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Religion in the Political Vacuum3/03/2007 00:12:33Unfortunately most of the time I am not much of a political activist, but from time to time I get a great boost for that sort of work. But then what usually happens is I get lost in some detail of the thinking, get fascinated, and confuse myself so fully that action becomes impossible. This afternoon the political vigor came to me during a talk by the British-Pakistani scholar and activist Tariq Ali. He spoke mainly about the failure of human rights under neoliberal ideology. He is incredibly hopeful, by the way, about the new South American revolutionary governments in Bolivia and Venezuela. What excited me, in the end, was a minor implicit point, not a call to action. Interestingly, he linked the rise of neoliberal economics, radical religion, and popular ambivalence about politics all together very skillfully. Since reading Kevin Phillips's American Theocracy, I've been puzzling over the connection between neoliberalism and radical religion. It hadn't occurred to me that ambivalence may be not only a symptom but an integral part of the matrix. Ali reiterated an observation that a professor of mine made yesterday, actually. In the 60s, most of the student groups around on campuses represented different kinds of secular politics: the Trotskyists, the IWW, etc. Now, as is plain to see, religion has taken its place: Intervarsity, Hillel, Campus Crusade, etc. man the tables outside our University Center instead. Somehow, two things have happened: politics (as such, since we know that religion is, if not politics, is at least political) has fallen to indifference and religion has physically taken its place. For Ali, this came together in the following way: neoliberal economics is an empty politics. Under it, the less politics to believe in, the better (politics is an obstacle to business). Because there is nothing to believe in in politics anymore, and since the parties which control the media and the electoral process both agree on the neoliberal model, political apathy reigns. That leaves the doors open for vehement religious movements to capture the hold of the public imagination, the public need for expression and solidarity. This is how he explains the revival of politicized religion in the U.S. (perpetrator of neoliberalism) and the Middle East (victim of it). This seems persuasive to me. One of the consequences of this argument is something many theorists of religious violence have observered: religious terrorism is often more expressive than it is strategic. Organizations like al-Qaeda, unlike political terrorists, can operate without clear goals for society because they operate by religious expression rather than political agenda. Some contend that these movements leave a the Muslim world with a dearth of original political thought because it is drowned out by political expressiveness. Same, by the way, in the U.S. Now the implicitness. This theory seems to rest on a certain way of theorizing about religion, one which I've been mulling over for a few months. I am not the first to think of it this way, but for the biological explanations for religious experience I am getting interested in, it takes on new meaning. Broadly, "religion" is defined by theorists in two main ways: (1) functionally, as in what religion does and what needs it fills, and (2) ontologically, as in what religion is (primarily directed to supernatural things), how it is experienced, and what separates it from other activities. If, as Ali suggests, religion fills a void that politics leaves (and presumably vis versa), the implication is that religion and politics are "functionally equivalent." This means that, in at least some respects, they fill common needs. Nevertheless, religion is ontologically different from politics per se, for example, in its tendency toward expressiveness rather than strategy. Mainly, though, the differences are obvious: modern religion and modern politics are inescapably differentiated; they follow distinct logics. At the very least, religion has gods and priests, politics has responsibility and hegemony. Let me reiterate: Ali's scheme (and my agreement with it) depends on the assumption that religion and politics may be usefully thought of as functionally equivalent (in many ways) and ontologically distinct (in many ways). When politics becomes empty, religion is able to take on an expanded role. This is interesting for biological explanations because it raises the question of whether functional equivalents like secular politics can possibly ever replace all ontological religion (as we conceive of it), or if the brain is indelibly wired for some forms of distinctly religious thinking. Ali's model employs this certain conception of religious functionalism to explain the rise of radical religion in the presence of a politically "emptying" economic system. Very powerful. |
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