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Context of this Article:
Although not a new phenomenon, the process of globalization has truly made the world a smaller place in which political, social, and economic events elsewhere affect individuals anywhere. 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.
In this context the relationship between globalization and religion can be understood in terms of three aspects.
The Aspects
First, globalization engenders greater religious tolerance across areas such as politics, economics, and society. For example, Globalization brings a culture of pluralism, meaning religions with overlapping but distinctive ethics and interests interact with one another. Essentially, the world’s leading religious traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—teach values such as human dignity, equality, freedom, peace, and solidarity. More specifically, religions maintain the Golden Rule: “what you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.”
Second, as globalization does so, it also disrupts traditional communities, causes economic marginalization, and brings individuals mental stress, all of which create a backlash of religious parochialism. By responding to individuals’ desire for welfare, as well as acting as a cultural protection against globalization, religion plays a social role and gains more recognition from the marginalized, particularly those in Third World countries. Moreover amidst a mad race for materialistic gains, it is realised that realize that inner peace can never be achieved through material possessions. As a result Religion provides them the way to inner peace and the sense of personal fulfillment. For example, individuals who feel insecure in the globalized world, in business or personal life, will often pray to God for his spiritual support.
Third, although globalization paves the way in bringing cultures, identities, and religions in direct contact, globalization brings religions to a circle of conflicts that reinforces their specific identities as well. Religion provides answers to questions concerning self-identity. However, in providing such answers, religion also institutes a notion of “truth,” which implies an automatic exclusion of the one—called an “abject”—who does not adhere to such “truth.” In times of uncertainty like globalization, therefore, collective identity is reduced to a number of cultural religious characteristics —“them” and “us” and “their” and “our.” In other words, the abject suddenly becomes recognized as a threat. For example, since the 9/11 attacks, there has been a tendency of the West to link the religion of Islam with terrorist practices while emergence of Islamic State (DAESH) links the US as Christian or a Judeo-Christian nation which stand against islamic interests. As long as religions see themselves as “world religions” and reinforce their specific identities, the chance for religions to avoid conflict among one another is grey.
Conclusion
In a time in which globalization has yet to fully complete its process, religions should be open to other traditions and what they can teach. Though having fixed texts, the major world religions do not have fixed beliefs, only fixed interpretations of those beliefs,meaning their beliefs can be rediscovered, reinvented, and reconceptualized.
For Instance, Gandhi Ji, when he encountered Tolstoy’s writings, drew his attention to the power of the Sermon on the Mount. In encountering Jesus’ Sermon, Gandhi became motivated to “turn the great Hindu narrative from the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, in order to find the message of nonviolence within his own religion and culture.” By finding that Tolstoy’s understanding of the Sermon on the Mount lacked “nonviolence as an active rather than a passive virtue . . . capable of producing an active resistance to evil,” he found it present in the Bhagavad Gita. As a result, Ghandiji transformed the Bhagavad Gita from a story that authorized killing to one of nonviolence.
The pieces of interreligious dialogue to manage religious diversity and to avoid violence are there, but the problem may be of globalization’s intentional and/or unintentional consequence of making religions more conscious of themselves as well as the undesirable consequences of disrupting traditional communities, causing economic marginalization, and bringing individuals mental stress—all reinforcing religious cultural characteristics and identities. Hence, the relationship between religion and globalization has brought new possibilities but also furthering challenges.
By: Chandan Sharma ProfileResourcesReport error
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