The following article is well worth reading for its overview of the place
of religion within a tide of rising populist sentiment. Indeed, so far,
the essay stands pretty much alone as an analysis of the phenomenon.
However, there are some major problems.
For example, when making generalizations about Islam or about reactions
to Islam it is necessary, it surely seems reasonable to conclude, to
actually
know what you are talking about. After all, there is plenty of solid
evidence
that Islam qua Islam inspires law breaking and violence. How many
terrorists attacks overtly inspired by Islam does it take to make
the point? There are literally thousands already, are we waiting
for tens of thousands?
There is also very selective reading of history. Yes, "Islamic
civilization"
made many contributions to the arts, science, philosophy, etc, but
as Bernard Lewis and other scholars have observed, this all came
to an and around the time that Christian and other populations
within Dar al-Islam became embattled minorities rather than,
until then, thriving pluralities in their societies. Which is to say
that Islam as long as it was forced by reality to show some measure
of tolerance could host a creative and "thinking" population
but as soon as it had the numbers to ignore and successfully
repress other groups it did so and destroyed all the achievements
that today's apologists for Islam hypocritically claim for Islam.
Sometimes the very language of the essay betrays its origins
in the politically correct / multi-cultural left. Hence:
Identitarian Movement
ultimate point of symbolic reference
radical alterity
post-religious discourse
orientating power of religion
This kind of language is:
(1) really poor writing style, and
(2) the worst kind of obscurantism.
Who writes like this except constipated academics
from Berkeley or places like Berkeley?
Get real.
Billy R.
====================================
WWRN
Religion and the new populism
Paul Silas Peterson ("The Immanent Frame," January 4, 2017)
Religion is playing an important role in the various expressions of new
populism across the Western world today. In some cases, it seems that the
diverse religious heritage of the Western world has been swallowed up by the
fish of populism. While some religious communities are backing some of the
new populism, others are exercising their prophetic office, and still other
religious communities are trying to maintain an objective neutrality in
these moving times. As Nadia Marzouki, Duncan McDonnell, and Olivier Roy
remark, there is an important distinction to be drawn between the churches and
the populist movements: “populists speak of identity and churches speak of
faith.” Democracies will always bring forth populist movements when a broad
cross-section of the democratic order feels, correctly or incorrectly, that
their concerns are not being recognized by the establishment. For good or
ill, these movements provide a corrective to the ruling order and call for
reforms.
The new populism today is probably best understood in the plural form:
populisms. Some versions of the new populism want the integration of
immigrants to fail (such as the radical Identitarian Movement); others want it
to
succeed. It would be an error to lump all of these groups together. Most
expressions of the zeitgeist are, however, essentially unified in their
anti-establishment agenda. They are calling for an end to the politics of
multiculturalism and demanding protections from the detrimental effects of
globalization. They want to strengthen cultural, political, and economic
borders,
regulative powers, and national identities. One of the strongest antecedent
conditions of these new movements was, among many others, the Financial
Crisis of 2007–2008 and its negative impact on income and employment levels.
President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign leader and White House chief
strategist, Steve Bannon, has drawn attention to this economic dimension in
the
formation of a “mainstream center-right populist movement.”
The push for stronger cultural identities and political borders is
inseparable from the general concern about Islam and immigration. Most of the
new
populists are promoting a one-sided criticism of Islam. This is connected
to the public fears of terrorism, angst about Sharia, the status of women in
Muslim communities, demographic tensions (aging European populations with
lower birth rates and younger immigrant populations with higher
birthrates), and issues surrounding the social integration of immigrants. In
this
context, talk about the Jewish and Christian heritage of the West has
reemerged
in secular Europe and in the United States as an alternative
identity-forming heritage. This is the case even in a very secular place like
former
East Germany.
This trend can be identified in many of the new populist parties but also
in some of the larger traditional parties. The largest party in Germany,
the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the traditional center-right Christian
Democratic Union (CDU), is now moving to the right on issues of
immigration in preparation for the coming parliamentary elections in 2017.
Merkel’s
earlier promotion of a Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) has received a
strong rebuke from a large portion of the party, and also from the
sister-party, the Bavarian Christian Socialist Union. France’s traditional
center-right party candidate for the 2017 elections, François Fillon, also
plans to
slow immigration and control Islam. He has called radical Islam “
totalitarianism like the Nazis,” and claims that “we’ve got to reduce
immigration
to its strict minimum.” France “is not a sum of communities, it is an
identity!”
In this broad discourse, talk about the religious heritage of the West has
reemerged. Steve Bannon wants to advance a “Judeo-Christian traditionalism”
for economic reasons, among others. During his campaign, Donald Trump
sought the endorsement of religious communities and emphasized America’s
Christian heritage. Fifty-two percent of Catholics as a whole, and sixty
percent
of white Catholics, voted for Trump. Fifty-eight percent of Protestants
supported the Republican candidate. Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals
supported Trump, yet fifty-one percent of these were actually voting
against Hillary Clinton, “rather than for Trump.” This number is probably
similar in the Catholic electorate.
Many conservative Christian voters backed Trump not because they approved
of him as a moral role model, but because they could not endorse Hillary
Clinton’s stance on late-term abortion. This was a major issue in the third
presidential debate. More generally, many conservative Christians were
worried about the future Supreme Court appointments. Trump’s charming
midwestern
Vice President-elect Mike Pence certainly helped his campaign secure a
majority of the Christian vote (which makes up seventy-five percent of the
total electorate). Pence, who once worked as a Catholic youth minister and who
“wanted to be a priest,” has charted new territory in ecumenism by
describing himself as an “evangelical Catholic.”
In light of this religious and political discourse today across the
Western world, there is a need to have an open discussion about this idea of
the
Jewish and Christian heritage of the Western world. While some are using
this concept to exclude others, the religious heritage of the West can
actually be a positive resource for multiculturalism, peaceful social
integration, and humanitarian aid. Anyone who wants to promote the Jewish and
Christian heritage of the Western world would certainly want to ensure that
“the
justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow” is not perverted
but upheld (Deuteronomy 27:19). In the same regard, they would want to
guarantee that a person in distress is brought “to an inn” where those who
are “moved with pity” and show “mercy” say “take care of him; and when I
come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend” (Luke 10:33-37). Those
seeking to preserve this heritage should remember the historical tradition
of Christian hospitality, hospitals, education, and care for the weak and
vulnerable, as well as the strong moral message about compassion (“do to
others as you would have them do to you,” Luke 6:31).
Rather than trying to avoid any talk about the Jewish and Christian
heritage, there is a need today to address it in its plurality and with all of
its positive and negative sides. This heritage has its ultimate point of
symbolic reference in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Christian Bible
is a classic example of multiculturalism: It is full of different cultures
and languages, religious traditions, interpretive disputes, and theological
conflicts. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Furthermore,
other languages were also influential, such as ancient Semitic languages,
Egyptian, Old Persian, and even Latin. The Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Canaanite,
and Greek cultural worlds are all represented in the Bible.
The early Jewish and Christian debates about theology are also examples of
the fundamental religious tensions in the history of the Western world—one
that is sadly filled with a parallel history of the violent persecution of
minority groups, and especially the persecution of the Jews. The
integration of Greek and Roman religious and philosophical traditions in
Jewish and
Christian theology is another example of the patchwork-style of the Western
world’s religious heritage. Surely, anyone who wants to promote the
religious heritage of the Western world would seek to affirm this fundamental
diversity as a positive characteristic of the Western tradition.
In this regard, there is also a need today to include Islam in our
understanding of the history of Western civilization. As Islam emerged in late
antiquity on the edges of the Roman Empire on the Arabian Peninsula it became
a unique expression of religious sentiment within an intercultural and
interreligious context of Arab, Jewish, and Christian theological debate. Some
rightwing populists today want to present Islam as a radical alterity that
has nothing to do with Western civilization. From the perspective of Jewish
and Christian religious history, however, Islam is better understood as a
proximate-other. As historical-critical exegesis of the Quran and
scientific historical research of the emergence of Islam have shown, the
genesis of
the religion was deeply related to Jewish and Christian traditions and the
theological debates of late antiquity in the Arab context.
Among the many painful stories of persecution, violence, and inhumanity,
there are a handful of positive shimmers of hope spread out in the diverse
and complicated religious heritage of the Western world, a heritage which is
best understood in its plurality. These should not be forgotten today. It
is true that some intellectuals think that we need to liberate ourselves
from these religious traditions and embrace a fully post-religious discourse
of secularism in order to achieve peaceful coexistence. While understandable
—as religion has been, in some cases, a source of violence—this stance
ultimately fails to acknowledge the positive moments in religious traditions
that can be drawn upon to support multiculturalism, tolerance, and peaceful
coexistence. The secularist view also fails to acknowledge the orientating
power of religion and the fact that religious modes of thought are not
going away. While liberal traditions of established religion are in dramatic
decline today in the Western world, conservative forms of non-established or
less-established religion are thriving.
Intellectual discourses that draw upon religious paradigms continue to be
very influential in much of the Western world. The way we talk about
religion and our religious heritage will have a significant impact on our
shared
life together. But how can we address the religious heritage without
falling into an exclusionary paradigm? Can we think about it from a
historically
and theologically informed perspective that is, at the same time, broad
enough to include the traditions of the Enlightenment and even secular
thought?
Perhaps there is a way to join these contrasting rationalities—the
rationality of the religious heritage, of the Enlightenment heritage, and of
the
secular heritage—into a dynamic conversation that will be productive,
inclusive, and pragmatic. Of course, this would be a kind of dialogical
rationality in the tradition of Jürgen Habermas. In this scenario, paths might
open
up to a generous orthodoxy, a generous Enlightenment, and even a generous
secularism. In terms of the Enlightenment tradition and secular thought, the
target here would not be the radicalism of the French Revolution but the
moderate Enlightenment tradition with its “gentle light of Enlightenment,”
as Steffen Martus describes it. In times of insecurity, intellectuals have
the opportunity to show the promising hope of moderation.
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