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Religions decline and proliferate
It has been three decades since the secularization thesis predicted religion’s role would decline in human sociopolitical life
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t has been three decades since the secularization thesis predicted religion’s role would decline in human sociopolitical life. This thesis has been widely criticized, as time has proven the thesis utterly wrong.
Religions have resurfaced — whether old, new or modified — as social and political forces shaping the contours of our world. In general, religious belief is becoming stronger, and religions are profoundly influential in the world today.
Let us look at this from the beginning. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, there have been many sociopolitical movements inspired by, directed by or managed along religious terms.
Take, for example, the new Christian Right in the United States, Catholic liberation theology across Latin America, the Zionist impulse in Israel, the Rushdie affair in Britain, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in India and the Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1990s Soviet invasion. They all derived their motivations from a deep religious consciousness.
Beyond the political spectrum, there are also a growing number of religious charitable and social organizations that work to serve society as a whole, either on local, national or international and transnational levels. Having historically been blamed as a source of bloody and brutal conflicts, wars and ethnic or racial domination of one group over another, there are some with religious beliefs that work hard to recapture and share the peaceful and merciful messages of religions for the betterment of mankind.
This awareness has inspired the formation of a huge number of faith-based charities and organizations across the world that work to help people suffering from poverty, famine, disaster, war etc.
In Indonesia, where religions have never completely lost their social, cultural and political importance for the populace, the resurgence of religion has occurred in various ways. The political shift at the end of Soeharto’s regime in the 1990s towards Islamist groups opened up an opportunity for religions and religious organizations to contest public social life.
The presence of religions and religious organizations became more visible after 1998’s reformasi, when hundreds of religion-based political parties were founded.
Faith-based charitable organizations, particularly Islamic ones such as Dompet Dhuafa Republika, PKPU, Rumah Zakat and others that work against poverty, poor education and disaster defense have supplemented the older Islamic organizations like Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama and Hidayatullah.
The main objectives of these new faith-based charities to run social welfare programs, provide education and healthcare facilities for the poor and offer microfinance credits for low-income groups demonstrates innovation outside the traditional role of religious institutions.
This desecularization, as Peter Berger identified the trend, is through the shifting role and function of religions emerging in new forms in contemporary human social life. The second coming of religion in the public arena is designed to preserve its existence and influence on the moral values of society, but in very different ways.
To do so, religious institutions have faced challenges related to, on the one hand, a relatively narrow space available to exercise their social and political power and, on the other, the demand for their contributions to the betterment of the entire society.
What I want to highlight here is the fact that the sovereignty of the state as a political power dominates any other sociocultural institutions, including religions. As a consequence, there is always a limited space for religious groups and organizations to exercise any religio-cultural authority over their adherents.
Take the case of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI). Despite their prominent position in Indonesian Muslim society, the didactic role of the MUI in imposing Islamic religious guidance for diverse ritual and social practices through issuing fatwas has to be situated in accordance with the state constitution and laws.
Additionally, the religious authority of the MUI is not merely limited, but also publicly contested in the freedom of speech of our current democratic era. Referring to this case, I would like to say religions and religious authority is still on the decline.
The impossibility of exercising religious authority against state power has left members of religious groups to work creatively using available political structures, or to work hand-in-hand with or from within the government to impose religio-moral values as part of state public policy. As we have observed in the last few years, there are many local and national regulations that are inspired by religion, and initiated by members of the House of Representatives or ministers from religion-based political parties.
This change in strategy, using state power to implement religion-inspired rules, however, will potentially exploit the basic idea of the nation-state of Indonesia and its primary objectives to create prosperity and equality for the entire population. Instead of the notion of Indonesia as a multi-ethnic and religiously diverse secular state, the intervention of religious values will narrow the scope or lead public policy in the wrong direction from what was addressed in the constitution.
Take, for instance, the policy to block pornographic websites that was prioritized by the communications and information technology minister. That seemed ridiculous and had no point at all given the
fact that basic Internet access is largely unreliable and even widely unavailable.
Another example concerns the fate of Ahmadiyah’s followers. Having been expelled from their homes, their mosques burned and continuously a target of violent attacks, the religious affairs minister prefers to discuss an Ahmadiyah ban in Indonesia rather than express concern about Ahmadiyah’s safety and future.
Nevertheless, despite the distressing impact of religious intervention in public policy, the second coming of religions in the form of charitable organizations with programs concerned with emergency disaster relief, poverty alleviation, free education for the poor and others has a direct and positive impact on the socio-economic life of society.
A related point to highlight here is that the massive proliferation of religious charitable organizations in the last decades demonstrates the varied manifestations of religious resurgence.
The movement is not only focused on preserving the influence of religion-moral values on society, but also focuses on the possibility of utilizing and expanding the role of religious organizations in many areas of human social life.
In other words, religion is not merely a structural force that imposes certain moral values on
its followers, but also a symbolic entity that can be used for many different purposes.
The number of religious charitable and social organizations, which are able to garner large amounts of public funds, has proved the salient sociocultural and political power of religion in society.
It is sufficient to say that religious authority might be formally declining, but the influence of religions will continue to be reproduced in many ways.
The writer, is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Essex, Colchester, UK, and a lecturer in sociology at Yogyakarta State University, Yogyakarta.
