Religion in Espace Mondial
can be proved at three different levels and we have
to distinguish between this three levels of analysis.
The first one would be the level of actors,
how actors are socialized.
What are the real influence of religion in
the social and political behavior of individuals and how these behaviors are organizing,
shaping the main issue and the main mobilization around the world.
The second level would be the system,
and the political system.
Commonly we hear from medias and from public opinion or opinion leaders,
we hear some sentences like the Muslim political system,
the Christian political system,
Islam and politics as if religion was able to shape and organize a political system.
In reality, in fact,
the difference is much more important than we can imagine.
It's very difficult to coin a system as
a Muslim political system or as a Christian political system,
as it is obvious that many many kinds of Islam do exist around the world and it's not
possible to conceive of
a single model of Islam and politics or of Christianism and politics.
So, we have to debate about that.
And the third level is the level of mobilization.
Is religion able to mobilize and to create,
to generate a political mobilization or
is religion only an emblem of a political mobilization?
Is religion an instrument or is it a goal?
And this is probably one of the main points we have to discover together.
But the first question,
the most important because not so easy to solve is,
what is a religion. What is a religion?
We have to go back to the famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim who
published a very important book dealing with religion in our world.
And Durkheim in this book opposes sacred to profane.
And this opposition is considered by Durkheim as the main founding position
for understanding and approaching
the manifestations and the expressions of religion and politics.
Sacred is the country of profane as sacred
is considered as out of reach for human beings.
Sacred is the field which is not able to be shaped and organized by
human beings when profane is
the real field of the human action and human creation.
If now, sacred is considered as out of reach,
we can imagine our sacred is a very strong argument for mobilizing people in a society,
if sacred is conceding or legitimacy which is out of reach of individuals.
It's a very strong,
useful and successful instrument for mobilizing and convincing individuals.
That's why sacred is so used in politics.
Using a formula which is coming from a field which is out of reach of
individuals is a very good instrument for convincing people.
Inside Sacred, Durkheim distinguishes rituals and beliefs,
and religion is the combination of rituals and beliefs.
Now the question is why sacred is so important in our modern or even post-modern world?
If we followed Durkheim,
sacred is supposed to decline when modernization takes place.
And so, Durkheim who was writing in a positive time,
positive period considered that religion
was to be faded when modernization takes place.
And however, we can observe something which is quite
different from what Durkheim foresaw.
So three hypothesis can be mobilized.
If sacred is so present in our modern or post-modern world,
it's first because maybe,
sacred is now creating a new modernity.
That is the first hypothesis.
And even we can consider that Laicity would be something like a new secular religion.
But in Laicity, we can also find something like the beliefs and even rituals.
Can we consider that we are now facing a new sacred modernity as the first hypothesis?
A second one which consider that sacred is a kind of substitute.
That's to say, in our modern world some structure are not really operating,
some time States doesn't work,
sometimes political parties doesn't work,
sometimes ideologies don't work anymore.
And when these instruments of governing, ruling, mobilizing,
protesting, are not working,
religion and sacred can be a very useful and functional substitute.
The third hypothesis would be to consider religion as a culture.
Different traditions are also expressing
different cultures as I define them in my previous lecture.
And so, religions will be back for expressing
these diversity of cultures which is really at stake in our present world.
So now, how can we consider religion, religious actors?
Religious actors must be considered as individuals.
Because, first of all,
we have to take into account the fact that religions
belongs to the individual and that every individual,
each individual is shaping his own religion.
So there is an individual level for approaching
this very important notion of religious actor.
And the second level would be the level of religious entrepreneurs.
Religions are organized, are structures by entrepreneurs as Max Weber defined then,
that's to say as "organized group with an administrative direction" and so,
we have to build up a typology of these religious actors and to consider that
these religious entrepreneurs are not working in the same manner
because all the religious entrepreneurs are different and must be considered separately.
For instance, if you take into account the Roman Catholic Church,
this is a religious entrepreneurs which is strongly
centralized and which can be compared with the nation state.
There is some similarities between the Easter of the church,
this very centralized organization,
and the nation state.
But now, if we move to the protestantism,
to the Christian reform,
we are facing another model in which
the individual is much more important and in which the church is
fading as a transnational structure and don't exist as
a unified church like the case in the Roman Catholic Christianism.
A third example would be the Orthodox Christianism in which church was merging with
empire when politics and religions are
combined in a kind of dual structure.
And now if we move to Islam,
we are facing another model in which there is no church,
no centralization, no organisation,
but a very complex network of preachers and in which the Muslim community,
the Ummah is playing a role of integration.
Now if we move to other religions from Asia like Hinduism,
we are facing another feature which is a kind of depreciation of power,
a depreciation of politics when on the contrary,
Buddhism is contesting power,
was created as a kind of protest against the power and
which is creating new structures especially around monasticism.
And so that's why when we consider religion and politics in the Espace Mondial,
we have to take in account, into account,
this diversity of actors.
