicates agreement (.). Whereas the Christian and Muslim groups’ attitudes do not differ significantly, those of Christian and nonreligious young people and those of Muslim and nonreligious young people are significantly different (a, a, b: eta .). The pattern for abortion is similar. Those of Christian and Muslim young people do not differ significantly, but again there are significant differences between the attitudes of the Christian and nonreligious groups and between the Muslim and nonreligious groups (a, a, b; eta .). Now we look at the attitudes toward the freedom of religion among the three groups. Our research focused on two features of religious freedom that form part of an ongoing discussion. Item (iii) refers to the prohibition of state interference in religious communities that have the right to manifest their faith according to their own ideas and rules in the areas of worship, teaching, practice and observance. Item (iv) relates to the right to religious manifestation in the public area, more specifically that part of the area occupied by public schools and, concretely, prayer at public schools. In the questionnaire submitted to the young people this item was deliberately phrased negatively to prevent so-called response set. It reads: ‘Prayer at public schools should be forbidden’. In this kind of empirical research it is methodologically permissible to invert an item both content- and score-wise for the sake of lucid presentation. That is what happened to this item (iv). It is to be understood as indicated in the table: prayer at public schools not forbidden.16 The last rows in this table reflect the data. The Christian group’s Mean for item (iii), the prohibition of political interference, indicates ambivalence (.). The Muslim group agrees with it (.). The nonreligious group is on the borderline between negative ambivalence and rejection (.). The Means for the item on prayer at public schools (iv) indicate that both the Christian (.) and the Muslim group (.) as well as the nonreligious group (.) are of the opinion that such prayer should not be forbidden.

16 The scores on the five-point scale for item (iv) were recoded accordingly: score  into score , score  into score , score  remained score , score  into score  and score  into score .

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In regard to item (iii), which states that political interference is forbidden, the attitudes of the three groups differ significantly (a, b, c: eta .). In regard to item (iv) that states that prayer at public schools should not be forbidden, the attitudes of the Christian group and those of the nonreligious group do not differ significantly, but there are significant differences between those of the Christian group and the Muslim group and between those of the nonreligious group and the Muslim group (a, b, a: eta .). Religious Beliefs and Ritual Participation in an Empirical Perspective After having described the young people’s attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion, now we turn to their religious beliefs and ritual participation. Tables  to  contain the scales for religious beliefs and Table  those for religious rites. The beliefs are divided into the three categories described earlier: beliefs on the vertical axis referring to the polarity between immanence and transcendence (Tables  and ), beliefs on the horizontal axis referring to the polarity between inclusion and exclusion (Tables  and ), and beliefs on the longitudinal axis referring to the polarity between literal and contextual interpretation of religious source texts (Table ). To these some items relating to participation in individual and collective rites are added (Table ). The scales for the religious beliefs are constructed on the basis of three items each, with the exception of scales for beliefs about God that are based on two items each. Scale reliability was analyzed for the entire population of Christian, Muslim and nonreligious young people collectively (alpha > .). The tables reflect the Means and Standard Deviations for each sub-population. The figures in the tables immediately after the scales indicate the questionnaire items. In Table  beliefs about God are divided according to three sets of images: transcendent, immanent-transcendent and immanent (Appendix II, ). The transcendent group breaks up into anthropomorphic, theistic images (scale i: Mean .; .; .) and non-anthropomorphic, deistic images (scale v: Mean .; .; .). The immanent-transcendent group comprises only anthropomorphic images. They are split between panentheistic images in individual life (scale ii: Mean .; .; l.), social life (scale iii: Mean .; .; .) and nature (scale iv: Mean .; .; .).

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

The immanent group comprises only non-anthropomorphic images. They are split between pantheistic images (scale vi: Mean .; .; .) and metatheistic images (scale vii: Mean .; .; .).17 This table shows the following results: Christian young people score around ., the middle of the scale, with the exception of pantheistic images, where they verge on negative ambivalence and rejection. Muslim young people roundly agree with anthropomorphic images and unanimously reject non-anthropomorphic images. Nonreligious young people disagree with all images. Table . Means and standard deviations of beliefs about God.

i. Theistic images of God (1,7) ii. Panentheistic images of God’s presence in individuals (2,6) iii. Panentheistic images of God’s presence in social life (3,5) iv. Panentheistic images of God’s presence in nature (4,8) v. Deistic images of God (9,11) vi. Pantheistic images of God (12,14) vii. Metatheistic images of God (10,13)

Christian

Muslim

Nonreligious

Mean SD

Mean SD

Mean SD

3.0 3.0

1.0 1.0

3.8 4.6

1.1 0.6

1.8 1.7

0.9 0.09

2.9

1.0

4.4

0.08

1.7

0.09

2.8

1.0

4.3

0.09

1.7

0.09

2.9 2.6 3.1

1.1 1.0 1.1

2.0 2.0 1.9

1.5 1.4 1.3

2.3 2.1 2.6

1.2 1.0 1.2

In Table  the vertical axis also includes beliefs about images of the founding prophets of Christianity and Islam: the eschatological prophet Jesus (Appendix II, ) and the last prophet, Muhammad (Appendix II, ).18 As the table indicates, there are again different groups of beliefs, three for each prophet: beliefs with transcendent, immanent-transcendent and immanent images. Beliefs with transcendent images pertain to Jesus as God’s incarnate Son (scale i: Mean .; l .; .) and to Muhammad as the prophet sent by God to proclaim his message (scale vi: Mean .; .; .). Beliefs with immanent-transcendent images of Jesus may be termed ‘transdescendent’ inasmuch as they pertain to Jesus as one inspired by and a vehicle of the Spirit (scale ii: Mean .; . l; l .) and ‘transascendent’ inasmuch as they pertain to Jesus as the

17 For theism, deism, panentheism, pantheism and metatheism see Van der Ven (). 18 For the  items on Muhammad in the questionnaire we consulted Abdulkader Tayob, former professor of Islamic Studies in Nijmegen, currently in Cape Town.



johannes a. (hans) van der ven

epitome of liberation (scale iii: Mean .; .; .) and solidarity (scale iv: Mean .; .; .). As for beliefs with immanent-transcendent images of Muhammad, some are transdescendent inasmuch as they portray him as a human being with a unique revelation (scale vii: Mean .; .; .) and others are transascendent inasmuch as they refer to Muhammad as a mystical (scale viii: Mean .; .; .) and a moral teacher (scale ix: Mean .; .; .). Beliefs with immanent images refer to the culturalhistorical, humanistic significance of Jesus (scale v: .; .; .) and Muhammad (scale x: .; .; .). Table . Means and standard deviations of beliefs about Jesus and Muhammad. Christian Mean SD i. Jesus, God’s incarnate Son (1,5,12) ii. Jesus, inspired by the Spirit (2,9,13) iii. Liberation by Jesus (3,6,15) iv. Jesus’ solidarity (4,7,11) v. Humanistic view of Jesus (8,10,14) vi. Muhammad, prophet of God (16,21,26) vii. Muhammad’s uniqueness (17,22,27) viii. Muhammad as mystical teacher (18,23,28) ix. Muhammad as moral teacher (19,24,29) x. Humanistic view of Muhammad (20,25,30)

2.9 3.2 3.2 3.4 2.8 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.3 2.7

1.0 0.9 0.8 0.9 0.8 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0

Muslim Nonreligious Mean SD 1.7 3.1 3.3 3.4 2.4 4.7 4.6 4.6 4.6 2.5

0.9 1.0 1.0 1.0 0.9 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.6 1.3

Mean SD 1.7 1.9 2.2 2.3 2.8 1.8 1.9 1.8 2.0 2.6

0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.0 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.2

This table reveals the following. Christian young people tend to subscribe to Jesus as a religious figure except for his incarnation image. Muslim young people agree to all religious images of Muhammad. But there is also a clear difference between the two groups. Muslim young people are far more positively inclined toward Jesus than Christian young people are toward Muhammad, whom they reject. For the rest both groups are dubious about a humanistic view, the Christian group about such a view of Jesus and the Muslim group about such a view of Muhammad. Finally, nonreligious young people evaluate both Jesus and Muhammad negatively, except for the humanistic image of Jesus, to which they react with negative ambivalence. Table  reflects the young people’s beliefs on the horizontal axis regarding the polarity between inclusion and exclusion of social groups by religious communities (Appendix II, ). The question is whether the young people agree that religious communities should withdraw into themselves and then seek to win over public opinion (scale i: Mean .;

church, state, and freedom of religion



.; .), which is characteristic of exclusion. Or are they in favour of inclusion, which consists of having committal interaction with social groups out there by prophetically championing marginalized people (scale ii: Mean .; .; .), opening themselves up to them (scale iii: Mean .; .; .) and inviting them in (scale iv: Mean .; .; .), with professional knowledge of these matters (scale v: Mean .; .; .)? Table . Means and standard deviations of beliefs of religious groups about inclusion and exclusion of social groups. Christian Mean SD i. Religious groups’ focus on public opinion (4,9,14) ii. Religious groups’ focus on prophetic action (1,6,11) iii. Religious groups’ focus on openness (2,7,12) iv. Religious groups inviting outsiders (3,8,13) v. Religious groups’ focus on professionalism (5,10,15)

Muslim Nonreligious Mean SD

Mean SD

2.8

0.8

3.4

0.8

2.2

0.9

3.3

0.7

3.8

0.7

2.8

0.9

3.3

0.8

3.2

0.9

3.3

1.0

3.5

0.8

3.6

0.8

3.4

1.0

3.3

0.7

3.8

0.8

3.0

1.0

According to this table Christian young people are negatively ambivalent toward religious groups that withdraw into themselves, close themselves off from other social groups and seek to win over public opinion, while nonreligious young people are purely negative. Muslim young people agree with such exclusiveness. However, all three subpopulations (Christian, Muslim and nonreligious) are more or less positive about an open, inviting, professional approach to society by religious groups. Christian and Muslim young people support prophetic championing of the underprivileged, while nonreligious young people are negatively ambivalent. Table . Means and standard deviations of beliefs of religious groups about inclusion and exclusion of other religious groups. Christian Mean SD i. Inter-religious exclusivism (1,5,9) ii. Inter-religious inclusivism (2,6,10) iii. Inter-religious dialogue (3,7,11) iv. Inter-religious pluralism (4,8,12)

2.3 2.5 2.7 3.0

0.9 0.8 0.9 0.9

Muslim Nonreligious Mean SD 4.2 3.5 3.2 2.9

0.8 0.8 0.9 1.1

Mean SD 1.5 1.7 2.2 2.7

0.7 0.8 1.1 1.1



johannes a. (hans) van der ven

Table  reflects the young people’s beliefs about the polarity between inclusion and exclusion of other religious groups (Appendix II, ). Exclusion consists of several variants: inter-religous religious exclusivism (scale i: Mean .; .; .), restrictive inclusiveness by paying attention to common features in each other’s traditions only (scale ii: Mean .; .; .), and favouring noncommittal inter-religious dialogue (scale iii: Mean .; .; .). Inclusion consists of truly recognizing other groups and their traditions as equally valid ways to salvation and grace on the basis of religious pluralism (scale iv: Mean .; .; .). Compared with the attitudes toward other social groups reflected in the previous table, this table reveals a manifestly different picture of attitudes toward other religious groups. Christian young people display a descending line of rejection from exclusiveness to inclusiveness, dialogue and pluralism, while Muslim young people display a descending line of agreement. Nonreligious young people in their turn reveal a descending line of rejection, but from a more negative point of departure than Christian young people. Table  pertains to beliefs on the longitudinal axis regarding the polarity between a literal and a contextual interpretation of the religious source texts, the Bible and the Qur"¯an (Appendix II, ). A literal interpretation based on the actual text evokes varying degrees of approval and rejection in the case of the Bible (scale i: .; .; .) and the Qur"¯an (scale iii: .; .; .). Contextual interpretation evokes more positive responses in the case of the Bible (scale ii: .; .; .), particularly among nonreligious young people, than that of the Qur"¯an (scale iv: .; .; .), which again nonreligious young people value the most. Table . Means and standard deviations of beliefs about the interpretation of religious source texts. Christian Mean SD i. Literal interpretation of the Bible (1) ii. Contextual interpretation of the Bible (2) iii. Literal interpretation of the Qur"¯an (3) iv. Contextual interpretation of the Qur"¯an (4)

3.2 3.1 1.9 2.8

1.2 1.1 1.1 1.3

Muslim Nonreligious Mean SD 2.5 3.1 4.9 2.1

1.4 1.3 0.4 1.5

Mean SD 1.8 3.5 1.6 3.2

1.0 1.1 0.9 1.3

The following picture emerges from this table. Christian young people are positively ambivalent about literal interpretation of the Bible, while Muslim young people strongly agree with such interpretation of the Qur"¯an. Christians are positively ambivalent about contextual interpretation of

church, state, and freedom of religion



the Bible, while Muslim young people reject such interpretation of the Qur"¯an. Nonreligious young people show the strongest rejection of a literal interpretation and agree most strongly with a contextual interpretation. Finally, Table  deals with ritual participation, divided into individual and collective participation (Appendix III). The items (i–iv) indicate the frequency of participation on a five-point scale.19 When it comes to prayer, Muslim young people manifestly surpass Christian and nonreligious young people (item i: Mean ., ., .). None of the three groups reads the Bible (item ii: Mean ., ., .). Only the Muslim group frequently reads the Qur"¯an (item iii: Mean ., ., .). In the case of collective rites, too, Muslim young people outshine the other two groups (item iv: Mean ., ., .). Table . Means and standard deviations of ritual participation. Christian Mean SD i. Prayer ii. Bible: reading iii. Qur"¯an: reading iv. Collective rites

2.3 1.7 1.0 2.5

1.4 1.1 0.2 1.1

Muslim Nonreligious Mean SD 4.2 1.3 3.9 3.4

Mean SD

1.2 0.6 1.1 1.3

1.2 1.1 1.0 1.5

0.6 0.4 0.1 0.7

What the table shows is that Muslim young people pray and take part in collective rites far more frequently than Christian young people. The most striking difference is in Christians’ Bible reading as opposed to the Muslims’ reading of the Qur"¯an. Effects of Beliefs and Rites on The Separation of Church and State and Religious Freedom Having described religious beliefs on the vertical, horizontal and longitudinal axes as well as the frequencies of participation in individual and collective rites, we can determine what effect such beliefs and participation have on attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the

19 Scale for individual rites (i, ii, iii):  = never,  = rarely,  = occasionally,  = periodically,  = regularly; scale for collective rites (iv):  = never,  = on religious feast days,  = occasionally,  = monthly or a few times each month,  = weekly or a few times each week.



johannes a. (hans) van der ven

Fig. . Conceptual model: Effects of religious beliefs and rites on church/state separation and religious freedom.

freedom of religion. To this end we use regression analyses. These are aimed at making predictions that, at least in the case of properly argued expectations, may be interpreted as effects, at any rate in the sense of necessary conditions (Blalock, ). The regression analyses entail certain steps. The first relates to the dependent variables, here the three groups’ attitudes toward the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion that we explored earlier. I measured the young people’s attitudes toward the separation of church and state twice, namely as political autonomy in regard to euthanasia and political autonomy in regard to abortion respectively (Table ). I measured their attitudes toward religious freedom twice as well, namely as the prohibition of political interference in religious communities and as the permissibility of prayer at public schools. That gives us four dependent variables (Figure ). For each dependent variable we planned a separate regression analysis for each group—Christian, Muslim and nonreligious. That came to a total of twelve regression analyses. The second step entails the selection of independent variables, here religious beliefs and participation in individual and collective rites (Figure ; Tables  to ). This selection is done with the help of the correlation analyses on which the regression analyses are based. The correlation analyses determine the strength of the correlation between each of

church, state, and freedom of religion



the four dependent variables pertaining to the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion on the one hand, and on the other all the religious beliefs and individual and collective rites examined so far, amounting to  religious beliefs (Tables  to ) and four rites (Table ), which is  independent variables all together. These correlation analyses were conducted for each of the four dependent variables for each of the three groups of young people, which came to a total of twelve correlation analyses. If the correlation coefficients are not high enough, in that they do not meet a predetermined criterion, there is no point including the independent variables concerned in the regression analyses and they are omitted. As our criterion we decided that for each of the  religious beliefs and rites there must be two or more relevant correlation coefficients (r > .) in the aforementioned total of twelve correlation analyses. Application of this criterion eliminated all four forms of individual and collective ritual participation, while only  of the  religious beliefs remained. The selected religious beliefs appear in Tables  and : belief in God’s panentheistice presence in individual and social life and in nature; Jesus as God’s incarnate Son and the humanistic view of Jesus; the humanistic view of Muhammad; religious groups focused on influencing public opinion and with a prophetic, open and inviting orientation; inter-religious exclusiveness, inclusiveness, dialogue and pluralism; and finally, contextual interpretation of the Bible and of the Qur"¯an. The third and final step is the introduction of some population characteristics as control variables in the regression analyses (Appendix V). There are five of these: gender, three social variables, namely political saliency, attitude toward social criticism and autonomy, and finally a psychological variable, namely personal stability (Figure ). Regarding gender distribution, the Christian group is   male and   female, while the percentages for the Muslim group are   and  , and those for the nonreligious group are   and  . Political saliency is crucial, because the principles of the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion are among the key political arrangements of modern democratic states. Hence the extent of political motivation and interest is seen as a major condition for acceptance of the two constitutional principles. On a five-point scale of descending rejection and ascending agreement the Means of political saliency for the Christian, Muslim and nonreligious group are respectively: ., . and .. The reasons for introducing attitudes toward social criticism and autonomy are analogous to those regarding the degree of political saliency. Ever since the Enlightenment these have exercised a major influence on the establishment



johannes a. (hans) van der ven

Table . Effects of religious beliefs on attitudes toward the separation of church and state: (i) political autonomy regarding euthanasia; (ii) political autonomy regarding abortion (beta), with controls. Euthanasia

Abortion

Christians Muslims Non-relig. Christians Muslims Non-relig. (N = 333) (N = 220) (N = 459) (N = 334) (N = 218) (N = 455) God’s panentheistic presence in individual life God’s panentheistic presence in social life God’s panentheistic presence in nature Jesus’ incarnation

.11

.16

.09

.18†

.00

-.05

-.19*

-.03

.07

-.23*

-.01

.07

.05

.13

-.20*

.00

.11

-.08

-.10

.15†

-.07

-.18*

.10

-.10

Jesus: humanistic view

.13*

-.02

.06

.12†

.05

.05

Muhammad: humanistic view

.02

-.02

.00

.07

-.07

-.02

Religious communities influencing public opinion

-.08

-.01

-.17**

-.07

-.13

-.22**

Religious communities’ prophetic practice

-.01

-.09

.04

.10

.20**

.06

-.07

-.02

.12†

-.06

-.08

-.05

.03

.02

-.02

-.01

-.05

.08

-.01

-.07

-.03

.08

Inter-religious dialogue

.11

-.07

.06

.07

.14

.04

Inter-religious pluralism

-.08

.23*

-.03

-.15*

.12

-.01

Contextual interpretation of the Bible

-.04

.01

.03

.05

Contextual interpretation of the Qur"¯an

-.02

.05

-.06

-.03

.00

-.01

R2 Model I

.04

.03

.05

.03

.06

.02

R2 Model II

.15

.22

.18

.13

.17

.16

Religious communities’ practice of openness

.13†

.13

Religious communities’ inviting attitude

.20**

.16†

Inter-religious exclusiveness

.16†

Inter-religious inclusivenenss

.13†

.19†

.10 .18**

.15*

Note: The dependent variables relate to the separation of church and state: (i) political autonomy regarding euthanasia and (ii) political autonomy regarding abortion. The effects on both variables are analyzed for each of the three groups: Christian, Muslim and nonreligious young people. Model I controls for gender (male = ), three values and one personality variable on five point scales ( = absolutely disagree through  = fully agree), i.e. political saliency, autonomy, social criticism and emotional stability. Model II adds the religious beliefs to the control variables. Significance: ** p . Age-squared was also added as a quadratic term in the model predicting the CPI, to allow for the fall off in participation among the elderly. Social differences included education ( = degree,  = no degree), employment ( = full time work,  = other), retirement ( = retired,  = not retired), household income (categorized –, with  = <  , per annum and  = >  , per annum), household status ( = living with spouse or partner,  = living alone), and children at home ( = yes,  = no). There was also an item asking for location (rural, suburban or urban), and responses to this were recoded into two dummy variables of rural ( = rural,  = other) and urban ( = urban,  = other). Religious differences included a number of variables that assessed both individual Christian inclination and individual religious activity. Respondents were asked to locate their personal theological positions using three separate seven-point bipolar semantic differential scales where the poles were anchored by liberal versus conservative, catholic versus evangelical, and not charismatic versus charismatic. The liberal-conservative and catholic-evangelical scores were recoded into five-point scales by combining the two extreme scores in each case. Results for the charismatic scale suggested all scores on the ‘not charismatic’ end of the scale referred to the same thing, so this scale was reduced to a three-point scale with  = lowest charismatic ratings (–),  = intermediate charismatic ratings (–) and  = highest charismatic ratings (–). These three scales are referred to by their high-score indicators: conservative, evangelical and charismatic.

factors predicting engagement with society



Church attendance was assessed on a seven-point scale, but only those who scored five (twice a month) or higher were included in the sample. Respondents were also asked to indicate involvement in a range of church activities and these were subsequently grouped into four categories: church governance, helping with young people, fellowship groups and helping with music or drama. The church activity index was the sum of the number of different areas of involvement, ranging from zero to four. Frequency of prayer was scored on a five-point scale ( = ‘never’,  = ‘nearly every day’). Congregational differences were based on respondents’ reports of the congregations they attended. The same three scales as for individual theological positions (liberal versus conservative, catholic versus evangelical, and not charismatic versus charismatic) were used to assess congregational differences. In some cases, scores on the conservative, evangelical and charismatic scales were identical between individual and congregation, indicating that individuals attended congregations that matched their own theological orientation. In other cases there was some disparity, suggesting that individuals perceived that their own position differed from the norm of their congregation. Respondents who rated themselves liberal or very liberal were particularly likely to attend a church that was more conservative than their own stance, but the converse was not true for conservatives. Some studies have shown that civic participation may be affected by the extent of social attachments within a congregation (Schwadel, ), so this was assessed by a Likert scale consisting of four items: ‘My church is important for my social life’; ‘I feel a strong sense of belonging to my church’; ‘I turn to fellow members of my church when I need help’ and ‘Members of my church care deeply for one another’. Each item was scored on a five-point scale, with high score indicating the importance of relationships. The items had an acceptably high internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .) and the sum of scores was used as an index of the strength of relationships in the congregation. Size of congregation was also rated on a nine-point scale with  = <  and  = > . Analysis Linear multiple regression analysis was used to identify the variables that were significant predictors of social concern and social conscience, after



andrew village

allowing for all other variables in the model. The significance level was set p < . because of the large sample size. To quantify the proportional contribution that different categories of predictor variables made to the overall model, the latter were added in blocks and the resulting change in adjusted R2 values was recorded. This was the change in R2 resulting from the addition of a given block of independent variables (individual, social, religious or congregational), when all other predictor variables were already in the model. For the CPI, binary regression analysis was used rather than linear regression, and true R2 values were not available. Instead pseudo- R2 values were used (Long, , pp. –), specifically the Nagelkerke statistic (Nagelkerke, ). Although this is not comparable with the R2 value from a linear regression (which is a measure of the proportion of variance of the dependent variable explained by the model), it can be used to compare the relative fit of different models applied to the same dataset. The aim in this part of the analysis was to compare the proportional effect of adding different groups of predictor variables to particular models, so the Nagelkerke statistic could be used without assuming it was a measure of the total variance explained by the model. To quantify the relative importance of each block of variables in predicting a given dependent variable, the change in R2 from adding a particular block to the model was expressed as a percentage of the sum R2 changes for adding all four blocks. This was used in order to facilitate comparison between different measures of engagement with society, and is not to be confused with the proportion of the total variance explained by each block of variables, which was always much lower. Results Socio-Demography of the Sample Church Times readers are not a random cross section of the Church of England, but they do represent a broad cross section of the denomination. Survey respondents most frequently rated their churches as conservative, Anglo-catholic and not charismatic, and   had university degrees (Table ). Men comprised   of the sample, which is probably slightly more than the Church of England as a whole (Brierley, , Table ..). The median age category was  (= s);   were retired;   were in full-time employment and median household income was

factors predicting engagement with society



 (=  k– k). Most respondents were living with a spouse or partner ( ), but only   had children living at home. Respondents from rural areas comprised   of the sample, compared with   from suburban areas and   from inner urban areas. Table . Summary of independent variables (n = ,). Mean

SD

Individual Sex (female =1) Age (1 = < 40, 6 = < 79) Extraversion Neuroticism Psychoticism

0.56 3.61 2.78 1.96 0.21

0.50 1.32 2.15 1.80 0.47

1 4 3 2 0

1 4 0 0 0

0 1 0 0 0

1 6 6 6 2

Social Degree (= 1) Employed full time (= 1) Retired (= 1) Income (1 =£ 100k Living with another (= 1) Children at home (= 1) Rural (= 1) Urban (= 1)

0.64 0.25 0.50 3.90 0.66 0.17 0.37 0.25

0.48 0.43 0.50 1.96 0.47 0.38 0.48 0.44

1 0 0 4 1 0 0 0

1 0 0 4 1 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 1 1 9 1 1 1 1

Individual religious Conservative Evangelical Charismatic Church attendance Prayer frequency Church involvement

2.93 2.40 1.22 6.28 4.71 1.46

1.52 1.47 0.56 0.53 0.76 0.96

3 2 1 6 5 1

1 1 1 6 5 1

1 1 1 5 1 0

5 5 3 7 5 4

3.25 2.49 1.13 15.65 4.42

1.37 1.42 0.43 2.94 1.75

3 2 1 16 4

3 1 1 17 3

1 1 1 4 1

5 5 3 20 9

Congregational Conservative Evangelical Charismatic Relationships Size (1 = < 10, 9 = > 300)

Median Mode Min. Max.



andrew village Correlations among the Dependent Variables

The correlations between the various scales of social engagement were much as expected, with the strongest correlation being between the measures of social concern for global issues and social conscience as measured by willingness to pay taxes (Table ). Although all three measures of social concern (global, moral and science) were significantly correlated with each other, the correlation between social conscience and moral concern was relatively weak. Correlations for the Civic Participation Index (CPI) and the other variables were also weak or not significant. Overall, these correlations indicated that although there was some linkage of social concern, social conscience and civic participation, these were not synonymous with a single attitude toward engagement with society. High concern for some aspects of society was not necessarily related to a high level of voluntary engagement. These results suggested that different factors may drive different aspects of social engagement. Table . Correlations between the dependent variables (n = ,). CPI Global Moral Science Conscience

.089*** -.004 -.017 .075***

Conscience

Science

Moral

.357*** .075*** .125***

.305*** .250***

.280***

Note: CPI = Civic Participation Index *** p < .

Predictors of Social Engagement Results for the full model, which included all independent variables, are given in Table . Significance of effect for any given variable was tested after allowing for all other variables in the model. The R2 values for each block are the change in adjusted R2 values (or Nagelkerke R2 for CPI) when the block is added to a model containing all other variables in the full model, that is, block effect measured independently of other blocks. For each dependent variable the overall model explained significantly more of the variance than expected by chance, but the overall levels of R2 were low, with only around   of the total variance explained by the independent variables. The different measures of social engagement were predicted by slightly different variables in each case.

factors predicting engagement with society

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Table . Multiple regression of social engagement variables. Global R2

Moral

Science

Conscience

CPI

Individual Sex Age Age squared Extraversion Neuroticism Psychoticism

.009 .08*** .03 – .00 .02 -.06***

.028 .13*** .15*** – -.01 .03 -.07***

.044 .20*** -.10*** – .00 .07*** -.02

.008 .08*** .05 – .00 .02 -.04

.026 0.84 1.86*** 0.92*** 1.10*** 0.94*** 1.03

Social R2 Education Employed full time Retired Income Living with another Children at home Rural Urban

.002 .06*** -.01 -.02 -.02 .01 .02 -.02 .02

.008 -.03 -.01 .01 -.08*** .04 .05*** .00 -.01

.027 -.07*** .05 -.02 -.15*** -.02 .00 -.02 -.02

.010 .09*** -.02 -.02 -.01 .03 .03 -.04 .00

.020 1.39*** 0.61*** 1.14 1.01 0.93 1.18 1.16 1.18

Religious R2 Conservative Evangelical Charismatic Church attendance Prayer frequency Church involvement

.027 -.16*** .02 .05 .01 .07*** .03

.022 .08*** .11*** .06*** .03 .06*** .02

.012 .00 -.04 .04 .00 .10*** .00

.046 -.25*** .04 .03 .00 .04 .02

.024 0.90*** 1.00 0.91 0.84 1.05 1.32***

Congregational R2 Conservative Evangelical Charismatic Relationships Size

.003 .02 -.01 .01 .06*** .02

.000 -.01 .00 -.01 .01 -.01

.006 -.02 .02 -.01 .07*** .04

.002 0.97 0.94 1.03 0.99 0.99

27.56*** .12

25.61*** .11

– .09

F for full model R2 for full model

.001 .01 .02 .01 .04 -.02

15.05*** 29.50*** .07 .12

Note: Figures in italics represent the change in R2 values (Nagelkerke R2 for CPI) due to variables in a given block, after allowing for all other variables in the model. Other values are standardized Beta values for linear regression (odds ratios for CPI). *** p < . CPI results from Village and Francis ().

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andrew village

Global concern was higher among women than among men, among tender-minded rather than tough-minded individuals, among those with degrees, among liberals rather than conservatives, among those who prayed more often and among those with good relationships with their congregations. There was a similar pattern for social conscience (willingness to pay tax for welfare), though in that case the relationships with psychoticism and prayer frequency were less evident. Moral concern was higher among women than among men, among the more elderly, among those who were tender-minded rather than tough-minded, among those living in lower income households, among those with children living at home, among conservatives, evangelicals and charismatics, and among those who prayed more often. This was in contrast to concern for science issues such as GM food, where concern was higher among women than among men, among younger individuals, among those with higher neuroticism scores, among those without degrees, among those living in lower income households and among those who prayed more often. As reported by Village and Francis () the CPI was not related to sex, but varied with age (the fact that the age and age squared variables were both significant indicated that the CPI increased with age among the young, but fell off significantly beyond middle age). It was higher among extraverts than among introverts, among the emotionally stable rather than unstable, among those with degrees, among those not working full time, among liberals and among those who were also heavily involved in church activities. Taken together, these results suggest that different types of social engagement are predicted by different subsets of individual, social, religious and congregational variables. Relative Predictive Power of Different Groups of Explanatory Variables From Table  it is possible to calculate the number of times independent variables in a particular block emerged as significant predictors (at p < .) of the five dependent variables. For variables in the ‘individual’ block, this was  out of a maximum of  possible occasions (excluding the age-squared predictor), or   of occasions. Comparable results for the other variable blocks were: social  ; religious   and congregational  . A slightly different way of comparing the predictive power of blocks of variables was to calculate the relative extents of changes in R2

factors predicting engagement with society



values when a block was added to the model (Table ). Assessing contribution in this way gave more prominence to religious variables compared with individual variables (  versus  ), but both were again more important than either social ( ) or congregational ( ) variables. In both methods, individual and religious variables seemed to have generally more predictive power for social engagement than social or congregational variables. Table . Relative contribution of different blocks of predictor variables to changes in R2 when blocks added to full model. Global Moral Science Conscience CPI Mean Sum of change in adjusted Attributed to: Individual Social Religious Congregational

R2

.041

.059

.083

.070

.072

22 % 5% 66 % 7%

48 % 14 % 37 % 2%

53 % 33 % 15 % 0%

11 % 14 % 66 % 9%

36 % 34 % 28 % 19 % 33 % 43 % 3% 4%

Discussion The engagement of religious people with society is a multidimensional and complex interaction that is governed by a wide range of factors. Although each of the models used to describe the five dependent variables reported here was highly statistically different from a random prediction, none explained more than around   of the variance. This low figure is not unusual in survey data, and may partly reflect the difficulty of operationalizing some of the constructs under consideration. The benefit of using a broad survey on a large sample is that a large number of variables could be included in the predictive model. This offered a fair test of the relative explanatory power of different variables related to individual, social or religious factors. In general, the dependent variables related to cognitive or affective responses to society (concern and conscience) were more closely related to each other than to the index of civic participation. This echoes the general case for correlating attitudes and behaviour, where there is rarely a close match between the two (Ajzen, ; Fishbein & Ajzen, ). This may partly be because it is easier to be concerned about the ills of society than to actually do something about them, and partly because the ability to volunteer depends on other factors besides individual volition.



andrew village

To join a group there has to be a group to join, and some people who show high concern may have found it difficult to link with activists. Similarly, the decline of volunteering with age may reflect a loss of capacity rather than a loss of motivation. Nonetheless, this was a sample of religious affiliates who were mostly well educated and on middle incomes, so it might be expected that opportunity and ability to participate would be higher than for most of the population. Although the effect size of the predictor variables was small, the pattern of significance between the different dependent variables fitted well with theoretical expectations and evidence from other studies. Concern for society was clearly a multi-dimensional construct, and concern in one area was not necessarily matched by concern in another. This is evident from the different predictive profiles among the global, moral and science areas of concern. Global concern over poverty, disease and the environment was positively linked to a willingness to pay taxes for welfare provision, and both were most evident among female liberals with degrees. In these areas, theological liberalism seems to be associated with social liberalism, rather than to a strongly religious dimension. In contrast, moral concern over gambling, television violence and paedophiles in the community was highest among conservatives, evangelicals and charismatics, suggesting that concern here was more directly related to particular religious beliefs. The predictors of moral and science concern were different in each case, but much as might be expected. Moral concern was greater among those with children living at home, which probably represented the greater concern of parents for children exposed to violence on television or neighbourhood paedophiles. Concern over science (genetics and testing products on animals) showed how non-religious variables could be more important in shaping attitudes toward a largely non-religious issue. Of the religious variables, only more frequent prayer was associated with more concern, while concern was higher among women, the young, the less emotionally stable, the less well educated and those on lower incomes. There is some evidence from Britain and elsewhere that this profile partly matches that of those showing similar concern among the public at large, at least in terms of the greater preponderance of women (Kruse, ; Luke, ; Sturgis et al., ; Uyeki & Holland, ). The pattern for the CPI also reflected the way that this engagement with society was shaped by particular factors. The lack of any sex difference reflects the ambiguous results found in other studies that have

factors predicting engagement with society



examined the roles of men and women in civic participation and volunteering (Curtis et al., ; Smith, ). The age effect is in line with other studies that indicate a peak of activity in mid life. Greater activity among the educated may reflect greater capacity and opportunity, and the lower activity among full-time employees may reflect lack of time or energy to be involved outside work. Higher involvement among those also busy in church circles is also in line with some other studies (Beyerlein & Hipp, ; Schwadel, ), and there was no suggestion among these Anglicans that business in church reduced engagement with society. The Relative Importance of Different Sorts of Factors for Social Engagement In general, individual and religious factors emerged as the most important in shaping engagement with society. This was a religiously committed sample, so it would be surprising (and perhaps disappointing) if religion did not shape their engagement in some way. Given that religious commitment was fairly uniform in this sample, the factors most likely to be important were those related to the different traditions found in the Church of England. Theological liberalism rather than conservatism predicted greater concern for global issues, greater social conscience and higher levels of participation. Conservatism tended to be associated with a greater concern for the moral ills of society. These different correlations are in line with the theological perspectives that drive these different positions. Among conservative evangelicals, creation is perceived as corrupted by human sinfulness, and evidence for this is perceived in the prevalence of immoral behaviour among some individuals or institutions in society. Concern for moral standards is driven by concern for the fallen condition of individual human beings, and saving society is primarily about saving individuals. Liberals, in contrast, may perceive sin as a structural failure of societies, and evidence for this is perceived in the failure of the human race to deal with social inequalities and injustices. Individual human fallibilities linked to moral behaviour are of less concern than fallibility of governments or multi-national corporations. Liberals look to institutions to act decisively, and concern for society is primarily concern about collective woes that require social action by believers and non-believers alike. Frequency of prayer emerged as a significant predictor of all three aspects of social concern. Church attendance was selected to be at least



andrew village

every two weeks, so there was less variability in this factor, which may explain why it was never a significant predictor. Higher frequency of prayer has been shown to be linked to greater civic participation in other studies (Loveland et al., ), but this was not the case in this sample. Among church-going Anglicans there is considerable variation in how often they pray, and those in this survey who prayed more often generally showed more concern for society. Although frequency of prayer was associated with a range of other factors such as sex, age and church tradition, analysis indicated that the relationship was independent of other factors that might also be related to social concern. Whether prayer generates concern, or whether concern leads individuals to prayer, could not be told from this study, but certainly there seems to be some linkage between this religious expression and some level of cognitive or affective engagement with society. The importance of individual, rather than religious, factors is indicated by the correlations between the five dependent variables and the three variables derived from the Eysenck personality questionnaire. Lower psychoticism scores, associated with tender-minded empathy, predicted greater global and moral concern, suggesting that those people whose personalities disposed them to concern for others were most likely to express this in terms of concern for society in these areas. Science concern, however, was positively correlated with higher neuroticism scores, associated with generally higher levels of anxiety, suggesting that concern over science issues may be driven by a fear of perceived danger to the individual, rather than concern for the well-being of society at large. Civic participation was driven by a mixture of extraversion and low neuroticism, which is much as might be expected from the nature of these different dimensions of personality (for a fuller discussion see Village & Francis, ). It was difficult to quantify the relative effects of different groups of variables, partly because of variations in the accuracy of measures and partly because the number of variables available varied from block to block. Nonetheless, a fairly clear pattern emerged for religious and individual factors to have more predictive power for social engagement than social or congregational variables. Religion does seem to be an important influence on social concern, social conscience and civic participation for these people, and it may carry more weight in some cases than their educational background or social location. Church congregations may play some role in shaping individual responses, as evidenced by the greater expressions of concern among people in con-

factors predicting engagement with society



gregations with close social relationships, but the nature of congregations seems generally to be less important than the nature of individual belief. The importance of individual as well as religious factors suggests that intrinsic variables such as sex, age or personality may predispose people to engage or not to engage, and reminds us that religious expression is the end product of the interaction of religious beliefs with individual differences. Whatever someone believes about their faith, they may be predisposed to engagement or detachment from society at large by the kind of people they are. The results here suggest that religious and individual factors often work independently of one another. In other words, different religious stances are not wholly explained by different individual factors such as personality. Religious belief generally cuts across personality, but both may be important in determining the expression of religion in society. Conclusion and Theological Reflection This chapter has attempted to assess the public significance of religion in a particular sample by looking at how far religious factors shape social engagement. Given that this was a religiously committed group, the aim was not to measure the effect of religious belief versus non-belief, but to assess the importance of different styles of belief in shaping different sorts of social engagement. If there had been no correlations, or religious factors had very little effect compared with social or individual differences, this would not necessarily mean that religion has no significance. To test this, a different sort of study is required that includes religious and nonreligious people. The fact that even in a uniformly religious sample religious differences emerged alongside individual differences as the most important predictors of social engagement suggests that religious style does matter in the public arena. In particular, whether individuals take a basically liberal or basically conservative theological stance will have some bearing on how they are likely to engage with society. These religious stances are not overwhelming in their effect, however, and whether or not an individual with a given theological stance from particular religious tradition shows high or low engagement may also depend on the sort of person they are. In theological terms, it might be argued that religious factors should emerge as the overriding predictors of the way Christians engage with



andrew village

society. Scripture entreats believers to ‘love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might’ (Deuteronomy :), and Jesus urged his disciples to deny themselves in following him (Luke :). In this perspective, individual or social differences between people become irrelevant factors to the expression of faith. Belief tends to override or obliterate factors not directly related to itself and every aspect of life is lived in close agreement with a particular religious stance. This expression of religious faith has some attractions in that it argues for a thorough-going consistency of attitude, belief and behaviour that is not driven by the contingencies of social or individual circumstance. The danger of this sort of perspective is that it too easily becomes prone to religious fanaticism. There is a counter understanding of religious belief that stresses the importance of locating religious belief within the context of individual differences (Francis, ; Francis & Jones, ). This perspective draws on the diversity inherent in the act of creation, expressed in the creation of humans as male and female (Genesis :), and argues that diversity of religious expression is in part an expression of the divinely ordained order of things. St Paul emphasizes the importance of diversity of religious expression in his use of the image of the Body of Christ ( Corinthians ), which recognizes that a common faith may be expressed in a wide range of service and activity. This empirical study of Christians reporting their engagement with society suggests that a common faith in a common denomination (Anglicanism) can nonetheless result in a wide range of responses to different aspects of society. This is partly driven by differences in the understanding of what Christian faith is, but also by differences that adhere closely to the individuality of believers. This diversity is not necessarily a sign that religion is of minor importance, but perhaps a sign that religion always is expressed through the diversity of human nature and experience. Acknowledgment I thank Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins, who kindly made available the dataset from the Church Times survey. Leslie also read the manuscript and made useful comments and suggestions.

factors predicting engagement with society

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and Canada. In C. Smidt (Ed.), Religion as social capital (pp. –). Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Smith, B.M., & Nelson, L.D. (). Personality correlates of helping behavior. Psychological Reports, , –. Smith, D.H. (). Determinants of voluntary association participation and volunteering. Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, , –. Sturgis, P., Cooper, H., Fife-Schaw, C., & Shepherd, R. (). Genomic science: Emerging public opinion. In A. Park, J. Curtice, K. Thomson, C. Bromley, & M. Phillips (Eds.), British social attitudes: The st report. (pp. –). London: Sage / National Centre for Social Research. Taylor-Gooby, P. (). Open markets and welfare values. European Societies, , –. Taylor-Gooby, P., & Hastie, C. (). Paying for ‘world class’ services: A British dilemma. Journal of Social Policy, , –. Uyeki, E.S., & Holland, L.J. (). Diffusion of pro-environment attitudes? American Behavioral Scientist, , -. Village, A., & Francis, L.J. (). All in the mind? Psychological, social and religious predictors of civic volunteerism among churchgoers in England. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, , –. Warburton, J., & Stirling, C. (). Factors affecting volunteering among older rural and city dwelling adults in Australia. Educational Gerontology, , – . Wilson, J., & Janoski, T. (). The contribution of religion to volunteer work. Sociology of Religion, , –. Woodrum, E. (). Determinants of moral attitudes. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, , –. Wuthnow, R. (). Mobilizing civic engagement: The changing impact of religious involvement. In T. Skocpol, & M.P. Fiorina (Eds.), Civic engagement in American democracy (pp. –). New York: Brookings Institution Press.

MAINTAINING A PUBLIC MINISTRY IN RURAL ENGLAND: WORK-RELATED PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE AMONG ANGLICAN CLERGY SERVING IN MULTI-CHURCH BENEFICES

Christine E. Brewster, Leslie J. Francis, and Mandy Robbins Introduction The decline in the number of stipendiary parochial clergy in the Church of England from , in  to , in  (Church Society, ), which has been caused by a decrease in both financial and human resources, has resulted in the amalgamation of many rural parishes. This has led to individual clergy accepting responsibility for an increasing number of rural parishes at a time when other rural amenities in the form of schools, shops and public transport are frequently being eroded. The Church of England, which remains committed to sustaining and supporting a parochial structure with a visible presence in even the smallest of rural communities, has thus frequently become central to the maintenance of social capital within rural communities; it is there to serve the needs and aspirations, not only of active church members, but also of those in the wider community. The result has been that rural clergy often seem to experience severe overextension, which may be detrimental to their work-related psychological health. The purpose of the present study is to examine the current state of the work-related psychological health of Anglican clergy in rural multichurch benefices, and to do so within theoretical frameworks which conceptualize work-related psychological health in terms of balanced affect and which situate individual differences in work-related psychological health within the context of psychological type theory. This theoretical framework will be introduced by examining six areas of theory and research: negative and positive aspects of ministry; assessing positive affect; the burnout syndrome; the Francis Burnout Inventory; psychological type theory and measurement; psychological type and clergy studies. The present chapter suggests that the work-related psychological health

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of rural clergy should be taken seriously by both the rural clergy themselves and by those who are responsible for their professional well-being, if a healthy public ministry is to be maintained in rural England. Negative and Positive Aspects of Ministry Following his scrutiny of empirical data, van der Ven () formed the view that while the clergy in general derive much satisfaction from carrying out their functions, they also experience chronic stress. He believes that this stress is caused by: the superficiality of many contacts, the dependency of core members of the parish, the impossibility of satisfying everybody’s wishes and needs, the difficulty of coping adequately with criticism from parishioners, and the inadequacy of their preparation for pastoral work. Time pressure is also experienced as a source of stress, and is often considered the most pressing problem, both professionally and privately. Financial problems are another stressing factor. (van der Ven, , p. )

There are enormous drains associated with being a clergyperson at the beginning of the twenty-first century, particularly concerning the pervasiveness of the clergy role, in which expectations, both from other people and from the clergy themselves, are ever-present. Ministry in the church is the only profession in which personal identity, professional identity and religious faith are all encapsulated in the same individuals. Clergypersons are often considered to be role models for members of their congregations and for local communities; they are aware that preaching does not come from the pulpit only, but also from the examples they give by the way they live their lives, and these factors place a tremendous burden upon them. Gilbert (), in the opening chapter of Who ministers to ministers? suggests that clergypersons have problems with expectations as follows: I am appalled at what is required of me. I am supposed to move from sick bed to administrative meeting, to planning, to supervising, to counselling, to praying, to trouble-shooting, to budgeting, to audio systems, to meditation, to worship preparation, to newsletter, to staff problems, to mission projects, to conflict management, to community leadership, to study, to funerals, to weddings, to preaching. And, I am expected to be superior, or at least first rate, in all of them. What I am not supposed to be is depressed, discouraged, cynical, angry, hurt. I am supposed to be up-beat, positive, strong, willing, available. (Gilbert, , p. )

The expectations listed by Gilbert () are relevant to clergypersons ministering in both rural and urban areas. Rural ministry, however,

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also encompasses the frustrations which relate to multi-church parish work involving several different communities. The research of Brewster () demonstrates that rural clergy are stressed by ‘overextension’, by ‘emotional difficulties’ in their efforts to keep spirituality alive and well, by difficulties in achieving ‘commitment and development’ caused by having a limited number of people to take on church responsibilities, and by ‘conflict management’ as experienced in the frequent need for resolution of tensions between different groups. During the past thirty years several books have focused on issues concerning the work-related psychological health of the clergy, and many of the titles have drawn attention to negative aspects of research findings, including Ministry burnout (Sanford, ), Clergy stress: The hidden conflicts in ministry (Coate, ), Burnout: Stress in ministry (Davey, ), Burnout in church leaders (Kaldor & Bullpitt, ), The cracked pot: The state of today’s Anglican parish clergy (Warren, ) and Clergy Burnout (Lehr, ). Looked at from the opposite perspective, Brewster’s () study found, from responses to the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills & Argyle, ), that many rural clergy experience ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ while carrying out their ministry. For example   indicate that they ‘have fun with other people’,   feel that ‘life is good’ and   feel that ‘life is very rewarding’. Other researchers who have found that the clergy enjoy high levels of job satisfaction include Sales and House () who found that clergy rank high in job satisfaction alongside scientists and university teachers, and Rose () who, by using data from the British Household Panel Survey, found that clergy ranked second highest in job satisfaction, with only medical secretaries ranking higher. The Archbishops’ Council () found that   of clergy considered their job satisfaction to be good or very good, while   considered it to be adequate,   as poor and only   as very poor. The body of research referred to in this section draws attention to both the positive features of the work-related psychological health and to major areas of vulnerability among the clergy. Assessing Positive Affect From  to  psychological ‘abstracts’ included seventeen times as many articles on ‘anger’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ than on ‘joy’, ‘life satisfaction’ and ‘happiness’ (Myers, ), but in recent years, as psychologists have sought to understand the causes and explanations of positive

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happiness as well as people’s evaluations of their own lives, research in the area of ‘happiness’, ‘subjective well-being’, ‘quality of life’ and ‘life satisfaction’ has increased dramatically. Researchers, however, find it difficult to agree on the precise character of this construct, and there is therefore a general lack of clarity concerning its definition, measurement and conceptual structure. This has resulted in the terms ‘happiness’, ‘wellbeing’ and ‘quality of life’ being used inconsistently within the human sciences. It has, however, been widely acknowledged since the research of Campbell, Converse, and Rodgers () that perceived well-being, or ‘subjective well-being’ (SWB) comprises both affect and cognition, whereas other terms in use describe a focus on either ‘affect’ or ‘cognition’, but not on both. The most general term in use is ‘happiness’, which focuses on affect, whereas ‘life satisfaction’ is concerned with cognitive processes. The Satisfaction in Ministry Scale in the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI), which is being used in the present study, focuses on positive affect (happiness). Cummins, Gullone, and Lau () believe that most people experience a moderately positive level of well-being, with the population average being at about   of maximum. They propose that subjective wellbeing (SWB) is under the influence of a ‘homeostatic’ system consisting of a person’s personality, a set of cognitive buffers and a person’s needs, which is designed to hold its value within a narrow, positive, set-pointrange for each individual. Cummins, Gullone, and Lau () suggest that a set of cognitive buffers acts to absorb the impact of a person’s changing need states, which in the case of rural clergy include the need to ‘manage’ stressors such as ‘overextension’, and that these buffers combine with an individual’s personality in order to control a person’s ‘happiness’ level. Prior to the development of the FBI, Turton and Francis () produced a revised version of the Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale developed by Glass (MJSS: Glass, ). This scale identified eight component aspects of ministry that might affect job satisfaction, including traditional functions (e.g. administration, preaching, teaching, visiting), relationships and support, community involvement and working conditions. Following the modification of items of the MJSS to make them more accessible to Anglican clergy in England, they found that the majority of clergy were reporting a high level of job satisfaction. The Satisfaction in Ministry Scale of the FBI concerns measures of positive affect as influenced by extrinsic conditions in the work-related

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lives of rural clergy, and its development was very much influenced by the Glass () and Turton and Francis () studies. The Burnout Syndrome During the last forty years the ‘burnout syndrome’ has been given a great deal of attention by many researchers (Freudenberger, ; Fichter, ; Beemsterboer & Baum, ; and Doohan, ). The model of burnout as proposed by Christina Maslach, and as operationalized by Maslach and Jackson in the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI: Maslach & Jackson, ), has been of central importance within the caring professions. Maslach and Jackson () reported burnout to be: a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who do ‘people work’ of some kind. (Maslach & Jackson, )

Maslach () believes that ‘emotional exhaustion’, the first aspect of burnout, is often associated with expressions such as ‘I don’t care any more’ or ‘I don’t have any feelings left’, as voiced by carers who find that they can no longer continue to give at an emotional level. The second strand, that of ‘depersonalization’, refers to the negative and cynical attitudes that members of the caring professions begin to show toward their clients as their work begins to take its psychological toll. The third aspect of the burnout syndrome is that of ‘reduced personal accomplishment’, when carers who are over-taxed begin to lose the sense of achievement in their work. They can cease to feel that their work is either worthwhile to themselves or beneficial to their clients. The MBI () has been employed among many professional groups, including public administration workers (Salanova, Grau, Cifre, & Llorens, ), community service workers (Mitchell & Hastings, ), nurses (Garrett & McDaniel, ), and teachers (Bakker & Schaufeli, ). Studies among the clergy have also employed the MBI, including those undertaken by Warner and Carter () and Strümpfer and Bands (). A second instrument that has made an important contribution to research in the field of ‘professional burnout’ is a ‘modified’ version of the MBI (Rutledge & Francis, ), which was adapted from the item version of the MBI. The ‘modified’ version was formulated specifically for use in Rutledge’s () study of burnout among the clergy. Professor Leslie Francis of the University of Wales, Bangor, obtained permission from the Consulting Psychologists’ Press in California to adapt

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the MBI for use, under licence and at a cost, with clergy in the United Kingdom. This adaptation modified the original in four main ways. The original American wording of some items was anglicized in order to correspond with the experience and vocabulary of religious professionals. The items were shaped to reflect the experience and language of pastoral ministry. Eight additional items were developed to form an instrument in which each of the three subscales of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization and Personal Accomplishment comprised ten items. The response scale was changed from a -point measure of frequency to a -point Likert () scale of attitudinal intensity. This instrument has provided an invaluable link between the original MBI and the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI: Francis, Kaldor, Robbins, & Castle, ) that is being used in the present study. The Francis Burnout Inventory Although most of the studies employing the Maslach Burnout Inventory have assumed a three-factor structure, Walkey and Green () are among a growing number of researchers who suggest that the subscales of Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization may merge into a single factor to produce a two-dimensional model of Emotional Exhaustion and Job Satisfaction. In keeping with this thinking, Francis, Kaldor, Robbins, and Castle () were at pains to produce an instrument whereby the negative affects suffered from ministry, in the form of ‘stress’ and ‘burnout’, could be contrasted with the positive affect of ‘job satisfaction’ and ‘happiness’. Early researchers in the field of happiness and well-being acted on the supposition that positive affect and negative affect are best assessed at opposite ends of a single continuum. This view was, however, radically criticized by Bradburn’s () theory of balanced affect, which suggests that positive and negative affect are best assessed on two separate continua and not at opposite ends of a single continuum. This allows for the fact that people can and do experience moderately high levels of positive affect in the form of happiness and subjective well-being at the same time as they are experiencing negative affect in the form of depression and/or stress. The instrument employed in the present study to assess work-related psychological health among rural clergy, the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI: Francis, Kaldor, Robbins, & Castle, ), bases itself upon Bradburn’s () model of balanced affect. According to this model it is pos-

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sible for individual clergy to experience high levels of positive affect (job satisfaction) at the same time as they experience high levels of negative affect (emotional exhaustion). Burnout occurs, therefore, whenever high levels of negative affect (emotional exhaustion) exist alongside low levels of positive affect (job satisfaction). The new FBI instrument consists of an -item scale that assesses positive affect, the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS), together with an item scale that measures negative affect, the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM). These two scales were used separately as part of the ‘Happy but Exhausted?’ research which Francis, Kaldor, Robbins, and Castle () carried out among , clergy from Australia, England and New Zealand, in order to test the appropriateness of the SEEM for international and interdenominational studies, and to develop the SIMS as a comparable measure of job satisfaction. The FBI has also been used more recently in a study among  clergy serving within the Presbyterian Church of the USA (Francis, Wulff, & Robbins, ). Psychological Type Theory and Measurement In his important work Psychological types, Jung () proposed a system of psychological type theory for the understanding and identification of the basic elements of the human psyche. He suggested that individuals differ in terms of three bipolar preferences: two orientations (or attitude types), two judging (or rational) functions and two perceiving (or irrational) functions. An additional index, which concerns attitude toward the outside world, was included in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI: Myers, McCaulley, Quenk, & Hammer, ) in order to identify whether people apply either their perceiving preference or their judging preference in the outside world. The two orientations are defined as introversion (I) and extraversion (E). Extravert types are interested in relating to people and things in their immediate environment, whereas introverts draw their energy from the inner world of ideas. The two perceiving processes are defined as sensing (S) and intuition (N). Sensing types focus on their environments through their senses and are concerned with the details of the ‘here and now’, whereas intuitive types look to possibilities beyond sensation and engage in a creative process of perception by making use of imagination and inspiration. The two judging processes are thinking (T) and feeling (F). Thinking types tend to be concerned with making decisions and judgements based

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on reason and logic, whereas feeling types tend to make decisions and judgements based on values and relational concerns. The two attitudes toward the outer world are defined as judging (J) and perceiving (P). Judging types deal with the outside world by using their preferred judging process (i.e. either thinking [T] or feeling [F]), whereas perceiving types use their preferred perceiving process (i.e. either sensing [S] or intuition [N]). For judgers, the outside world is planned and organized, whereas for perceivers it is unplanned, flexible and spontaneous. The Jungian model of psychological type has been operationalized through several psychometric instruments, including the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS: Keirsey & Bates, ), the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI: Myers, McCaulley, Quenk, & Hammer, ) and the Francis Psychological Type Scales (FPTS: Francis, ) which are employed in the present study. The FPTS instrument has been developed independently of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and like many other operationalizations of psychological type theory (e.g. Keirsey & Bates, ; Myers, McCaulley, Quenk, & Hammer, ), the fourth index of judging (J) and perceiving (P) is included in order to measure attitude toward the outside world. The alpha coefficient of the eight scales of the FPTS ranges from . to ., which is well above the acceptable level suggested by DeVellis (), and the instrument has been found to achieve concurrent validity. The Francis Psychological Type Scales (Francis, ) are being included in the present study because they offer a short, simple and inexpensive way of assessing psychological type in a meaningful way. Psychological Type and Clergy Studies Psychological type profiling of the clergy was undertaken during the s in the USA in studies that have been summarized by Macdaid, McCaulley, and Kainz () in their Atlas of type tables and also by Myers and McCaulley () in their manual for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. More recently, in the United Kingdom, further studies have been concerned with the psychological type profiling of Anglican clergy (Francis, Payne, & Jones, ; Francis, Craig, Whinney, Tilley, & Slater, ), of Evangelical church leaders (Francis and Robbins, ), of interdenominational church leaders (Craig, Francis, & Robbins, ) and of Roman Catholic priests (Craig, Duncan, & Francis, ).

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Research in the field of psychological type and the clergy has shown that there are some significant differences in the profiles of clergy recorded across different denominations. It has also suggested that overall, clergy of various denominations tend to prefer introversion over extraversion, sensing over intuition, feeling over thinking and judging over perceiving (Francis, Payne, & Jones, ). In a study designed to link psychological type with the work-related psychological health of the clergy, Francis, Robbins, Kaldor, and Castle () found that better quality of work-related psychological health was experienced by extraverts rather than introverts and by feelers rather than thinkers. It was also found in this study that intuitives enjoyed a higher level of satisfaction in ministry than that experienced by sensors. A second study, undertaken in the USA by Francis, Wulff, and Robbins (), reported that introverts recorded higher scores than extraverts on the index of emotional exhaustion in ministry, while extraverts recorded higher scores than introverts on the index of satisfaction in ministry. In this study the judging process also emerged as a significant predictor of scores on the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale, with feeling types recording higher scores than thinking types. Garden (, , , ) has argued that it is inappropriate to assess the relationship between psychological type and scores obtained from the employment of standard measures of burnout, because he contends that burnout needs to be conceptualized in different ways for different psychological types. Using the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry and the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale, which have been designed especially for use among church ministers, however, Francis, Robbins, Kaldor, and Castle () believe that there is considerable benefit in exploring the relationship between psychological type and individual differences in work-related psychological health, in order to establish whether psychological type theory can be shown to predict levels of work-related psychological health among the clergy. Research Agenda Against this background, the three main aims of the present study are to establish first, the level of work-related psychological health among rural clergy in multi-church parishes; second, the psychological type profile of rural clergy in multi-church parishes; and third, the relationships that exist between psychological type and individual differences in workrelated psychological health.

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christine e. brewster et al. Method Procedure

A detailed questionnaire was sent to a random sample of Anglican clergy serving in rural multi-church benefices. A response rate of   generated  completed questionnaires. The present analyses are based on those respondents who identified themselves as engaged in full-time stipendiary ministry with care for at least three churches and who had completed the key measures identified below (N = ). Measures Work-related psychological health was assessed by the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS) which form the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI: Francis, Kaldor, Robbins, & Castle, ). Each instrument consists of  items that are assessed on a five-point Likert () scale: agree strongly (), agree (), not certain (), disagree () and disagree strongly (). An example item from the SEEM, which measures negative affect, is ‘I feel drained by fulfilling my ministry roles’ and an example item from the SIMS, which assesses positive affect, is ‘I feel very positive about my ministry here’. The  SEEM items and the  SIMS items are presented alternately. Psychological type was assessed by the Francis Psychological Type Scales (FPTS: Francis, ). This is a self-report, pencil and paper instrument that comprises  items to distinguish between the two orientations (E and I), the two perceiving functions (S and N), the two judging functions (T and F) and the two attitudes toward the outside world (J and P). Each item consists of contrasting pairs of characteristics, and participants are invited to select the characteristics that they feel best represent their personal preferences. The FPTS uses an ipsative scoring system and a forced-choice format. An example from the ten questions that aim to distinguish between extraversion and introversion is ‘Are you: energized by others (E) or drained by too many people (I)?’ Sensing and intuition are also distinguished by ten questions, an example of which is ‘Do you tend to be more: concerned for meaning (N) or concerned about detail (S)?’ An example from the ten judging items is ‘Are you: warm-hearted (F) or fair-minded (T)?’ and an example of attitude toward the outside world is ‘Do you tend to be: more happy with routine (J) or unhappy with routine (P)?’

maintaining a public ministry in rural england



The Sample Four out of every five respondents were male ( ) while approximately one fifth ( ) was female. A small number ( ) of the rural clergy were in their thirties, exactly one quarter ( ) were in their forties,   were in their fifties and   were in their sixties. Over one half of the clergy ( ) had been in their present positions for at least five years, while   had been in their current roles for  years or more. The majority of the clergy ( ) were married, while   were single,   were widowed,   were separated or divorced and   were remarried after being widowed or divorced. In terms of churchmanship,   considered themselves to be catholic, while   indicated that they were of evangelical persuasion, and   were committed to neither of these persuasions. The following splits were found in terms of the liberal—conservative distinction (  liberal;   conservative;   committed to neither of these), and in terms of the charismatic—noncharismatic distinction (  charismatic;   non-charismatic;   committed to neither of these positions). Exactly one third of the rural clergy ( ) served three churches, while those caring for four or five churches totalled  , and one fifth ( ) of the sample cared for six or more churches. Exactly one quarter ( ) of the sample had to travel at least seven miles to their farthest churches and   indicated that their farthest churches were at least ten miles away. Results and Discussion The scale properties of the SEEM and the SIMS, in terms of the item rest-of-test correlations, together with alpha coefficients, are shown in Tables  and . Item endorsements which reflect ‘agree strongly’ and ‘agree’ responses are also shown in these tables. The SEEM achieved an alpha coefficient of . and the alpha coefficient for the SIMS was also .. These alphas demonstrate that both scales are functioning with high levels of internal consistency reliability. The item endorsements for the SEEM, as shown in Table , reveal that the rural clergy in this survey experience significant levels of emotional exhaustion in ministry. For example, exactly one half ( ) of the rural clergy feel drained by fulfilling their ministry roles, and just under one half of these clergy ( ) find themselves frustrated in their attempts to accomplish tasks which are important to them.



christine e. brewster et al.

At the same time, the item endorsements for the SIMS, as shown in Table , suggest that rural clergy experience a high level of satisfaction in ministry. Almost four out of every five respondents ( ) indicate that they gain a lot of personal satisfaction from working with people in their current ministry. The same percentage ( ) feel that their pastoral ministry has a positive influence on people’s lives, and   are glad that they entered the ministry. Table . Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM): scale properties. r

%

I feel drained by fulfilling my ministry roles Fatigue and irritation are part of my daily experience I am invaded by sadness I can’t explain I am feeling negative or cynical about the people with whom I work I always have enthusiasm for my work* My humour has a cynical and biting tone I find myself spending less and less time with those among whom I minister I have been discouraged by the lack of personal support for me here I find myself frustrated in my attempts to accomplish tasks important to me I am less patient with those among whom I minister than I used to be I am becoming less flexible in my dealings with those among whom I minister

0.61 0.69 0.54 0.64 0.50 0.39 0.48 0.57 0.61 0.58 0.58

50 42 15 13 43 18 41 23 48 28 19

Alpha

0.87

* Note: This item has been reverse coded to compute the correlations, but not the percentage endorsement. Table . Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS): scale properties. r

%

I have accomplished many worthwhile things in my current ministry here I gain a lot of personal satisfaction from working with people in my current ministry I deal very effectively with the problems of the people in my current ministry I can easily understand how the people here feel about things I feel very positive about my ministry here I feel that my pastoral ministry has a positive influence on people’s lives I feel that my teaching ministry has a positive influence on people’s faith I feel that my ministry is really appreciated by people I am really glad that I entered the ministry The ministry here gives real purpose and meaning to my life I gain a lot of personal satisfaction from fulfilling my functions here

0.58 63 0.65 79

Alpha

0.87

0.32 36 0.31 0.58 0.55 0.43 0.57 0.57 0.65 0.69

55 56 79 66 71 79 62 75

maintaining a public ministry in rural england



Table . Type distribution: psychological type profile of rural clergy serving at least three churches. N =  + =   of N The Sixteen Complete Types

Dichotomous Preferences

ISTJ n = 55 (10.6 %)

ISFJ n = 103 (19.8 %)

INFJ n = 56 (10.7 %)

INTJ n = 43 (8.3 %)

+++++ +++++ +

+++++ +++++ +++++ +++++

+++++ +++++ +

+++++ +++

ISTP n=5 (1.0 %)

ISFP n = 22 (4.2 %)

INFP n = 48 (9.2 %)

INTP n = 14 (2.7 %)

+

++++

+++++ ++++

+++

ESTP n=6 (1.2 %)

ESFP n = 14 (2.7 %)

ENFP n = 27 (5.2 %)

ENTP n=3 (0.6 %)

+

+++

+++++

+

ESTJ n = 20 (3.8 %)

ESFJ n = 53 (10.2 %)

ENFJ n = 34 (6.5 %)

ENTJ n = 18 (3.5 %)

++++

+++++ +++++

+++++ ++

++++

E I

n = 175 n = 346

(33.6 %) (66.4 %)

S N

n = 278 n = 243

(53.4 %) (46.6 %)

T F

n = 164 n = 357

(31.5 %) (68.5 %)

J P

n = 382 n = 139

(73.3 %) (26.7 %)

Pairs and Temperaments IJ IP EP EJ

n = 257 n = 89 n = 50 n = 125

(49.3 %) (17.1 %) (9.6 %) (24.0 %)

ST SF NF NT

n = 86 n = 192 n = 165 n = 78

(16.5 %) (36.9 %) (31.7 %) (15.0 %)

SJ SP NP NJ

n = 231 n = 47 n = 92 n = 151

(44.3 %) (9.0 %) (17.7 %) (29.0 %)

TJ TP FP FJ

n = 136 n = 28 n = 111 n = 246

(26.1 %) (5.4 %) (21.3 %) (47.2 %)

Jungian Types (E) Jungian Types (I) Dominant Types n % n % n %

IN EN IS ES

n = 161 n = 82 n = 185 n = 93

(30.9 %) (15.7 %) (35.5 %) (17.9 %)

E-TJ E-FJ ES-P EN-P

ET EF IF IT

n = 47 n = 128 n = 229 n = 117

(9.0 %) (24.6 %) (44.0 %) (22.5 %)

38 87 20 30

7.3 16.7 3.8 5.8

I-TP 19 3.6 I-FP 70 13.4 IS-J 158 30.3 IN-J 99 19.0

Dt. T 57 10.9 Dt. F 157 30.1 Dt. S 178 34.2 Dt. N 129 24.8



christine e. brewster et al.

Table . Mean scores of emotional exhaustion and satisfaction in ministry by dichotomous type preferences. Comparisons

Mean

SD

N

F

P