RELIGION AS AN INSTRUMENT OF POLITICAL POWER

The so-called ‘resurgence’ of religion in the public sphere and the domain of the political more generally in recent decades is now a significant area of interdisciplinary scholarship eliciting a complex array of responses, ranging from vehement opposition to the very idea that religious concepts and commitments have a right to expression in public, political debates to a reassessment of the provenance and implications of divisions between the secular and the religious and their relationship to the nation state. The current geopolitical landscape wherein ‘religion’ has become a force to be reckoned with has demanded a reassessment of once predominant understandings of processes of secularisation, as well as the meanings of, and tensions inherent within, secular assumptions and secularist positions. The notion that there is no singular secularism, but rather a plurality of secularisms, and of religion as an invention of European modernity and colonialist exigencies are two of many emerging efforts to reconceptualise the meanings of religion and the secular and the entangled relationship between them. This course will offer a comprehensive overview of the various debates around, and theorisations of the nature of secularism and the role of religion in the public sphere in order to we attend to the central issue of how 'the secular' is constituted, understood, and instantiated in both domestic and international or transnational contexts. Other related topics will also be examined, taking a thematic approach, such as the relationship between religious discourses and political violence, the legislative difficulties presented by contradictions in liberalist political principles that underpin the political systems of the global North and models of multiculturalism, theocratic conceptions of the state, the role of religion in identity politics and transnational institutions, and state responses to religious identity claims and priorities, free speech and blasphemy, and religious discrimination amongst others.

Philosophy & Social criticism, 2016

The aim of this article is to identify the main factors of the current crisis of the nation-state and to demonstrate how many of the voids left by this crisis are filled by religions. The main characteristic of the nation-state is the principle of sovereignty. The apogee of the nation-state is the political form (as well as a political need) of industrialization. National identity is possible only when the state proves to its citizens that the fact of being a member of it carries benefits and privileges and will always bring more. Today, the majority of nation-states, in particular the oldest great powers, no longer have this capability. The weakening of the nation-state began at the end of the 19 th century. The first wave of globalization multiplied the cases of reciprocal interferences and trespassed on the theoretical impermeability of the sovereign states. The outcome of the First World War, with the creation of the first supranational body (the League of Nations), and much more the outcome of the Second World War, were two important steps of this crisis. The birth of the United Nations, and of other supranational bodies (the International Monetary Fund [IMF], the World Bank [WB], the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT]. . .), as well as the creation of the first court called to judge an entire political class, were an assault on the principle of sovereignty. The second wave of globalization, characterized by the free circulation of goods, money, people and cultures, did the rest. Moreover, the countries that 'invented' the principle of sovereignty are today in relative decline as new powers are emerging. The nation-state is no longer able to keep its promises. The less effective states become at offering their citizens both meaning and social services, the more do religions tend to reoccupy the public stage. The less national and political legitimacy they have, the more powers use the religious tool against one another.

Perspectives on Politics, 2005

The nation and the Church are never far apart in Europe. The Westphalian state-system defined allegiance and loyalty to the state as correlates of religious conformity. The re-emergence of religious conflict in Europe is the paradoxical result of globalization and individualization. The new social meaning of faith compels courts, governments, and the general publics to re-examine the old stability pacts between the national Churches and states. The belated secularization of the state is the likely outcome.

International Conference Faith, Community and Culture Date: 9-12 Septembe University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus Kelowna BC, Canada, 2019

Religious identities have been developed at the crossroads of history and myths, facts and legends, ideologies and symbols, values and ethics, laws and customs, political and religious power structures, and layers of transforming cultural identities built up throughout the history of societies. Past and present are continuously interacting through new analysis and reasoning, combining static and dynamic elements, changing narratives of present actions by alternative interpretations of past events. A complex legacy often stereotyped, and frequently capable of fuel narratives of fear and violence upholding clashes of ideologies and frictions of cultural identities. A legacy that requires a transdisciplinary brainstorming approach to comprehend the role of religion in today´s world and its political complexities, more globalized, yet confronting multiple identities rooted in diverse religious legacies and nationalist ideologies. In this presentation, I will follow this approach. It is a complex path that requires a meta disciplinary integrative approach searching for patterns and cycles, opening up new possibilities to understand facts and interpretations from different angles. In which the role of collective resentment cannot be ignored or underestimated. Resentment is a powerful emotion capable to unleash extremism and violence when the victim becomes the offender. Westernization and its paradoxes have been displaced by the challenge of globalism as a new paradigm of the 21 st century1. For this reason, this presentation surpasses the 20 th century dominant narrative of the western world´s vision of us and the rest to be focused on the contemporary global and multipolar world´s framework. The knowledge of global History facilitates interpretative and interactive wisdom that human historical experience can provide to us, like a sensitive compass in the dynamics and challenges of our contemporary world. The European history and its legacy, as the main initial stream in the development of Modernity and its impact worldwide, offers one of the best paradoxical examples of a political and religious identities building process. Religious identity was a major political force in Europe until the 18 th century when religion was a monopoly of the state. Let me briefly review this paradigm, to be able to understand better its global consequences.

Research result. Sociology and Management, 2020

The question of modern European religious identity surpasses its spiritual and ecclesiastical boundaries and firmly dwells within the political sphere. This is precisely why this is a topic of great interest for the scientific discipline of politology of religion. It has been widely accepted in the European secular narrative that religion has lost its cohesive role and power, but faced with new temptations it could regain some of its vitality and importance. Such signs are visible and easily detectable even in some of the member states of the European Union such as those belonging to the Visegrád Group, but also in the wider European scale. In our opinion, it is precisely the question of identity that has found itself in the main stream of political, geopolitical, and even security and economic temptations of Europe, and even of Western civilization itself. The question of religious identity has thus become the focus of interest of many political, religious and other thinkers, who recognize the acuteness of this problem. All this is eloquently reflected, not only in the self-understanding of modern Europe, but also in its attitude towards the issue of the growing Islamic element on its own territory, its relationship with the Islamic world, [Baudrillard, 2002: 162] and, also, with China, the United States and especially with Russia. In that sense, as a paradigm of such relations, understanding and misunderstanding of the European Union with other geopolitical factors on a global level, can serve the fact that, on July 4 2020, constitutional changes came into force in Russia, which clearly determine this great power as a state based on Christian foundations. [Bilbija, 2020] Although this, of course, does not disqualify this world power as a society based on the separation of Church and State, nor does it in any way violate the principle of equality of all traditional religious communities on its territory, we will see that this concept is essentially foreign and ideologically unacceptable for today's European Union and much of the Western world. Namely, as we will see, the modern Europe (or more precisely-the European Union) builds its ideological matrix not on the foundations of its own Christian heritage, but on the foundations of agnostic secularism and liberalism, as inaugurated by the French Revolution, which places our topic in the domain of politology of religion.