Home > Third World Quarterly, Vol 17, No 3, pp 525-535, 1996
Political
para-theology: rethinking religion, politics and democracy
WILLIAM F.
S. MILES
Third
World Quarterly, Vol 17, No 3 (1996) pp 525-535, 1996
The superseding of global bipolar
politics has given rise, in Ken Jowitt's regrettably apt phrase, to
a New World Disorder.l Classical cleavages based on state policies towards
market freedom and East-West regional configurations are giving way
to different bases of inter-state alliances. During this period of flux,
populations throughout the developing world (including former Communist
states) are rediscovering the religious dimension to group identity
and statist politics. How this religious resurgence will ultimately
affect the geopolitical landscape remains to be seen. For while religion
may provide a common linkage between formerly antagonistic state units
(such as Iran and the newly independent Asian republics of the Commonwealth
of Independent States), in religiously pluralistic societies a heightened
emphasis on religion as a basis of state identity is destabilising (eg
Serbia, India, Nigeria).
Religious revival or resurgence
in the political arena (many specialists blanch at the overused 'fundamentalism')
is not merely a response to fissures along the capitalist-communist
fault line. The re-emergence of 'political Islam',2 as personified by
the fall of the Shah of Iran, preceded that of the Berlin Wall by well
over a decade. Radicalisation of the militant Hindu Bharataya Janata
Party (BJP), epitomised by its incited razing of the Avodya mosque in
northern India, had nothing to do with events in Moscow, or even Sarajevo.
And though in 1995 there was no reoccurrence of the annual Christmas
bombings by the (not coincidentally Catholic) Irish Republican Ammy,
a spate of killings near Belfast in early 1996 serves as a timeworn
reminder of ongoing religious division even within the uncontestably
'developed' and formally democratic world.
Yet even if the parallelism
of religious revivalism and communist collapse is a coincidence, it
is likely that the latter will feed the former. (It is not a coincidence,
of course, in the former communist states themselves. Consider the role
of the Catholic Church in transitional Poland, for instance, or that
of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the conflict over Bosnia-Herzegovina.)
On another level, however, the two phenomena do share a common causality:
popular and profound dissatisfaction with the ideology-that be. In the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the failure was that of Marxism-Leninism;
in the Middle East,and in many parts of the (former) Third World, discredit
goes to nationalism. Both of these ideologies, communism and nationalism,
promised wealth and equity to 'the people', the former through socialism,
the latter through development. While both sets of society underwent
the preconditions of their respective transformations -- revolution
and decolonization -- their productive and distributional fruits were
not forthcoming.
Para-theology
versus sacralised politics
The debunking of utopian socialism
a la Marx and Engels, and utopian nationalism � la Bodin and Herder,
does not mean that utopian ideology per se has been rejected. Rather,
the basis for utopian ideology has shifted from a material class focus
(scientific socialism) and territorial ethnic congruence (post colonial
nationalism) to an apparently otherworldly one. However incompatible
socialist and nationalist versions of utopia have proven with democracy,
at least they are in line with modernism. Not so religious utopias,
which reject democratic premises and earthly, historically progressive
templates for realising the ideal society. Each major religion has its
examples: Islam in Iran and the Maghreb3, Messianic Zionism in 'Judea
and Samaria',4 millenarian movements among American and Christian sects,5
BJP Hindus in India, Buddhist hit squads in Sri Lanka, Aum Shinrikiyo
subway poisoners in Japan...Unfortunately, the list goes on and on.
Sceptical, cynical, or simply
antireligious voices may here break into the argument thus: how hypocritical
are such exemplars of religion! Whether couched in terms of peace, bliss,
love, justice, unity or brotherhood, religion is supposed to promote
harmony among humanity, not conflict or violence. Yet the renewed intrusion
of religion into the realm of politics, far from having a pacifying
effect, has had quite the opposite result.
The counterargument has been
made, of course, that religion has helped to promote democracy and can
further world peace.6 But this claim is made in the context of the Western
world and particularly for the Judeo-Christian tradition. Samuel Huntington,
viewing the issue from a cross-cultural perspective, finds certain non-Western
religions (Confucianism and, probably, Islam) to be incompatible with
democracy.7 From this vantage, it seems unlikely that the global interaction
between religion and politics can lead, in overall balance, to greater
inter-group stability.8
This seeming dichotomy between
religious revivalism and political stability reflects a common confusion.
For it uncritically accepts as 'religious' discourse and behaviour which
are promulgated in religion's name. It behooves us, whether we are personally
suspicious of, sympathetic to, or neutrally detached from religion to
differentiate between leaders and activities which are genuinely religious
and those which are not. Clerics and lay leaders who, consciously or
not, use religious rationale primarily to gain or maintain power we
may call 'para-theologians'. Their activities should not be considered
a form of politicised (but otherwise authentic) religion but rather
as 'para-theology'.
The paradigm of para-theology
is useful because it conceptualises not only the illegitimate use of
religion for political purposes but its converse: sacralised politics.
Sacralised politics refers to authentically religiously, spiritually,
or doctrinally motivated behaviour or activity that occurs in the political
arena or spills into it. The adverbial qualifier 'authentically' is
the litmus test separating sacralised politics from political para-theology
and refers back to the power ramifications for leaders or would-be leaders.
For those engaged in sacralised
politics, the anticipated outcome in personal political power is neutral
or even negative; for political para-theologians, the expected result--viewed
from either the actor's or observer's standpoint--is positive. Sacralised
politics tends to be more democratic in process and output than political
para-theology, though it will not be compatible with democracy in all
specific instances. Both because it is usually democratic, and is inconsistent
when it is not, sacralised politics will generally be less politically
efficacious than para-theology.
Even when they disagree with
the specific stances taken by practitioners of sacralised politics,
critics should not disingenuously lump them together with political
para-theologians. It is the distinction in power implications, not the
content of position, which informs the analysis.
Recognising para-theology,
in contrast to sacralised politics, requires us to reexamine the nature
and source of power wielded in the name of religion. Power that is derived
from, or exercised for the sake of, the divine transcends that of the
individual personality. More pointedly it eclipses consequences for
any given leader or set of leaders. Religious institutions, as do all
others, of course require a modicum of power to survive. But institutional
survival is not the same as individual power. Secular, political, power
redounds to individuals or groups who deem themselves to be irreplaceable
decision makers for their respective communities.
A distinction analogous to
that between para-theology and sacralised politics is the one between
the doctrines of 'crusade' and 'just war'.9 Both refer to justifications
for the use of armed force couched in religious terms. Both emanate
from a given religious tradition. Both, from the perspective of the
war casualty, have similar, tragic outcomes. Yet there remains a fundamental
difference between military conflict which is launched by executive
theological fiat for territorial conquest and that which is deconstructed
(often ex-post facto) by morally conflicted theologians. Except for
strict pacifists, there are degrees of morality regarding warfare. 10
Distinguishing sacralised politics from political para-theology is akin
to judging between just and unjust wars: not simple, but morally as
well as politically imperative.
Power exercised for authentically
perceived divine purposes dispenses with the significance, and interests,
of individual actors. Para-theologians do not separate themselves from
the divine mission: they purport to be the funnels through which the
divine acts and take challenges to their persons as affronts to God.
Secular power is thus stockpiled in the guise of divine power. In sacralised
politics, power is depersonalised and shared; in para-theology, politicians
empower themselves with the halo of the divine. The more cozy the clerical
lifestyle, the more para-theological the political behaviour.
The separationist
premise
The claim that one can differentiate
between authentic religious behaviour and Para-theology rests on a controvertible
proposition; namely, that one can separate religion from politics. For
sure, the conceptual dualism which long characterised the conventional
study of the relationship between religion and state is, as Irving Louis
Horowitz pointed out over a decade ago, inadequate.l1 But even if the
task of dissecting--or bisecting--religion from politics is difficult,
it remains important to disentangle the two definitionally. 12 One potentially
fruitful direction might be the divergence between 'private' and 'public'
religion or, more specifically, privatised religion versus its publically
resurgent variants. 13. But, as Casanova notes, 'Religion cannot easily
be encased in a strictly private individual sphere...[There is an enduring]
tension between religions' private and public roles'.14
Persons themselves grounded
in religiously-inspired political activism will deny that a meaningful
politics/religion distinction can be made. Christian liberation theology,
for instance, claims that political neutrality legitimates the suffering
of the oppressed, the very people whom Jesus was sent to serve and save.
An 'epistemological preference for the poor' means that true Christians
cannot ignore the spiritual ramifications of earthly actions, and that
the pretence of political neutrality is religiously inauthentic.15 It
is in Latin America that liberation theology has had the greatest political
impact, with Catholic priests and laypersons lending explicit support
(again, in the name of religion) to opposition movements.
But it is in the context of
Islam that the unity of mosque and state is most strongly asserted.
The Koran articulates a complete way of life, Islamicist activists argue,
a comprehensive mode of being that does not separate the private from
the public, the individual from the community, the society from the
state. Secularism is synonymous with heresy in this integrationist view.
It is not sufficient that state leaders be Muslim; governments must
have Islam as their raison d'etre. Otherwise they are illegitimate and
need to be overthrown.
Such a view of Muslim monism
is at odds with the historical and theological reality of Islam. No
less that Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism, real Islam has
been characterised by a high degree of diversity in matters governmental
as well as doctrinal. Such diversity goes well beyond the overworked
division between Sunni and Shi'ite branches of the faith. In different
places and in different times, the mystical tradition (Sufism) has predominated
over the scholastic one (reflected in the ulama; this replicates the
dichotomy between chassidic and rabbinic Judaism). Sufism itself has
split into numerous, sometimes competing, brotherhoods.16 Some Islamic
regimes have been undergirded by populism (Khomeini's Iran), others
by sultanism (the Ottoman empire). In some Muslim nations, Islam has
been interpreted as a kind of socialism (as articulated in Libya's Green
Book, and by Iraq's and Syria's Ba'ath regimes); in others, it has been
construed as rather compatible with capitalism (Saudi Arabia, Morocco,
the Gulf states). In some Islamic nations preachers and mosques are
sponsored and controlled by the government (masjid hukumi); elsewhere,
their status and role is more independent (masjid ahli). Governments
explicitly constituted in the name of Islam may be ruled by military
officers (Pakistan under Zia, Sudan under Numeiri) or by emirs (Kuwait).
Others whose Islamic underpinnings are more indirect include Jordan
(under a king), Egypt (governed by a one-party regime) and Senegal (with
a multiparty democracy).But perhaps the most dichotomous strands are
those pitting Islamic modernism, which accepts European enlightenment
ideals and values, against anti-Western 'fundamentalism'. (The former
is identified with the l9th century sheikh Rifa al-Tahtawi; the latter
may be traced to Hasan-al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brothers.) In
the name of shura (consultation, democracy), Islamic modernists look
to liberally reformed government to allow 'greater political participation,
reform through decentralisation, broader economic liberalisation, a
priority upon social justice, and more pluralism and tolerance of Islamic
modernists.l7 'Fundamentalists' divide between camps which want to take
over the reins of state in the name of Islam and those who believe that,
by its very nature, human government is flawed. In short, the great
diversity in societies which otherwise are indiscriminately thought
of as Muslim precludes simple encapsulation of what Islamic politics
are or ought to be.
The same can be said of virtually
all other religions of wide global import. Differences between Roman
Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and Russian Orthodoxy (not to mention
between Catholicism tout court and Protestantism) have betokened substantive
differences in the way that questions of rulership and political fealty
have been played out in their respective societies. Eastern Europe is
currently evincing renewed relationships between church and nation.
Within American Protestantism, and indeed the American Baptist tradition,
witness the theo-political contrast between the two reverend Jesses,
Falwell and Jackson. Judaism, though ostensibly emanating from a single
body of law, the Torah, has had two parallel streams of talmudic interpretation
flowing from it (the western, or ashkenazi, and eastern, or sephardi),
a distinction which, when intertwined with distinctive ethnic, historical
and cultural dimensions, continues to have an impact on domestic Israeli
politics today. American Judaism has many characteristics distinguishing
it from Israeli Judaism,18 not least of which is the emergence of progressively
liberal non-orthodox traditions. And then there are the marginal movements
on both sides of the theo-political spectrum, both ostensibly emanating
from a 'correct' vision of Judaism. These are represented by such antitheses
as the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's anti-democratic and quasi-racist Kach
movement (a spin-off of which moulded the assassin of Prime Minister
Rabin) and the liberal, humanistic, conciliatory theology of Rabbis
David Hartmann and the late Yehoshua Leibowitz.
Even Buddhism--which most Westerners
associate with a transcendental unworldly, apolitical mindset--has become
a catalyst for earthly violence. Anagarika Dharmapala's (1864-1933)
populist, anti-Western, anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu interpretation of
Theravada Budhism in Ceylon planted poisonous seeds whose insidious
offshoots largely account for Sinhala Buddhist-Tamil Hindu conflict
in present-day Sri Lanka.19 Just as contradictory is the hardening of
the philosophically tolerant Hindu tradition, as manifested in the BJP
platform in India, which novelly equates the Hindu religion with the
Indian state.
To reiterate: any religion
worthy of the name allows for extremely broad, and often contradictory,
interpretations of both theological doctrine and political behaviour.
Unless one claims that all politics legitimated by religious rationale
is 'true'--an untenable position both for the politically activist theologian,
for whom the opposite theo-political stance is tantamount to heresy,
as well as for the neutral social scientist, who possesses no basis
for evaluating a religion's truth value--then some yardstick distinguishing
the genuinely religious from the para-theological is called for. One
such gauge is the degree to which the purported theologian wishes to
restructure government and so redefine the state.
Religions and constitutions
A major reason for the diversity
in political ideology and institutional structure emanating from single
religions is that religions are not constitutional in nature. That is,
although they set forth broad principles for the conduct of persons
in society, and some elaborate specific legal systems (canon law, shari'a,
halacha), they do not, interestingly enough, specify how any government
set up in that religion's name ought to be structured. This is not surprising
for Buddhism and Hinduism, religions which have been less legalistic
and text-oriented than their Western counterparts. But it is significant
when one considers Jewish, Christian and Muslim states. Modern Israeli
constitutional engineers cannot look to the Torah for a detailed model
of the Knesset (let alone guidance as to the advisability of parliamentary
over presidential modes of election); not even the Sanhedrin of the
pre-modern Jewish polity is mentioned there. One reads the New Testament
in vain for a blueprint of the Vatican or a procedure for papal selection;
indeed, it is this constitutional vagueness which made possible not
only a competing papacy in Avignon but the very emergence of a Reformation
and its myriad theo-political offshoots.
It is the lack of a detailed
prescription of the Muslim state in the Koran which, given Islam's putative
unity of religion and politics, is most striking. Governments in the
Islamic republics of Iran, Sudan and Mauritania bear only faint structural
resemblance to one another. Pakistan, whose very existence is based
on its being an Islamic state, is notoriously unstable, not only in
terms of its leadership but in its very mode of governance: its Islamic
essence, however, is never seriously challenged. Is it an anachronistic
fallacy to ask why theo-political readers of the Koran can alternatively
sanction military, imamic, princely, single-party, or multiparty modes
of governance for their otherwise Muslim state, without apparent contradiction?
Is it because constitution-writing is a latter day phenomenon that the
holy texts, even where juridically explicit, are constitutionally silent?
Probably not, for the simple reason that the Koran--just like the Old
and New Testaments--was not intended to be a political, much less constitutional,
document, but rather a guide for correct conduct and interpersonal behaviour
on the sub-state level. In the Muslim tradition, political theorists
during the Ottoman period thought that 'the realm of Islamic authenticity
lies within the soul of the individual and in the relations of individuals
to each other within small communities'.20 Even today, 'the true domain
of Islam is still the righteous small community and the ethical individual',21
a conception which applies well to other religious traditions. Shaping
belief and moderating behaviour in civil society is thus a legitimate
function of religion while controlling the state, or seeking to control
it, for the same purposes is not.
It is when clerics and religiously-cloaked
politicians breach the divide between individual, inter-personal and
communitarian prescription and state-level policy and action that para-theology
is being committed. Though their beliefs may be genuinely grounded in
a religious creed, para-theologians overstep the line between legitimate
theology and the overpoliticisation of religion. And it is here that
their actions become most dangerous, for if they do not distinguish
between religion and politics, how will their followers?
Religion, nationalism
and the nation-state
The relationship between religion
and state has been quite different in Western Europe and North America
from that in the Second and Third Worlds. Post-Re- formation Europe
and its migratory offshoots have moved, however fitfully, towards separating
church from state. Communist societies strove to coopt religious institutions
by incorporating them within the state apparatus. In the Third World
many colonised societies, particularly those with large Muslim majorities,
used religious integrity as a rallying point for anti-colonial action,
especially if the coloniser showed hostility to the indigenous religion.
But after independence most Third World nations, including those of
the Near and Middle East, erected their polities as European-style nation-states
whose basis for legitimation was secular. Thus was Islam disestablished
in Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan and superseded by
nationalism as the actual raison d'etat.
Nationalism was supposed not
only to unite peoples of various cultures, ethnicities, languages, dialects
and religions into unified and independent political entities but to
deliver, quite literally, the material goods as well. Economic development
was inexorably to follow political decolonisation.
This, of course, has not usually
been the case. Even when substantial wealth has been generated (particularly
in lands blessed with subterranean petroleum), inequitable distribution
has left the majority of people materially disenfranchised and, particularly
among urban populations, with a strong sense of aggrievement. Iran under
the Shah epitomised this scenario. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, economic
stagnation and declining standards of living have been identified as
a key condition of 'militant Islam and the politics of redemption'.22
In Latin America, the attraction of liberation theology is also directly
linked to economic deprivation and distributive disparities. Hindu mosque-razers
in India represent that large stratum for whom the Indian state has
not succeeded in raising material conditions. Soviet-style mismanagement
and economic inefficiency contributed, in part, to the shift in loyalty
from state to church in Poland and, to lesser extents, elsewhere throughout
the Soviet bloc.23
It is perhaps in Africa that
the ideology of nationalism has shown itself most bankrupt. Somalia,
Liberia and Rwanda are extreme examples of the brittleness of the African
nation-state, but their underlying problems are shared throughout the
continent. Developmental failure (particularly in the face of famine
and drought), constitutional anarchy, governmental corruption, predatory
militaries: all these, occurring in political constructs which are themselves
the products of arbitrary colonial partition, leave people yearning
for alternative systems of hope. Political para-theologians are all
too ready to respond. The heightened political importance of religion
in Nigeria, occurring in both Muslim and Christian camps, is a troubling
example of African para-theology.24
Not surprisingly popular religion,
entailing the 'perceptions, ethic and conventions of various groups
divided by occupation, class or gender, and expressed through religious
terminology'25 has arisen most prominently in sub-Saharan Africa. Popular
religion challenges both secular political hegemons as well as the orthodox,
mainstream religious elites which are usually in alliance with them.
Even where state-recognised clerics perform a generally politically
conservative function and harbour materialistic goals, as Haynes points
out, their role as mediators in intra-elite conflicts in Africa does
differentiate them from their para-theological colleagues.
Religion and nationalism are
not inherently antagonistic. Indeed, they can be complementary, as both
colonial-era movements for national liberation and contemporary military
chaplaincies in developed states prove. However, when nationalism is
discredited on economic, cultural or political grounds, its place cannot
be taken by religion per se, for religious systems are not inherently
equipped to satisfy the political and economic demands made of the nation-state.
The ideological space must still be filled (politics, no less than nature,
abhors a vacuum) and para-theology is the prime candidate.
Neither are religion and democracy
inherently incompatible. Huntington, for one, acknowledges the dynamism
of all major religious cultures and the possibility of even Confucian
and Muslim societies democratising. But Huntington, along with many
political analysts of religion, links national and religious cultures
too tightly, involuntarily obscuring the fact that impediments to development
and democratisation result not so much from doctrinal essences as from
political para-theology.
Religion as
a basis for group identity
Political para-theology not only functions as a surrogate form of nationalism
('religious nationalism' is
a misleading term) but imparts a seductively powerful basis for sub-state
or transnational identity. Kashmiris of India wish to join their land
with Pakistan because both are Muslim. Punjabis also consider withdrawal
from India on account of their (religious) identity as Sikhs. Bosnian
Muslims refuse incorporation in a state of Christian Serbs; Serbian
'ethnic cleansing' is really a form of para-theological murder. Shi'ites
and Phalangists acted similarly, only with Lebanese specificity, not
so long ago. Atheistic Russians and Hebrew-illiterate Falashas may claim
automatic citizenship in Israel, whereas Jerusalem-born Palestinians
may not. Self-styled Tamil Tigers attack Sinhalese Buddhists on their
shared island. Bombs were planted in Northern Ireland according to the
intended victims' (Christian) denomination.
All such examples tell us much
about the strength of group identity and the lengths to which members
will go to preserve it. They tell us nothing, however, about the religions
in whose name, or within whose garb, such politics are conducted. In
the case of India, neither the Sikh nor Muslim religion prohibits its
adherents from living as religious minorities within the borders of
larger states. Christians and Muslims coexisted (and even intermarried)
in Yugoslavia for nearly half a century before political instability
gave vent to communal conflict. Modern Zionism, to borrow Robert Bellah's
phrase, is more of a civil religion than an expression of orthodox Judaism.26
The tolerance and openness of Hindu and Buddhist theologies makes Sri
Lankan fratricide not only a human travesty but a para-theological parody.
Though wars between European Protestants and Catholics did have a theological
basis in the past, few, if any, are the Northern Irish antagonists today
who can articulate a genuinely religious motivation for their respective
antipathies today.
Political para-theologians
use the appeal of religion to incite their followers to commit a-religious,
and sometimes anti-religious, behaviour in order to solidify group membership
and gain political power. The establishment of Pakistan is a good instance
of the use of para-theology to further personal interest and group solidarity
in spite of a true religious imperative. Pakistan's founding fathers
were themselves Westernised, privately secular nationalists for whom
Islam conveniently provided a powerful justification for statehood.
Serbian claims that Orthodoxy was protecting the West from a Muslim
onslaught should be regarded in a similar light.
In his insightful and stimulating
essay which envisions the possibility of a 'new ethnic order', Myron
Weiner develops a typology of ethnic and religious demands that lead
to international conflict.27 Except for including a category of 'fundamentalism',
however, Weiner treats ethnic and religious claims, and identities,
alike. Religious identity, in my view, can and must be categorically
differentiated from ethnic identity. Otherwise, one is hard pressed
to recognise the critical distinction between religious revolts against
the state, which are truly inspired from theology, and pseudo-religious
ones, in which religion is merely a referent for group identity.
Religious identity is a matter
of shared theology, ritual, belief. Ethnic identity is a matter of common
ancestry, descent, history, language, culture and also (though not necessarily)
religion. If we do not distinguish the two identities from each other
then we cannot hope to demarcate ethnic from religious conflict. The
danger of such intellectual confusion is that, by undermining the legitimacy
of religion as an instrument of peace, its inherent potential for conflict
resolution will be seriously compromised.
Sacralisation
of politics versus politicisation of religion
I have been claiming that the para-theology paradigm does not deny the
existence of political behaviour which is authentically religious in motivation.
Such activity, when subject
to certain limits (confined to civil society, non-hegemonic, constitutionally
neutral) may be thought of as the sacralisation of politics. It should
not be confused with the politicisation of religion, the very hallmark
of para-theology.
This paradigm does not mean
that politics which is truly religious in inspiration need be peaceful
or non-violent, while conflict in the name of religion must be para-theological.
Mark Juergensmeyer is correct in arguing that some (most?) religiously
motivated killers genuinely believe that their commission of violence
is an ineluctable, intermediary step towards a world of divinely sanctioned
peace.28 But one must be able to set apart the genuine (if misguided)martyr
ready to commit suicide by self-explosion from the foreign government
agent making the explosives available for reasons of (para-theocratic)
state. Both the nature of the religion and the circumstances of the
politics will determine whether the action or activity is sacralised
politics or politicised religion.
Take the notion of jihad which,
though reinterpreted by theological modemists as spiritual renewal or
conquest of inner impurity, may still refer to armed struggle to defend
the Faith Using the criteria of para-theology, we can conceptually distinguish
the invocation of jihad by Saddam Hussein to legitimise war over Kuwait
from those mujahaddin who legitimately fought to defend Islam in Afghanistan.
(Of course, following the Soviet withdrawal some of the mujahaddin,
in a bid to consolidate power based on clan, have lapsed into para-theology.)
In the USA it is useful to understand that, by itself, the anti-abortion
movement may be a genuine expression of the sacralisation of politics,
while the New Christian Right, though it encapsulates 'right-to-life'
advocates, fits the definition of para-theology.
To recapitulate, the paradigm
is intended as a descriptive, not proscriptive, device to distinguish
between authentically religious behaviour which impinges on society
at large from para-theology proper, which bears the following characteristics
and qualifications:
The common intertwining of
religion and politics should not preclude conceptual rigour when the
two intermingle. If war is too important to be left only to generals,
and if politics is too important to be left only to politicians, surely
religion is too important to be left to clerics. Religion's impact on
democracy mandates, for example, that contemporary democratic theory
step beyond the familiar confines of secular analysis.
Policy-makers ignore theology at their peril when analysing instances of religiously defined behaviour. For when they blithely dismiss doctrine, they too risk falling into the trap of the para-theologians, those political actors whose success lies precisely in obfuscating political motivation behind religious inspiration.
POLITICAL PARA-THEOLOGY
Notes
1 Ken Jowitt, 'The New World Disorder,' in Diamond & Plattner (eds), The Global Resurgence of Democracy, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1993.
2 For a thorough exposition of this paradigm, see the special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science devoted to the theme of 'Political Islam' edited by Butterworth & Zartman, 542, 1992.
3 See Lahouari Addi's treatment of Algeria ('Islamicist utopia and democracy') in ibid.
4 See Gideon Aaron, 'Jewish Zionist fundamentalism', in Martin Marty & R Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms Observed Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
5 Recent examples include the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas and the mass suicide of the Solar Temple millenarians in Switzerland, Canada and France.
6 George Wiegel, 'Religion and peace: an argument complexified', The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1991, pp 27-41.
7 Samuel Huntington, 'Religion and the third wave', The National Interest, Summer 1991, pp 29-42.
S For a comprehensive and well documented attempt to highlight the ecumenical, including non-Western, potential for religion in peace making, see Douglas Johnston & Cynthia Sampson (eds), Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
9 See David R Smock, Religious Perspectives on War. Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Attitudes Toward Force After the Gulf War, Wasmngton, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1992.
See David R Smock, Perspectives on Pacifism. Christian, Jewish and Muslim Views on Nonviolence and International Conflict, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1995.
Irving Louis Horowitz, 'Religion, the State, and Politics', in Myron Aronoff (ed), Religion and Politics. Political Anthropology, Volume 3, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984, pp 5-9.
12 George Moyser, 'Politics and religion in the modern world: an overview', in Moyser (ed.), Politics and Religion in the Modern World, London: Routledge, 1991.
3 Jose Casanova, 'Private and public religions', Social Research, 59, 1992.
4 Ibid, p 57, pp 17�57.
5 Frank Flinn offers a good synthesis of the major tenets of liberation theology in his contribution to Richard Rubenstein's volume Spirit Matters. The Worldwide Impact of Religion on Contemporary Politics, New York: Paragon House, 1987.
16 See John Voll 'Conservative and traditional brotherhoods', Annals, ('Political Islam' issue).
17 Patrick Gaffney, 'Popular Islam', Annals ('Political Islam' issue), p 49.
18 Charles Liebman & Steven Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism. The Israeli and American Experiences, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
'9 Gananath Obeysekere, 'Buddhism and conscience: an exploratory essay', Daedalus, 120:3, 1991.
20 Ira Lapidus, 'The golden age: the political concepts of Islam', Annals ('Political Islam' issue), p 17.
21 Ibid, p 25.
22 Mary-Jane Deeb, 'Militant Islam and the politics of redemption, Annals ('Political Islam' issue).
23 Zdzislawa Walaszek, 'An open issue of legitimacy: the state and the church in Poland'; Philip Walters, 'The Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet state'; Jurgen Moltmann, 'Religion and state in Germany: West and East', in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 483, 1986, special issue on 'Religion and the State: The Struggle for Legitimacy and Power'.
24 See John Hunwick, 'An African case study of political Islam: Nigeria', Annals, ('Political Islam' issue), pp 143-155; and Jibrin Ibrahim, 'Religion and political turbulence in Nigeria', The Journal of Modern African Studies, 29, 1991, pp 115-136.
25 Jeff Haynes, 'Popular religion and politics in sub-Saharan Africa', Third World Quarterly, 16, 1995, p 102.
26 Charles Liebman & Don-Yehiya Eliezer, Civil Religion in Israel, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983.
27 Myron Weiner, 'Peoples and states in a new ethnic order?', Third World Quarterly, 13, 1992, pp 317�333.
28 Mark Juergensmeyer, 'The
terrorists who long for peace', The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs,
20, 1996, pp 1-11.
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