Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dwight N. Hopkins is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Lois Ann Lorentzen is Professor of Social Ethics in the department of theology and religious studies at the University of San Francisco.

Eduardo Mendieta is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

David Batstone is Associate Professor of Social Ethics in the department of theology and religious studies at the University of San Francisco.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"By bringing religions in confrontation with globalization, this volume offers a healthy corrective to the received view that one religion, Christianity, shall be the measuring stick to evaluate all other religions and to the received view that links a given religion to a given race. "Religions/Globalizations "makes a signal contribution to understanding the changing faces of religions in an era in which the old principles of colonial domination are being redrawn under the new forms of global coloniality."--Walter Mignolo, Duke University

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

RELIGIONS / GLOBALIZATIONS

Duke University Press

Contents

Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................................................viiIntroduction.............................................................................................................................................1Dwight N. Hopkins / Religion of Globalization............................................................................................................7Enrique Dussel / The Sociohistorical Meaning of Liberation Theology (Reflections about Its Origin and World Context).....................................33Eduardo Mendieta / Society's Religion: The Rise of Social Theory, Globalization, and the Invention of Religion...........................................46Mark Juergensmeyer / The Global Rise of Religious Nationalism............................................................................................66Lois Ann Lorentzen / Who Is an Indian? Religion, Globalization, and Chiapas..............................................................................84Lamin Sanneh / The African Transformation of Christianity: Comparative Reflections on Ethnicity and Religious Mobilization in Africa.....................105Linda E. Thomas / Macroeconomy, Apartheid, & Rituals of Healing in an African Indigenous Church..........................................................135Vijaya Rettakudi Nagarajan / (In)Corporating Threshold Art: Kolam Competitions, Patronage, and Colgate...................................................161Kathryn Poethig / Visa Trouble: Cambodian American Christians and Their Defense of Multiple Citizenships.................................................187Berit Bretthauer / Televangelism: Local and Global Dimensions............................................................................................203David Batstone / Dancing to a Different Beat: Emerging Spiritualities in the Network Society.............................................................226Index....................................................................................................................................................243

Chapter One

The Religion of Globalization

The many different interactions between globalization and religion can be approached from a variety of theological perspectives and ethical practices. The World Council of Churches (WCC) marks one such engagement. The WCC constitutes the largest transnational institutional manifestation of diverse communities of Christian faith. It encompasses the denominations of Protestantism (e.g., Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational, Baptist, etc.), structural dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, a strong presence of and leadership by Eastern Orthodox Churches, and an assortment of new syncretized or indigenized forms of Christian religions located throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The WCC takes seriously the Christian imperative to make all peoples followers of Jesus Christ the light of the world. In this regard, Christianity perceives its domain as a form of discipleship on a global stage where, by way of the preached word, theological instruction, sacramental ritualization, iconographic representation, and a persistent witness of love, justice, and reconciliation, the message of Jesus the Christ will truly become the embodied vision of a new and ultimate future that is to come for all peoples.

The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, in contrast, pursues the multilateral engagement of diverse communities of faith-from African indigenous religions, the great religions of Asia, Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, and Catholicism, to any forms of faith expressions, on the global scale, that agree to civil conversation through mutual encounter. Whereas the WCC might have an evangelistic prescriptive dimension, the Parliament pursues across national borders conversations guided by enlightened dialogue shared by each religion offering its unique gifts to the universal human community regardless of any particular doctrinal demands and tradition's commands. Moreover, again contrasting the WCC, the Parliament refrains from any explicit involvement in political problematics. Its primary "ought" manifests in its broadening of the tent of interlocutors so that changes in the human condition follow logically from more and more people getting to know one another. The metaphor and reality of a parliament mean respectful interchange and exchange of the broadest possible distribution and differentiation of faith communities throughout the world. The wider the contact and knowledge of the other, the increased possibilities of living together in harmony.

A third paradigm of religion and globalization contact appears in the Pluralism Project. Here the revelation of globalization is implosion. Instead of seeking a variety of ways of unifying religious communities outside the United States, the project examines the multiplying reality of a rapid heterogeneity of religions within the United States. This study of the increased religious diversity in the United States focuses especially on the growing multidimensional nature of religions brought by immigrant groups. In a word, the analysis does not follow lines of investigation from the powerful colonial center to its intertwinement with religions in the colonies or geographic peripheries of the world. Quite the opposite, instead of ascertaining the dominant religions' missionary explosion outward all over the earth (especially Christian world evangelization from North America to the Third World), the Pluralism Project study reverses the angle of vision. It observes implosion: how is it that non-Christian religions from the rest of the world (particularly from the Third World) are undergoing a process of potential long-term saturation in the American domestic Christian landscape? It seeks to discern how Americans of all faiths are crafting a positive pluralism.

This essay pursues an alternative claim. The argument is that globalization of monopoly finance capitalist culture is itself a religion. Such a religion feeds on the most vulnerable peoples in the world theater. Consequently, a theology of liberation is one necessary response to the rapacious appetite of globalization qua religion. The Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) signifies this response. The majority of this article defines the contours of globalization as a religion. At the end, I examine the schematic theological position of EATWOT.

Religion is a system of beliefs and practices comprising a god (which is the object of one's faith), a faith (which is a belief in a desired power greater than oneself), a religious leadership (which determines the path of belief), religious institutions (which facilitate the ongoing organization of the religion), a theological anthropology (which defines what it means to be human), values (which set the standards to which the religion subscribes), a theology (which is the theoretical justification of the faith), and revelation (which is the diverse ways that the god manifests itself in and to the world).

God, more specifically, is the ultimate concern of a community of believers. This god is the final desire and aim that surpasses and circumscribes all other penultimate realities, dreams, wants, and actions. It controls all things and motivates its believers to...