Ken Wilber's Sociable God

Some religions are better than others. And some religions are worse. The idea that we cannot judge some religious or spiritual engagements as being better or worse than any other is simply not true. There is a way to discern better or worse or higher or lower engagements. This is the radical idea that Ken Wilber proposes. He offers a new way of looking at religion itself, calling for vertical dimensions of depth. Wilber’s model provides us with a solid base in which to think about religion and human evolution. It also provides a context in which we can examine religious pluralism, particularism and exclusion, as well as religious fundamentalism and violence.

Developmental Hierarchy

Wilber’s ideas are complex and he introduces many terms that may be foreign. I will present his work as clearly and succinctly as possible. Wilber uses a developmental model of nested structural hierarchies. In this hierarchy, Wilber outlines seven stages of human development in three categories: The three subconscious or prepersonal stages are “Archaic”, “Magic” and “Mythic”. The selfconscious or personal stage he calls the “Rational” stage. The three superconscious or transpersonal stages are “Psychic”, “Subtle” and “Causal”. In this development hierarchy, each succeeding stage contains more love, compassion, care, justice, consciousness, rights and so on.  The higher one is in this hierarchy the more likely you will see reduced oppression, prejudice and various “isms”. “The higher one is, the more care and less oppression one is inclined to possess” (8). In this way, we can judge different religious and spiritual engagements. He says,

To the extent that spiritual engagements involve care and consideration for others – and a capacity to take into account perspectives other than one’s own egoic perspective – then to that extent as well, some spiritual engagements are better, truer, deeper, more authentic than others (12).

The term “transpersonal” is a relatively new term, and has been championed mostly in the field of psychology (transpersonal psychology). Wilber defines transpersonal as a “sustained and experimental inquiry into spiritual, or transcendental (transpersonal), or ‘perennial philosophical’ concerns” (58). He says, “it attempts to develop legitimate and reproducible means for differentiating between authentic spiritual experience and merely psychotic, hallucinatory, paranoid, delusional or other abnormal or pathological states” (58). Using this context, Wilber presents a transpersonal sociology; a nonreductionistic sociology of religion.

Pre/Post Fallacy

In order to understand Wilber’s contribution, it is important to point out how he fills the gaps in others theories of religion. Wilber says, a common mistake many make in the field of religion is what he calls the “pre/post fallacy” (pre-rational, and post-rational). “Where development process from pre-X to X to post-X, the pre states and post states, because they are both non-X states, tend to be confused and equated, simply because the appear, at first glance, to be so similar” (14). We either reduce transrational or superconscious states to prerational, infantile fusion (Freud) or we elevate infantile, prerational states to transcendental, transpersonal glory (Romantics).

For the Romantics, the prerational consciousness was deeply spiritual. With the rise of egoic rationality, this early nondissociated state was brutally repressed. In its place, modernity arose and was characterized by fragmentation and alienation. Modernism’s spirituality, if any, was thus shallow. This view depicts millions of people as “having an inferior consciousness and lacking any deep spirituality” (24). Romantics want to remember the positive contributions of previous stages but in doing so they inject characteristics into the magical nondissociated structure that were not really present; elevating them into a transrational perspective. Wilber calls this tendency the “Mistaken Fall”. Those who favor the magical, nondissociated fusion stages tend to see every succeeding stage as a “catastrophic fall from an original paradise.” Likewise, those who see the modern world of science, such as the holy trinity of atheists, as the pinnacle of human development, see the rise of transrational as a regression back to magical superstition. He summarizes it thusly: it is ”tendency to see spirit as being present in one epoch and not in others, instead of seeing spirit present as the entire evolutionary unfolding” (33).

Generally speaking, religious scholars perceive a series of falls of humanity as we transition into the modern and postmodern worlds. Likewise, secular scholars see a progression of enlightenment, an overcoming of superstition with the rise of modernity, science and liberalism (34). Who is right? Wilber says, they are both right and they are also both wrong. Religion, or spirit, has simply moved from magic to mythic to rational on its way to postrational stages. It is ironic that the rise of modernity, secularism and liberalism actually represent an increase in spirit and religious unfolding. Spirit resides now not in myths but in reason and science itself. He says, “there is more spirit in reason’s denial of mythic god than there is in myth’s affirmation of that god…the rational denial of god contained more spirit than the mythic affirmation of god, for the simple reason that it contained more developmental depth” and thus, more spirit or religiosity (35-6). Rationalization is necessary, appropriate, phase-specific and evolutionary. Therefore, it is entirely religious, in the sense that it is an increasingly advanced consciousness. We will return to this later when we discuss the different usages and definitions of religion.

This is a very interesting concept and dynamic. The separation of church and state for example is traditionally perceived in an inherently limiting way. Church usually means the magic or mythic stages of religion, and state means rationality and secularism. Our education systems likewise are liberal-rational in nature. The more educated a person becomes, the less magic and mythic religion they embrace (35). These dynamics depend on a reductionist definition of what religion is and how it is typically related to secularism and rationality.

However, even if our society is largely based on rationality and secular ideals, there will still be large pockets of culture that remain at prerational stages of unfolding. Wilber says there will always be these pockets. “Even if the center of gravity of the world’s population were rational or higher, pockets of prerational culture would continue to exist and must be handled with specific legal, political, and occasionally military means” (35). The constant struggle between religious apologists (whether prerational or postrational) and rational, secular and scientifically minded groups and individuals, is best represented in terms of competition between different stages of human consciousness and evolution. We will return to this idea later.

States/Stages

A person can have a transpersonal/transrational experience no matter what stage of development they are in. This differentiates stages and states. States are transitory and can change at any moment, or through religious/spiritual technologies such as drumming, chanting or the use of psychedelic drugs. However, these states can only be interpreted through the lens of whatever developmental stage on which an individual exists. This not only applies to individuals, but to groups as well. Any given culture/religion has something like a center of gravity or an average mode of consciousness, around which conventional, everyday realities are organized. Foucault would call this the “dominant mode of discourse.” So although any state of consciousness is available to all stages, it is always experienced and interpreted through the cultural lens of whatever stage of development is the current center of gravity. The higher one is on the developmental scale however, the more likely one is able to experience the states of the higher stages.

Wilber wants to stress that all, or even most, of the states that claim to be transpersonal or postrational are actually not. As such, he says that a highly critical and skeptical attitude must be valued. It is unfortunate he says, that skepticism is often confused with a lack of faith. In this sense, the holy trinity (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens) could not agree more. Religious endeavors cannot be pardoned from criticism.

Transcend and Include

Many of Wilber’s critics are put off by the hierarchical nature of his developmental model. Some claim it connotes an elitist and superior attitude of those in the “higher” stages. The question arises: If a group/culture/religion/nation/individual is in a higher stage of consciousness than another, can that be used as a superiority complex or a justification for oppression and violence? Wilber’s model however is more complex than this. Development through the stages of consciousness constitute a “transcend and include” dynamic. As one progresses to a higher stage, you transcend the previous stages limitations but include its accomplishments. Wilber describes this development as envelopment. It is a “nested hierarchy”, where each higher structure of consciousness is “potentially capable of legitimately criticizing the partiality, but not the phase-specific appropriateness, of it lower predecessors” (69).

As a higher stage begins to emerge it has to pass through the lower for the simple reason that the lower is already there, it already exists. Both stages are initially fused. They are undifferentiated from each other. The growth of the higher stage is, in part, a process of differentiation from that lower level, or vertical transcendence (86). A distorted, or pathological lower stage can thus subsequently determine the health of the following stage of development. The pathologies can be reproduced in a different form. This is not a causal relationship however. The higher stage can often redress the imbalance, offering corrections. Thus, pathologies of lower stages can predispose, but not cause, similar patterns in a higher stage. Likewise, a higher stage can often repress and/or oppress the lower stages.

Wilber’s central question is: Is there a way of determining how to make “sane, compassionate and caring judgments based on degrees of depth, love and inclusion” (38)? The criteria used for this can be called holistic embrace and is inextricably intertwined with identity formation. For example, when my identity expands from me to my family, from my family to my tribe, community, nation, from my nation to all of humanity, and from humanity to all sentient beings without exception, my corresponding capacity for empathy and sympathy increases with each expansion. More and more souls have come into my identity thus increasing my own depth. They are embraced. There are no outsiders, no fragmentation (36-7). In this way we can adjudicate the authenticity of various cultural and religious engagements. A person or group who has extended sympathy and caring for those beyond him/herself has not impoverished his self, but enriched it. This, in Wilber’s view is the pinnacle of individuality, the height of religious engagement and the purpose of the evolution of human consciousness (37).

For a critical sociology of religion, we must be capable of structurally analyzing various religious engagements, and assign them a spot in the hierarchy where we can constantly judge their degree of depth and authenticity. In this way, this or that religious engagement is higher than this or that other religious engagement. A great advantage of this “integral” theory is that it lets “shamans, saints and sages living fifty thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago, or two thousand years ago, be fully enlightened by the criterion of being one with the entire manifest universe as it existed at that time” (51). One can be authentic in a phase specific manner that is completely in tune with its center of gravity. However, no development or evolution is without its possible pathologies. Cultural evolution is no exception. Our history is full of brutality, repression and oppression. Wilber warns, “whenever the wisdom of a previous stage is forgotten, a pathology results” (31).

Translation/Transformation

If we think of the various levels of structural organization as floors in a tall building,

each floor is itself a deep structure or stage, while the various components on each floor, the furniture so to speak, are surface structures. Movement from one floor to another, between deep structures, is called transformation. Movement of surface structures on each floor, rearranging furniture, is called translation (90). Surface structures are historically conditioned and come with their own wisdom and/or pathology. They are not caused by, but are molded in some degree, by past surface structures. They hold their particular belief systems, ideologies, languages and customs. Deep structures, on the other hand, are relatively a-historical, collective and cross-cultural.

Each stage of development has its respective needs (similar to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). Human beings have physical needs, emotional needs, mental-egoic needs, spiritual needs etc. Wilber speaks of the needs specific to each stage as food or “mana”. Adapting to and learning to digest, the food or mana of a particular stage characterizes the translation aspect of the growth and development process. The current structure must provide this food, or it will perish (84). There is both good mana, and bad mana. The higher the stage one is on, the more likely you will have access to higher, or better, food-truth (this does not deny, however, the validity of phase-specific lower truths). Translation has one major function – “to integrate, stabilize and equilibrate its given level” (92). When a stage can no longer provide this function through providing the necessary food/mana, it yearns for transcendence, to go beyond its level. This is the one major function of transformation. This dialectic and tension between translation and transformation “constitutes much of the dynamic of development” (92). Wilber calls this “(r)evolutionary structuralization.”

Legitimacy/Authenticity

Legitimacy describes how well a spiritual movement or religion facilitates translation (“how well a spirituality provides meaning, integration and value at a particular level”). Authenticity quantifies how well a spiritual movement facilitates transformation (“how well a spirituality promotes transformation to higher levels altogether”). Legitimacy can be referred to as a horizontal scale of development. Authenticity, on the other hand, would be the vertical dimension of growth. There are different degrees of authenticity. Likewise, there are ways to adjudicate those degrees of depth. Wilber describes it thusly, there is both self and other. This separation causes a fear a trembling of the self. It is faced with the existential fact of death and represses it. This is the ultimate repression. This existential situation leads to the creation of immortality symbols or projects. These projects somehow promise to transcend death, and in the process create a “codified system of death denial” (95). Immortality projects are a part of surface structures, of translation to a given stage. They determine that stages legitimacy for meeting its needs. The higher one goes on the developmental scale, the less and less compensatory these projects become. Thus, in order to transform to the next level of structural organization, an individual must accept the death that is present at its current level of adaptation. The self must cease to identify with that level. Wilber says,

Only when the self is strong enough to die to that level can it transcend that level. The self can begin to identify with the new level and begin its own translative process. As the self adapts it begins to face a new ‘other’ and thus will suffer new death-seizures and therefore create new defense measures and new immortality projects (96).

Each transformation is a process of death and rebirth; death to the old level, the old self, and rebirth to the newly emergent level, the new self as identified with new surface structures. Gauging authenticity of an individual, group, or movement becomes a process of judging the facilitation, effectiveness and level of encouragement in this process. How can one go beyond fear, beyond the existential reality of death repression? Wilber answers by saying that you can go beyond this fear and trembling by transcending the dynamic of self and other altogether, by transcending subject and object. Only through shedding the self and widening our spectrum of identification can we grow.

Definitions/Usages of the Term “Religion”

There are at least a dozen different meanings of the word religion that point to a dozen different functions. When we speak of religion, especially in academia, we need to be careful in our usage as different understandings and connotations abound. Religions oppress, and they liberate, at any given moment which function of religion are we referring to? Wilber discusses nine different definitions. Each definition/usage is legitimate, but we must specify our meaning. It is all to common to slip back and forth between meanings and usages to serve current purposes but that can ultimately lead to faulty conclusions. The usages are organized thus: rd-1, rd-2 and so on.

Rd-1: Religion as nonrational engagement.

This usage can have both positive and negative connotations. Religion, in this treatment, deals with nonrational but valid aspects of human life such as faith and grace. It might be an important and even vital aspect of being human (homoreligious as Armstrong would say) but it is not considered real cognition. This can include both the prerational and postrational stages and functions of religion. In this usage, science and rationality are not religious, nor can they be.

Rd-2: Religion as extremely meaningful or integrative engagement.

Religion in this light is a “functional activity”. It is active in its search for meaning and integration. This usage is thus a mechanism of translation. How does religion reflect a given developmental stages search for food or mana? In this way, secularism is a valid religion. Purely rational enterprises are religious in nature in that they, like all levels, are “in search of their phase-specific mana, and this mana-search-on whatever level, high or low, sacred or secular-is understood as religion” (99). Rd-1 and rd-2 can even be contradictory depending on the usage, but both are acceptable if we understand the different functions of religion properly.

Rd-3: Religion as an immortality project.

Using the term defined earlier, religion is seen as a “wishful, defensive, compensatory belief, created in order to assuage insecurity/anxiety” (99). Religion serves an existential need. In this way, it is also serving the needs of translation in each stage. As in rd-2, rationality is also a valid religious endeavor. Science and reason do for the “rational ego exactly what myth does for the childish ego and magic does for the infantile ego” (100). In each case, religion helps to veil the existential anxieties of death. It gives an individual or group something to hold onto, to cling to in the face of impending death of the self.

Rd-4: Religion as evolutionary growth.

In this view, all evolution, history and human development is a process of “increasing realization”. Religion becomes the term for the transformation process itself. The drive for transcendence is religion. It is not a function of translation, of adapting to a given level, or mana searching, but of dying to that level altogether in pursuit of higher structures.

Rd-5: Religion as fixation/regression.

This is the standard primitivization theory. Religion is not nonrational, it is prerational; it is magic and myth. It is usually always derogatory. We will discuss primivitization theory later.

Rd-6: Exoteric religion.

This is usually constituted of the preparatory aspects of religion that allow for higher, inward and/or advanced practices. Belief systems can fall into this category. They can invoke and/or support faith.

Rd-7: Esoteric religion.

This is comprised of the advanced practices mentioned above in rd-6. These practices culminate or at least have a goal or facilitating mystical or peak experiences, which we will discuss momentarily.

Rd-8: Legitimate religion.

This would be a religion that primarily functions in translation processes by providing good mana. It must provide meaning and immortality symbols. This is similar to rd-2. However, rd-2 refers to mana in general, whereas rd-8 refers to good mana religion only. It is legitimate in its capacity to provide good mana. Rd-2 can provide bad mana. Providing bad mana can be characterized as a crisis in legitimacy, when a religion fails in its integrative and defensive functions. Wilber’s example is that of the Catholic church and human reproduction. Their official, and traditional stance is long outdated and has lost legitimacy in the context of the rational secular religion that has emerged.

Rd-9: Authentic religion.

This religion validates transformation processes. A crisis in authenticity occurs when an existing stage or paradigm is challenged by an emerging, higher stage of development. Wilber says, “authentic religion is any practice leading to a genuine emergence of, and eventual adaptation to, those transpersonal realms” (102).

With all of these usages/definitions of religion, there are two different degrees of validity. There is the horizontal scale and the vertical scale. There is both legitimacy and authenticity. Legitimacy is the degree “of translative smoothness and integrity, measured against the potential capacity of the given level itself” (103). Authenticity is the “degree of transformative power, measured by the degree of hierarchical structuralization delivered by the transformation” (103). Each of these definitions has its appropriate place. But we must specify which we mean at any given time, otherwise statements such as “All religions are true,” and “the religious impulse is universal,” or “all religions are one at some deep level,” are misleading, meaningless and false.

Belief, Faith, Experience and Adaptation

For Wilber, the differences between belief, faith, experience and adaptation are extremely important. Religious belief is considered the lowest form of religious engagement. Codified belief systems, he says, often “operate with no authentic religious connection whatsoever” (105). They mostly serve as an oasis of immortality symbols. It is usually an “ideological nexus” that stipulates the means, or qualifications, for immortality.  Questioning impulses are often not allowed to stay in these systems long. As a result, they are often projected onto others and attacked as something outside the self, outside the system. Wilber states,

The true believer is forever on the make, looking for converts and battling disbelievers, for, on the one hand, the mere existence of a disbeliever is one token less in the immortality account, and, on the other, if the true believer can persuade others to embrace his ideology, it helps to quiet his own disbelieving impulses (106).

However, belief can serve as an expression and codification of a higher degree of religious involvement as in rd-6. In this way, they can be authentic belief systems, but only when “linked to actual higher (authentic) religiousness” (106).

A person of faith will usually have a set of beliefs, but their involvement is not predominantly generated by these beliefs. A person of faith usually cannot actually say why they are “right” or has faith. Beliefs have become secondary to something else. Faith confers a measure of peace and inner stability as doubt is now accepted. It plays an integral part in faith. However, there are usually only two ways to deal with doubt. One is to revert to mere belief, to clothe it in “more rigid and external forms” such as immortality symbols, and the other is to act on the yearning for greater closeness with the divine and to advance to experience.

Religious experiences, or “peak”/mystical experiences, provide a temporary insight into one of the transpersonal stages. They go beyond simple faith into an actual encounter, albeit brief. Faith is conducive to these experiences. Beliefs seem to inhibit them. When they occur, they may effect a conversion experience, where one adopts a belief system in which to make sense of their experience. In transpersonal psychology this is called either a “spiritual emergence”, or a “spiritual emergency” depending on whether the ego has the capacity to integrate whatever may come up in the experience. Wilber says, “If an authentic peak experience occurs to a mythic-religious true believer, it often has the awkward effect of energizing his or her mythic immortality symbols. The result is a ‘born again’ believer” (108). This can be said to occur to a great number of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.

William James, in his book Varieties of Religious Experience, posited that the fundamental religiousness came not from belief, or from faith, but from experience. The world religions, he claimed, began as experiences that were then codified into belief systems that faith was then based around. That paradigm, according to Wilber, blinds us to the fact that it is possible to actually adapt to these higher realms in a permanent and stable fashion. They are not fleeting experiences. Authentic religion is then a process of “concrete developmental transformation and structural adaptation” (111).

One way to understand this developmental model is through the lens of perspectivism, a capacity to “take the role of others, to cognitively project oneself into a mental perspective and viewpoint other than one’s own” (113). Each stage is increasingly capable and thus has more empathy, compassion and care for others. This is not a new idea. Increasing perspectivism, which can also be viewed as “decreasing egocentrism, is a primary indicator of development.” A person can distance themselves from societies norms in this fashion can choose what to accept and what to reject. Whatever decision is made, it is not blind obedience or conformity. A community thinking the same way, sharing the same symbols and worshiping the same god, for example, characterizes the mythic mentality. The rationality paradigm, on the other hand, says to do different things together, to share different symbols and exchange perspectives. In this way, those in the rational stage of development have a greater capacity for both legitimate and authentic religious engagement, in that they have a more sophisticated perspectivism (115). Wilber’s point here is to challenge scholars who have continuously posited rationalism, secularism, modernism and liberalism as an anti-religious trend. For Wilber, they are not just religious but authentically religious in that they represent higher levels of structural adaptation. It’s overall scheme, according to Wilber, may be to strip “infantile and childish associations, parental fixations, wish fulfillments, dependency yearnings, and symbiotic gratifications” (115). In this way, spirit can be approached as spirit itself, rather than as a cosmic parent. Rationalization then is not just a step in the right direction, but is a prerequisite of transrational stages of development. 

This applies well to primitivization theory, which states that religion is prompted by fixations or regression back to infantile magic or childish myth. This theory, championed by Freud, is characterized by Oedipal object-relation and is susceptible to paternal externalizations and projections as well as patriarchal introjections. The problem here is obvious, if fails to address all, if not most of the essentials components of religion and religious experience (62). It is an extremely reductionistic view of religion. Wilber says, “If we treat religion as a structure among other structures and not something shared by them all, then increasing historical development clearly shows an eventually decreasing religiosity” (73). If we follow this way of thinking, the rational-scientific stage is the pinnacle of development and thus of religion. Religion would have no choice but to fall into the realm of the primitivizationists and traditional psychoanalysts, being nothing more than fixation and regression as the holy trinity posits.

There are really only two ways we can navigate this debacle. First: evolution and development is in fact devolution. There actually existed a historical Garden of Eden from which we have fallen and continue to fall from. The rise of modernity, secularism and liberalism are seen as evidence of this fall. Many fundamentalists have this view. If this is true, then the earlier stages of development were actually higher. Second: there are stages of structuralization that are higher and better than the rational-scientific stage. Human and religious evolution and development is still taking place (74), moving into the transpersonal stages.

The Origins of Religious Violence

Hector Avalos has produced an invaluable contribution to the field of religious studies in his book The Origins of Religious Violence. He presents a radical new theory to religious violence based on the creation of scarce resources. Through this theory he contrasts religious violence with secular (or nonreligious) violence and applies it to the field of international politics and foreign policy. I will briefly present an overview of his ideas.

Avalos presents two main propositions: (1) “Most violence”, he says, “is due to scarce resources, real or perceived. Whenever people perceive that there is not enough of something they value, conflict may ensue to maintain or acquire that resource. This can range from love in a family to oil on a global scale.” (2) “When religion causes violence, it often does so because it has created new scarce resources” (18). Avalos outline four main scarce resources that are created by religion: access to the divine will (particularity through inscripturation), sacred space, group privileging and salvation. I will return to how religion creates these scarce resources later on.

Avalos defines religion as a “mode of life and thought that presupposes the existence of, and a relationship with, supernatural forces and/or beings” (103). He uses an empirico-rationalist approach, which states, “unreasonable beliefs are those that neither can be verified nor are based on verifiable phenomena” (27). We define natural as that which by one or more of the five senses and/or logic. The supernatural must be unknown or unknowable. If we could detect it, it would cease to be supernatural. Avalos concludes, “if it is not natural then it is nothing more than a concept whose reality cannot be verified” (103).

As opposed to verifiable resource scarcities such as water, food and shelter, scarcities generated by religion require only belief in them in order to exist. The competition for these resources can cause conflict when the competitors need to acquire it or feel that loss of control of the resource will somehow threaten their well being (79). Religious believers can thus die or kill over a perceived scarcity that in actuality is not scarce at all. Violence predicated on the acquisition or maintenance of an unverifiable resource is simply needless. Bodily wellbeing, or life, is being traded for nonexistent gain. The scarce resources created by religion are completely manufactured by, or reliant upon, unverifiable premises. Thus, religion causes violence if and when the perpetration of violence is a logical consequence of beliefs in unverifiable forces and/or beings. “A scarce resource X created by religion may cause violence when at least one of two or more persons or groups (1) desires to acquire or maintain X, and (2) believes violence is an allowable and proper method to acquire and/or maintain X” (22).

Avalos spends time discussing previous theories of religious violence. If will briefly present his main point. “Current theories of religious violence” he says, “are still permeated by the idea that religion is essentially good and that violence is a deviation” (93). Previous theories are thus incomplete. Religious violence is seen as unrepresentative while the true religion and real god is being distorted. Avalos criticizes the claim that religious violence is a response to modernism and secularism. He says that it allows religious apologists to retain the value of religion, while deflecting the fundamentals mechanisms of violence to which all religions are susceptible. “Such militants are violent because modernism and secularization threaten the scarce resources (e.g., salvation, sacred space) that their belief systems have manufactured” (80). Similar to Rodney Stark, Regina Schwartz argued that because monotheism automatically creates a group of insiders and outsiders, the creation of outsiders is itself a violent act. Diana Edelman then argued for inclusive monotheism that acknowledges various forms of one supreme deity. This once again, is an attempt to keep the value of religion while claiming that violent religion is simply an aberration. Avalos, in regards to monotheism said, “The creation of scarce resources may occur when the adherents of a religion claim that the benefits of that religion are not or cannot be equally distributed to all human beings” (22). Outsiders are denied access to benefits provided by that one god. These benefits could be anything ranging from land to national identity. Avalos argues that the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are all heavily dependent on violence premises in that “they all regard their scriptures as sacred despite the violence endorsed therein” (29). Religion does not always cause violence, he says, but religion is inherently prone to violence. Any theory of religious violence must address the fundamental susceptibility to violence based on the creation of scarce resources, in this case, unverifiable resources.

What are scarce resources? They can be anything from tangible resources such as food, as elaborated by those such as Amartya Sen (and within economic theory, Thomas Malthus), to power and status within families, communities and countries. Scarce resources can incite ethnic conflicts and create immigration issues. It is based in the fear of losing a valued resource or of losing control of a resource. There are economic/status based threats and cultural/symbolic threats, which would include religion and way of life. This inherently brings up geopolitics and the control of resources deemed valuable. The “militarization of space” can be seen as a direct consequence of seeing space and a precious and scarce resource (99), which I will return to shortly.

The idea that insufficiency is a major, if not the main, cause of conflict is not new. Whenever there is not enough of something that is valued, conflict is the likely result. Scarcities are related to conflict from the smaller social units to the largest sociopolitical entities. And while a broad spectrum of researchers see the importance of scarcities, none of them seems to appreciate fully how religion can create scarce resources. What unites all of the scarcities, even those that are human-made, is that they exist or can exist. Available quantities of oil can really be insufficient to meet the needs or wants of people. Love and justice can really be insufficient in a family. “But these scarcities differ in important ways from scarcities that are precipitated by religion. Those differences, we shall argue, render religion a more tragic source of violence” (100).

Religion creates scarce resources in four main ways, through inscripturation, scared space, group privileging and salvation. Inscripturation refers to the creation of a written account of what is “believed to be authoritative information about or from supernatural forces and/or beings…what readers believe to be the thoughts and actions of a deity or supernatural force” (104). Writing becomes a scarce resource when not everyone has access to the writing or the ability to read. This can be the case with many females in the Muslim world who are denied access to scriptures or cannot become imams. More importantly however, is the creation of a scarce resource based on inscripturation, that of divine communication or religious authority. For example, the Catholic Church is the ultimate interpretative authority on scripture, and Catholics follow their interpretation. A secular example would be the US Supreme Court as being the ultimate interpretive authority on the US Constitution. Avalos says, “when divine communication is believed to reside in one book or set of books, and not in all books, then a sacred canon can be considered a form of sacred space, wherein the word of deities is embodied in those texts” (106).

When some are denied access to sacred space, or cannot live in sacred space, it becomes a scarce resource. This can be best understood in a social functionalist view, religion as being a mechanism that legitimizes existing social organizations and hierarchies. Avalos explains sacred space thusly,

Let us say that population X has declared a certain bounded space was given to them by god, who communicates only with members of population X. While there may be enough physical space for the community, the space has now been made scarce solely because of the belief that a god has declared it to be his property. Any loss of life resulting from that scarcity would be completely wasteful if that god did not in fact exist/ any violence resulting from this belief would be judged wasteful and or immoral (355).

Land is scarce already. It is absurd to create a new scarcity of land by calling it “holy” on the basis of unverifiable claims.

Group privileging usually withholds economic and social benefits. “Violence may follow attempts to acquire those benefits or attempts to prevent the loss of those benefits” (109). In the case of inscripturation, not everyone can read and write therefore, elite groups had control over written information. Salvation is not available to everyone. It stipulates that anyone can receive a more permanent supernatural status or benefit by joining a particular religion. But this is not tangible or verifiable. As Avalos states, “salvation exists only insofar as people believe in it” (109); salvation, of course meaning salvation from sin, or from the ultimate destruction caused by sin. Martyrdom can also fall into this category. It is a virtual ticket to heaven that is not available to everyone. You gain supernatural boons by giving up ones life in a violent exodus. Salvation through the shedding of blood was necessary for the abolition of sin. People become saved though the violence death of the son of god. Ultimately, any notion that sacrifice is necessary for our collective health is neither empirically verifiable nor helpful for overcoming violence itself. Avalos says,

The idea that anyone needs supernatural salvation is unverifiable. The concept that god or god’s son or anyone else has to die to be saved is not only unverifiable but can be seen as a continuation of ancient violence ideas about blood magic and sacrifice that simply have no place in the modern world. The idea that god died not because it was necessary, but simply to show his love, is equally misguided. The idea that violence is an expression of love is the problem (367).

Any person, or group of persons, that threatens another’s salvation can become the object of violence. In all these cases, violence can occur “when the loss of those valued resources is thought to be imminent or when someone else attempts to acquire those scarce resources” (110).

Avalos’s main argument is based in comparative ethics, meaning “scarcities caused by unverifiable propositions form a more tragic and preventable violence” (301). Avalos claims “the lack of verifiability in religious belief ethically differentiates the violence attributed to religion from the violence attributed to nonreligious factors” (29). His argument is quite simple. What exists has more value than what does not exist. Life exists. Therefore, life is worth more than what does not exist. Accordingly, any action that places the value of life as equal or less than equal than the value of nothing is immoral. It is always immoral to kill for something that has no value. Avalos says, “since religion is a mode of life and thought premised on the existence of and or relationship with unverifiable supernatural forces and or beings, then it follows that killing for religious reasons is always immoral” (354). Expressed another way, if acts of violence caused by actual (verifiable) scarcities are judged as immoral, then acts of violence caused by resources that are not actually scarce (unverifiable) are more immoral. Religious violence is always immoral. Non religious violence is not always immoral. This is the fundamental ethical difference.

The best prospect for a nonviolent global society is a secular humanist hegemony. Violence based on verifiable scarcities is workable, violence based on unverifiable scarcities is simply unnecessary and unhelpful. Avalos presents a few solutions to this problem of religious violence. It is given in the framework of minimization, meaning that we must concentrate on “ ridding ourselves of unnecessary violence” (359). Sacred space, salvation and group privileging are not essential features of religion! His solution is to focus on those resources that people are actually lacking, food, shelter, justice and so on. “Using empirico-rationalist epistemology is the key to determining what people actually need to live” (368). Religion, in this way, is unnecessary for morality. Including god in our moral considerations does not change them, except to add another unnecessary scarce resource and layers of bureaucracy and power structures. Religion should have no place whatsoever in our moral considerations nor should it have a place in finding solutions for religious violence.

Brian Kimball - When Religion Becomes Evil

Brian Kimball’s excellent book, offers five warning signs for when religion become evil. These warning signs are: absolute truth claims, blind obedience, establishing the ideal time, the end justifies any means and declaring holy war. I will quickly present his ideas and then offer a few comparisons to the previous authors I’ve discussed.

Kimball asks, “Is religion itself the problem?” And his answer is two fold: no, and yes. Kimball, like Armstrong distinguishes between authentic religion and traditional, narrow religion. In this way, he is a religious apologist, which makes sense as he is an Baptist minister. However, don’t let this persuade you of the validity of his criticisms and arguments which are sounds and relevant. He begins his book by saying that there has been a collective failure to challenge presuppositions, to think anew and to openly debate religious concerns. This failure, he says, contributes to the disaster we see with narrow, traditional and violent religion. Many traditional ways of viewing the world and relating to others are simply inadequate. “They are becoming increasingly dangerous” (9).

Is religion the problem?

All religions are not the same. As such, not all religious worldviews are equally valid (23). Agreeing with Sam Harris and Ken Wilber alike, he says value judgments of religion are sorely needed. There are objective criteria we can use to make informed and responsible decisions about what is acceptable under the religious rubric. Freedom of religion is a wonderful thing, but equally important is freedom from the religions others wish to impose upon those who differ (25).

Asking ‘is religion the problem?’ completely depends upon our understanding of religion itself. If religion can be summed up as fundamentalist and narrow and literalist then the obvious question is yes! Religion would clearly be the problem. However, religion is more than the holy trinity of atheists makes it out to be. According to Kimball, Sam Harris seems to think there is only one way to understand and interpret sacred texts, and that is a literal understanding. Kimball, in this sense, completely agrees with Karen Armstrong; asserting that fundamentalism is the only valid form of faith is “uninformed and deceitful”. Harris also does not distinguish faith and belief. Believing X, Y and Z, does not sum up religion or religious people. However, Kimball recognizes consistently that there is a growing and dangerous proportion of the population that would fit into this category. Their exclusivist understanding and propagation of religion merely reinforces the argument that religion is indeed the problem (35). In order to answer the question ‘is religion the problem?’ accurately, we need “a broader, deeper, and more inclusive understanding of religion” (38).

Kimball briefly tries to answer his own question by saying that if religious institutions and teachings lack “flexibility, opportunities for growth, and healthy systems of checks and balances” they certainly can be, and usually are, a major part of the problem. Regardless of what people say about their love of god or their need for religion in their lives, or in the public arena, when their behavior toward the other is violent and destructive, when it causes suffering, the religion has certainly become corrupted and is in need of serious reform.

Truth Claims

Kimball says “In every religion, truth claims constitute the foundation on which the entire structure rests. However, when particular interpretations of these claims become propositions requiring uniform assent and are treated as rigid doctrines, the likelihood of corruption in that traditional rises exponentially” (49). This creates an environment for religion and religious people to become defensive and sometimes assume an offensive posture towards difference and criticism. Presuming to know god, to have exclusive rights to the correct interpretation of sacred texts, has potentially destructive consequences (55). This absolutism blocks any ability or willingness to perceive the multitude of ways, even in one single tradition, people understand and conceptualize the transcendent.

Truth claims are based on selective readings. Usually people defer to authority figures who define the Christian position on any variety of issues such as human sexuality or the physical age of the planet. Literalism, Kimball says is dangerous for two reasons:

1. Sacred texts are apprehensible and therefore sensible. Despite the notion of original or authorial intent, meaning is determined by what the reader attributes to the author. Thus, “what the reader thinks is there becomes not merely the reader’s opinion but the will of god” (67).

2.  Allegories, typologies and symbolic interpretations are avoided in favor of the pure and uncorrupted word; truth and meaning become synonymous. When the symbolic, metaphorical and allegorical nature of sacred texts is lost, and literalism predominates, it is significantly more likely that those who differ will be demonized.

The problem of truth claims is that we take the language of faith and turn them into absolute truths in our craving for certainty. Kimball goes so far as to say that “Christians who take the bible literally are either ignorant or self deluded” (66). I could not agree more. Unfortunately, we are speaking of a very large proportion of Christians and Christianity.

Blind Obedience

The limitation of intellectual freedom and individual integrity is a sure sign of religious corruption. Kimball says, “when authority figures discourage questions or disallow honest questions, something clearly is wrong” (99). There is usually strong social pressure, and familial pressure, to conform. This pressure is applied more often in terms of how the religious communities define themselves in relation to the larger social network. “Some groups physically withdraw from the perceived corrupt society around them” (100). We can see this in the case of evangelical Christian home schooling, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the like.

It is important to stress that religion and religious communities must be allowed to be bizarre and self-destructive. Religious or not, this occurs all the time. The line is crossed when the sect poses a threat to anyone other than their “freely participating adult adherents” (104).

Establishing the Ideal Time

Following the Millennialism traditions, when a hoped-for ideal is tied to a particular religious worldview and those who wish to implement their vision of the hoped-for time, presume to know what god wants not just for them but for the everyone (115).

Usually, those who can be described in this vain have a very black and white vision of the ideal time. For example, to use a familiar name, Pat Robertson has said

 “One is either following god in all aspects of life or not following god at all. One is either engaged in godly politics or is participating in the anti-god structures that now threaten the home, school, and the church” (128). Either you agree with this vision or you do not. And if you do not agree then you are obstructing its fruition. This certainty, for Robertson, and indeed many in the religious right, correlates to our political and economic systems. “He’s [Satan] gone after the government and moved it away from the more free enterprise system we’ve known and turned it into a socialist welfare state” (130). This vision can also create an attitude of exclusivism and bigotry. For example, Pat Buchanan said in 1993, “our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity” (131).

People and groups who have a political and economic blueprint based on divine mandate should be regarded with extreme caution.

The End Justifies any Means

This can be both an external and internal problem and usually results from a religious community or person taking a defensive stance from perceived threats. Externally, stemming from group identity, the “other” can be seen as an object posing a threat rather than as a person. Internally, this can manifest as “discrimination and dehumanization within the group in the form of sexism, classism, racism” (149). Religion, being patriarchal and misogynist warrants its own post and isn’t my, nor Kimball’s focus. But this can be seen in many forms familiar to us such as vigilante style justice, honor killings and female circumcision.

Protecting the institution itself can become the end that justifies any means. For example, Catholic priests and child molestation. There has been little or no recourse to the criminal justice system. These issues have been handled behind closed doors, protecting the institution of the church.

Declaring Holy War

“More wars have been waged, more people killed, and more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history” (168). Of course this can be difficult to separate from various political and nationalistic motivation that have usually come in conjunction with religious motivation. Nonetheless, it’s a solid statement. Declaring holy war is more likely to occur when a community of faith feels threatened by external powers. Sound familiar?

Inclusive Faith

Kimball says we are in desperate need of new paradigms, new ways of understanding particularity and pluralism. At the forefront of this struggle should be men and women of faith. Change must come from within if religion is to stop being used to oppress and dehumanize. Each tradition has its own resources and flexibility to modify its teachings and practices. To bring this change to a more pluralistic context, “believers must ask themselves how they can best function in a world in which most others don’t share the same understanding” (100).

Religious groups should not feel threatened by difference and diversity. They should look at difference as an opportunity to deepen and broaden their view. As Kimball says, “Security” does not come “from having or assuming we have all the answers” but from how one is oriented in the world. It comes from a practical response to confusion, crisis, calamity, and yes, difference. The answer Kimball says, similar to Rodney Stark, is more religion; but real, authentic and transformative religion. 

Karen Armstrong and The Case for God

Karen Armstrong, in her book, The Case for God, doesn’t do what you think she does. Armstrong is a religious academic and historian, and a damn good one at that. She is a religious apologist, but not for the kind of religion most of us think of when we think of religion. She has just as many criticisms with religion as most atheists do including, I would say, people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Where they differ however is their scope in what they mean by religion in the first place. Most people’s ideas about religion are highly reductionist. Questions like “Do you believe in God”, or “Are you a Christian”, are usually easily understood and answered accordingly through common connotations and cultural assumption. Religion and God usually mean very clear things, whether is the Evangelical version or the Mormon version, there is a level of certainty in making these claims and assumptions. As we’ll see many atheists and Armstrong could not agree more in their criticism about this sort of religion. However, most atheists stop here and limit their criticism of religion to this narrow arena of understanding and praxis.

Generally speaking, mystics, yes even Christian mystics, and many eastern traditions embrace relative amounts of uncertainty and not knowing. Religion and God are understood as being metaphorical labels and symbols for that which cannot be known and cannot be spoken about by limited human minds, languages and imaginations. They speak of religion and God in a completely different way, that in Armstrong’s view is more true and authentic. Armstrong says that what religion truly is and can be is fundamentally at odds with the majority of its worldly manifestations that cling to certainty and dogma. In her view, some religion is better than others depending on the level of embrace of not-knowing. Again, here she will agree with many atheists. I will present some of her amazing ideas, then offer some of my own, including criticisms of her work.

Armstrong begins by differentiating mythos and logos. Mythos was first designed “to help people to navigate the obscure regions of the psyche, which are difficult to access but which profoundly influence our thought and behavior” (xi). Myths were not effective if people simply believed in them, they were programs of action. Religion was based around mythos. It was not something people thought but what hey did. Truth was acquired through practical action influenced by and motivated by mythos.

Religion however, went corrupt when logos began to overtake mythos. Myth was discredited and the scientific method took its place as the only reliable means of attaining truth. After this revolution, religious knowledge became theoretical rather than practical. Belief suddenly became a fundamental axiom and prerequisite of faith. Because of this transition, today we speak of believers and unbelievers as if accepting some amount of dogma is an essential activity (xv). In Armstrong’s view, this is a gross distortion of what religion is. Many of us have been “left stranded with an incoherent concept of god” (320).

We have forgotten to value unknowing. It is important to “recognize the limits of our knowledge, silence, reticence, and awe” (xviii). Religious practice must naturally entail what she calls ‘esktasis’, which can be described as a stepping outside the norm, “stepping outside the prism of ego and experience the sacred” (xiii). It necessarily involved uncertainty. This unknowing was celebrated and delighted in. In transcending the ego through religious practice, for example, we experience sadness directly, “it not longer become my sadness but sorrow itself” (xiv).

The sacred, or God, is transcendent. In the vain of Tillich and Heidegger, this is what is called the Ground of Being. The eternal Tao is the Tao that cannot be named. The Tao has no qualities, no form. It can be experienced but never seen, it is not a god. It predates heaven and earth. It is beyond divinity, neither being nor nonbeing. As Armstrong summed up, “it [is] impossible to define or describe, because Being is all encompassing and our minds are only equipped to deal with particular beings, which can merely participate in it in a restricted manner” (11). This ground is a power that is higher, deeper and more fundamental than our notions of god or gods. It transcends our limited personalities. In every religious tradition, there is a “deliberate and principled reticence about god and/or the sacred” (xviii).

Being itself, is not only the ground of being, it is also the ground of the human psyche. It is neither external nor alien to humanity. The two are connected. This is the microcosm and macrocosm, the atman and Brahman. This is how we are able to experience it…we are it! Human beings are wired to yearn for transcendent experiences, to yearn for esktasis. In this way, Armstrong argues that religion, as it should be practiced and understood will never disappear. It is a defining aspect of humanity. She says, “the desire to cultivate a sense of the transcendent may be the defining human characteristic” (9).

For Armstrong, this lasted until the rise of modernity, the rise of logos at the expense of mythos. “Before the modern period, most men and women were naturally inclined to religion and they were prepared to work at it” (10). Before modernism, people were not expected to believe in the abstract. Humanity forgot that “authentic religious discourse could not lead to clear, distinct and empirically verified truth” (21). Religion is not something provided to the masses by authority figures, it was not a notional activity. Accepting dogma on someone else’s authority completely abdicates personal responsibility. Religion did not require belief in a set of doctrines. She says, “Religious discourse should not attempt to impart clear information about the divine but should lead to an appreciation of the limits of language and understanding…it could not be accessed by rational, discursive thought but required a carefully cultivated state of mind and the abnegation of selflessness” (26). Faith was a matter of practical insight and active commitment, it had little to do with abstract belief. For example, the Buddha had little time for theological speculation and metaphysical questions. What difference would it make to discover that a god had created the world? “Pain, hatred, grief and sorrow would still exist. These issues were irrelevant” (23).

For Armstrong, modernity brought a lust for certainty. This certainty made religion more logos based at the expense of a more transcendent, unknowning based religion, which is more authentic and transformative and real. For someone who has much criticism for the reductionism of religion, she is being highly reductionist in her view of modernism. Modernism can be said in part to be a response to the tyranny and oppressive authority of religion. Nonetheless, she elevates the religion of the past and says what we see today is a distortion of a truth lost in translation.

Secularism for Armstrong has a large negative effect. She does not see it as the fulfillment of the rational ethos of the enlightenment. Secularism in her view is creating a violent and oppressive religious backlash. She says a militant religiosity, will “emerge in every region where a secular, western style government had separated religion and politics” (292-3). Fundamentalists feel under threat, they are defensive and are unwilling to entertain rival points of view be they other religions, or social issues such as evolution, homosexuality, feminism and abortion. Secularism did not create these fundamentalists. They are reacting to it.

Using her model, Armstrong critiques most atheists quite well. She says,

“Atheism is parasitically dependent on the form of theism it seeks to eliminate and becomes its reverse mirror image…all three [Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins) insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion” (xvi). This may be true. However, Armstrong takes her views much further. She says, “Dawkins is not correct to assume that fundamentalist belief either represents or is even typical of either Christianity or religion as a whole…he is mistaken to assume that this is the way people have generally understood the term God (304)…Christian fundamentalists are convinced that their doctrinal beliefs are an accurate, final expression of sacred truth and that every word of the Bible is literally true – an attitude that is a radical departure from mainstream Christian tradition (294)” Does this woman live under a rock or something? Anywhere from 33% to 62% of Americans think the Bible is the literal truth of God. I know that’s quite a spectrum, but best-case scenario is 33%. That’s one third of Americans! And that is no small demographic! Refer to previous blog posts about the prominence of fundamentalist religion in the world.

I do agree with Armstrong when she says “this type of religiosity represents a retreat from god” (295). In this way, she completely agrees with atheists. She says the holy trinity (Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins) present religion at its absolute worst (306), which is also true. However, she continues saying that they are not “theologically literate,” and are intellectually conservative. “They never discuss the work of such theologians as Bultmann or Tillich who offer a very different view of religion and is closer to mainstream religion than any fundamentalist” (307). While this is also true she is false to make the assumption that notknowing religion is closer to the mainstream than fundamentalist religion. She downplays its manifestation, its influence and its power and thus undervalues the atheist and secular agendas. Atheism, for her, is just another divisive theology. She does not see its importance in the overall debate concerning sacredness. After all, what can be more sacred than a rational and well thought out critique of religion and its superstitions and dogmas?

She says the “atheist assault is likely to drive the fundamentalists to even greater commitment to creationism, and their contemptuous dismissal of Islam is a gift to Muslim extremists, who can use it to argue that the West is indeed intent on a new crusade” (308). This may also be true but it does not mean that atheism should be abandoned or discredited!

Arstrong’s conclusions and calls for action are hard to disagree with however. We do indeed need to shed a great deal of our knowledge about religion so that we can move on to new insights. Where she and I disagree is that atheism and secularism is a necessary player in this process. Faith and belief, she says, have become unfortunately fused in modern consciousness (305). Belief now exclusively means an intellectual submission to a “somewhat dubious position.” What it means to be religious or to believe in God no longer means what it used to. We are stuck in certainty. She says, “to make limited historical phenomena – a particular idea of god, creation science, family values, Islam or the holy land – more important than the sacred reverence due to the ‘other’ is a sacrilegious denial of everything that god stands for” (322). However, there is an innate desire for ekstasis, for mythos. Armstrong thinks we are entering a post-secular age. She hopes that atheist and theist alike should abandon the modern appetite for certainty. “No state of affairs is permanent, and we are now witnessing the death of the death of god.” She calls for a “negative theology”, namely a theology based in unknowing. We should drive our reasoning power to the point where we can go no further, and in this moment, we should not be frustrated but should experience a sense of “astonishment, awe and contentment.” We can turn within and become aware of otherness. Religion should be transformative with a marked effect on the personality. There is no dramatic “born-again” experience defined by intense certainty, but is a slow, incremental and imperceptible transformation.

I will return to Armstrong more when I begin discussing Ken Wilber. Most particularly, his idea of the pre/post fallacy.

Texas - One State Under God

Texas has a new license plate. It features the three Crosses at Calvary and says "One State Under God."
These license plates are made to benefit a Christian ministry in East Texas. Opponents of the plate claim, and rightfully so, that this is a clear and blatant government endorsement of religion. Advocates, however, claim that this is an expression of religious speech protected under the first amendment. The DMV is a public institution. It is completely facilitated by the state. Of course we have the protection of free speech which includes the expression of religious speech. If people wanted to express their religious free speech with the various automobiles, they can use bumper stickers, which many do. Using a license plate, given by the state and for state purposes is a clear violation of separation of church and state. In addition, having the proceeds go to a religious organization makes it even more transparent. The state cannot sponsor a religious organization. Period.

Religion and Politics in Sri Lanka

 Mark Juergensmeyer discusses a new cold war, a clash of what he calls two ideologies of order, between religious and secular nationalism.  Western secularization and modernization are seen as a direct threat to a more traditional ideology of order, that of religion. In many cases, secularization and modernization are seen merely as the continuation of western colonialism.  The role religion and ideology play in politics cannot be overlooked or underestimated.  In societies divided along religious and ethnoreligious lines, this drama is necessary to explore.  I will present an overview and examination of the role of religion and ideology in the divided society of Sri Lanka.  Religion and ideology in politics more generally must be explored in addition to various issues associated with deeply divided societies.  To understand this drama, different factors and frameworks are necessary for a thorough examination.  First I will explore religion and fundamentalism more broadly.  The case of Sri Lanka will then be presented and examined in light of various approaches to comparative politics.  The lenses of political culture, the role of elites and institutions will be utilized.

Fundamentalisms

Fundamentalism is inherently reactive to secularization and modernization influences.  It is foremost concerned with the erosion and displacement of religion in society.  Religions proper role has been diminished and replaced.  To understand religious nationalism, we must first understand religious fundamentalism.  In Fundamentalisms Comprehended, Marty and Appleby (1995) present a brief overview of the ideological foundations of fundamentalism.  It is dualistic in nature.  The world outside is contaminated and the world inside is pure.  These boundaries are strict.  There are the sinful and the saved, the righteous and the wicked.  These groups offer perfect purity to its members, and in doing so they are absolutists in nature, meaning they believe in inerrancy.  They have the path to liberation or nirvana and offer sanctum from the contaminated, sinful world outside their community.  They are highly concerned with education systems of the secularized world and thus seek to censor information, protecting civil society from corruption.  Behavior deemed sinful is clearly outlined and must be strictly regulated.  The intervention of the secular state in the religious sphere is the primary concern. 

There is a difference various religions have in how they conceptualize time.  There are two kinds of time, historic and messianic.  Historic is open-ended, amenable to gradual reconstruction and transformation.  In messianic time, however, the need is approaching fast and enemies are about to be conquered at any moment.  What role are they to play then if the end is approaching?  Fundamentalists will answer to messianic time through four different patterns of interaction with the world: conquering, transforming, renouncing or creating.  Each of these corresponds also with how to abolish their enemies.  Only two are relevant to our examination of Sri Lanka, the conqueror and the transformer. 

The conquerors seek to eliminate enemies altogether.  They desire to assume control of the structures of society that give life to their enemy.  They are then in a position to define and dominate outsiders, eliminating them, placing them in cultural, political or geographic exile, or converting them forcibly to their cause.  They seek to suppress all alternative visions and movements.  The transformer differs slightly.  They seek to interpret and influence the structures, institutions, laws and practices of a society, so that opposing fundamentalism may become more difficult, and so that conditions become more favorable for the conversion or marginalization of the enemy.  They seek to reform society to its image, but will adopt accommodating strategies with relaxed boundaries and shades of grey.

Sri Lanka – History and Background

Appleby and Marty (1995) outline three characteristics found in the majority of ethnic confrontations.

1.   There are sharp external boundaries and defined territories.  Claims are based on a historical continuity in identification with blood and culture.

2.   Notions of superiority and supremacy bolster the sharp external boundaries. There is thus a sacred basis for nationalist exclusivism.

3.   Utilization of dramatic and confrontational tactics.

Sri Lanka is characterized by the conqueror fundamentalist trend and clearly embodies these three characteristics.  Their unique historical context complicates matters by their background of deep ethnic tensions.  The Sinhala-Buddhist majority is reacting not only to the threats of modernization and secularization, particularly from their colonial past, but also against the threat of the Hindu Tamils emigrating from southern India.  They are seeking to repossess the northern parts of Sri Lanka from the Hindu Tamils.  And the Tamils seek to establish their own separate state on the island.

          Sri Lanka experienced more than four centuries of Dutch, Portuguese and British influence.  Colonial rule had near complete control of their education systems, threatening the survival of Buddhist culture and traditions.  One Buddhist bhikkhu said, “Those politicians who use English language and British customs and force the British political system on us continue colonialism in Sri Lanka as surely as if the British never left” (Juergensmeyer, 1993, 100).  In the late 19^th century, Buddhism began to experience a revival.  Buddhist schools began to be encouraged.  Angarika Dharmapala in 1891 started a revivalist journal seeking to create a moralistic and nationalistic Buddhism.  He died in 1933.  Four years later S.W.R.D. Bandaraike founded Sinhala Maha Sabha, a Buddhist revivalist political party.  A Buddhist Commission of Inquiry was formed and they issued a report entitled the ‘Betrayal of Buddhism’, which sought to examine the ways British colonial rule suppressed and discriminated against Buddhism.  This report had a huge influence on the 1956 elections which brought about a movement to make Sinhalese the official state language.  Resistance from the Tamils culminated in the bloody language riots of 1957.  Coupled with urbanization, industrial growth and rising economic inequality, class antagonism began to rise.  All these factors led to extreme political polarization.  Violence and intimidation became an acceptable aspect of political life as the government became more intrusive and authoritarian.  The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) fought for a separate Tamil state in the north which led to an explosion of violence in the 70s.

          Dharmapala’s leadership demanded that Theravada Buddhism rid itself of foreign influence, purging any synthesis of Buddhism with other faiths or practices (Hindu gods etc), and returning to the simplicities, the ‘fundamentals’ of Buddhism.  Their attention was geared towards reviving Buddhist culture and traditions suppressed by British colonialism and the Hindu and Islamic threats resulting from the Tamils in the north.  In other words, they were concerned with anti-imperialism and ethnonational preemptiveness.  The Tamils were perceived as evil.  Sharp ideological boundaries were drawn and enforced.  The emergence of aggressive Hindu nationalism has only fed their paranoia and reinforced their need to oppose them.  They were an imminent threat to the very survival of their culture, traditions and beliefs and thus must be fought by any means.  The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the Peoples Liberation Front, became the most active Sinhala Buddhist movement.  They regarded the secular government as an “obstacle to social progress” (1993, 104).  They were savage in their tactics, killing hundreds, some say thousands of rural villagers in an attempt to control rural areas and undermine the legitimacy of the government.  Most of their targets however, were government officials in what amounted to a Sinhalese holy war.  In 1988, they boycotted elections and vowed to continue their violent resistance until a Sinhalese Buddhist state was created.  In January 1989, eight candidates for parliament seats were dragged out of their homes and murdered.  They demanded the immediate departure of all Indians from Sri Lanka, civilian and military.  This militancy was handled brutally through government repression and authoritarianism. 

The government’s poor organization and lack of capacity to handle these issues effectively led to reactive social and political movements.  Their political parties have little substance and followings, resulting in fragmentation of religious and political authorities.  This theme will be touched on later in respect to elites.  The outcome, in summary, is that Sri Lanka is deadlocked into a pattern of violence feeding violence based around religious and ethnic differences.

          The Sinhala Buddhists must sustain and fortify its niche in society in order to defend itself from alien, penetrating forces of both the Tamils and secularization.  They must strike violently out at the enemy as they encounter ideological and cultural resistances in a growing pluralist, secularized society.  They clearly can be defined as exhibiting the world conqueror fundamentalist model.  The question is however, what variables exacerbate these divides, and what approaches can be taken to mitigate these patterns in the political culture, their institutions and the role of elites?

Political Culture and Ideology

          Both religious and secular nationalism, according to Clifford Geertz, are cultural systems, and thus are both ideologies.  As such, a brief exploration of ideology is required to understand how they function in society.  Ideology is a key feature to explore simply because it provides meaning to both individuals and to society as a whole.  Geertz says, “the function of ideology is to make an autonomous politics possible by providing the authoritative concepts that render it meaningful” (1997, 218).  People are guided emotionally and intellectually by unexamined biases.  When these biases are religious in nature and provide them with a sense of purpose and meaning they are advanced with great passion and little compromise.  Ideologies are thus crucial as sources of sociopolitical meanings and attitudes. 

When society is unable to have a coherent political orientation, ideologies provide images of the political process.  Geertz asserts that there are currently two approaches to the study of the social determinants of ideology: the interest theory and the strain theory.  The interest theory is characterized by a background of universal struggle for power, influence and advantage.  The strain theory is characterized by a background of an effort to correct sociopsychological disequilibrium.  These two theories are not mutually exclusive and can both be present in an ideological framework (1997, 201).  Structural problems and maladies are felt on the individual level as personal insecurity.  “For it is in the experience of the social actor that the imperfections of society and contradictions of character meet and exacerbate one another” (1997, 204).  Thus, other institutional variables and inefficiencies of the state can create grievances that catalyze ideological reactions.  “Ideology is a patterned reaction to the patterned strains of a social role.  It provides a symbolic outlet from emotional disturbances generated by social disequilibrium” (1997, 204). 

Ideological movements can thus be explained as catharsis.  Emotional tension can be drained off by being displaced onto symbolic enemies, which in turn provides a legitimate justification for hostility.  They can also be explained through individuals and groups legitimizing their actions in terms of adherence to higher values or higher purposes.  The role of civil society here is of the upmost importance.  “It makes a great deal of difference if a society [has] independent trade unions, civic associations, communications media, and political parties, capable of draining off anxiety and resentment in response to social and economic crises, and converting them into secular politics and public policy” (Appleby 1995, 434).  The reduction of civil society by interventionist states thus becomes a stressor, forcing individuals and groups to react ideologically. 

Meaning-making cannot be ignored in divided societies.  Ideology plays a crucial role in the environment in which healing must take place and new institutions must be forged.  Whatever replaces these ideologies must provide similar sociopsychological purposes.  The clash of ideologies, Geertz explains, may bring a given problem to attention, but it may also give it a powerful, passionate charge so that it may no longer be possible to deal with it rationally.  A political environment must then serve the purpose of managing these clashes effectively while simultaneously providing a sense of order and meaning.

Juergensmeyer offers a solution to this problem in his essay The New Religious State.  Religious nationalists, he says, are striving for a political order based on religious values.  They operate on the assumption that religion can replace liberal democracy by providing the “ideological glue” that holds a state together.  Religion, and secularism, according to Juergensemeyer are two competing “ideologies of order.”  Both have the ability to command communal loyalty and legitimize authority.  Both conceive the world around them as coherent and manageable, suggest levels of meaning beneath the mundane world, provide identity and provide authority that give social and political order a reason for being.  And both define how individuals should act and relate people to the larger social network.  

The West has had a long historical dialogue between secularism and religion.  Accommodating religion in the developing world is proving much more difficult.  Juergensmeyer says, “given religious histories that were part of national heritages, religious institutions that were sometimes the nations’ most effective systems of communication, and religious leaders who were often more devoted, efficient, and intelligent than government officials, religion could not be ignored” (1995, 384).  The government of Sri Lanka needs Sinhalese support but also cannot afford to alienate the Tamils and other minority groups.  This dynamic, leads to what is called, a double frustration; leaders are considered traitors by both religious and secular communities by making compromises.  Both feel that behind the compromises lie an inherent bias and loyalty.  Juergensmeyer believes, however, that it is possible to form an alliance and balance between these two ideologies.  The clashes between them can create new possibilities for accommodation and synthesis, forming the new religious state. 

Institutions

There are many institutional variables to take into account such as the electoral process and rules of political competition.  According to Alfred Stepan, having free and contested elections is a necessary condition for the successful transition to democracy.  To be considered free and contested, certain institutional guarantees must be met: the freedom to join and form organizations, the freedom of expression, the right to vote, eligibility for public office, right of political leaders to compete for support and votes, access to alternative sources of information, free and fair elections, and institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference (2001, 216).  In addition, the constitution must have some measure of protection for minority rights.  All groups must have the right and capability to advance their interests.  Sri Lanka obviously does not meet all these requirements.  How then can we create certain institutional rules of the game that can lead to these results?

In the West, Stepan says we carry an assumption: for democracy to flourish we need a strict separation of church and state. This is a false assumption.  Before states can be considered a democracy they must first be crafted for what he calls the “twin tolerations,” meaning that minimal boundaries of freedom must be crafted for political institutions by religious authorities and vice versa.  The dynamic between religion and politics, according to Stepan, lies not in church-state separation but in the construction and reconstruction of the twin tolerations, a kind of dialectic forming a new synthesis again and again.  For this to occur, he believes religions must possess multivocal elements.  Multivocal elements are elements within religious doctrine that can be used to help craft new practices and tolerance of democratic structures and struggles.  Without these multivocal elements, society will not be able to manage the necessary dialectic between secularism and religion and will thus be deadlocked, unable to successfully transition to democracy.  This will be a difficult task to achieve.  Fundamentalism, as we know, is alienative in that it distrusts, attacks and works to undermine established secular political institutions.  Whoever is not with me, is against me; compromise is abhorred.  How then, can this be achieved?

          The design of the political system creates the rules of the game.  Organizing political institutions is one way to begin to forge this new alliance.  Arend Lijphart in his essay Constitutional Design for Divided Societies offers some possible solutions.  He says, different groups can only be accommodated through power sharing, which requires the “participation of representatives of all significant communal groups in political decision making” (2004, 97).  He outlines a “one size” power-sharing model that fits well for most divided societies regardless of unique contexts.  I will quickly present a few of these recommendations.  He advocates proportional representation systems, so that all groups are treated equally.  The overriding principle here is never to exclude any significant group.  He prefers parliamentary systems as opposed to presidential because presidential systems tend to be majoritarian in nature and result in ‘winner-take-all’ outcomes.  Power sharing must be built into the executive, including having multiple languages and ethnicities.  He also advises for federalism and decentralized power.  This is an excellent way to provide autonomy and to avoid dominance by larger states on the federal level.  These mechanisms can provide institutional rules of the game that can shift towards cooperation and tolerance between differing ethnic and religious divides. 

The Role of Elites

          John Higley and Michael Burton assert that stable democracies depend greatly on the “consensual unity” of elites.  The internal relations of national elites are a strong determinant for democratic transitions and breakdowns.  Regime changes must be considered temporary unless accompanied by elite transformations, from disunity to consensual unity.  Elites are considered disunified when its members “(1) share few or no understandings about the properties or political conduct and (2) engage in only limited and sporadic interactions across factional or sectoral boundaries.  The basic situation of persons composing this elite type is one of deep insecurity” (1989, 19).  The fear is that the other person, or other faction will gain the upper hand.  Members will then take extreme measures to defend their position, killing or imprisoning their enemies.  Stable regimes do not simply appear as the result of writing constitutions or holding elections.  The necessary step, they say, is the consensual unification of previously disunified elites.  If Sri Lanka had sufficient leadership in political parties and support from citizens, this theory would lead us to believe, that the conversation between disunified elites can begin to take place and reach what Higley and Burton call “elite settlement.”  Once this occurs, the political rules of the game can begin to be formed through other institutional means. 

Summary and Conclusion

Juergensmeyer believes that religious nationalisms all over the globe are creating a new synthesis of secular politics and religion. 

They are creating…a merger between the cultural identity and legitimacy of old religiously sanctioned monarchies and the democratic spirit and organizational unity of modern industrial society.  This combination can be incendiary, for it blends the absolutism of religion with the potency of modern politics.  Yet it may also be necessary, for without the legitimacy conferred by religion, the democratic process does not seem to work in some parts of the world.  In these places, it may be necessary for the essential elements of democracy to be conveyed in the vessels of new religious states (2003, 201-202).

Whether this is able to occur in Sri Lanka is another story and depends on a number of different factors.  The political culture itself needs to undergo a shift in order to provide meaning for its citizens in the secular and democratic process.  Institutional factors must also be addressed.  The electoral and representative systems must be tailored to foster a political environment of cooperation and mutual benefit.  The “twin tolerations” must evolve in order to begin the dialectic between secular and religious nationalisms.  The role of elites will also play a role in creating the necessary political climate for changes to be made.  In conclusion, the fundamentalisms in Sri Lanka are very complicated, and no single solution is apparent.  The new cold war continues to be waged. 

Resources

Martin E. Marty, R. Scott Appleby Eds. 1995. Fundamentalisms Comprehended. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. 1993. The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. The New Religious State in Comparative Politics, Vol. 27, No. 4. (Jul., 1995), pp. 379-391.

Geertz, Clifford. 1997. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers.

Higley, John; Burton, Michael G. The Elite Variable in Democratic Transitions and Breakdowns. In American Sociological Review, Vol. 54, No. 1. (Feb., 1989), pp. 17-32.

Lijphart, Arend. Constitutional Design for Divided Societies. In Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No.2. (April 2004). Pp96-107.

March, James G., Olsen, Johan P. The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life. 1984. pp.734-747.

Diamond, Larry, ed. 2005. The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the “Twin Tolerations”. pp. 213-253.

Stepan, Alfred. 2001. Arguing Comparative Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.