What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Religion?
What gets lost in the debate about whether “religion” is good, neutral, or bad, is what religion, in fact, is. The term is way too broad to unify all who espouse it—or all who denigrate it. What, then, is the best way to categorize different forms of religious life and belief?
“Fundamentalism” is a popular sociological term, but an imprecise label. Most people are fundamentalists about something, in the sense that their beliefs rest upon unquestioned axioms. Moreover, “fundamentalism” as a term focuses on the source of one’s beliefs, but says nothing about one’s obligations. Nor does it tell us anything about how one makes decisions.
I propose a tripartite distinction (these categories are heuristics; the reality of lived religion is messy, falling on a spectrum between them).
Religion can be imperialistic, anti-imperialistic, or quietistic.
Imperialistic religion is when a religion seeks to grow indefinitely, in theory seeking world domination and universal conversion, but more moderately seeking total sovereignty within the constraints of nationhood. Imperalistic religion, such as that of the Emperor Constantine, sees the state as a mechanism for advancing its cause. The army is not secular, but sacred—a way to enforce theocracy. Imperialistic religion rejects the Founding Fathers’ ideal of “freedom of religion,” because it seeks to be a monopoly on religious expression.
Anti-imperialistic religion grants no sanctity to the state, no divinity to sovereignty. Religion’s vocation is to be an oppositional force. Political life is a necessary evil, but cannot exhaust the demands of spirit. Power is fundamentally corrupting. Religion must play the role of the prophet relative to the king. Where imperial religion’s job is to say “yes” to power, anti-imperial religion’s job is to say “no.” Anti-imperial religionists can vote, can lobby, can endorse their preferred candidates, but they cannot coronate political leaders and policies, and will not conflate political victories with religious ones. God’s commands go above and beyond—and often conflict—with what the state asks.
Quietist religion or Stoic religion is religion that neither says “yes” nor “no” to state power, or says “yes” and “no” to it. Quietist religion is conflict-avoidant. It “Renders unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Its focus is on the cultivation of private virtue and social enclaves that try to take from the state when it benefits and hide from the state when it hurts. Quietists are not indifferent to who is in charge, but they are characteristically “apolitical” in focus. Like anti-imperialistic religionists, they see the state as spiritually empty. They also don’t seek to spread indefinitely, but instead have more modest aims. Yet they are less overtly oppositional, more comfortable with the political status-quo. In part, this is because quietists are skeptical/cynical that the state can bring the kind of social transformation they’d like to see.
All three forms can be “activist”—in the sense that they want to take action. But only quietism thinks the best kind of action has little to do with the state.
How would you add to or revise my categories? What are your categories for understanding different forms of religious life?
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