0:09
Religion in <i>Espace Mondial</i>
can be approached at three different levels,
and we have to distinguish
between these three levels of analysis:
The first one will be the level of actors.
How actors are socialized?
What is the real influence of religion
in the social and political
behavior of individuals?
And how these behaviors are
organizing, shaping, the main issues
and the main mobilizations around the world?
The second level would be
the system and the political system.
Commonly we hear from media
and from public opinion or opinion leaders…
we hear some sentences like
“the Muslim political system,
the Christian political system,
Islam and politics…”
as if a religion was able to shape
and organize a political system.
In reality, in fact, the difference is
much more important that we can imagine,
it’s very difficult to coin a system
as a “Muslim political system”
or as a “Christian political system”,
as it is obvious that many many kinds of Islam
do exist around the world,
and it is not possible to conceive
a single model of Islam and politics,
of Christianity and politics,
so we have to debate about that.
And the third level
is the level of mobilization:
is religion able to mobilize and to create,
to generate a political mobilization?
Or is religion only an emblem
of a political mobilization?
Is religion an instrument or is it a goal?
And this is probably one of the main points
we have to discover together.
2:22
But the first question, the most important,
because not so easy to solve is:
what is a religion?
We have to go back
to famous French sociologist,
Emile Durkheim who published
a very important book dealing
with religion in our world.
And Durkheim in this book
opposed sacred to profane,
and this opposition is considered by Durkheim
as a main founding opposition;
for understanding and approaching
the manifestations and the expressions
of religion and politics.
Sacred is the contrary of profane
as sacred is considered
as out of reach for human beings,
sacred is the field which is not able
to be shaped and organized
by human beings,
when profane is the real field
of the human action and human creation.
4:02
If sacred is conceding a legitimacy
which is out of reach of individuals,
it’s a very strong useful
and successful instrument
for mobilizing and convincing individuals,
that’s why sacred is so used in politics.
5:00
Now the question is why sacred
is so important in our modern
or even postmodern world?
If we follow Durkheim,
sacred is supposed to decline
when modernization takes place.
And so, Durkheim who was writing
in a positivist time, considered
that religion was to be failed
when modernization takes place,
and however, we can observe something
which is quite different
from what Durkheim fore saw.
5:50
So, three hypothesis can be mobilized.
If sacred is so present
in our modern and postmodern world,
it is first because maybe
sacred is now creating a new modernity,
that is the first hypothesis.
And even we can consider that <i>laïcité</i>
would be something like a new secular religion,
6:20
but, in <i>laïcité</i>, we can also find
something like believes and even rituals.
Can we consider that
we are now facing a new sacred modernity?
That’s the first hypothesis.
A second one would be to consider
that sacred is a kind of substitute;
that’s to say in our modern world,
some structures are not really operating,
sometimes states doesn’t work,
sometimes political parties doesn’t work,
sometimes ideologies don’t work anymore
and when these instruments of governing,
ruling, mobilizing, protesting,
are not working,
religion and sacred
can be a very useful and functional substitute.
The third hypothesis will be
to consider religion as a culture.
Different religions are also
expressing different cultures
as I defined them in my previous lecture,
and so religion will be back
for expressing this diversity of cultures
which is really at stake in our present world.
7:45
So now, how can we consider religious actors?
Religious actors
must be considered as individuals,
because first of all,
we have to take into account the fact
that religion belongs to individuals,
and that every individual, each individual
is shaping his own religion.
So there is an individual level
for approaching
this very important notion of religious actors.
8:18
And the second level
will be the level of religious entrepreneurs,
religions are organized, are structured,
by entrepreneurs
as Max Weber defined them,
that’s to say as organized groups
with an administrative direction.
And so, we have to build up
a typology of these religious actors,
and to consider
that these religious entrepreneurs
are not working in the same manner
because all the religious entrepreneurs
are different and must be considered separately.
For instance if you take into account
the Roman Catholic Church,
this is a religious entrepreneur,
which is strongly centralized
and which can be compared
with the nation state.
There is some similarities
between the history of the church,
this very centralized organization,
and the nation state.
But now if we move to the Protestantism,
to the Christian reform,
we are facing another model,
in which the individual is much more important,
and in which the church is fading
as a transnational structure
and don’t exist as a unified church
like the case in the Roman Catholic Christianity.
10:20
And now if we move to Islam,
we are facing another model
in which there is no church,
no centralization, no organization
but a very complex network of preachers
and in which the Muslim community, the Ummah,
is playing the role of integration.
10:42
Now if we move to other religions from Asia,
like Hinduism, we are facing another feature
which is a kind of depreciation of power,
depreciation of politics,
when, on the contrary,
Buddhism is contesting power,
was created
as a kind of protest against the power
and which is creating new structures,
especially around monachism.
And so, that’s why when we consider
religions and politics in the <i>Espace Mondial</i>,
we have to take into account
this diversity of actors.