Religion, Conflict and Violence: Patterns East and West, Past and Present

• Kyoko Tokuno, James Wellman, Comparative Religion Program, Jackson School of International Studies

• Website for the project: http://depts.washington.edu/religion/violence; includes a Call for Papers for May 12-14 Spring Symposium

• SPONSORS: The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, The College of Arts & Sciences, Department of Near East Languages and Civilization, Comparative Religion Program, East Asia Center, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, China Studies, and private donors.

Clifford Geertz’s Definition of Religion: Classic Definition in the Field

• Religion is

– a system of symbols

– which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men

– by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and

– clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that

– the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Talal Assad’s Critique of Geertz

– Search for universal essence of religion separates religion from power and inoculates religion from conflict/violence

– No universal definitions because the definition itself is an historical product of discursive processes

– Socioeconomic conditions are the independent variable shaping religion rather than religion shaping specific dispositions/social structures

Wellman/Tokuno Response to Asad:

– Agree, mistake to separate religion from power, as a legitimating force of state power

– Mistake in Asad’s analysis to assume that religion is always at the mercy of political/state forces

– Religion:

• Becomes the state/shares power w/state to coerce its values

• Uses ‘sacred violence’ to legitimize demands on individual/group

– Conflict/power are not separate from religion but is endemic to it

– Conflict can induce violence but can become a dynamic, creative force

Is a Universal Definition of Religion Possible?

• Yes; otherwise, the field becomes a miasma of confusion

• Universal definition cannot offer an essence, but can provide a revisable approximation and guide

– Dangers in the definitional game:

• too ambiguous or figurative;

• too narrow or broad;

• redundant or negative

– Definitions must also be judged on the basis of their own context and historical period

Working Definition of Religion

• Religion is a system of symbols, composed of beliefs and practices, developed in a communal setting, often institutionally legitimated, which negotiates and interacts with a power or force that is experienced as within and beyond the self and group; this power or force is most often referred to as god/spirit or gods/spirits. The symbolic and social boundaries of religion mobilizes group identity and, at times, conflict and even violence within and between groups.

– System of Symbols (Story)– Beliefs (Doctrines)– Practices (Rituals)– Communally reproduced (Tradition)– Institutionally legitimated (Authority)– Power transcending individual and group (Transcendence)– Boundaries create identity, conflict and potential violence (Conflict)

Advantages of Wellman/Tokuno Definition over Geertz’s

• Overcomes Geertz’s focus on symbols as chief carrier of religious power

• Emphasizes the importance of practices/rituals as shaping tools

• Focuses on the communal and institutional legitimating processes

• Avoids the negativity of “aura of factuality” in estimating religious experience

• Religion (most often) about spirits/gods, which distinguishes it and makes it a subset of a general definition of culture

• Underlines that conflict (and potentially violence) are not marginal to religion but are often the intended and unintended consequences of religion

What is the Cause of Religious Violence?Is it Monotheism?

• Argument: Monotheism’s “particularism” ‘We are the only true faith,’ becomes the agent of violence

• Problems:

– Not all Monotheists are actively violent

– Non-monotheistic religions have been actively violent, using particularism and killing or initiating conflict in the name of faith

– Not all Monotheistic faiths act in the same way—their actions are quite fluid relative to circumstance/leadership

What is the Cause of Religious Violence?Is it fundamentalism?

• American Protestant origin of the term

• Scott Appleby’s recent work: Strong Religion, based on the mid-1990s Chicago Fundamentalist Project, continues to use fundamentalism

– Why let the word burden the field with all of its pejorative and dogmatic meanings?

– Appleby believes that the term best applies to Abrahamic religions and not for religions from the East

– Appleby defines fundamentalism: Reaction to modernism

• Religion, conflict and violence in premodern periods

Internal Relations of Religion and Culture:Minimalist and Maximalist Religion

• Terms adapted from Lincoln’s work, Holy Terror

• Minimalist Religion:

– Religion that focuses on the inner, subjective lives of its followers; beliefs and practices defend the individual/group from culture and state

– Religion that adapts well to modernity in the West with greater social differentiation of cultural spheres (open religious market)

– Minimalist religion is not simply a function of modernity, premodern precursors

– Minimalist religion is passively aggressive toward state/cultural powers, believing that they have a secret knowledge that is a transcendental force to overcome all powers

Maximalist Religion

• Maximalist religion:

– Religion that believes in a continuous line between metaphysical worldview and concrete relations politically and culturally

– Maximalist religion has exemplars in premodern period, ancient world; religion struggles with modernity and becomes the “enemy” of Enlightenment critics in the West

– Maximalist religion is what is most often called fundamentalism– Maximalist religion most often rationalizes state enforced religious

morality, or wants to dominate the state

• A proposition: The more a religion becomes maximalist, the greater the tendency for conflict to move to violence

External Relations of Religion and Culture

• Established Religion:– Orthodoxy, orthopraxy; mainstream; clerical; public and open;

conformed to wider status quo morality• Sectarian Religion:

– Heterodoxy, heteropraxy; peripheral; lay led; syncretic; private or secret; millenarian and subversive to status quo

Theories of Conflict and Violence

• Social/religious life creates conflict: tension with others; however, not all conflict escalates to violence

• Violence: to afflict physical or emotional harm on the self, other/group

• Question: What moves religious conflict from tension to violence?

– Motivations based on worldview and leadership, discussed below

Types of Violence

• Types of violence, using Stevan Harrell’s typology:

– Vertical violence, from above (dominance), from below (resistance)

– Horizontal violence, competition/conflict within/between individuals/groups over restricted economic/cultural resources

Types of Religious Violence

• Vertical Violence:

– Dominance (from above):

• Holy War: crusade, jihad (Religious group against the other)

• Sacrificial rites (Religious leaders against vulnerable members)

– Resistance (from below):

• Millennial movements (Protest movements)

• Martyrdom, self-immolation, asceticism (Protest/self-repression)

Types of Religious Violence

• Horizontal Violence:

– Internecine conflict: internal group violence to establish leadership

– Violence between groups; competition in open religious market over limited cultural/economic capital

What is the Source of Religious Violence?Motivation: Worldview, Leadership and Context

• Complex mixture of religious worldview and religious leadership. – Worldview: Motivation is shaped by symbolic resources– Leadership: Groups are galvanized by dynamic/charismatic leaders– Context: Dominant religion/culture weaken/becomes oppressive

What is the Source of Religious Violence?Worldview

– Religious Worldview that creates violence:• Religious worldview has symbolic resources that point at a utopist

vision of total religious world• Religious worldview can be this-worldly or other-worldly, though

most often related to a wider, normative transcendental vision • The transcendental demand (hope) that the cosmic religious vision

become embodied, politically/culturally

What is the Source of Religious Violence?Leadership

– Religious Leadership

• Most often led by young and aggressive male leadership that is educated (modicum of status) and has some access to material resources

• Belief that they have become agents of the vision

• Belief that the vision demands human initiative

• Belief and actions that the cosmic visions rationalizes the use of violence for a larger moral imperative

What is the Source of Religious Violence?Cultural Context

– Cultural Context that facilitates/shapes violence (i.e. our assertion is that violence relative to religion is not a function of a context, but the context shapes the contours of the conflict that occurs):

• Weakening of familial/social ties, no more constraint on conflict

• Secular/religious state becomes more oppressive against minority religions/sectarian groups