Introduction: Religion as a critical identity marker for the 21st Century.
Does religion matter: a surprising question?
Not so very long ago Western academia would have dismissed the idea of religious identity as a major political issue out of hand. The sociologist Peter Berger in 1968 famously wrote that by “the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture.”[1] Throughout the post-war decades in the academy, religion was largely ignored, seen as an irrelevance in a world defined by ideological clashes.
Despite those expectations religious identity remains a critical issue. Data from the Pew Centre in 2010 suggest that “there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.”[2] In many parts of the world a failure to appear sufficiently religious can be a major detriment to any political ambition. In the legally secular USA in the most recent Congressional election only one congressman out of 535 was prepared to have their religion listed as “unaffiliated” (versus 20% of the general population).[3]
Given such overwhelming numbers it would seem farcical to see religious identity as anything but significant. The truth of the matter is that religious identity never really went away – God is not “back” as such – but the salience of religion on the world stage has increased over recent years. The first part of this article focuses on demonstrating this increasing salience and therefore why religious identity poses a particular relevance to leadership today in a way in which it did not for much of the 20th century.
A changing scenario: how the narratives of power and identity have shifted
Not so long ago there was a clear geopolitical map of the world. To the West lay the “first world”, defined by its commitment (in principle) to liberalism, freedom, democracy, and capitalism. To the East, the other side of Churchill’s famous Iron Curtain, lay the “second world” – defined, in principle, by equality and communism. To the South lay the “third world”, an area of relative lack of economic and political development that was contested by the other two worlds as they sought to bring various regions under their model.
That world is over. Indeed, though the terminology of “first” and “third” world still occasionally surfaces, in general even that has lost much of its meaning, replaced by the broader sense of varieties of being “developed”. The geopolitical map is now defined by the technical definitions of economists.
What does this mean for identity and politics, both for individuals and collective groups, such as communities, nations, states, and international groups?
For decades, it could be counted on that particular groups would rally round the party or the flag when it came to particular ideological or political programmes. The great ideologies spawned by the Enlightenment were critically important in informing political and personal goals and identities. Communism picked up the mantle of égalité as the key end (or telos) of society. Fraternité was picked up by the Christian Democrat parties across Europe and by the European project. Liberté developed into liberalism, which was the default winner of the 20th century ideological conflicts.
Yet, each of these as a self-evident political telos ground to a halt. Égalité was moribund long before the final collapse of the Berlin Wall. The Christian Democrat parties collapsed not long after communism in the 1990s, with the few survivors (such as Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU) barely recognisable as the party of their origins. And liberalism, for all its economic triumph, is widely criticised for failing to serve and protect a true and substantive common good, and for failing to motivate and inspire electorates whose political disaffection has become only too painfully evident over recent decades.[4]
As it has become increasingly unlikely for these kinds of ideological telos to motivate people, space has opened for other identities to take a more prominent place. Most of these are not “new” but, during the Cold War at least, were muted voices behind a more dominant narrative of political ideology.
In a Post 9/11 world many have returned to Samuel Huntington’s seminal Clash of Civilizations[5] and see a world of competing ethnic/religious identity clashes replacing those of political ideology. If 9/11 brought home the issues around Islamic identity, then Vladimir Putin’s revival of Russian Orthodoxy and increasingly aggressive moves in Crimea, Ukraine and elsewhere have seemed to highlight another fault-line, one that seems all the more live for emerging on the doorstep of NATO and the EU.
Europe is still dealing with the ongoing legacy of ethnic conflict in the Balkans. Kosovo is still not recognised by almost half the members of the UN including five EU members.[6] Bosnia and Herzegovina, another European country torn apart by ethnic conflict, continues to be governed by an uneasy power-sharing agreement between the three main ethnic groups under international supervision.
Outside of Europe there is no shortage of ethnic-national conflict zones to highlight as a modern fault-line. The Sahel, a belt running the breadth of Africa between the Sahara to the North and the Savanna to the South is the scene of a multitude of long-running conflicts between different ethnic and religious groups, particularly between Al-Qaeda sponsored Islamic groups (although Boko Haram in Nigeria has since split from these associations and now backs the Islamic State) and government troops in Mali and Nigeria.
In Asia the Kurdish issue has only been heightened by the rise of the Islamic State and armed conflict in Kurdistan, renewing calls for a separate Kurdish state or at least for Kurdish militias to be armed by other governments. Central Asian republics are struggling with increasing terrorist attacks from Jihadist groups and separatist movements by ethnic groups. Tajikistan, for example, is desperately trying to contain the separatist ambitions of the Gorno-Badakhshan region while Kyrgyzstan seems to be losing its grip on keeping different ethnic groups under a single national banner.
The increasing salience of religious and ethnic identity as a factor for 21st Century leadership is reflected in increasing media coverage. Since 9/11 religion has been covered significantly more in the media than it had been in previous years.[7] Yet there is a danger in this of seeing only the “problem narratives” associated with such identities. A response to try and contain or sideline these difficult identity markers is naïve, since they have proved remarkably durable and also risks overly problematizing an issue that can have its positive aspects too. Too often the media coverage is ill-informed and sticking dogmatically to a few narratives about ‘religion’, particularly linked with more familiar political issues (like the “Religious Right” in the USA) or over scandals (such as the Catholic sex abuse scandal).
Religious correspondents, a study in Europe found, tend to work multiple briefs and are often noticeably under-informed about particular issues and likely to focus on a few areas of particular controversy in their own context (so, for example French journalists focus on the Muslim veil, Greeks on mosque building, etc.).[8] Given the pivotal nature of religion as an identity marker this media ignorance has the potential to be a significant hindrance to leadership.
If the media coverage leaves something to be desired it does at least point to religious identity being more important than it once was. Religion has the potential to continue to be an immensely powerful marker of identity both on the ‘macro’ level of states and nations and on the ‘micro’ level of individual people.
The eminent sociologist of religion, David Martin makes a helpful distinction between three interlinked model of religion: Established, Diaspora, and Voluntary. Each of these remains important in a distinct way.
Established religion is religion that is the established or dominant cultural expression of a political entity, even if it is not the “state” religion. Thus, Catholicism in contemporary Brazil would fit the criteria despite a broadly secular constitution. Such religion was thought to be particularly in decline. In fact, it retains an importance that is explicit in many states and remains a powerful undercurrent in others.
From the perspectives of politics this is the easiest form of religion to understand since it is often foundational to national cultures. Far more difficult is “diaspora religion”, which is associated with immigrant communities. It is most obviously manifested in what increasingly is viewed as a ‘Muslim problem’. Since these diaspora are usually “foreign” to the home culture, they are more difficult to fit into political narratives on issues like shared values.
Finally, there is “voluntaristic religion”, religion that is actively opted into by the individual, rather than assumed as a marker of the culture into which a person is born. This is a significant area of growth, particular among Pentecostal churches in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. The individualised and often counter-cultural aspect that this raises is again difficult to fit into political narratives.
The immediate challenge for leadership in the 21st century when it comes to religion and identity is to realise the importance of these religious identities. For most of the 20th century, religion slipped down the pecking order of social science concerns as a key factor for leadership. For leaders educated in that milieu the first step must be to recognise the issues that matter. It is to that theme that this essay now turns.
Religion and identity in the eyes of leaders
Introduction
How is this increased salience of religious identity in the 21st century world seen by leaders and those who advise or inform their thinking? To explore this question, we conducted interviews with a number of academics and leaders from a range of fields including the media, military and intelligence, politics, diplomacy, and business, alongside desk-based research on the development of religion and identity worldwide.
The interviews probed how leaders in different areas have reflected on a changing world order and how their experiences of the challenges posed by these changes might provide points to reflect on for the next generation of leaders.
To that end, two key themes emerged: (1) the changing face of power and control, and (2) the knowledge gap on religion and identity issues.
The changing face of power and control
This was a broad theme that emerged again and again in a range of contexts and contains within a multitude of related points. We can usefully subdivide these as follows:
1. The struggles of elites to maintain traditional power structures
2. The impact of individualism and consumerism (even beyond the West)
3. The search for cohesive and meaningful identity categories and values
4. The seeming increased power of “minority pleas”
5. The inadequacy of traditional tools and solutions
By no means are all (or even any) of these ideas uniquely concerned with questions of religious identity. Nevertheless, in each case there is a related or inter-twined issue of religious identity that sometimes took leaders by surprise and that in many cases they were poorly resourced to respond to.
1. The struggles of elites to maintain traditional power structures
The old power structures are struggling. In Western Europe the political party is dying. In the UK, for example, less than 1% of the population is now member of a political party. Members of the Conservative party presently have an average age of 69. In Britain there has been a remarkable shake-up in the way that political parties work. There was a rare coalition government in 2010, and although the Conservative Party has managed to establish a slim overall majority in 2015 the extraordinary growth in members of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and increasing number of votes (if not seats) for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), suggest a cultural shift. Populism is on the march, the old parties and elites are struggling.
Nor is this a British phenomenon. Europe’s traditional ruling parties are beset by more opponents and difficulties in sustaining power than they have been at any time since the Second World War. The European project has staggered from crisis to crisis with the latest test being a marked difficulty in persuading Greek and Spanish voters (and now governments) to toe the line on an austerity politics deemed necessary to protect the economic structure of the Union as a whole.
Beyond Europe’s borders, Latin American politics are overwhelmingly dominated by populist movements, with the ‘Kirchnerismo’ politics of Argentina is but one manifestation of that broader trend that encompasses a string of prominent leaders including the Kirchners,[9]Chavez[10], Lula[11], and others.
Elsewhere the Arab Spring of 2010 seemed to demonstrate a refusal on the part of many in the Arab world to accept the old despotic forms of governance. If progress towards democracy in many of those countries seems to have stalled, at least there is a greater sense than before of a demos that can act to enforce change.
This change and the difficulty of traditional power structures was regularly a concern of our interviewees. A European diplomat noted the pan-European phenomenon of new expressions of popular resistance and anti-establishment political parties as a key challenge for leaders in the 21st century. Among those he named as a particular concern were PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West or Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes), Anonymous, Syriza, Podemos, UKIP, and le Front Nationale. Notable is that these “threats” as they were perceived, though all expressing some sort of populist demand and being beyond the control of the typical power structures, have no shared ideology. UKIP has a raison d’etre against the EU and immigration, as to an extent does the FN in France. Podemos and Syriza are far left parties resisting austerity. PEGIDA and Anonymous are not parties at all but movements with a political agenda.
Where does religious identity sit within that development? The first point to make is that it is not immune from this process. A point made by one interviewee who had worked with religious leaders is that religious groups too are struggling to retain their traditional ‘grip’ over people. It is a notable feature of the place of religion in the Christian world in particular that the great traditional episcopal churches (Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican) are the ones most struggling to retain their adherents (with significant national variants and trend-defiers in particular places). Instead the growth not only in the West but also in Africa and increasingly in Latin America and Asia is among Pentecostal churches of various stripes which often emphasize shallow hierarchies and more personal interaction with the Spirit.
There is a similar phenomenon in some other religious traditions. One academic interviewee noted that “there was a time when you could count on the Grand Mufti being listened to – but that time seems to have passed. The growth of ISIS flies in the face of the old guard of Islamic authority and teaching”.
The other challenge is a broader one. The breakdown in 20th century identity blocs (West-East, Capitalist-Communist, etc.) has left the old establishment power structures groping at shifting identities. Finding ways of creating broad-tent coalitions is increasingly difficult and religion and identity are one of the battlefields on which that is being played out. In Europe, the new populist right wing parties and groups have been increasingly keen to make a pitch for a traditional “Christian” identity. PEGIDA is an interesting example, claiming a European identity that is diametrically opposed to Islam. PEGIDA in its full German title also includes “Abendland”. Though translated and often commonly used to mean “the West” it also echoes a German Catholic political philosophy of a Christian political space that was significant in the first half of the 20th Century in forming part of the ideological backdrop to the Christian Democrat movement.
This intersection of populism, identity claims and religion form part of the new dynamic with which the establishment has to reconcile itself to in a world in which traditional power structures are breaking down.
2. The impact of individualism and consumerism
This was a feature of the 21st century world commented on – and lamented – by many interviewees. “The breakdown of community has been a real problem to deal with”, one politician said. It overlaps considerably with the breakdown of traditional power structures discussed above. There is no longer such a cohesive sense of community identity. Instead people are used to being able to buy what they want tailored to their own needs, and don’t see why the same should not apply to their politics, community and religion.
This is often lamented as a particular Western ailment. However, our interviewees broadened that scope – for example, one scholar noted that in Iran there is a palpable sense of disappointment among many clerics and ordinary people that the revolution didn’t go far enough. Inequality remains a real social problem and consumerism and the markets remain a dominant part of Iranian society.
It was echoed in the West by a politician who reported that somehow everyone had shifted from signing up to the manifesto that best reflected their views to “demanding instant and total accord between what they wanted and what a politician can do”. The voter has become a consumer and works with those assumptions – that the customer is always right and that if one provider is not meeting all their needs another one must do.
3. The search for cohesive and meaningful identity categories and values
For a long time it was assumed as the basic currency unit of International Relations, diplomacy and politics was the nation-state. The bounded homogeneous community with a shared identity (be that broadly ethnic, religious or linguistic) was thought to be the most solid unit since it was large enough to be a force externally but had enough shared internal characteristics to maintain its stability and cohesion. To some extent such a unit was always party fictional. The number of nation states made up of a single shared ethnicity or language is pretty small and includes none of the large power players on the international scene.
In recent years, however, that fictional element has become ever harder to sustain, with globalisation, population movement and colonial legacies having created a far more complex situation than the nice neat Westphalian model is capable of supporting. Indeed, a senior international diplomat described it as a situation in which there has been a “globalisation of identity”. The mixing of values and ideas has created a market place like never before in which “inevitably some will die and some will take hold”.
This has been neatly illustrated by the struggles in a number of places of trying to define a national set of values. In the UK, the teaching of “British values” in schools is oft-talked about but without much clarity as to what they actually constitute in any meaningful way. One interviewee summed this up as a clash between “a desire to rule stuff out – like the Trojan horse schools in Birmingham – and a desire to also keep everyone together. [The] trouble is, it’s basically impossible to do both without undermining the very sense of unity you’re trying to foster”. A British politician echoed that feeling. “I think we get into trouble when we try and make universal values applicable to only one party or political position at the expense of others”.
A diplomat discussed the similar issues that the EU has been having in developing a coherent set of values or principles to underpin itself. The problem for him was a German model based on very high levels of idealism being difficult (even impossible) to combine with the more pragmatic British approach to union.
The difficulty of defining collective values is one that is also very familiar elsewhere. In 2014 Vladimir Putin introduced a new standard textbook for all Russian school children on the history of Russia. This textbook, produced by a number of academics, came with clear instructions on what could and could not be included and was explicitly designed to be a book to inspire patriotic feelings. Putin intends it to show the continuous proud Russian history.
There is a similar trend that accounts for the increasing use of blasphemy laws in some Muslim majority countries. Pakistan is a good example of a country that has been suffering from fragmentation for some years using blasphemy laws to entrench a collective culture. Since Pakistan’s independence in 1947 these laws have become progressively stricter in line with the increasing difficulties of keeping the country together. They were notably expanded in the 1980s including the legal separation the Ahmadi community, who were declared non-Muslim. Since the tightening of the laws in 1987 official accusations have gone up exponentially and particularly since 2010,[12] while a 1991 law also stiffened the penalties, bringing in the death penalty.
Identity and religion issues are a critical element in this – after all, the original Westphalian formula was explicitly religious (Cuius regio, eius religio – whose realm, whose religion) and today these issues of collective identity still rest remarkably strongly along religious boundaries (and that applies worldwide). The ability to understand and identify where these boundaries lie and how they have become more contentious with immigration and population movement over time is a key challenge for leadership in the 21st century.
4. The seeming increased power of “minority pleas”
Closely related to the idea above of forming cohesive identity issues, a number of interviewees articulated the concern that particular minority pleas were more prominent than they had ever been before. One interviewee said:
“It seems to me like people expect to be catered for, every minority group. Of course we have to protect minorities but it seems like it’s gone much further than that now. Today it’s getting close to a situation where rather than just being protected they want to get special treatment”.
Another said:
“the problem with some groups now is that they don’t want to play by that old J.S. Mill rule that you have all the freedom and rights you want until it interferes with someone else – they literally don’t want the same rules to apply to them!”
This perception has, of course, fuelled the rise of particular groups and parties in the West who have specialised in opposing the “special treatment” of particular groups, especially Muslims. Pressure points have emerged in a number of contexts. In France (and elsewhere) the disputes over the use of the veil in schools have been especially prominent as a case study in the limits of laicité and French national culture. In Canada, there have been disputes over Sikh kirpans and dress.[13] The right to free speech and the expectation not to be unfairly attacked have been in regular conflict but perhaps no more than in debates over offensive cartoons – with the tragic loss of life at Charlie Hebdo being only the latest (albeit the deadliest) in a string of flashpoints.
There is a dimension in this too about the shifting (or perceived shifting) of the way in which human rights have moved from a useful tool to protect people to creating a complacency in which people deserve rights without a reciprocal sense of duty. The fact that ECHR has managed to become part of the enemy for some right wing parties in Europe is linked in part to that sense of rights now being used overly to assert minority pleas rather than providing a safety net against the excesses of the state.
The flip side of such debates, of course, is the continuing difficulty caused by discrimination and prejudice against particular groups. Over the last decade across Europe there are data to suggest a worrying increase in hate crime directed against Jews and Muslims.[14]
5. The inadequacy of traditional tools and solutions
This theme has already received a lot of attention already in regards to traditional political tools like parties. There is also a broader sense of a struggle to find ways of exercising power and information in leadership. Central to this is the rise of communications and the internet.
This has an impact even in the media. The proliferation and instant reporting ability provided by the internet has on one level increased the ability of the media to report constantly on anything, anywhere in the world. A journalist we interviewed reported that in some ways this has actually hurt traditional media. In one obvious sense they have lost market share since amateur journalists can now scoop the big media sources for stories. It has also though, for our interviewee, sapped the media of much originality. “Everyone now is copying one another and afraid to take a risk on anything that isn’t already out there.”
The internet has also created a new transnational communication network that poses particular problems for police and security purposes. One interviewee made this very clear “you’re more likely to be radicalised in your bedroom watching a video then in the mosque now”. That raises a leadership problem for finding who to speak to and who the right agents are for countering extremism but it also raises new opportunities that need to be thought about. One interviewee mentioned one such innovative approach which was a group of online imams who worked to counter bad Islamic theology online.
It is also an issue for polities that might once have found it rather easier to control the flow of information. Propaganda and control of the media is much more difficult than it once was. New stories about the execution of atheist bloggers in the Middle East are shocking – but also illustrate the fear present in regimes where control is harder to sustain in the internet age. That fear is well-justified when one senior politician noted reports that by 2020 as much as 80% of the world's population could have access to a smart phone.
Transnational forces require different solutions and tools than those that were needed to counter state-sponsored enemies. The business of doing intelligence and security, not least when it comes to religious actors is one which needs serious consideration in the 21st Century.
The Knowledge Gap on Religion and Identity Issues
So far this essay has explored how religion comes as something of a surprise to leaders today, as something which is outside the purview of what leaders were meant to expect to deal with in the 21st century. It has also examined the changing nature of power. A common theme linking the two is that leaders are groping at these issues of religion and identity without sufficient clarity or knowledge of the situation. There are several areas in which this is especially apparent as challenges with which leaders need to engage:
1. Understanding the way religious groups think – moving beyond secular utilitarian political assumptions
2. Finding the right sources – who provides the expertise?
3. Identifying the right leaders, movers and shakers
4. Countering fear and risk aversion
1. Understanding the way religious groups think
Several interviewees noted this as the key lesson they could offer for future leaders. Often, whether it is in the field of the media, politics, diplomacy, business or security we are guilty of thinking that everyone thinks the way we do. Much policy in the West has treated the “war on terror” or dealings with groups like ISIS as if the objectives and ways of doing things of these groups is the same as that of secular states playing by the same rules as the West is used to playing.
One interviewee highlighted the conflicts over shrines in Iraq and Syria. There is no material value or secular value to such places – and yet British imams are finding it difficult to persuade young British Muslims against going out to defend these holy places from attack. The symbolic destruction of cultural sites – be they pre-Islamic or of another Islamic group has been an essential plank in ISIS’s operation and one which doesn’t tally with the Western understanding of what they ought to be doing.
Understanding that political actions can be grounded in religious motivations and that the rest of the world does not share a Western assumption about how politics is conducted has proved to be a steep learning curve for many. This was also true in the military and media – with one former defence correspondent recalling the difficulties in getting any clarity in understanding the differing ideologies of the various military forces in conflict zones in the Middle East.
This is not only true in conflicts but has a dimension in development and education as well. One interviewee who works in the international aid sector noted the apparent resistance of some Western agencies to work with religious groups – which was a serious oversight given the enormous role of religious groups in the provision of education and development worldwide. For example, around 60% of education in sub-Saharan Africa is directly provided by religious groups. Failing to work with religious groups can have a serious detrimental effect on development efforts. This problem, according to this interviewee, has been getting worse in recent years. DFID (the UK government Department for International Development) used to have a reputation as a really innovative development body prepared to take chances and risks on bold projects, but according to the interviewee “today they have been taken over by the security agenda – security and risk are the only parameters that matter”.
2. Finding the right sources
Having established the need to understand religion the next problem invariably facing leaders is where to find the expertise to do so. A bi-product of the internet age is a vast amount of information, often repeated or ripped from other sources and rarely checked thoroughly for authenticity. This was an issue highlighted by several interviewees. A journalist reported that she had been shocked by the failure of her colleagues to vet or understand the people from whom they were seeking opinions. An academic bemoaned the lazy recycling of clichéd and incorrect information on Islam that was repeated so often it had seemingly become the standard of orthodoxy!
A politician noted this difficulty too: “Over time you build up the experience and expertise to be able to find the good sources and people whose opinions are good ones – but it takes time and often time is the one thing politicians don't have, particularly during a crisis”. Another interviewee blamed this on the social science of the 1970s: “everyone was taught to think religion was irrelevant, so they don’t know anything about it. Maybe the younger guys will change that, but it is a real battle with some people!”
More than one interviewee noted as a regret that they hadn’t received a good enough briefing on religion. Nor was this uniquely a Western phenomenon – one interviewee noted that the Chinese state had taken a very long time to properly confront some of the problems with its religious minorities in large part because it had taken a very long time to accept that this wasn’t a problem that was just going to drift away over time.
There was some optimism that this was getting better, with new training and expertise emerging, but it is not yet where it needs to be and improving the provision of expertise and advice to leaders was seen as a necessity by several interviewees.
3. Identifying the right leaders, movers and shakers
Tied into ignorance about religion and identity is a difficulty that has been exasperated by the internet and the rise of transnational groups – a problem in identifying who to speak to.
One journalist noted “we’ve made mistakes. We’ve given people a voice and assumed they spoke for a particular segment of society and they didn’t, and partly it was because we didn’t understand. We were used to covering religion as being what the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury said. Well there isn’t an equivalent figure for Hindus, or Muslims, or Sikhs, etc. but that didn’t stop us all trying to find one! There have been people given a voice who if we’d known better we would never have touched.”
The Iranian context is interesting here. Traditional state-to-state negotiation is shown to be particularly ineffective in a context in which the Ayatollahs continue to wield such significant power. One academic said: “the Fatwas are what is holding Iran together right now – or the whole thing would fall apart, and yet the world’s leaders never ever seem to be able to identify who the various Ayatollahs are or what they believe and think”. In such a context negotiations with Iran’s President can only ever be part of the story for leadership.
That situation is even more difficult with the many transnational groups whose leadership structure is often obscure. Too often leaders have been guilty of making category errors like assuming that all Islamic radicals operate the way that Al-Qaeda operate, or that radical Buddhist sects are essentially the same. ISIS has brought this problem home. Initial assumptions that they were just like Al-Qaeda have been shown to be wide of the mark – their theology and politics are quite separate. For mediators, according to one interviewee from the sector, part of the challenge has been finding people to speak to. The ISIS leadership fears moderates and those prepared to negotiate, and have a tendency to assassinate anyone who seems to be serving in that role. Mediation, therefore requires a flexible, locally-based approach identifying people on the ground – not negotiating as one would expect with the overall leaders.
More efforts need to be made to find ways of communicating with different communities and uncovering the power levers that can usefully be of service to 21st century leaders.
4. Countering fear and risk aversion
In many ways this could serve as a summary of the above sections. It is a pervasive issue at the heart of how religion and politics currently interact for leadership in the 21st century. Religion is badly understood and seen as a problematic or dangerous barrier to peace and modernity. As a result, for a set of leaders in the 21st century world who have become increasingly in the business of managing risk there is an understandable temptation to think that the safest available option is to avoid religion.
This attitude, however, is naive and even potentially dangerous. Religion is clearly not going away and failing to engage with or understand it only increases the danger caused by extremist groups or undermining other political goals. The example given above of the way in which fear and risk of religion has undermined DFID’s development work is a clear indication of exactly this tendency.
On many of these issues religion serves as something of a double-edged sword. One interviewee noted that there are some 50 or more conflicts in the world today which involve religion as a factor, with the result that there are some 50 million refugees or displaced people and millions of dead. However, religion also serves as a key feature of mediation and development in many of these countries and those conflicts are unlikely to be settled by simply ignoring the religious element. For good or ill, religion is a factor too important to be legitimately avoided by 21st century leaders.
Ben Ryan is a Researcher at Theos @BenedictWRyan
This essay is a contribution to the Churchill 2015 21st Century Statesmanship Global Leaders Programme - see here for more details. Ben Ryan was part of the Faith and Religion panel. The panel's final report can be downloaded here.
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[1] Berger 1968
[2] http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/
[3] http://www.pewforum.org/2015/01/05/faith-on-the-hill/
[4] See Peter Mair, 2006, 'Ruling the Void? The Hollowing of Western Democracy', New Left Review 42
[5] Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, 1996
[6] Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain are the ones yet to recognise Kosovo.
[7] Hoover 2008
[8] Getting the facts Right: Reporting Ethnicity and Religion, 2012
[9] Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband Néstor Kirchner are Peronist politicians who between them have continuously in power as President of Argentina since 2003.
[10] Hugo Chavez was the populist socialist President of Venezuela from February 1999 until his death in 2013.
[11] Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – popularly known as Lula, was President of Brazil from 2003-2011 and a populist reformer.
[12] Reported by ‘The Blasphemy Law Project’ – see a summary here https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/engage-reforming-pakistan-s-blasphemy-law#/story
[13] For a summary from Sikh legal news see http://www.worldsikh.org/legal
[14] Widely reported but see, for example, ‘Antisemitic attacks in UK at highest level ever recorded’ Guardian 5th February 2015 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/antisemitic-attacks-uk-community-security-trust-britain-jewish-population
