Religion, Democratization, and Market Transition
A Workshop sponsored by the NSF Sociology Program, December 6-7, 1993
Chair:
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John McCarthy
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Department of Sociology
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Catholic University of America
Participants:
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Jean Comaroff
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Anthropology Department
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University of Chicago
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Laurence R. Iannaccone
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Department of Economics
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University of Santa Clara
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Lonnie Kliever
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Department of Religious Studies
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Southern Methodist University
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Mansoor Moaddel
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Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology
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Eastern Michigan University
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Paula Nesbitt
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Iliff School of Theology
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Stanley J. Tambiah
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Department of Anthropology
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Harvard University
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Kenneth D. Wald
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Department of Political Science
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University of Florida
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Martin K. Whyte
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Department of Sociology
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University of Michigan
NSF Organizer:
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William Sims Bainbridge
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Sociology Program
Executive Summary
Religion is a major factor in the dramatic transformations of political and
economic institutions currently sweeping large sectors of the globe. The
theories and methodologies of the social and behavioral sciences are
sufficiently well developed to permit high-quality scientific research on a
host of questions that have great intellectual and policy significance.
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This research is of very great urgency, for three reasons:
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1. Such tremendous changes are occurring so rapidly in many nations that
researchers must move quickly if they are to collect information crucial
for understanding them.
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2. The role of religion is so powerful in current world transformation that
American leaders need quick and authoritative advice on how to respond
effectively to religion-related events.
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3. Knowledge is so fragmentary at present in many of these areas that
prompt research projects could achieve great and rapid scientific progress.
The workshop identified 12 general categories of research, grouped under
four headings and illustrated with representative projects below:
1. How religion promotes democracy both in developing societies and in
mature democratic nations.
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1.1. Religion and Democratic Processes. It is widely believed that
the church is a major force for democracy in several nations of Latin
America and Eastern Europe. Is this true? If so, what factors allow it to
play this crucial role in transforming some societies and not others?
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Case studies of political dynamics in particular communities can form the
basis of comparative meta-analysis to identify and measure the range of
processes that involve religion in democratization and the conditions that
may prevent this.
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1.2. Social Implications of Religion. How effective are American
churches -- compared with secular social service agencies -- in dealing
with the problems of politically, educationally and economically deprived
groups?
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Inventories of religious schools and social services would provide a
framework for surveys of satisfaction and usage by target groups and policy
analysis contrasting the efficiencies and secondary benefits of religious
and secular delivery systems.
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1.3. The Marketplace of Religion. The set of denominations and
religious movements, both local and international, has been described as a
market and approached from the research perspective of economics and from
other comparable social-system paradigms. How does religious freedom
support and interweave with institutions of political freedom and
market-oriented money economies?
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This new approach requires extensive studies of resource, information, and
membership flows both within and across societies, coupled with computer
simulations of market networks to develop mathematical models.
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1.4. Democratization in Leninist Systems. To what extent has the
hostility toward religion of Marxist-Leninist regimes contributed to their
own downfall?
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The most promising research methodologies include interviews with leaders
who played important roles in resistance to or transformation of Marxist
regimes, conducted swiftly before opportunities are lost, combined with
random-sample opinion surveys to chart statistical correlations between
religious and political attitudes.
2. Conditions that work against democracy, either preventing it from arising
or eroding existing democratic institutions.
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2.1. Ethnonationalism and Immigration. How do religious differences
within a society often reinforce ethnonationalism, leading to violence and
oppression of politically weak groups, and what can be done to prevent this
tragedy?
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An exciting research program would combine cross-national and
cross-denominational analysis of the development of Hindu (including Sikh
and Tamil), Buddhist and Moslem ethnonationalism in India, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, and Bangladesh, considered as mutually reinforcing processes of
competition and identity formation.
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2.2. Non-Mainstream Religious Movements. What factors stimulate the
emergence of millenarian cults, in both the developing countries and
advanced industrial societies, and under what circumstances can they become
either serious threats to public safety or harmless manifestations of
cultural diversity?
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Promising scientific techniques are statistical study of rates of incidence
of such cults across space and time to produce explanatory multiple
regression models of community-level independent variables, plus parallel
analysis of recruits versus non-recruits to develop individual-level
models.
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2.3. Religious Authority. Religious organizations differ greatly in
both their images of divine leadership and their actual bureaucratic
procedures for making decisions. How do these varying authority structures
influence the adherents' support for democracy versus authoritarianism in
secular politics?
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Research should combine systematic content analysis of religious doctrines,
questionnaire surveys to assess the correlations linking belief in
particular doctrines with democracy-related attitudes and behaviors, and
transnational comparative work on political and religious institutions.
3. The relationships linking religion to markets, science, and technology.
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3.1. Market Transition and Economics. How much truth is there to the
theories that religion provides a moral basis for free markets (for
instance by restricting greed and supporting trust) and helps people deal
non-violently with the widespread loss of security and status associated
with market transition?
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Based on the great progress recently achieved in understanding when and how
religion can inhibit ordinary crime and delinquency, quantitative research
should target the mechanisms through which religious values and
institutions can channel human desires and frustrations into harmless and
even productive channels.
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3.2. Science and Technology. Is secularization theory correct --
that scientific rationalism inescapably erodes religious faith -- or are
there a variety of ways in which science and religion are compatible or
even reinforce each other?
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Starting with fresh, rigorous theoretical analysis, survey methodologies
should be used to chart and explain the substantial denominational
differences of participation in scientific professions, supported by
comparative and historical investigations of the wide variations in the
status of science across societies.
4. The effects on religion of rapid social, political, and economic change.
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4.1. The Effects of Democratization and Market Transition on
Religion. In the wake of democratization and liberalization of markets,
does religious pluralism cause an increase or a decrease in the influence
of the churches, and how does the relative balance between conventional
denominations and radical sects change?
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A long-term research program should comprehensively track changes through
longitudinal study of the former Soviet Union, with annual surveys of
random samples of the population and a continuous registry of all religious
organizations in a sample of communities.
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4.2. The Roles of Intellectuals, Elites, and Mass Media. How do
intellectuals and other elites mediate between social change and religious
institutions?
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Content analysis of American mass-media images of Islamic fundamentalism
would be valuable, employing state-of-the-art computerized relational data
bases of newspaper and TV news stories.
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4.3. The Role of Governments. What are the current official policies of the
world's governments toward religion, and how much does actual treatment of
religion diverge from these standards?
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Systematic collation of legal codes and government policies should be
compared with inventories of religion-related cases in each nation.
Workshop Recommendations:
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Among the many areas in which little scientific knowledge exists, we have
identified five topics that deserve the highest priority:
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1. How existing churches and new religious movements promote the
development of democratic institutions and free markets in formerly
totalitarian societies.
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2. The role religion plays in mature democracies like the United States, as
they attempt to sustain themselves and over time to become more democratic.
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3. The ways that religion can become tragically implicated in often bloody
conflicts between ethnic groups and nationalist movements.
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4. The religious aspects of immigration and the massive movements of people
currently in progress around the world.
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5. The dynamic interplay of social, economic, cultural, and political
forces around religion in communities undergoing radical change.
Report
Scientific knowledge about the relationships linking religion to democracy
and to the development of free markets is highly inadequate. Despite their
human and intellectual importance, they have not been studied extensively and
our understanding of them is quite incomplete. However, enough has been done
in many fields for us to be able to sketch the outlines of a research agenda
and to identify some key questions that need to be addressed. Given the
extreme limits of our knowledge, everything we say here must be considered
provisional, but we can state our first observations with considerable
confidence.
Since the founding of the social sciences, research on religion has done
much to develop and test general scientific theories of human behavior. Many
classic theorists devoted extensive energy to work on religion, notably:
William James and Sigmund Freud in psychology; Emile Durkheim and Max Weber
in sociology; James Frazer and Edward Tylor in anthropology. Today, numerous
journals are devoted to the scientific study of religion, and articles on
religion appear regularly in the central journals of several social and
behavioral sciences.
Today, scientific theories of great generality are being evaluated by
empirical research on various social aspects of religion. For example, the
widespread notion that human behavior is largely controlled by overarching
"values" has come under increasing criticism by theorists who consider
individual economic interest or the influence of social networks to be far
more important, and religion offers many opportunities for comparative
evaluation of these competing general theories. Some models of cultural
progress argue that rationalism is replacing mysticism in an inexorable
historical process, and the persistence of religion challenges this
analysis.
Because economic motives appear muted in religious groups, they are often
the ideal natural laboratory for testing a variety of hypotheses in
sociology, social psychology, and anthropology. The relative accessibility
of religious groups to researchers, the diversity of social phenomena that
occur within them, and the wide selection of religious movements available
for study, make them excellent research sites for scientific hypotheses
having nothing to do with religion per se. Religion is the most distinctive
system of culture and social organization, outside the narrowly-defined
areas of politics and economics themselves, likely to have profound effects
on democratization and the emergence of market-oriented economies.
Every major religious tradition is potentially compatible with democracy and
can support the development of democratic institutions in a society that has
not known them previously. All powerful social forces have the capacity to
do harm, and religion is no exception. Under favorable circumstances,
however, strong religious commitment may often enhance democracy, and the
development of free markets can be encouraged by beliefs and values
belonging to each of the major world religions. This is true even for
fundamentalist movements within these religious traditions. Unfavorable
social, political, and economic conditions can sometimes turn particular
religious movements against the political and economic institutions favored
by Western democracies. But the ways that this can happen are a legitimate
focus for scientific research, rather than an indictment of religion itself.
Social science does not have the capacity to assess the truth claims of
religious traditions. However, it can examine the social consequences of
religious belief, organization, and action. Failure to approach religion
from this perspective may blind us to the positive and constructive role
that religion may play in the transition to democracy and market economies.
In recent times, large and powerful movements have arisen that combine in
one amalgam religious, political, economic, and social values and
objectives. In these movements religious cosmology, imagery, and themes have
played an overarching structuring role, and religious leaders have been
principal activists. This makes it all the more necessary to realize that
the study of democratizing and market transition processes cannot leave out
of account the manner in which religion is implicated in them.
Social-scientific research on religion, democratization, and market
transition is entirely feasible, providing knowledge of use to decision
makers and increasing our understanding of the world we live in. The factors
shaping the role of religion are not simple, and the particular social,
political, and economic conditions surrounding religion can have powerful
effects. However, we believe that underlying this complexity are a
relatively small number of general principles that could be learned through
careful scientific research.
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The research questions we identified can be grouped under four major
headings:
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1. How religion promotes democracy both in developing societies and in
mature democratic nations.
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2. Conditions that work against democracy, either preventin it from arising
or eroding existing democratic institutions.
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3. The relationships linking religion to markets, science, and technology.
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4. The effects on religion of rapid social, political, and economic change.
Organized under these headings, the following agenda identifies a range of
research topics, methodological approaches, and theories that can be the
basis of successful research programs. While the list is not exhaustive, it
demonstrates the significance and diversity of possible future work by
social scientists in this area. Some writers have imagined that
secularization would soon banish religion from the modern world, but we
believe that religion will continue to play a major role in human affairs
far into the future. Given the crucial importance of the changes currently
sweeping much of the world, improved knowledge of a key factor shaping those
changes is essential. Therefore, we urge substantial support for research
programs to examine the questions we outline below.
1. How Religion Promotes Democracy
The link between religion and democracy is strong, and there are several
issues concerning how religion can promote democracy in established
democratic countries and in nations undergoing political and economic
transition. For example, religion can influence people's views of democracy
and their acceptance of democratic institutions, and it can be a factor in a
nation's social development. The following section addresses these issues
and covers four main areas: religion and democratic processes, religion and
its social implications, the marketplace of religion, and democratization in
Leninist systems.
1.1. Religion and Democratic Processes
1.1.1. The potential contribution of religious institutions to mass
political participation in societies of all kinds is a highly fruitful area
for systematic research. In studies of democratic societies, the United
States ranks last in the rate of voter turnout in national elections.
Previous research has attributed low turnout to institutional barriers that
raise the costs of voting (principally registration laws) and personal
attitudes that diminish the perceived benefits of electoral participation.
The social response to this problem has included efforts to liberalize
registration laws (most recently, the "Motor Voter" law) and public service
campaigns designed to emphasize the responsibilities of citizenship.
There is fragmentary research suggesting that religious affiliation and
involvement may significantly increase the tendency of citizens to register
and to vote. In certain elections, churches have shown impressive capacity
to mount registration campaigns and stimulate citizens to make a trip to the
polls. Even when no overt politicization is intended, religious
participation may unintentionally stimulate political activity by providing
social support for community activism and placing the individual in an
extended social network through which political mobilization may spread.
These effects may counter the corrosive impact of untrammelled individualism
on the attitudes of parishioners. For minority communities where the
barriers to political activity are particularly high, the churches have
played an especially central role in community mobilization. Considering
that churches are by far the most widespread form of voluntary organization
in the United States, the potential for political education is impressive.
More intensive study of churches as agents of political mobilization could
contribute to our knowledge about democratization in at least two respects.
First, it would uncover the factors that retard political engagement and
identify strategies that churches utilize to overcome barriers to
participation. An increased understanding of these factors would translate
into sounder strategies for enhancing the level of public involvement.
Second, the lessons from America have application in newly democratic
states. Small, facetoface organizations may emerge as key mechanisms linking
citizens to the state.
An especially fruitful research method would be community surveys designed
to trace social networks and organizational membership, as well as the
beliefs, attitudes and behavior of individual respondents.
1.1.2. Religion affects political mobilization by influencing members' views
of democracy through their experience of the religious group's own internal
practices. There is a long tradition of churches functioning as political
training grounds by providing members with crucial organizing and mobilizing
skills. The rise of the Labor Party in 19th century Britain was often
attributed to working class activists who had learned to speak and organize
in Methodist and Baptist churches in the north. More recently, the vanguard
of the American civil rights movement in the 1960's came from historically
black churches. Many observers of the democratic revolutions in Eastern
Europe cited the church as the environment where activists gained the
commitment and organizing skills that proved decisive in their struggles.
Yet it must also be recognized that churches may inhibit democratic ideals
by emphasizing strong authority structures and demanding unconditional
obedience.
A number of variables warrant investigation. A religion's view of God and
religious authority should be distinguished from the actual governing
processes in the religious organization. A religious community might
emphasize the equality of all believers before God -- an idea with obvious
democratic overtones -- but organize religious activity in an extremely
hierarchical way. It is also important to distinguish between
authoritarianism and an ideological commitment to authority as the guarantor
of the social order. Any investigation must be sensitive to such
differences.
The research should include an analysis and observation of religious
communities to determine what messages about authority and obedience are
actually being transmitted and absorbed and an assessment of the
consequences of political participation on church members' views of the
political process.
1.1.3. Churches may influence political processes through the effects of
grass roots politicoreligious coalitions on democratic freedom and access to
socioeconomic opportunity. For example, the mass media have reported the
success conservative evangelical religious organizations have achieved in
forming grass roots political alliances to create sociopolitical change at
the local and state levels. Organized religious coalitions planning
widespread societal change based upon particular theological or ideological
presuppositions raise interesting issues involving freedom of expression,
such as those concerning the boundaries between preaching and lobbying or
between church and state.
Before the implications of such political and ethical issues can be
addressed, research must track the extent of linked coalitions and their
efficacy, the nature of the agendas, and the underlying religious
rationales. This might be done through studying the composition of coalition
groups for particular election issues, tracing contributions, performing a
content analysis of documents, and conducting field research through
participant observation and interviews.
1.1.4. The effect of religion on democratic processes outside the United
States and other established democracies is a research topic of the first
magnitude. Religion has supplied much of the motive force for
democratization in Latin America. While a good deal of attention has been
devoted to the writings of liberation theologists and the actions of
charismatic religious leaders, scholars have also emphasized the
contribution of grass roots religious movements such as Catholic "base
communities," Pentecostalism, and AfroBrazilian and AfroCaribbean
traditions. These movements have promoted new readings of sacred texts,
producing a popular construction of religious ideas stressing the dignity of
human labor, the priority of human rights, and other democratic values. In
emphasizing participatory democracy and demystifying traditional authority
structures, such movements may invigorate civil society, thus deepening the
popular commitment to democracy and helping to immunize the citizenry
against the lure of authoritarianism. This phenomenon can be explored across
religious traditions, crossnationally, and with a sensitivity to the
interaction between institutions and cultural change.
1.1.5. Other developments on a global scale at present raise important
questions about established notions of religion, politics, democracy, and
economic development. Across the world, religious movements of various sorts
struggle to articulate, pursue, and maintain individual and group rights in
ways that often differ from classic Western liberal notions of citizenship
and democratic participation. Also, movements for democratization have
sometimes had unforeseen consequences. While many of these developments
might raise cautionary lessons, the growing global conversation on these
vital issues might also expand our horizons of democratic possibilities,
such as local-level mediation of disputes, models of neighborhood and
community participation in large-scale political processes, and mitigation
of individual anomie.
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While it is too ambitious to hope to arrive at a general theory of these
developments at this stage, our knowledge may be advanced by examining a
series of cases that illustrate how conventional Western models have been
debated and transformed in actual application. Among the many cases that
present exemplary scientific problems, two can illustrate the challenges to
traditional theories of democracy:
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1) The largely unexpected rise of Hindu nationalism in India, where
religious mobilization revitalized the definition of identity and
community, yet did so at the expense of the identity of other individuals
and groups.
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2) The situation of the "new" South Africa, where Western democratic
institutions are being vigorously debated, including the adequacy of a
constitution based on individual rights alone, with existing cultural
orientations asserting concepts of group rights.
1.2. Social Implications of Religion
1.2.1. In the ongoing battle against poverty, drug use, family disruption,
and other manifestations of social disarray, American churches play an
important yet undervalued role. Apart from philanthropy, churches have
emerged as major agents of social change and service delivery -- offering a
stunning array of programs that encompass education, day care, counselling,
agency referral, food, shelter, and a myriad of other forms of outreach. In
the inner city and poor rural communities, religious institutions number
among the few viable organizations with the capacity to induce planned
change and community development.
These efforts, often known as social justice ministries, have occasionally
been chronicled but are not widely studied or investigated as potential
models of social development. As a start, it would be useful simply to
identify and catalog the extent of public services provided by American
churches. Policy analysis and evaluation could fruitfully be applied to
these programs. Such investigation might identify particularly effective
strategies for community improvement that have wide application across
policy areas and national boundaries.
1.2.2. Religious movements play a variety of roles in the struggles for
civil rights. We need to learn how different religious organizations
(established churches or grass roots movements) serve in struggles to
articulate, pursue, and maintain the rights of individuals and groups.
Formal organizations with global networks can often assume state functions
where states collapse (the Catholic Church in Uganda during and after Amin,
and churches in many parts of eastern Europe); they can also apply
widespread pressure on governments (the International Reformed and Lutheran
Churches in South Africa). National churches that replicate state structures
but have an independent, even sacred rationale and legitimacy can serve as
bases for critique and mobilization against government action and policy
--although their freedoms are not unlimited, as many modern martyrs have
attested. Less formally structured religious movements often serve to
articulate locallevel consciousness of injustice and models of reform. They
also can operate efficiently beyond the more cumbersome reach of the state,
as have spiritualists in the Zimbabwe War and mediums in South Korea.
1.2.3. Organized religion may play a variable role in the emergence and
maintenance of civil society (which is the network of non-governmental
organizations and informal groups that form the basis of social life). This
includes its capacity to encourage or inhibit the freedom for citizens to
create diverse nonreligious civil institutions. It also includes its role as
social infrastructure (e.g., co-optable collectivities) in ignoring,
facilitating, or inhibiting social, political, and economic change.
1.2.4. The connection between religion and education has several positive
implications for democracy. Religious groups typically seek to educate their
own children in a variety of settings. In many nations, religious schools
make up an important segment of the formal schooling enterprise, and the
amount and nature of these schooling efforts across religious groups and
across nations are important variables. As states with previously highly
centralized and totally public educational systems cope with market
transitions, the role of religious groups in providing formal schooling
should become more widespread, especially since international religious
groups are now in the process of establishing schools in many of these
nations.
Illustrative questions include: What is the cross-national variation in the
establishment of private schools controlled by religious groups? How are
these trends related to trends in religious adherence? What are the
differential consequences of public/religious schooling for socialization
outcomes in such areas as civic values and entrepreneurial proclivities?
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Several theories relate to the link between religion and education:
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1) Increased education -- particularly a growth in literacy -- facilitates
the routinization of religious movements through greater tolerance for a
diversity of ideas (political, social, and economic).
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2) The education of women is especially crucial to the development of
internal pluralism; as women become educated, the likelihood increases of
gender-negotiated role definitions, including demands for greater economic
and political participation by women within their constituent religious
groups.
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3) The effects of education differ given whether it is "public" to the
extent that it includes a diversity of ideas and understandings, or
"private" to the extent that it offers only a single, religiously
particular understanding. Where education is strongly privatized, such as
in "home schooling," it can serve to socially control rather than to
facilitate diversity and tolerance. Investigating these issues is essential
to understanding religion's influence on democratization through education.
1.3. The Marketplace of Religious Movements and Denominations
1.3.1. The set of churches and religious movements a society possesses can
be conceptualized as a marketplace. To the extent that individuals are free
to choose the church they attend, they are customers who evaluate the
quality of services they are offered and accordingly decide where to place
their spiritual investments. The consequences may differ greatly, depending
upon whether the religious market is dominated by a monopoly, consists of
numerous competing denominations, is impoverished by government
restrictions, or includes transnational churches as well as local sects.
The concept of a religious market provides the basis for using economic
theory and methods to study religiosity. Like standard secular markets,
religious markets manifest varying degrees of competition, concentration,
and government intervention. Techniques of data collection and statistical
analysis already employed by economists to study secular manifestations of
these phenomena will also be valuable here.
Classical economist Adam Smith favored a free market in religious ideas,
institutions, and authority. In Smith's view, an open market would multiply
the number of religious groups, and the competition between them would have
salutary effects. That is, groups would have to settle for small market
shares if they could not offer views that had broad appeal. The more
idiosyncratic the demands of a religious group, the less likely it is to win
a wide and influential following. Multiplying religious options would reduce
the disruptive power that any particular religious movement might have.
In support of Smith's view, there are examples of democratic societies that
have flourished (or at least persisted) in the presence of religious
diversity and competition. The United States, for example, is a society with
a thriving religious life organized around many different forms of religious
identity that has, nonetheless, managed to avoid destructive political
confessionalism. Religious freedom is an aspect of personal liberty, and it
may enjoy mutually supportive relationships with political democracy and
economic free markets.
1.3.2. International religious organizations can be effective channels of
cultural diffusion, transmitting democracy-related values, information and
skills from one society to another. These can be long-standing international
churches, such as Roman Catholicism, or new evangelical movements such as
many that have arisen in American Protestantism. All standard techniques for
studying formal organizations, social movements, and networks of
communication will be valuable for research on contemporary phenomena. The
full toolkit of systematic social history research can be applied to
examples from the past.
A great need currently exists for social historical research on European and
American Christian missionary movements. Such work was largely ignored for
decades, both because social scientists interested in national development
tended to apply narrowly-defined economic models, and because of the
sensitivity of may newly-independent nations over issues of cultural
imperialism. Now it can be recognized, however, that past missionary
movements may have had very positive net effects of the host countries, and
research findings about those cases will be necessary if we are to
understand the effects of the substantial Christian missionary activity
currently in progress.
The analogy to technology transfer carried out by transnational corporations
suggests that research techniques designed to investigate global
manufacturing and information services will also be useful here.
1.4. Democratization in Leninist Systems
1.4.1. In Leninist societies, the roles played by religion in
democratization and market transition may be so different from those played
in other societies that research agendas and methods may be quite
distinctive. Leninist societies cane be roughly defined as those having
one-party regimes based on Marxist ideology, explicitly employing force to
compel obedience and suppress alternative political movements. In principle,
atheism is a hallmark of their ideology, and thus they attempt to destroy
the churches and eradicate faith. However, in practice different Leninist
regimes developed various accommodations with religion, from severely
limiting and co-opting the church as in Russia to leaving it considerable
independence as in Poland.
The recent opening of a number of these societies to social scientists
permits research on the status of religion under Marxist-Leninism, as well
as on the current transition period that many of them have apparently
entered. What is the role of various religions and religious communities in
challenging and bringing about the downfall of Leninist systems? Did the
explicit hostility to religion in Marxist doctrine give religion a special
role as a chief opposition ideology? Or was capitalism such an effective
counter-ideology that religious faith was ineffective in promoting an
intellectual liberation unless solidly rooted in powerful, independent
churches (as in Poland).
2. Conditions that Work Against Democracy
Although religion often promotes democratic ideals and the participation in
democratic processes, it can -- under certain social, economic, and
political circumstances -- inhibit democratization and the transition to a
market economy. These circumstances usually involve the issues of
ethnonationalism and immigration, nonmainstream religious movements, and
religious authority. These issues and the corresponding research topics are
addressed here.
2.1. Ethnonationalism and Immigration
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2.1.1. The term "ethnonationalism" refers to a collectivity of persons who
construct their shared identity around a combination of features --
religion, language, ethnicity, and territoriality -- and claim collective
entitlements on that basis. Research should test theories that
ethnonationalism has the following pair of implications for democratic
politics in a plural society.
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1) If the nation-making project is predicated on the concept of citizenship
as a homogenizing and unifying status that applies to all persons born or
naturalized in a country, then multiple ethnonationalist movements subvert
nation making and the possibility of an overarching political community.
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2) If nation making and participatory democracy are predicated on the
necessary practice of "secular politics," then again especially in a
country with multiple religious communities, ethnonationalist and
fundamentalist movements seriously destabilize democratic politics, and
generate collective violence. Participatory democratic politics may
actually provide the arena, context, and opportunities for contending
ethnonationalist and fundamentalist movements to exacerbate their
differences as they compete through periodic election for material and
symbolic resources in order to advance their status and to acquire and
exercise power.
2.1.2. Conflict between ethnonationalist groups within a country has widely
resulted in displacement of vulnerable peoples, especially minorities, in
the form of refugees and asylum seekers. Scholars hypothesize that
transnational refugees and diaspora communities may affect and complicate
politics in their home countries in at least two ways. On the one hand,
their enforced absence from and nostalgia for their homelands may further
intensify and radicalize their ethnonationalist sentiments, and they can
help to continue and intensify the conflict in their home countries through
cash remittances and other kinds of support. On the other hand, these
transnational diaspora communities may also be able to appeal to
international organizations like the United Nations and the European
Community to enforce basic standards of human rights, thereby enhancing
democracy. As a source of symbolic cohesion and moral authority, religion
may strengthen either of these tendencies. What factors determine which of
these processes will predominate?
Immigrants typically increase the religious diversity of the countries they
enter, although religious markers of separateness may impede their
assimilation into full membership in the society. In Europe, established
notions of democracy and continued economic development are being tested,
even eroded, by transnational immigrant groups and diaspora refugee
communities (displaced by religio-political conflicts in their home
countries). These population movements have raised issues in European
democracies regarding criteria of granting citizenship, economic
opportunity, residence rights, and apparently has also activated neo-Nazi
trends. Such developments imperil the economic development and marketization
of third world countries and the countries of Eastern Europe and of the
former USSR.
2.2. Non-mainstream Religious Movements
2.2.1. Philosopher David Hume argued that an unregulated religious "market"
would inevitably result in fanaticism, conflict, and disorder. According to
his theory, the opportunity for religions to compete in an unregulated
manner would encourage the offering of yet more extreme points of view and a
kind of irresponsible bidding for public support. The only way to contain
such a situation was to maintain an established religion or state church.
This would prevent the development and expression of unhealthy religious
impulses and confine religious discussion to a safe domain. It would also
deprive religious rivals of social authority, state resources, and
legitimacy.
In support of Hume's theory, the world does not lack examples in which
religious passion was a factor in the delegitimization and collapse of
democratic structures. Perhaps because religious issues are not always
bargainable -- lacking a mutually acceptable compromise -- they are
frequently debated in zero-sum terms. This situation may encourage the
losers of a debate to withdraw their allegiance from a state that appears to
them to embrace the wrong values, or to seek to overthrow a state that
refuses to follow God's law.
2.2.2. Many observers of religion today are extremely concerned about the
harm that may be caused by millenarian religious groups, those revolutionary
cults that believe God will soon sweep aside conventional society to create
a utopia. From Waco, Texas, to Estonia and Ukraine in the former Soviet
Union, millenarian movements challenge the resources of scholars and
governments. All too often the scholarship mobilized in the heat of these
dramas is itself melodramatic and inappropriate. We need to realize that
these movements have been a persistent feature of modernity; they cannot be
treated as irregular and unexpected recurrences of a medieval phenomenon. We
need more systematic, comparative study of the incidence, development, and
outcomes of these movements in the 20th century world.
Besides some reliable data about incidence, organization, and membership, we
also need more sophisticated, qualitative treatment of the discourses of
these movements. What they address and how they can attract literate
followers are questions of great scientific significance. Too much weight is
put on psychological, reductionist models in trying to understand these
movements in America -- both on the part of the public and government. We
need a serious analysis of why, for some people, millenarianism seems to
interpret and control forces that established ideologies and institutions do
not. These movements occur and have occurred widely across human societies;
we need to understand their dynamic meaning at the present moment, in
various global contexts.
2.2.3. The connection between what are often termed "fundamentalist"
upsurges and the uneasy integration of local communities into global markets
should also be investigated. From Cargo Cults to witch finding, from
fundamentalist churches to fervent environmentalism, such movements may
express efforts to domesticate and manage perceived threats to existing ways
of life. Often they are reactions to radical shifts in social scale or the
experience of value abstraction. They are also often responses to largescale
population movements (immigration and labor migration) that seem to alter
the relation of social groups to resources. Typically, established political
and religious institutions are only partially able to speak to these issues.
In many parts of the world, there is a vacuum between radical economic
shifts and embryonic democracy movements, a vacuum in which nightmares
flourish (as in Eastern Europe and many parts of the nonEuropean world).
Whose role is it to address these fears? Do we wait for local situations to
breed the moral movements they deserve? What determines which sorts of
reactions emerge? Are Christian Nationalists, Greens, and neoNazis in the
new Germany speaking to different sectors of the population about the same
set of structural conditions? Clearly these movements have rather different
implications for the fostering and extending of civil rights. We need to
know more about these "moral" concerns in the wake of market transitions,
without limiting ourselves to an excessively narrow definition of
"religious" responses.
2.3. Religious Authority
2.3.1. The relationship between members' understanding of religious
authority and their interpretation of political and socioeconomic freedom
demands scientific examination. Hypotheses could be drawn from such classics
as Fromm's Escape From Freedom, and Weber's Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism. To what extent might the authority structure
of particular religious groups render the concept of democracy incompatible
for its constituency? Are concepts of pluralistic democracy or free market
competition themselves generated from particular religious assumptions, and
is pressure for their implementation another example of colonial imperialism
to the benefit of firstworld countries seeking less expensive labor sources
and increased consumer demand? A related question is whether or when global
political, socioeconomic, or human rights issues are more important than the
survivability of particular religious groups and their practices, and what
are the criteria for such decisions? The implications are also important for
religiousbased tensions within the U.S.
The chief research methodology would combine systematic content analysis of
religious doctrines, questionnaire surveys to assess the correlations
linking belief in particular doctrines with democracy-related attitudes and
behaviors, and transnational comparative work on political and religious
institutions.
3. Markets, Science and Technology
The study of religion's influence on democratization must also include an
investigation into its effect on market transition and the related economic,
scientific, and technological implications. The following research agenda
addresses these topics and describes areas for possible research.
3.1. Market Transition and Economics
3.1.1. An analysis of the religious assumptions that undergird business and
economic market relationships would help determine to what extent religious
worldviews affect secular decisions on trade and business ethics. Are
utilitarian individualist assumptions successful or even viable in
communitarian cultures without destroying their moral basis and social
cohesion? Likewise, how have pressures to move from a paternalistic
political and economic paradigm (e.g., benevolent despot, company family) to
an entrepreneurial and participatory paradigm accentuated moral and social
dislocation among certain groups -- with ensuing backlash -- because of a
clash of underlying religious presuppositions? Religions assert norms that
logically ought to have significant consequences for economic behavior: "Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you." "Thou shalt not steal." To
what extent do such religious moral principles facilitate the trust and
predictability necessary for free markets?
The implications of this research involve the efficacy of policy formation.
This topic can be explored from many angles, such as "civil religion,"
crosstraditional ethics, application of interreligious dialogue to political
and economic issues, or analysis of underlying socioeconomic and political
dimensions of religious warfare and retaliation.
3.1.2. Max Weber's Protestant Ethic thesis asserts that Protestant countries
are more likely to embrace capitalism and hence are more likely to reap the
rewards of thrift, industry, and economic progress. Whether or not one
accepts the logic of Weber's argument (or even the empirical evidence that
he claimed to have found), one can hardly ignore the possibility that
religion affects economic orientation and outcomes. The impact of religion
may be felt at various levels. Individuals of one faith may, for example, be
more likely to follow a particular type of career, or make career sacrifices
for the sake of their religion, or save a larger portion of their income. At
broader levels, different religions may provide more or less support for
specific economic institutions such as lending, private property,
capitalism, or income redistribution.
As many countries move toward market economies, it is important to know
whether their religious traditions will stimulate or impede this transition.
In some cases, it may be possible to identify particular routes by which to
achieve marketization that are especially congruent with the dominant
religious values.
3.1.3. Organized religion has a variable role in working for universal
social justice and more equitable economic arrangements within, during and
following market transitions. Rapid market transitions almost inevitably
bring about greater economic inequality and more widespread poverty. What
factors shape the advocacy and charitable role of religious groups within
nations that confront such conditions? What is the role of religious
affiliation and participation on charitable giving and volunteering? What is
the relationship of social inequality to the viability of democratic forms?
Can religion -- through ideology, identity, and community formation --
minimize downward socio-economic mobility as well as empowering upward
mobility?
Democratic competition amid equal access to an abundance of resources
creates very different outcomes than competition with perceived unequal
access to a scarcity of resources, particularly for those facing loss. Where
a group faces downward socioeconomic mobility, religion may serve as an
organizing force and catalyst for expression of social discontent, and
renegotiation of social inequalities through the provocation of conflict
with other groups perceived as a threat to increasingly scarce resources.
Understanding the relationship of socioeconomic mobility to the
politicization of religion can provide insight into how religious tensions
may be aggravated or mitigated through economic policy formation.
This topic can be researched in several ways such as historical analysis of
socioeconomic change among particular politicized religious groups combined
with observational field research. Questionnaire surveys and interviews may
focus on the extent of feared and real socioeconomic change in people's
lives, and how religious participation seems to offer solutions.
3.2. Science and Technology
3.2.1. The "secularization" thesis holds that modern science (among other
factors) has eroded religion and is incompatible with belief in the
supernatural. In contrast, a number of theories have argued that science has
its historical roots in religion, and thus that the two may be compatible.
For example, some social scientists have interpreted the rise of science in
seventeenth-century England as an attempt to come closer to God through
learning about his creations, and much nineteenth-century American natural
science was couched in similar terms. Alternatively, science rests on the
assumption that the universe operates according to lawful principles, which
may rest culturally upon monotheistic religion that postulates a rational,
universal law-giver.
Science has been described as a democratic form of developing knowledge and
as the proper mode for evaluating ideas in a free market. What new research
can illuminate these relationships? Recent quantitative studies on the
relationships between religion and science are rare, usually
unsophisticated, and often rely upon secondary analysis of data collected
for other purposes. Thus it is no wonder that their results are equivocal. A
fresh start is needed, beginning with careful development of explanatory
theories and creation of appropriate techniques for measuring variables.
Survey research is needed both on the general population and on
professionals in religion and science, but it should be supplemented with
historical research on the development of both scientific and religious
thought in multiple cultural contexts including Europe since science first
began to emerge at the end of the Middle Ages.
3.2.2. Technology, along with being a tool to advance democratic ideals, can
serve both religious consensus and religious extremism. Different means of
communications, such as modems, TV, VCR, radio, video and audio tapes, fax
machines, and satellite dishes, are used for political mobilization by
religious groups. Communication technology can distribute the products of
Western secular culture to Middle Eastern societies despite the restrictions
imposed by the existing ruling elites and religious leaders. At the same
time, it can spread the messages of a religion to societies where previously
it had few adherents, boost the influence of some faiths over others within
a society, and promote the agendas of religious movements that span several
denominations. What role do these technologies play in a transition to
democracy?
4. Effects on Religion of Rapid Change
Most of this report focuses on the ways in which religion might affect
democratization and the transition to market economies, but it is important
to recognize that the lines of causation can run in the reverse direction.
Changes in the political and economic environment have implications for
religion, and the resulting changes in the religious environment are
important in their own right. Moreover, these changes will have feedback
effects on a country's political and social environment. Democratization and
market transition, along with the influence of intellectuals, elites, mass
media, and government regulation, produce conditions that challenge religion
to adapt or to resist change.
4.1. The Effect of Democratization and Market Transition on Religion
4.1.1. The process of democratization in the new republics of Eastern
Europe, similar to the process of democratization in Latin America, has
opened the door to new religious movements. Will these new religious
movements undermine or solidify emerging realignments of political,
intellectual, and economic elites? Will the new religions be significant
only to the extent that they replace a failed secular theodicy, or may they
also contribute to the changing climate of a consumer culture which
celebrates a plurality of styles? Will these outsider groups accept their
marginal status or will they demonopolize the older established elites?
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4.1.2. The rapidly changing political and economic situations in Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union provide a dramatic natural experiment
and rare opportunity to verify or disprovea range of social-scientific
theories about religious markets. Specifically, hypotheses can be tested in
the following three general areas:
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1) Does increased pluralism enhance or inhibit "secularization"? Do
competitive religious markets increase levels of individual religious
participation? Does competition increase the vitality and hence the
attractiveness of religious organizations, or does competition result in
the commoditization, privatization, and mutual discrediting of such
organizations?
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2) Does increased pluralism especially help certain types of religions? Do
extremist sects or nonconventional cults gain at the expense of more
traditional religions? Is the dominant, previously-established church
unable to compete effectively?
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3) Is state imposed secularism a reversible process? Will people raised in
anti-religious or explicitly atheistic environments naturally return to
religion when permitted to do so, or having once been removed from
traditional faiths and religious institutions will they remain unattached
to supernatural belief systems?
4.1.3. Among the most perplexing scientific questions is the fact that
religion appears far more powerful in the United States than in Western
Europe. For a long time, many European intellectuals attributed this to lack
of sophistication on the part of Americans, but now that the United States
has been the world leader in science and education for many decades, this
explanation seems untenable. Mirroring the religious differences, socialism
has been far more influential in Europe, suggesting that religious
comparisons must be done in a context of political economy.
Scientific explanations might begin with the observation that European
nations possessed established state churches, closely connected to
long-dominant political regimes, while the United States has known more than
two centuries of separation between church and state. In the nineteenth
century, European opposition political movements often adopted socialist
ideologies, and in antagonism to the state churches they came to be
non-religious or even actively anti-clerical. Today, when church-state
connections in Western Europe have weakened considerably, many American
sociologists of religion would expect to see a gradual but profound
strengthening of religion there. The moderation of major socialist parties,
coupled with the great confusion in far-left parties in the wake of the
collapse of the Soviet Union, means that the political side of the European
equation may also have changed.
Research to test such theories might begin with quantitative surveys of
Europeans, like those that have been administered to Americans for decades,
measuring religious and political variables on the level of individuals.
Intensive comparative research on religious and political movements on both
sides of the Atlantic would permit analysis on the level of groups and
societies.
4.1.4. Detailed examination of historic examples can also provide
information and understanding that usefully supplement investigations of the
changing conditions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. For
example, in the first half of the 20th century a number of Middle Eastern
countries experienced a fairly strong democraticnationalist movement. How
did the existing religious institutions react to these democracies? What
were the social bases of liberalnationalist ideology in this period? Why did
they often fail? Analysis from an historical perspective will provide cases
to compare with the changing conditions in Eastern Europe and other
countries which are still very early in their periods of transition.
4.2. The Roles of Intellectuals, Elites, and Mass Media
4.2.1. Research on the dynamic context of cultural production may identify
the kinds of intellectual environment in which religious ideas favorable to
democracy are likely to be produced. This investigatory strategy proceeds
from the observation that ideological producers address social and moral
issues currently significant in their environment. Of course, they are
limited by the availability of resources and political conditions. The
actual production of ideas, however, occurs in relationship with alternative
systems of beliefs and values. Ideological production involves the
reevaluation, revisiting, or rejections of the themes and claims of
competing ideologies. At the same time, ideological producers face the
rebuttals and critiques of their competitors and often innovate in response.
Thus, research on any particular ideology needs to take account of the
competitors it faces and the structure of institutions in which this
competition takes place.
4.2.2. Intellectuals often play a crucial role in shaping the ideological
climate of a society. Some argue that the onesided antiwestern rhetoric and
Westbadgering of many Middle Eastern intellectuals provided a favorable
ideological condition for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the region.
This is in a sharp contrast with the proWestern orientation of many
intellectuals during the first half of the 20th century. A comparative study
of the role of intellectuals in shaping politics may produce beneficial
results for cultural theory. At the same time, such a study provides clues
as to how democracy would become a popular ideology in society.
4.2.3. According to Karl Mannheim's theory of the democratization of
culture, elites play a key role in maintaining social order. In fact,
Mannheim isolates three principles of democratization -- the equality of
persons, the autonomy of individuals, and the necessity of ruling elites.
The task of the elites is to balance off the inherent conflicts between the
first two principles. Put another way, the task of democratic elites is to
encourage and reward the surrender of some of the freedoms of individuals
for the well being of the whole, balancing equality and autonomy. A fruitful
area of research is the attitudes toward religion by elites and the
correlation of those attitudes with popular religious visibility and
influence.
4.2.4. The mass media play a role in shaping as well as merely reporting
religiousbased political conflict. Under the assumption of objectivity,
those in mass media may not be aware of how their own assumptions, perhaps
coming out of their own religious understandings, may shape news stories,
questions for interviews, or the production of values in film, television
programming, and image advertising. An extreme example involves overtly
religious groups who purchase networks and offer "objective" broadcast
programming, but the phenomenon may exist throughout the media. To what
extent are the mass media either overtly complicit or passively used to
rally public opinion against particular religious groups such as Islamic
fundamentalist sects, or more directly to coerce or destroy smaller, focused
groups such as the Rajneesh or the Branch Davidians?
A research approach might be to sample national media decisionmakers
(writers, editors, broadcasters, etc.), using surveys and interviews, to
study their underlying assumptions and decision making; content analysis can
also be applied to their media products.
4.3. The Role of Governments
4.3.1. Constitutional separation of church and state is a difficult
principle to apply perfectly, and governments typically set implicit
standards about which kinds of religion will be encouraged or discouraged.
At what point does a government believe that a religious group is a threat
to stability? What factors make government leaders feel justified in
monitoring, regulating or taking action against religious groups, or
individuals representing such groups?
Scientific research can provide the knowledge base to improve the quality of
ethical and policy decisions about when sanctions should be applied against
deviant religious groups. Collaborative work between governmental agencies
and an advisory panel from the academic community representing scholars who
study religious movements from a diversity of disciplines could make an
important contribution to United States agencies, and could assist the
government as it works with other national governments on this issue.
4.3.2. Most nations establish, through law and regulation, the conditions
under which individual citizens and groups may practice religion. There is
wide variation across existing nations. Those states undergoing democratic
transitions typically create new, more or less coherent, constitutional
provisions, statutes, and administrative rules that directly affect the
exercise of religion. Societies vary dramatically as well in the legal and
regulatory systems they develop that govern other realms of individual and
group behavior. These may also affect, indirectly, the exercise of religion.
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Systematic empirical assessment of these variations is a necessary prelude
to studying the impact of changing religious market places upon the
differential growth of religious groups in states that formerly repressed
the free exercise of religion, as well as the role of religious groups in
civil society. These rule structures are likely to be embedded in broader
legal processes of democratization, and can be expected to have indirect
consequences for market transitions through their impact upon religious
communities. There are at least three ways in which legal and regulatory
systems can affect religious exercise:
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1) Traditional constitutional freedom of exercise guarantees -- assembly,
belief, practice, etc.
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2) Granting of special statuses to religious groups, clergy, and property.
In the U.S. this includes nonprofit status, and it has included special tax
advantages to clergy and property tax exemption for religious property.
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3) Indirect, unintended effects, such as the impact of changing immigration
laws (which control the influx of unconventional religious leaders as well
as members of minority ethnic religions) and regulation of radio and
television broadcasting (including commercialization of religious
broadcasting versus a public-service model).
A first step toward understanding these forces will be to inventory
different countries' explicit constitutional provisions and laws regarding
religious exercise. Court decisions, in which deviant groups test the
boundaries of the law, provide additional information. It must be noted,
however, that the actual impact of specific restrictions or guarantees will
vary greatly depending on how they are interpreted and implemented (e.g,
most constitutions include statements guaranteeing freedom of religion, but
actual levels of freedom vary greatly) and, as noted above, many constraints
are indirect or unanticipated. Hence any inventory of laws and provisions
must be supplemented by case studies.
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4.3.3. To what extent are the forces that shape religious communities and
religious faiths in Leninist systems unique or common to other societies?
Among the many research topics that would need to be addressed three stand
out:
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1) What are the varieties of relationships between the state and various
religions and religious communities within existing Leninist systems? How
and why do these relationships vary within each society, across societies,
and over time?
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2) To what extent did particular religions or religious communities develop
coopted and collaborator relationships with their Leninist rulers,
relationships marked by limited cooperation and partial resistance, or
active resistance relationships?
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3) How did the policies of Leninist states alter the fundamental features
of various religions and religious communities that existed in such
societies?
4.3.4. Given the unusual position of religion in Leninist societies,
churches and religious movements may go through exceptional periods of
adjustment and transformation when Leninist regimes lose power. The list of
challenging questions is quite long: What are the varieties of forms of
religion and religious communities visible in post-Leninist societies or in
reformed Leninist societies such as China? What are the trends in religious
membership, belief, and participation in such societies? What are the
processes by which various religions try to cleanse themselves of the taint
of cooperation with the former Leninist system, for example by purging
leaders, revising rituals, and conducting revivals? What new institutional
forms and practices are visible, and can we designate them as returns to
earlier traditions, products of the Leninist era, new innovations, or
foreign imports? To what extent do the state leaders and various contenders
for political power in post-Leninist systems try to make use of religious
symbols and practices in order to bolster their claims to legitimacy, and
what explains variations in such reliance on religion? Do particular
religions and religious communities in post-Leninist systems foster
participatory and democratic practices internally? To what extent do they
foster exclusivist "true faith" claims in regard to both their adherents and
the external world, or to what extent do they accept a "religious
marketplace" set of premises?
Especially important are questions about the capacity of religion to serve
important social functions, from consoling people during times of stress to
providing the basis for moral cohesion, when churches have only just
re-emerged from decades of suppression and are weak in leadership,
organization, popular legitimation, and social networks of adherents. In
several formerly Leninist societies, the loss of strong central governmental
control has suddenly liberated intense social tensions associated with
ethnic, regional, economic and other cleavages. Groups within these
societies may not have enjoyed the freedom to work out their differences and
come to an accommodation with each other, and there are grave questions
whether severely disrupted churches are going to be able to help these
societies heal their wounds -- rather than aggravating them by adding
religious hostilities to the other problems.
Conclusion
Religion is a major force for social and moral change, especially where
formal political institutions are undeveloped or compromised. Yet scientific
knowledge about the relationships linking religion to democracy and to free
markets is highly inadequate. Very little funding has been available for
research in this important area, from either public or private sources.
Basic work has been done in developing explanatory theories and systematic
methods for research, so there is a foundation for greatly increased
funding. But practically none of the key questions has been answered.
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Among the many areas in which little scientific knowledge exists, we have
identified five topics that deserve the highest priority:
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1. How existing churches and new religious movements promote the
development of democratic institutions and free markets in formerly
totalitarian societies.
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2. The role religion plays in mature democracies like the United States, as
they attempt to sustain themselves and over time to become more democratic.
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3. The ways that religion can become tragically implicated in often bloody
conflicts between ethnic groups and nationalist movements.
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4. The religious aspects of immigration and the massive movements of people
currently in progress around the world.
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5. The dynamic interplay of social, economic, cultural, and political
forces around religion in communities undergoing radical change.
This research is of very great urgency, for three reasons: (1) Such
tremendous changes are occurring so rapidly in many nations that researchers
must move quickly if they are to collect information crucial for
understanding them. (2) The role of religion is so powerful in current world
transformation that American leaders need quick and authoritative advice on
how to respond effectively to religion-related events. (3) Knowledge is so
fragmentary at present in many of these areas that prompt research projects
could achieve great and rapid scientific progress.
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