CHAPTER 6

THE GLOBALIZATION OF RELIGION

Globalization is commonly described as an intensification or explosion in the growth

of various networks and flows that transcend national boundaries. The significance of this
process, however, is highly contested. For some, globalization is the end of the nation-state,
in favor of a “borderless world”, while for others it signifies a global crisis.
However, since globalization can be defined as a process of an “ever more
interdependent world” where “political, economic, social, and cultural relationships are not
restricted to territorial boundaries or to state actors,” globalization has much to do with its
impact on cultures. Globalization shifts the cultural makeup of the globe and creates a
homogenized “global culture”. As a result, individuals “search for constant time and space-
bounded identities” in a world ever changing by the day. One such identity is religion.
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. Nonetheless,
the relationship between globalization and religion is one with new possibilities and
furthering challenges. This chapter’s approach to religion and globalization starts with an

understanding of the need to see contemporary problems in a historical perspective, both to

understand what is really new and what is a recurrence of ancient phenomena, and to
understand the extent to which contemporary phenomena bear the weight of the history
which precedes them, especially in the field of religion and identity which is so deeply
marked by heritage and origins. Each analysis seeks to understand the role of religion in
globalization and the effects of globalization on religion.

REALITY
In actuality, the relationship between religion and globalism is much more
complicated. One of the cases, religion was the result of a shift in state policy. The church of
England was "shaped by rationality of modern democratic culture.
King henry's personal circumstances would drive him to break his Catholic ties and
found the Church of England.
According to Pruitt (2019), when Martin Luther and having a wide influence in
political, economic, and social effects, the Reformation became the basis for founding of
Protestantism. The word Protestant is made from two Latin word; pro "publicly" and testari
"to bear witness" (protest). Luther and Calvin complaining about the Catholic Church in
1521, King Henry VIII took it upon himself to personally refused the arguments of the
Protestants Reformation Leader and the pope Leo X rewarded King Henry with the great title
of "Defender of the Faith" because of his support in Roman Church. Decade later King Henry
VIII would break with the Catholic Church. He accepted the role of Supreme Head of the
Church of England and end the nation's monasteries and redistributing their massive property
as he saw fit.
By 1527, King Henry wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon because Anne Boleyn
was pregnant carrying his son, so he needed to divorce Catherine that can't give him an heir.
Henry VIII asked Pope Clemet VII to grant him a divorce from Catherine (Prezi, 2014). The
pope argued that the marriage was against God's will, due to the fact that she had been
married to Henry's brother, Arthur. This is one of the reasons he broke with Rome because
the pope wouldn't let him have a divorce. And he created his own church.
According to Marrow (2013), in 1558 under Queen Elizabeth I, England was again a
Protestant nation. Anglican Church of England became firmly established and dominant, but
Queen Elizabeth did her best to sort out the problem of religion. She wanted England to have
peace and not divided over religion so she tried to find ways which both the Catholic and
Protestant sides would accept. Elizabeth insisted on protestant beliefs but she still allowed
many things to the Catholic religion such as bishops, priests and church decorations. And
create a policy that will punish the extreme protestants and extreme Catholic who tried to
convert a person to his/her faith.
Queen Elizabeth did not call herself the Head of the Church instead she was known as
the Supreme Governor of the English Church. She globalized in order to unite the country
after the changes in religion under King Henry VIII. In comparison King Henry only wants to
divorce his wife Catherine. Using globalization, he could gain great power and wealth to
control the people of England. He would also make money because he would get rid of the
Catholic Churches and make money off the gold and jewelry that Catholic Church had. And
he could build and expand his own church and he was leader of the church now.
Religions are the foundations of modern republics
It's constitution explicitly states that “Islam is the religion of the federation”, and the
rulers of each state was also the "Head of the religion of Islam. " The late Iranian religious
leader, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, bragged about the superiority of Islamic rule over its
secular counterparts. BBC (2014), Khomeini declared an Islamic republic after his victory
against Shah's government and was appointed Iran's political and religious leader. The Sha
government's collapse and force to leave the country.
He put other cleric to work on writing an Islamic constitution for Iran. He also began
saying more authoritarian sentiments. “Don't listen to those who speak of democracy they are
all against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. We will break all the
poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy and such thing”. The Sha was ill
with cancer knowing that U.S. allowed Sha to enter the country. Ayatollah Khomeini heard
about it and was no more sympathetic to the cries of the secular left than the Sha. Using his
power, Khomeini saw this as a chance to demonstrate the new Iranian against of Western
Influence because of U.S. helping Sha. During his term many who protested against his
regime were killed. Khomeini had his doctrines and beliefs taught in public schools on Iran.
He made sure and believed that the ideas on which the new Iran had been built needed to be,
in his words. Up until now Iran remarks a religion-based society, and Khomeini life work
and decade of rule will no doubt continue to influence the country far into the future after his
death.
To Khomeini, all secular ideologies were the same- they were flawed- and Islamic
rule was the superior form of government because it was spiritual. Je controlled his people
through religion that many against. Despite of oppositions he still overpowering the country
and disapproved the idea of globalism that for him against his will.

RELIGION FOR AND AGAINST GLOBALIZATION

Self-Identification
In ancient times, there are two basic lines of interpretation of self-identification. First,
ancient reflections about the self-identification express the insight of different philosophical
approaches as what is the relation between what we value as our ideal goals in life and what
we actually are. Second, we could think that there is no unambiguous problem of the self to
which there are different answers, depending upon the philosophical vocabularies that the
ancient philosophers happen to use. Egyptian presentation of self was to be a tool for forming
and preserving a culture identity by literary means.
Meanwhile in modern times, self-identification becomes a reflexive project of each
individual, whereas in pre-modern settings of self-identity was largely given, as oppose to
made. Individuals create and reform their identities through choice and due to the reflexive
nature of self-identification. Life is not a predetermined path with limited options based on
location, family or gender: it is full of possibilities, but the individual is given little guidance
on what is the best option.

Religious Fundamentalism
Religious fundamentalism refers to the belief of an individual o a group of individuals
in the absolute authority of a sacred religious text or teachings of a particular religious leader,
prophet, and God. These fundamentalists believe that their religion is beyond any form of
criticism.
In ancient times, the concept of religious fundamentalism was introduced with the
publication of, The Fundamentals, a series of books published between 1909 and 1920
appealing to Christians to believe in certain religious doctrines of Christianity. The term
‘fundamentalist’ was soon used to describe a section of Protestant Christians who bore a
separatist attitude towards modernity.
In the later years, the term was used to relate to the most extreme believers of ever
religion in the world. Most religions of the world tend to be associated with fundamentalist
elements. Christian fundamentalists, who have absolute belief in the words of the Holy Bible,
are found everywhere in the Christian world. In the earlier part of the 20th century, Christian
fundamentalists, such as those in the United States, protested against the Theory of Evolution
put forth b Charles Darwin, and also supported the temperance movement against the sale of
liquor. Currently, a section of the Christian fundamentalists believes in the “premillennial
eschatology”, wherein they consider the world to be doomed until Jesus returns and defeats
the Antichrist.

Caliphate
The concept of caliphate has had many different interpretations and realizations
through the centuries, but fundamental to them is that it offers an idea of leadership which is
about the just ordering of Muslim society according to the will of God.
In ancient times, Caliphate is a political-religious state comprising the Muslim
community and the lands and people under its dominion in the centuries following the death
632 CE of the Prophet Muhammad. Dynastic struggles later brought about the Caliphate’s
decline, and it ceased to exist as a functioning political institution with the Mongol
destruction of Baghdad in 1258. After the leadership of Muhammad, the urgent need for a
successor to Muhammad as political leader of the Muslim community was met by a group of
Muslim elders in Medina who designated Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law, as caliph.
In the modern times, some have argued that the caliph is the shadow of God on earth,
a man whose authority is semi-divine and whose conduct is without blame; many more would
accept that the caliph was, so to speak, the chief executive of the umma, the Muslim
community, an ordinary human with worldly powers, and there is a wide spectrum of ideas in
between. All are informed of the desire to see God’s will work out among the Muslims. In
order to understand ISIS’s idea of caliphate, and why it should prove relevant and important
to many, we have to understand its roots deep in the Muslim tradition. ISIS has made the
revival of the caliphate a keystone of its project for Islamic renewal, and the response this has
generated shows the potency of the idea almost 14 centuries since it first emerged.
Negative effects of Globalization
In the ancient times, human history can be perceived as the process of globalization
from its inception. The Roman Empire globalized its values within its own world.
Modernization and industrialization based on the industrial revolution have clearly been
globalization processes, although they have not yet reached every part of the world.
Throughout history, many cultures and races have been destroyed or forced to change by
other cultures and races.
Meanwhile in modern world, the movements of people from rural to urban areas have
accelerated, and the growth of cities in the developing world especially is linked to
substandard living for many. The national state is losing influence relative to global economic
pressures, and in some countries, there is a failure or hesitation to develop social policies. All
of these changes in case the likelihood that vulnerable people will be exploited, and threats to
the human rights of less able people will increase.
Theory
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. Reza Aslan
argues that, “no single force can be said to have had a greater impact on propelling
globalization forward than religion, which has always sought to spread its message”. This
idea, as shall be made apparent throughout this article, is not controversial or novel thinking,
nor is it meant to be. The dominant reasoning on the subject of globalization, expressed by
such influential thinkers as famed journalist Thomas Friedman, places economics at the
center of analysis and skews focus away from the ideational factors at work in this process.
The greatest difficulties stem from globalization, where information readily available from all
over the world clashes with the tradition cultural identity and symbolism of the Chinese
world. Symbolism denotes social standing, shares a moral message, and also expresses
historic events and superstitions (Kögel and Tsu, 2004). It is fair to say that the impact of
globalization in the cultural sphere has, most generally, viewed in a pessimistic light.
Typically, it has been associated with the destruction of cultural identities, victims of the
accelerating encroachment of the homogenized, westernized consume culture (Shepard and
Hayduk, 2002).
All things considered, the term globalization is still challenging since it assumes no
unity in use and meaning. Under the aspect of diversity, theories of globalization nevertheless
seem to come together in a few main models or perspectives (Kale, 2004). Attention
ambiguities as inherit in the three main versions of globalization, when the term is promoted
to a sociological concept: “globalization as a Condition” opposing “globalization as a
process,” “globalization as a reality” dissimilar to globalization as a Futurology,” and “One
dimensional globalization” contradicting “Multidimensional globalization.” (Van Der Bly,
2006). And in the context of globality, or in a modern world-system, religion has not only
failed to vanished from public and political scenes, it even takes over them, to play a major
role in the social and political organization of modern societies, and above all, in the
reconfiguration of international relationships. Accordingly, the theory of globalization
bypasses the theory of modernization and offers a theoretical refutation to an interpretation of
religious global history in terms of secularization (Beyer, 2009).

SECULARIZATION THEORY
Secularization is said to be a process whereby religion loses some of its significance
in the operation of the social and political systems, either in the sense of general
disengagement of religious institutions from public life, or in the subordination of religious
values to secular ones. Earlier accounts of secularization, known as "secularization theory"
were located within the broader theoretical framework of modernization theory that proposed
that as industrialization, urbanization and rationalization all increase, then religiosity must,
inevitably, decline. While secularization theory was criticized and debunked, its themes
resonate in some accounts of globalization.
Roots of Secularization
Dylan Reaves (2012) asserted in his article, Peter Berger and the Rise and Fall of the
Theory of Secularization, how Berger stated that some of the roots of secularization lie in
Christianity; specifically, in Protestantism. Since its earliest days, Christianity have been
circulating secularizing notions, even back into its origins in Judaism. In 1517, Martin Luther
brought drastic changes during the Protestant Reformation. Essentially, Protestantism
removed all of the more ethereal aspects of Catholicism, molding the faith down to a more
basic level.
According to Protestantism, miracles no longer had the same significance as they
once had. Mass, with its deep meanings and weekly miracle of transubstantiation (the
conversion of bread and wine to the actual body and blood of Christ), was done away with
entirely. All communication with the souls of the dead, or any significance of the saints
beyond historical interest, was eliminated.
Protestants did not believe the world was constantly being affected by divine forces;
instead, God had a more permissive approach, though certainly not to the extent of Deism.
The sacred and the profane were pulled further from one another, existing in two entirely
separate realities. Many of these beliefs were long held to be essential to belief in God, or
Christianity. Based on Reaves, “when people began to lose the miraculous and transcendent
aspects of religion, it became easier and easier to pull away from the religion as a whole – in
other words, to become secularized”. It is believed by Protestants, there was only one fragile
thread of communication with the divine. When this line of communication fell into doubt,
the entire foundation of that individual’s beliefs was destroyed.
Going further back into the historical roots of Christianity, even Judaism was
extremely secularizing when compared to the faiths of the other cultures that surrounded the
early Jews. Prominent societies around the Israelites like Mesopotamians and Egyptians
believed the sacred was constantly interacting with our world. Every worldly happening was
as a direct result of the interference of the gods, or their divine will. It is clarified that the
mundane existed in connection with the world of their divinities. One must also put into
important consideration that there were numerous gods and goddesses, all with different
personalities and domains of power.
The Judeo-Christian God, on the other hand, is a solitary and omnipotent being.
Unlike the gods of their oppressors, the god of Israel did not exist inside the Israelite’s
cosmos, instead it was outside of it. He had not been created along with the world; he created
it, and was timeless, having no beginning and end. This god was not connected to the
Israelites by any territorial or “natural” law; instead, they were bonded by a covenant, and
were only bonded through this historical agreement and resulting obedience. Finally, this
omnipotent master was entirely unaffected by human meddling like magics and rituals.
Man’s history became extremely important, replacing the mythology of other societies with
accounts of great people, King David and the prophets for example.
All of these factors were extremely secularizing, as God is removed from mankind to
an extent previously unknown in other religions. Everything was rationalized, and the early
religious leaders made sure to purge the faith of many ethereal understandings that had
previously been standard in religions across the globe. Thus, from its creation in
exceptionally rational Judaism, to its removal from the retrogress of Catholicism into
mysticism as a result of the Protestant Reformation, Christianity has had a great deal to do
with secularization in the cultures it influences.

The secularizing West and the rapidly growing rest

Recent surveys propose that religion would fade from relevancy as the world
modernizes, which is similar to the predictions before, and it’s happening startlingly fast.
France will have a majority secular population soon. So will the Netherlands and New
Zealand. The United Kingdom and Australia will soon lose Christian majorities. Religion is
rapidly becoming less important than it’s ever been, even to people who live in countries
where faith has affected everything from rulers to borders to architecture (Bullard, 2016).
Bullard (2016) added that the religiously unaffiliated, called “nones”, are growing
significantly. They’re the second largest religious group in North America and most of
Europe. In the United States, nones make up almost a quarter of the population. In the past
decade, U.S. nones have overtaken Catholics, mainline protestants, and all followers of
non-Christian faiths. China is also a highly secular country; it is where the Cultural
Revolution tamped down religion for decades. While in some former Communist countries,
religion is on the increase .
In a similar vein, a comparative study of secularization on a global scale by Norris &
Inglehart (2004) suggest three dimensions for the measurement of secularization: (a) religious
participation that involves collective religious practices and the erosion of individual
religious practices, (b) religious values that pertain to the goals that people prioritize for their
society, community and themselves and, (c) religious beliefs that refer to the faith in the core
beliefs held by different world theologies.
Zuckerman (2017) argued that socialization is the number one engine which drives
religiosity. Conservative societies raise their children to become religious. In the same
manner, as more and more people stop being religious, it is quite likely that they won’t raise
their children to be religious, and thus the inter-generational spread of religion will weaken in
the decades ahead.
People wondered whether religion was relevant to modern life when communism
was spreading and science was explaining more about our natural world than ever before.
Scientific advancement isn’t just making people question God, it’s also connecting those
who question. It’s now easy to find atheist and agnostic discussion groups online, even if
you come from a religious community. Additionally, secularization is highly correlated with
internet access and usage. Hence, as the web becomes more common in people’s lives,
secularism will continue to grow.
Nevertheless, it would be a major mistake to assume that secularization is
triumphantly advancing, and religion will eventually disappear throughout the world. On the
contrary, religious people have more kids than secular people. And those nations today with
the highest birthrates are the most religious, while those nations today with the lowest
birthrates tend to be among the most secular. So demographically, in terms of who has more
babies, the religious have the breeding advantage. The growth of secularity will most likely
level off within a few decades, while Islam will continue to grow, becoming the world’s
largest religion by 2050 (Zuckerman, 2017).
In support of this, Norris & Inglehart (2004) identified that due to demographic trends
in poorer societies, the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views
than ever before and they constitute a growing proportion of the world's population.
Desecularization

“As time passed, Berger began to realize that, despite his own predictions and the
predictions of the academic community at large, the world has not been completely
secularized. To the contrary, he ultimately argues that the world is as religious as ever”,
(Reaves, 2012).
Reactions to secularization from religion necessarily came in one of two forms:
rejection, or adaptation. Prediction about religion as a whole remaining successful in the
future does not apply equally to all movements. Everyone will naturally have differing views
on the matter based on their own faith tradition. Despite this, it does seem that in the end,
what adherents of almost every faith can all agree upon is that a culture that tries to exist
without any sort of transcendent viewpoint
From the excerpts of Haynes & Ben-Porat (2010) work, Globalisation, Religion and
Secularisation – Different States, Same Trajectories, accounts of globalization are mixed, as
secularization is challenged by a resurgence of religion in different formations in many parts
of the world. Haynes & Ben-Portat noted that, “while religious politics and tensions between
religion and secular tendencies have never disappeared – in many cases they have now re-
emerged to become a key characteristic of contemporary politics”. This salience can be
observed not only in the rise of anti-secular ideologies and religious parties but also in a
pronounced persistence of personal religious belief.
New tensions are also brought to the fore in state-religion-society relations with the
impact of globalization as a result of mass immigration that can challenge existing state-
religion arrangements/institutions like marriage and its regulation, as well as the spread of
liberal ideologies. According to Haynes & Ben-Portat (2010), the impact of globalization
needs to be studied "locally" against existing personal beliefs, social norms and political
arrangements.
Reaves (2012) supports this with four major areas that Peter Berger argues in which
the resurgence of religion and the overcoming of secularism could have interesting affects:
(a) international politics, (b) issue of war and peace, (c) religion and economic development,
(d) the matters of human rights and social justice.
 CONCLUSION

In sum, globalization has both secularizing and religionizing influences upon states
and societies. Religion may be strengthened by reactions to global challenges, and religious
actors may use global opportunities to deliver their message more effectively.
Religion and globalization share a strange yet mutually reinforcing relationship.
Globalization may yield incredible dividends for some religious actors, but because others
find themselves victimized by the powerful forces of homogenization and cultural disruption,
some of these groups will undoubtedly create security challenges in the future.
Globalization has affected religion in different ways. However, religion has proven
persistent in the face of globalization. This does not mean that religion is not affected by a
rapid flow of globalization. Religion has changed by adapting to new circumstances and
developing new roles and identities for itself. Thus, it is safe to say that religion is not a
declining force in the globalizing world, for it is able to transform into a new form with new
roles and identities.

mean that religion is not

affected by a rapid flow of
globalization. Religion
has changed by adapting to
new circumstances and
developing new roles
and identities for itself.
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