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PART III CIVILIZATIONS

Lane, Jan-Erik, and Svante Ersson. Culture and Politics : A Comparative Approach, Routledge, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=438388. Created from apus on 2020-03-18 08:37:19.

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Introduction

We have examined culture as ethnicity in a few chapters, where ethnic groups were either approached as highly compact or as having a low degree of compactness. Turning now to the analysis of civilization, the key problem is again that of compactness. Since civilizations are typically carried by huge groups, comprising many countries, they can only be coherent if they are founded on some single strong common component. We argue that religion could constitute such a cement. In fact, religion is the critical factor in identifying the major civilizations of the world. Ethnicity is the culture of a people, but, ‘people’ may stand for very different kinds of groups, which explains to some extent why ethnic theory has delivered controversial results. Let us turn to the other major entity in cultural studies – namely, religion.

Linking civilization with religion is the approach used by Max Weber. If ethnicity is one pillar of culture, then religion is certainly the other foundation. Whereas ethnicity identifies a people living in a certain geographical location, a religion is a belief system which, in principle, may be adhered to by any people wherever they are situated. Religion as culture is more encompassing than ethnicity as culture, although the principal world religions have stable locations or spatial homes. An excellent source for the comparative inquiry into religion is the six volumes edited by Peuch (1970–76). Another source is the set of French Dictionnaires published in the 1990s, which cover all the major religions.

It is true that there is an immense variety of religious beliefs, when religion is defined as any kind of non-secular attitude. Yet, if the myriad different religions can be classified into a few world religions, then one may research the outcomes of religious creed in a parsimonious manner. Another approach to the study of civilizations is to link them up with time or the lingering relevance of major historical legacies. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the analysis of civilizations where we will connect it with religion in particular as the promoter of secular outcomes.

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Chapter 5

Civilizations and the Major Types of Religion

Introduction

One of the most well-known social science theories links the type of religion with profound practical consequences. It argues that one of the great world religions has a logic built into its system of beliefs and values which, when put into practice, works itself out in social consequences of huge civilizational significance. In addition, it claims that none of the other world religions has the same core of ideas, which promote economic development par préférence. We are, of course, referring to Weber’s theory of Protestantism and capitalism (Weber, 1904). Weber’s analysis of the major world religions is distributed through several places in his work. On the one hand, there is his general statement of the sociology of religion in Economy and Society, but there are also monographs on Protestantism, ancient Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism as well as Confucianism (but not Islam), as well as brief remarks scattered throughout other works.

In his empirical inquiries Weber relied on the knowledge available about these world religions at that time. Although he read this secondary literature extremely carefully, as time has passed, it has been argued that his empirical descriptions have become partly outdated. Nevertheless, he did set the theoretical focus on which later studies into religions have been conducted. Thus, he had a string of influence on the inquiry into the world religions, with scholars always asking ‘Was Weber right or wrong?’. However, we ask, on the contrary: ‘How could we evaluate this theory today, making it relevant for understanding not only history but also the present?’

It should be explicitly admitted that the Weber thesis was launched in order to explain historically the occidental advantage in relation to other civilizations. But, we ask, can it be applied to today’s differences in outcomes? For instance, economic growth in South-east Asia in the second half of the twentieth century has stimulated a debate about the connections between religion and development. One could obtain a perspective on this question, if one starts from Weber’s well-known model which links Protestantism with affluence through the impact of this religion on economic ethics. Examining the evidence about economic outcomes conceived in a broad sense, however, one finds little evidence of the occurrence of the Weberian mechanism today. Instead the religions that Weber rejected – that

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is, Buddhism and Confucianism – have been very much connected with economic growth. The distinctive characteristic of Protestantism is that it stands strong in countries with human rights – a link that Weber never identified.

One way to inquire into whether ‘Culture Matters’ is to establish whether there are various configurations of outcomes connected with the persistence of one world religion over another. Weber’s model may be interpreted as a theory about a very special connection in history – the joint occurrence of Protestantism and capitalism in Northern Europe and North America. Protestantism gave birth to, or promoted, capitalism, argues Weber, but he never claims that Protestantism will continue to produce economic develop- ment, in this part of the world or in any other part, when transplanted into it. Perhaps Protestantism did once have this developmental impact but now, in the early twenty-first century, this connection no longer holds. Either Protestantism may have lost its edge due to secularization or other factors which also stimulate development are at work. Such an interpretation would save the theory but at the cost of limiting it to the understanding of the past. We would, of course, still want to search for a theory about religion and its outcomes that would be sufficiently general to also encompass present conditions.

The World Religions

Throughout history, religion has been a powerful source of cultural diversity, and it remains today one of the principal vehicles of cultural identification. In the eyes of the virtuosi, religion may be seem to be preoccupied with abstract matters with little bearing on day-to-day life – for example, deliverance from sin, salvation and hidden powers. However, to the ordinary man and woman religious behaviour has a practical significance, as it gives very detailed prescriptions about how to act or interact with people. Although secularization has certainly mitigated the relevance of religion, the world religions are still strong enough to give countries or entire subcontinents different cultural identities (cf. Haynes, 1998).

Let us search for ample evidence for the occurrence of religious effects. Macro outcomes may be a function of religious creed – that is, which world religion prevails – but what is the impact of religion within a country when the religious structure is heterogeneous? We wish to elucidate what happens within a country when different religious families meet, as well as examining the social, economic and political consequences of the world religions when they prevail in a country as a dominant creed.

A divided society or religious structure is typical of countries where two or more of the world religions have met and confronted each other without a resolution one way or the other. All the countries of the world are, in one sense, religiously heterogeneous, because even in a country where one of the world religions prevails there is bound to exist a variety of traditions and

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sects, confronting each other but yet belonging to the same world religion. This is one kind of religious heterogeneity that we will have in mind here. In another sense, however, only countries in which different major religious creeds separate the population into compact groups – be these Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus, Protestants or Catholics, Orthodox or atheists – have a divided religious structure. The ongoing process of secularization will either almost inevitably diminish religious conflict within societies or, conversely, reinforce the tensions between non-religious and religious people. It is only when secularization results in religious indifference that religious tensions cool down, as, for instance, in the Netherlands.

The inquiry into religious heterogeneity or a divided religious structure below will follow the same pattern used in Chapter 4 when dealing with ethnic structure. First, we test the hypothesis that countries with a great deal of religious fragmentation differ in terms of outcomes from countries with little religious fragmentation. Second, we examine regions within one country where the various regions display different religious creed in order to find out what impact religion may have on the support for political parties. Third we will inquire into the impact of religion on micro-level outcomes or individual behaviour.

Civilizations

From an overview article in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences by C. Brinkmann (1930), it is evident that the study of civilizations had already achieved considerable results during the interwar years. In this article a number of features of civilizations are identified and the question of advance and decay of civilizations is raised explicitly – the cycle theory of civilizations. The author places the study of civilizations with cultural history (Alfred Weber) and the new social sciences emerging around 1900.

S. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilisations (1996) reintroduced the concept of a civilization into political discourse. His argument is that distinct civilizations do exist and that they matter a good deal for politics. Listing nine major civilizations – the occidental, Latin American, the African, the Islamic, the Chinese, the Hindu, the Orthodox, the Buddhist and the Japanese civilizations – he deals mainly with the foreign policy questions that the interaction of these civilizations raises. This is an important, but limited, angle from which to analyse the impact of such cultures as civilizations. Civilizations may matter for more than questions of peace and war; they may also matter, for instance, in relation to democracy and socioeconomic development.

In the Huntington classification religion is obviously one of the criteria for identifying a civilization, but it is combined with other features, such as historical legacy (occidentalism, Latin-Americanism) or nationalism (for example, Japanese civilization) or a mere geographical criterion (for example,

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Africa). Once one starts mixing criteria on what is to count as a civilization, then there is hardly any limit to how many civilizations may be identified. Civilizations, as realms of culture, may be identified in different ways but, in our view, they are profoundly associated with the major world religions. Let us first discuss alternative suggested classifications of civilizations before we make use of the Weber system for analysing the major religions of the world and their outcomes.

The concept of a civilization was discussed in Chapter 1. It has a common core, with the concept of culture meaning something that has been accomplished or something developed: ‘an advanced stage or system of social development’ (Oxford English Dictionary). One key feature that separates the concept of civilization from that of an ethnic group is the group or the compactness of the group which carries the civilization. As a civilization is the common property of more than one people, it can never be highly compact. Some civilizations – for example the occidental or Christian civilization comprise more than ten peoples or nations: ‘those people of the world regarded as having this (advanced stage)’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Another important characteristic of civilizations as a kind of community is that they relate somehow to religion and religious identity.

Let us quote from a few definitions in order to see how different scholars have pinned down the characteristics that distinguish these special kinds of community labelled ‘civilisations’:

Civilization is generally used so as to include indiscriminately three distinct factors, namely (1) intellectual and technical progress, (2) achievements in the development of community life and of governmental institutions, and (3) cultural expressions of what is traditionally called the ‘soul’, as distinct from the ‘intellect’, in religious phenomena, in the arts, or in any other manner. (Brecht, 1967, p. 348)

Brecht’s definition qualifies the two features laid down above – namely achievements by a social group – by requiring that a civilization consist not only of technical accomplishments but also of developments in the area of soul. He stresses compactness, requiring not only common community life but also shared governmental institutions, which seems contestable. Civilization and state are different kinds of phenomenon.

Taking a more religious slant, Sorokin presents a list of civilizations that not only have existed but also persist today:

Let us now turn to a more thorough examination of the types of culture mentality, selecting these not from among individuals and small groups, but largely from the vast and long-enduring psychosocial systems established by the great historical religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Confucianism, and others. (Sorokin, 1957, p. 43)

In line with our approach to civilizations, Sorokin opposes small groups with long-enduring psychosocial systems, defining civilizations as large-scale

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communities with a medium or low level of compactness, in contradistinction to ethnic communities.

Civilizations may thus be understood as large-scale cultural systems developing over time. This is basically the standpoint of Sorokin who distinguished between ideational, sensate, idealistic and mixed systems of culture. To him, the vast cultural systems consist of language, science, philosophy, religion, the fine arts, ethics and law, as well as the systems of applied technology, economics and politics. But besides these most general cultural systems there are larger cultural unities or cultural supersystems. Each such supersystem is based on certain major premises or certain ultimate principles, the development of which makes up its total so-called ideology (Sorokin, 1966, pp. 22–24).

To us, the general cultural phenomena that Sorokin speaks of do not constitute civilizations in and of themselves, as these aspects of culture enter, in various forms, into civilizations. A civilisation is more concrete than the abstract expressions of culture such as language or technology. Sorokin goes on to state:

The investigators seem also to agree that these civilisations, or cultural supersystems, like deep cultural undercurrents, largely determine most of the surface ripplings of the sociocultural ocean: the life, organisation, and functions of smaller groups and cultural systems, the mentality and behaviour of individuals, and a multitude of concrete historical events, trends, and processes. (Sorokin, 1966, p. 177)

Sorokin is here advancing a strong ‘culture matters’ thesis, which needs empirical confirmation.

We here wish to link up with the concept of a civilization as employed in the study of history. Historians such as Toynbee have stressed the relevance of historical legacies for the formation of different civilizations around the world. He originally distinguished 26 civilizations, but identified six types existing in the 1950s: Western, Russian, Islamic, Hindu, Chinese and primitive civilizations. He states:

Societies of this species are commonly called civilizations, to distinguish them from primitive societies which are also ‘intelligible fields of study’ and which form another, in fact the other, species within this genus. Our twenty-one societies must, therefore, have one specific feature in common in the fact that they alone are in the process of civilization. (Toynbee, 1987, p. 35)

Anthropologists may not agree with historians about which cultures are civilizations, especially if the latter stress their degree of advancement as the criterion. The study of civilizations among the major anthropologists in the twentieth century concentrated on cultures that historians have labelled ‘primitive’, but in-depth analyses often showed that a few non-Western civilizations had achieved a high level of development, although not entirely

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in accordance with the Western criteria (Kuper, 1996; Kottak, 2000). Also, primitive civilizations are, after all, civilizations which call for a cultural approach in order to understand them or their logic.

Geographers have also shown an interest in identifying civilizations or ‘culture realms’ as they may term them. Common to these culture realms was that they ‘all had their elaborate ethical or religious ideologies’ (Broek and Webb, 1968, p. 188). Thus, for instance, Broek identifies eight culture realms, based on a mixture of criteria: Occidental, Main Islamic, Indic, East Asian, South-east Asian, Meso-African and Southern Pacific.

Let us here present an overview of these civilization classifications in terms of the population distribution for the twentieth century. Displayed in Table 5.1 are the population distributions for the civilization concepts suggested by Toynbee, Broek and Huntington. As stated above, Huntington identified nine contemporary civilizations as of the late twentieth century, whereas Broek has eight and Toynbee only six civilizations.

We wish to point out two things in respect to Table 5.1 – one conceptual and another empirical. First, the conceptual categories suggested for the major types of modern civilizations are close to each other, as all three identify a Western (occidental), an Islamic, an Indian as well as a Chinese type of civilization. The Indian and Chinese civilizations appear to be ethnically-based, but in reality it is religion (Hinduism, Buddhism– Confucianism) that constitutes the foundation. The same may be said in relation to the Russian civilization (Christian Orthodox). The concepts of a Latin American civilization or an African civilization are interesting, but it is not clear what, besides geographical location, constitutes the characteristics of the culture or civilization in question. Here, historical heritage is probably the relevant consideration. However, it is impossible not to question this classification as harbouring a Western bias. Could one not speak of an Inuit civilization or a Tibetan one, for instance? Furthermore, the standard image of a homogenous ‘African’ civilization is also questionable, as Northern Africa has a different cultural heritage than Southern or Eastern Africa, or even Central Africa.

Second, it is obvious from these three mappings that various civilizations in many ways converge or overlap empirically, reflecting the fact that the Western/occidental civilizations tend to go together as is also the case with what is called the African/meso-African/primitive civilizations. One observes also that the so-called Western civilization is declining in terms of numbers whereas the Islamic civilization is increasing. The same is true of the Buddhist civilization (declining) when compared with the Hindu civilization (expanding).

Although these three classifications of still existing civilizations converge considerably, the list could easily be expanded. In the Western category one could identify several civilizations such as the French, the British, the German, the Italian and so forth. The same applies to the enormously encompassing categories of Islamic and African civilizations. Why not focus

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Civilizations and the Major Types of Religion 145

Table 5.1 Major civilizations: population distribution in the twentieth century as percentages of total population

Toynbee Civilization 1900 1950 1980 1990 1997

Primitive 4.6 6.4 7.6 8.4 9.1 Hindu 20.0 21.3 23.5 24.3 24.9 Islamic 6.3 6.9 8.5 9.5 10.3 Chinese 33.8 28.3 28.1 27.4 26.7 Russian 10.0 9.4 7.6 6.9 6.3 Western 25.2 27.7 24.7 23.5 22.7

Broek Civilization 1900 1950 1980 1990 1997

Meso-African 4.1 5.6 6.7 7.5 8.0 Indic 16.5 16.7 18.3 19.0 19.6 Islamic 6.7 7.4 9.0 10.1 11.0 South-east Asian 5.0 6.8 8.1 8.4 8.6 East Asian 32.9 27.2 26.7 25.8 25.1 Occidental 36.0 36.3 31.2 29.2 27.7

Huntington Civilization 1900 1950 1980 1990 1997

African 4.6 6.4 7.7 8.5 9.2 Hindu 16.5 16.7 18.3 19.0 19.6 Islamic 9.5 10.5 12.6 13.7 14.4 Orthodox 7.3 7.0 5.3 4.8 4.3 Buddhist 4.2 5.4 5.1 4.9 4.8 Sinic 31.3 25.6 26.4 25.9 25.5 Latin American 3.9 6.3 8.0 8.3 8.3 Western 22.7 22.1 16.7 15.0 14.0

Sources: Based on Toynbee (1987); Broek and Webber (1968, pp. 187, 189); Huntington (1996, pp. 26–27). Some adjustments to the classification of these civilizations have been made. Population figures are from Barrett (1982) and Encyclopaedia Britannica (1998).

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directly on the key concept in most of these mentioned civilizations – namely, religion?

The Weber Approach

Does civilization matter for real-world outcomes? Yes, to a considerable extent, stated Weber in 1904 when inquiring into economic outcomes. When he broadened the analysis to cover the economic outcomes of the world religions, he came to the same conclusion. Let us look at his argument in detail.

The study of the social consequences of religion made its breakthrough with the publication in 1904 of ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’. However, we will extend Weber’s focus on the economic consequences of religious beliefs to an analysis of their political implications. In all studies of religious behaviour there are two alternative perspectives which need to be balanced: understanding the main ideas – the content of a religion; and theorizing the practical consequences of a religion for society – their social, economic and political outcomes.

The comparative study of religion has resulted in a few standard distinctions concerning the varieties of religious creed that are almost universally referred to. First, one distinguishes between atheism and the major world religions, although recognizing also the occurrence of animism. Second, one distinguishes between the world religions which may vary in number. The first distinction between non-believers and religious believers has become increasingly problematical, as it is not easy to tell whether an individual is truly a religious practitioner. The second distinction (or distinctions) concerning the number and nature of the world religions is a matter of contention among scholars.

Which religions constitute civilizations? If one wishes to allow for many religions, then there is hardly any limit to the number of religions one may wish to identify. However, if the purpose is to classify religions into families constituting civilizations, then one would at least distinguish between three major religious worlds. Thus, we have the following:

1 Hindu–Buddhist world: India, which is Hinduist, and all the countries where Buddhism has a strong position, often in combination with another religion such as Confucianism, Taoism or Shintoism.

2 Muslim world: all countries with a majority of the population adhering to the Qur’anic system of belief – whether Sunni or Shia. It may be divided into the Arab world and the non-Arab world – an ethnic dimension.

3 Christian world: Catholic, Protestant and Greek Orthodox countries, also including Judaism as the forerunner of Christianity.

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This elementary classification says nothing about what separates these three families nor anything about how compact they tend to be – an immense task for various types of research. Let us briefly describe the main differences between these three religious families, although this must be in the form of sketch based on a limited set of sources. The presentation of these three families – the Christian traditions, the Hindu and Buddhist traditions and Islam – is based on the separation between two basic approaches to understanding belief systems: the essentialist and the relativist perspective.

In the essentialist approach to religion, the emphasis is placed on its core ideas. The core of a religion is a set of beliefs or values which are in some sense fundamental to the religion in question, at least in the eyes of its virtuosi. It may be a controversial task to specify this core, but often religions have key sources from which one may distil its core beliefs or values. However, one may have to be content with laying down a variety of core interpretations of a religion since these will have been interpreted differently at various times. For instance, Christianity received a number of authoritative interpretations when it was established as a state religion, but this did not prevent it from later splitting into several core sets of beliefs and values. The same process has taken place within Islam.

In the relativist approach to religion, religion is not seen as a coherent system of beliefs or values but as an active force in social life. This approach models how religion affects, or is affected by, other social systems. Religious beliefs and values are not seen as time-independent responses to the eternal questions of mankind but, instead, as entering into the particular circumstances of time and space, reacting to social forces and also influencing them. Thus, when religion becomes entangled with mundane contingencies, it may be used by individuals in their struggle to maintain power or, under charismatic leaders, may become a revolutionary force, changing major practices.

The interesting thing about Weber’s approach to religion is that he combines the two perspectives – the dogmatic and the functionalist. Thus, he claimed immense social consequences from the nature of religious belief, but he also took great pains to understand the logic of a religion.

Three World Religions: Alternative Classifications

Of course, if one were to name only a few religious families, then one might not necessarily pick the ones mentioned above. Another possible classification would be the following dichotomy derived from Weber’s concepts: Hinduism/Zoroastroism. Under Zoroastroism one would then count all the religions which are extra-worldly: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Under Hinduism one could place all the religions that are inner-worldly: the religions of India and their offsprings in Southern and South-east Asia. Which classification is the correct one depends on the basic criterion or viewpoint that one chooses to apply.

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It cannot be overemphasized that a number of different criteria can be employed for the identification of religious families. There is no single best classification. Thus, for instance we have: eschatological religions/non- eschatological religions, depending on whether the religions in question are based on the idea of a paradise, or life after death. Or we might focus on grace: salvation religions/non-salvation religions, reflecting whether a religion concentrates on the deliverance from sin. Or another dichotomy could be: dualistic/non-dualistic religions, depending on whether or not there is a conception of two ultimate forces opposing each other. Finally, one could use a distinction such as: institutional religions/non-institutional religions, as some religions emphasize moral rules more than religious rituals.

These are all doctrinal classifications. From a sociological perspective, religions may also be analysed very differently by various alternative distinctions. All religions have a separation of their adherents. Thus, one finds religious elites or sects on the one hand and the population at large on the other hand. Religious belief may differ tremendously between these two sections, even within one and the same religion. It has been argued that to understand a religion, one needs to focus on a certain group, the ascetic individuals, who drive the inner logic of a religion to its extreme (Weber, 1978) – the virtuosi. One may also look at how a religion emerges – that is, its connection with a specific script or the efforts of an actual instigator of religious beliefs – the prophets.

There are yet more distinctions involved. How consistent are religious beliefs? Is religion ecstasy or legal prescriptions reflecting extraordinary or ordinary life? Is the core of religion about God or gods, or is the religion a different form of organization – churches? This is not the forum to attempt to answer these difficult questions in the comparative analysis of religion (Hamilton, 1995), so we will restrict ourselves to the question of the impact of religion on politics and socioeconomic development.

According to Weber, religious thought is always somehow linked to the practical problem of personal identity from a cultural point of view (Weber, 1993, 2001). The crucial idea is that of finding the path to a correct way of life – that is, a way of living that is in agreement with the requirements of righteousness. People may change from wrong to right through grace or through work and adherence to the law. All religions have consequences for the conduct of behaviour in daily life by offering an ethical challenge: you live like this, but righteousness entails that!

Despite what has been said about the difficulty in creating typologies which cover the immense variety of religious creeds, we will retain the simple threefold classification above. Let us make a brief overview of the three families without following in detail their historical evolution and mentioning some themes discussed in comparative research from the outcome perspective. The first world religion to emerge is that of Brahmanism, often attributed to the so-called Aryans, said to have conquered Northern India sometime after 2000 BC (Peuch, 1970b; Peuch, 1976a).

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Hinduism and Buddhism

Analyses of Hinduism have emphasised its social consequences – the legitimation of the Indian caste system with its complex, but immutable, social distinctions between groups and consequent negative consequences for society. It is generally considered as having originated in the needs of a warrior group, the Aryans, to consolidate their grip upon Northern India after the conquest – a functional hypothesis. However, the content of Hinduism as a religion has also attracted much interest, given its very special cosmology and mythology, as well as its intricate rituals.

In its main version, Hinduism is polytheist, including three great gods – Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva – as well as a large number of small gods. There is no one single revelation source, but instead a number of sources in Sanskrit – namely, the Veda texts, dating back to before 1500 BC. The key idea in Hinduism is that of the ‘Wheel of Life’, which may be interpreted much more deterministically than implied by the polytheism of the religion. The notion of a basic force in the universe – karma – in combination with the idea of reincarnation – samsara – has formed the basis for an entirely different development of Hinduism towards atheism or pantheism. Actually, Hinduism is a religion that covers a broad spectrum of diverse movements, including the non-violence notion or ahimsa. Characteristic for all forms of Hinduism is the idea of a delivery from karma, or blind necessity, by means of some forms of the yoga method as practised by the virtuosi.

However, the main version of Hinduism has traditionally focused on the position of the Brahmans, or priests. Very much protecting the survival of the cast-society, the Brahmans provided themselves with the leader positions besides the Kshatriyas (warriors) and the Vaisyas (merchants), whereas the rest of society contained the immense numbers of the casteless, structured hierarchically into various groups down to the lowest of them all, the Pariahs.

One perplexing aspect in Hinduism is not so much the variety of creeds and sects, but the non-existence of a formally instituted church. There are many temples with lots of gods and rituals, sacraments, but there is nothing similar to a priesthood as in Christianity. How are the temples in Hinduism supported? Hinduism seems today to encompass a myriad small gods, worshipped almost in the apotheostic form – that is, by offering small gifts in exchange for personal success. Yet, Hinduism retains its core focus on the collection of myths in its chief texts, dating from almost 1000 years ago. While its mythology describes a world of very active gods and heroes, at the same time there is no master plan for how or to where the wheel of human life moves.

Another startling aspect with Hinduism is the total rejection of all other world religions. There is no apostasy, no proselytism and no heresy, because Hinduism is only a concern for Indians, and Indians who adhere to Hinduism cannot change their religion. This belief in the immense credibility and validity of Hinduism as the only correct way of life for Indians stands

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in stark contrast to the variability of Hinduism as displayed in all its diverse manifestations. Hinduism is mainly concentrated to India, but there are pockets of Hindu believers in other parts of South-east Asia such as, for instance, Bali in Indonesia.

By far the most important branch to emerge from traditional Hinduism has been Buddhism. This is the export version of Hinduism, conquering a number of countries outside India. Inside India Buddhism was practically wiped out around 1 000 AD, as in 1193 the last stronghold of Buddhism was destroyed in India by forces adhering to traditional Hinduism, who could not accept the basic atheist tone of ancient Buddhism. Whether or not Buddhism involves a principled rejection of the caste system has been much debated but, in any case, members of the casteless groups can also embark upon the road that leads to nirvana – the new idea in Buddhism vis à vis Hinduism.

Buddhism is expressed most visibly in the numerous monks who attempt to live up to the ethics of their Master, Siddhartha, who lived at about 500 BC. Since the monks without a Church (virtuosi) are such a dominant feature in Buddhism and all people can become monks, it is easy to overlook another aspect of Buddhism – namely, its strict ethical nature, communicating a way of life to ordinary people participating in society. Mainstream Buddhist ethics is not the ethics of monkhood, but a practical set of maxims about how to live in purity and not to go astray by resorting to artificial solutions such as drinking and so on.

From a doctrinal point of view, Buddhism may be considered to be an atheist Hinduism with the key concept of nirvana, thus emphasizing pessimism or ‘Weltschmerz’ – karma being a force of selfishness, greed and endless pursuit. However, the sharp consistency of the message of Siddhartha, as forthcoming in the available sources about his teachings through his life as a vagabond, stands in contrast to the enormous adaptability of Buddhism to other creeds when it expanded outside India and entered into symbiosis with, for example, Confucianism in China and Shintoism in Japan.

Buddhism has spread out over a vast area from Sri Lanka and Tibet to Indonesia, entering into countless alliances with other creeds, diversifying itself to an extent that forces one to raise the question of what remains of its core today. One speaks of two main developmental trends: the ‘Little Wagon’ and the ‘Big Wagon’. When, as in one form of Buddhism, one starts to count so-called Buddhisattvas as some form of godlike phenomena, then Buddhism loses much of its soul and becomes more like a religion of apotheosis. Tibetan Buddhism has retained more of a doctrinal coherence, although its special adherence to the idea of the lamas in the form of a Dalai Lama makes it different from original Buddhism.

Perhaps the socially most important form of Buddhism is its combination with the main Chinese religion, Confucianism. The ethical system introduced by Confucius around 500–400 BC is basically an atheist ethical religion, playing on the opposition between passive versus active: yang and yin. One may even assert that Confucianism is more ethics and less religion, as it

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regards respect and obedience towards worldly institutions such as the family and the government as the means towards individual harmony. Completely different is Taoism, or the Chinese form of mysticism, created by Lao-Tse. But this has also gone well in combination with Buddhism, testifying to the plasticity of that religion.

Speaking of Hinduism and Buddhism, one must point out the immense difference between the doctrinal core of a religion and the mass beliefs towards that religion. In an essentialist perspective on religion, religion is seen as a more or less coherent system of symbols, being the patrimony of an exclusive group, the religious elite (virtuosi). Conversely, in the relativistic perspective, religion becomes a far more diffuse entity, comprising a set of ideas with a minimum of consistency between them.

When one speaks about the consequences for the economy or the polity of religious creed, then it is vital to be clear about whether one is referring to the religion of the ascetics or the religion of the general public. This question is highly relevant in relation to the Weber model, to be evaluated below, for instance with regard to his understanding of the social consequences of Hinduism and Buddhism. Thus, the core of Buddhism, focusing on the notions of karma and nirvana seemed anti-social to Weber, but he did not take into account their teachings for the ordinary man, which emphasize control, frugality and thrift (Weber, 1996).

On the surface, Hinduism and Buddhism seem to be polytheistic religions. They tend to degenerate into an instrumental relationship between the worshipper and a certain deity who brings material advantages against sacrifices. The myriad gods or goddesses in Hinduism, as well as the immense number of Bodhisattvas in Buddhism, might seem reminiscent of Greek and Roman religion with its polytheism and instrumentalism. Yet, in its core beliefs, the Eastern religions are, as Glasenapp stressed, characterized by strict determinism adhering to the idea of life as a wheel portraying the profoundly circular path of events (Glasenapp, 1963). In order to arrive at an evolutionary or teleological conception of life as having a start and an end we have to turn to the Western religions – that is, the religions that somehow seem to have emerged from the teachings of the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, whose actual time of living has not been confirmed, but is thought to be between 1000 and 500 BC.

Judaism and Christianity

With the religion of Abraham, Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament, we have the first of three religions that adhere to the format of Zoroastrianism. Thus, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have the same basic properties, being eschatological, dualistic, monotheistic, prophetic, messianic and chiliastic (Glasenapp, 1957).

In Judaism, especially during the periods of hardship (Babylonian prison- hood), the ideas of one sole mighty God as creator of the world (Jahweh),

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of the struggle between good and evil, of the resurrection of the dead, and of the ultimate salvation of the chosen people are developed to the maximum. These ideas entail the problem of predestination, or how to make sure that one will end up in heaven rather than hell (Peuch, 1972a), which tends to be solved by the emphasis on the observation of a large number of behaviour maxims laid down in the Torah and interpreted in the Talmud. Yet, the most distinctive feature in Judaism is the idea that almighty God – Jahweh – is first and foremost the God of a specifically chosen people, the Jewish people.

In the New Testament, according to the interpretation by St Paul, mankind replaces the Jewish people as the end of the drama, the death of Jesus Christ as the son of God being the turning point in the struggle between good and evil, paving the way for an eternal life after death for those who believe in Him. Grace can only be had by belief in Jesus Christ as St Paul laid down in his extremely influential Epistles. With Jesus Christ, the warrior-like features of Jahweh are transformed into Agape or altruism – that is, the Christian love for the miserable, unfortunate and poor (Nygren, 1982). One could perhaps claim that Allah is more reminiscent of Jahweh than of God, according to St Paul. We will speak more of the various types of Christianity, especially the Protestant forms, when we discuss the Weber theory below (Peuch, 1972a, 1972b).

Islam

Perhaps more than any other religion, the analysis of Islam has focused on religion and politics. Why is this so? It is often stated that Islam makes no distinction between the secular and the spiritual, but this separation has been problematic in other religions too, as, for instance, in Augustine’s theory of Civitate Dei. In any case, the strong institutionalization in Sunni Islam suggests that efforts have been made to routinize an extremely dynamic religious creed, creating a kind of boundary between the sacred and the profane (Peuch, 1976a).

Two basic approaches to the analysis of Islam may be distinguished: high culture or essentialist approaches (Gellner, 1983b) and sociological or relativistic approaches (Ayubi, 1991; Zubaida, 1993). In the essentialist approach, one is preoccupied with the contents of the religion – that is, with interpretations based on a hermeneutical understanding. One poses questions sush as the following: ‘What kind of religion is Islam?’, ‘What are its basic beliefs?’, ‘What is the core of the Koran?’ Conversely, in the relativistic approach, one examines either the sources of support for Islam or one researches the social, economic and political consequences of Islam – called its ‘functions’. Thus, one ask such questions as: ‘Why Islamic fundamentalism?’, ‘How can Islam be used in political struggles?’, ‘Which groups endorse what kind of Islam for which reasons?’ In relation to the problem of where Islamic fundamentalism comes from doctrinally, as well as why it receives strong

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backing today, one often sees these two perspectives cross each other. Let us develop the essentialist perspective a little further.

In the essentialist framework there are a few basic sources of Islam: the Qur’an; the Hadith, or the deeds of the Prophet; the Ijma (consensus); the Qiyas (analogy), and Ijtihad or individual thought or ra’y – that is, individual opinion. Together, they form the foundation of Shari’a law as developed by the figh (jurisprudence). By the beginning of the tenth century AD ‘the gate of ijtihad was closed’ and the rule of taqlid (emulation, imitation, tradition) was formulated so that doctrine might not be derived independently from the original sources (of which the Hadith is particularly amorphous), but rather through the teachings of one of the four recognized schools. In the Sunni tradition, one has little or no space of charismatic interpretation by religious leaders.

The Sunni version of Islam may be viewed as both highly political and as a depolitization at the same time. It institutionalizes Islam to a very broad extent, but at the same time it limits the role of religion to the conduct of specific things – namely, the strict observance of a number of behaviour duties. These include the Five Pillars: (1) profession of faith or shahada; (2) prayer or sulat; (3) almsgiving or zakat; (4) fasting or sanm and (5) pilgrimage or haj. The so-called sacred places and days are clearly laid down, as for instance when to visit the Kaba in Mecca.

Yet, the Sunni version of Islam has been far from the dominant version, as its strictly legalistic tone has provoked a search for other kinds of religious experience. Thus, we find sufism and the dervishes but, more importantly, the challenge from the Shi’a interpretation, which is basically a charismatic version of Islam stressing the role of leaders, so-called imams or, more generally, maddhis.

From the essentialist perspective Shi’a Islam is based on the full recognition of Ali and his descendants. Ali married Fatima (Mohammad’s daughter) and was elected as the fourth caliph – as the last true caliph. Shi’a in its principal version recognizes thus far 12 imams, the last (Muhammad) disappearing in the ninth century. The death of Ali in 661 is a key date in the Shi’a version of Islam. Other versions of Shi’a allow for fewer imams than 12 – the Alaouites and the Isma’ilis.

The intersection between religion and politics takes place in Islam at the institution of the caliph, who was both a spiritual and worldly leader. Understandably, there have been numerous conflicts about correct succession – that is, controversies about the election of caliphs – since the death of the Prophet. Changes in the nature and location of the caliphate have reflected the ascension and dethronement of various dynasties in the Arab world. The struggle between groups to control the caliphate as well as the struggle between various caliphates has dominated Arab history right up until the caliphate was more or less abolished under the Ottoman Empire and with the eviction of the Moors in Spain. Today, the Saudi King is the protector of the holy places, but there is nothing corresponding to the caliph. Formally, the

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caliphate was eliminated by Kemal Atatürk in 1923, resulting in the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1927 as a counterreaction to restore it.

There is a perplexing question concerning Islam: is there a church in this religion? The religious places, the mosques, are state property and are operated by state officials. The Western concept of a church independent from the state is completely outside of the doctrine of Islam. In Islam, all the Muslims are considered as a community, the Umma, which constitutes a body of believers. They are to be served by the mullahs or the religious leaders. The priests are sometimes called sheikhs.

The relativistic perspective on Islam is entirely a different matter. It asks questions about its sources and functions. What are the social, economic, and political origins of Islamic belief? What are the consequences of Islam for democracy, state stability and affluence, as well as income inequalities? Thus, in the relativistic perspective, Islamic fundamentalism is typically seen as a form of alienation or a search for a palliative for counteracting a sense of exclusion in domestic or international politics. Thus, it responds more to a quest for participation than to doctrinal reasons.

The distinction between essentialist and relativist perspectives is highly applicable for the understanding of Islam. We now proceed to examine a theory that argues from an essential perspective to a relativistic perspective, deriving the social consequences of the world religions from their doctrinal core, as understood by religious elites. Strangely enough, Weber did not cover Islam in his grandiose exposé of the world religions, at least not to a considerable extent.

Beverley Milton-Edwards offers a timely introduction to the politics of Islam in Islam and Politics in the Contemporary World (2004). She has prepared herself well for a penetrating analysis that is very much up-to-date. The world of Islam and Moslem societies is the major Non-Western civilization today and its immenseness defies any one single comprehension. This book focuses exclusively on the politics of the Koranic countries, covering Islam and the state, protest behaviour, the democracy debate, and the violent processes of change in Moslem societies, including revolutions and counter-revolutions. Milton-Edwards stresses the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism with its dire consequences for the Moslem countries and the rest of the World. She has clearly seen how the teachings of Mawdudi and Qutb offered the solution for people searching for a real and complete alternative to Arab traditionalism, the opportunism of the modernising élites, and Anglo-Saxon hegemony. She states: ‘In conclusion, there is evidence that the religious fundamentals of Islam are incompatible with modern secular liberal democracy’, (p. 116).

I fully agree, if Faraj is the interpreter of the Koranic fundamentals in his Jihad – The Absent Obligation. I completely disagree, if giant Averroes is the interpreter in On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy. Islam has

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many faces: the mujahideen – a religion of warriors, the waqf – a religion of monumental architecture, the fiqh – jurisprudence and legal order of more than a billion people, the ulama – the virtuosi without a clear role limitation, the umma – social heterogeneity searching in vain for compactness, and the caliphe – the unhappy solution to the problem of charismatic authority.

It is understandable that Islam and Politics concentrates upon the Arab world. However, we must not forget that the largest Muslim society is actually in India, with a large minority of almost 300 million Moslems. The status of democracy in the non-Arab part of the Moslem civilisation is not equally contested as in the Arab section. Why? Countries like Malaysia, Mauritius, Bangladesh, Bosnia, and India are more democratic than Arab countries like Tunisia, Syria, and the Emirates. Milton-Edwards offers a lot of information about the nature of Arab politics, but she does not bring out the factor which could be the missing link between religion and retardation in the Moslem world; namely tribalism. This is a phenomenon that is as pervasive in the Moslem world as it is badly understood, even by experts on ethnicity. Theoretically, Islam should undo tribal affinities, constituting a world religion to which any ethnie may belong. In reality, the Moslem societies are organised along tribal sections to an extent that makes legal-rational authority precarious.

The position of women under Islam as well as Arab traditionalism needs to be more researched. Speaking of religion and politics in the Muslim world, one of the riddles of Islam is the place of the clergy in the Koranic state. It remains a puzzle how the ulama is paid, recruited, and controlled by government. The titles of the clergy are not the same in the different countries and their autonomy in relation to the state varies, too. What we need is an analysis of the funding and management of the core Koranic institutions, including the mosques, the priests, and the schools and universities.

Weber’s Theory of Religion

Weber’s theory about religion comprises several studies, some of which are collected in the three volumes of his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (1963–72), which appeared after his death in 1920. It contains numerous fragments of a theory about the economic implications of core religious beliefs, together with extensive comparative historical research, in order to confirm that the actual consequences of long-established religious beliefs are indeed what the theory predicts. Weber limits himself to looking at the economic aspects of the major world religions, in particular whether they further economic growth or economic rationality – that is, ‘die Wirtschaftlichen Konsequenzen der Weltreligionen’.

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Weber has a specific perspective when he looks at economic development, namely that of modern capitalism. Sustained processes of economic growth are engineered by capitalist processes, in which the characteristic feature is the means–end rational action on a grand scale, meaning that the capitalist is oriented towards mastering the world by means of huge enterprises that are bent to his or her short-term economic profits which are capitalized long-term in the form of worldly possessions. Thus, modern capitalism is rational and present-minded. Where could such an orientation originate considering the power of traditional modes of thinking in all of the ancient civilisations? Protestantism, suggested Weber in 1904.

His later comparative studies sought to confirm this theory about the developmental implications of Protestantism, when he undertook to examine at great length all the world religions except Islam. Most interestingly, he argued that Buddhism or Confucianism could not bring forward economic growth, at least not in the form of modern capitalism. Let us quote from that examination, because here he states in effect very clearly what is distinctive of puritan or ascetic Protestantism by comparing it with its opposite.

Weber explicitly rejects any positive connection between Buddhism and an ethic of economic behaviour. In fact, he claims that Buddhism as a set of religious beliefs excludes a spirit of capitalism. Examining various forms of Buddhism he states that Buddhism ‘wurde eine der grössten Missionsreligionen der Erde’ (Weber, 1972, p. 248), but he fails to see any real rational reason for that. To Weber, Buddhism is basically asocial:

Assurance of one’s state of grace, that is, certain knowledge of one’s own salvation is not sought through proving one’s self by any inner-worldly or extra-worldly action, by ‘work’ of any kind, but, in contrast to this, it is sought in a psychic state remote from activity. (Weber, 1996, p. 213)

And after having analysed how ‘[t]he specific asocial character of all genuine mysticism is here carried to its maximum’ (Weber, 1996, p. 213), he concludes that Buddhism is fundamentally ‘eine Mönchs-Religion’ and that ‘a rational economic ethic could hardly develop in this sort of religious order’ (Weber, 1996, p. 216). Considering the enormous economic success of the Buddhist countries in South-east Asia and mainland China after Weber’s lifetime, one must ask whether this analysis of Buddhism really covers the whole picture.

In relation to Confucianism Weber acknowledges that it is as rational as Puritanism, displaying ‘Nüchternheit’ (prudence) and ‘Sparsamkeit’ (thrift). The key difference is the internal drive of Puritanism and the external adaptation of Confucianism. Weber states:

But only the Puritan rational ethic with its supramundane orientation brought economic rationalism to its consistent conclusion. This happened merely because nothing was further from the conscious puritan intention. It happened because

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inner-worldly work was simply expressive of the striving for a transcendental goal. (Weber, 1964, p. 247)

Thus, the inner drive of Puritanism towards ‘rationale Beherrschung der Welt’ reflected its extra-worldly orientation – undoubtedly a complicated, if not paradoxical, explanation. In any case, Weber here identifies the two critical aspects of any religion in so far as they are relevant to his special perspective, namely ‘die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen’. In his view, these two dimensions of any religion – rationality versus irrationality and ‘Jenseits’ versus ‘Diesseits’ – explain why religions have developmental consequences. These two properties – rationality versus irrationality, on the one hand, and what is called ‘Diesseits’ (inner-worldliness) versus ‘Jenseits’ (extra-worldliness) on the other hand are combined in Figure 5.1 (Weber, 1963, pp. 237–75).

It is not difficult to find examples of all four kinds of religion, arising from combinations of the two critical aspects. Weber’s basic model is that a religious orientation of type I brings forward economic growth in the form of modern capitalism, although paradoxically such an ‘innerweltlich’ orientation ‘an sich nichts ferner lag’, as Weber admits (Weber, 1963. pp. 235–6). Extra-worldly religions with a so-called ‘ausserweltlich orientation’ are typically strongly eschatological, meaning that life on this earth is but a preparation for life after death, which is more real or true. But, even though it may have a rational attitude towards the mechanisms that govern life on earth, how can a religion with a strong Jenseits orientation foster something as mundane as economic growth or affluence? Can we make sense of the connection between religion and economic output without making use of Weber’s complicated explanation in terms of redemption and double predestination as in Calvinism, Puritanism and other Protestant sects?

Economic growth is the rise in output from production. On a long-term basis, it can only be brought about by savings being channelled into productive investments that increase the capital stock in society. Sustained economic growth is only feasible in a rational environment where people are oriented towards activity in this world. Thus, economic development would prosper from a belief system of type I. Which of the world religions come closest to type I?

Weber’s genius was that he knew that religions harbour a variety of beliefs, values and lifestyles. One and the same religion may appear in very different

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Rationality Irrationality

Inner-worldliness I II

Extra-worldliness III IV

Figure 5.1 Basic Weber orientations in all religions Lane, Jan-Erik, and Svante Ersson. Culture and Politics : A Comparative Approach, Routledge, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=438388. Created from apus on 2020-03-18 08:37:19.

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formations. For instance, taking Christianity, what are the core beliefs? Those of the layman or those of the virtuosi – for example, the monks or nuns or Aquinas, Luther or Calvin? Various trends can be found in all religions, some moving closer to rationality and Diesseits or Jenseits than others. Mysticism, asceticism, priesthood, personal piety and religious indifference are to be found in all of the world religions.

Weber in his Verstehen focused on the logic of core beliefs and the implications of these beliefs for action. Thus, not only did he show empirically that modern capitalism arose among people who happened to adhere to various branches of Puritanism (ascetic Protestantism) but he also claimed that the logic of Puritanism would entail or promote modern capitalism. However, in accomplishing both these objectives he had to make a transition from rational Jenseits to rational Diesseits although, admittedly, it does not actually seem to make much sense.

If one dares to make generalizations about the world religions, given their heterogeneity, then, with the exception of countries or regions where Islam is strong, there is one obvious candidate for type I – the combination of Buddhism and Confucianism that dominates South East Asia to-day. Although there are widely different forms of Buddhism, the combination with Confucianism seems to result in a religious belief system with a work ethic that would be eminently suitable for serving as the foundation for economic development.

Hinduism and Catholicism would have to be placed under irrationality, the first with a Diesseits bias and the second with a Jenseits bias. Islam is clearly rational and Jenseits, at least so in both its main orientations, Sunni and Shia, but not under Sufism. Judaism would belong to the same group, as there was always a clear connection between the two, also explicitly recognized in the Torahn. The classification may be expanded to include other religions like Taoism or various types of Protestantism, but the basic model must be that type I fosters economic growth. It has been argued that Weber’s thesis about the economic consequences of religious beliefs was merely a historical explanation. It answered the question that had puzzled many for a long time: why capitalism first in Western Europe? However, as Weber always emphasized the general implications of social science arguments, his thesis could be interpreted as a general theory about the social consequences of various religions.

We could apply the Weber theory to the religions of today in order to look for evidence of the effects of religions on economic development. This may not be doing justice to Weber, but the key question is still with us: does religion promote economic development? If so, which religion has the largest impact? Many would argue that Weber’s theory of religion concerns only the origins of modern capitalism. However, this leads to the confusing debate about what capitalism is and how modern capitalism differs from ancient or medieval capitalism – see the discussion between Weber and Sombart, for instance. Nevertheless, in whatever manner in which Weber is interpreted,

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it remains an urgent task to identify or clarify the outcomes of the world religions.

In the proposed new analysis which would also include the profound economic growth processes occurring after the Second World War, it may also be desirable to interpret development more broadly. Thus, we will include not only output or economic development, but also social develop- ment and political development, the former meaning quality of life or equality of living standards and the latter the implementation of civil and political rights (that is, democracy) as we have outlined in Chapter 2. But, in the empirical inquiry, we will first classify a number of countries according to the prevailing or dominant religious belief in that country.

Mapping the Major World Religions

As religious beliefs tend to be stable over time, if religion results in outcomes, then they will sooner or later be discovered. However, these consequences may not be immediately observable as soon as they begin to operate, however, if there are other factors at work which neutralize the development implications of religion, like, for instance, civil war. Thus, one should examine the outcomes of religious belief using long time spans.

Now, religious beliefs are not completely unchangeable. Over very long time periods one may observe fundamental changes in religious creed, including not only secularization but also the shift among broad population groups from one religion to another. The advance of Islam during the twentieth century, not only in terms of its geographical extension but also in terms of a heightened intensity of Islamic belief, is an example of change. What is the relative strength of the major world religions? Table 5.2 shows the number of countries where a majority of the population adheres to one creed in 1900 and 1994. The secularization trend is not well measured in this table though.

Among 150 countries, covering 98 per cent of the population on earth, most countries are either Christian, Muslim or Buddhist. The countries that practise Hinduism are not that numerous, but the number of Hindus is immense considering the size of India. There are far more Roman Catholic countries than Protestant or Orthodox Christian. The advance of Islam in the twentieth century is clearly shown in the table. In relation to some 150 countries of the world today, one may establish that the dominating religion in a country, or the religious creed that a majority of the population adheres to, has been the same one during the twentieth century in as many as 104 of these. The changing countries are those where Christianity has replaced traditionalism – 19 countries – or those where Islam has replaced traditionalism – eight countries – as well as those where Atheism has become dominant, as in communist countries or former communist countries or in countries where secularization has been extensive – five countries all in all. The country

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variation is so substantial that it must be possible to estimate whether various religions present different outcome configurations and perhaps, in the next step, test whether religion is the factor that matters for these outcomes.

Table 5.3 gives data on how large the world religions are in terms of the number of people who practise them. Note that secularization is a powerful trend in most countries, as the number of atheists/non religious has risen sharply.

Interestingly, the two expanding world religions are currently Islam and Roman Catholicism, especially the former. Remarkably, the number of Buddhists has declined dramatically, relatively speaking, and the Hindus are now more numerous than the Buddhists, reflecting the immense population growth in India. Also Protestantism has declined in relative size. The sharp relative decline of Buddhism reflects the spread of atheism in China and Japan, which may not be an irreversible trend, given the fact that one of the principal sources of atheism, namely communism, is losing its attraction worldwide. It is an open question whether atheism in former communist countries or communist China will recede to the advantage of religions such as Greek Orthodoxy (Russia) or Buddhism–Confucianism (China). The profound process of secularization, so often emphasized in social analysis of the twentieth century, has not affected two of the world religions, Hinduism or Islam, as it has mainly concerned Christianity, especially Protestantism, or Buddhism.

Table 5.4 shows the distribution of the world religions according to continent. Again, one notes the profound process towards secularization, or

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Table 5.2 World religions: number of countries

World Religions 1900 1994

Christian 66 78 Roman Catholic 38 46 Protestant 13 16 Orthodox 12 11 Anglican 3 1

Muslim 32 41 Hindu 3 3 Buddhist 12 13 Jewish 0 1 Other/non-religious 37 14

Notes: Other/non-religious covers atheists and non-religious as well as people with animism. For 1900 our assumption is that the territories of the countries at that time corresponds roughly with the territories of the countries of the 1990s.

Sources: Barrett (1982); Encyclopaedia Britannica (1995).

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the increase in atheists/non-religious not only in communist countries but also in Western Europe.

Again, the overwhelming impression is that of variation. No one continent has the same pattern of religious beliefs as any other continent. In Africa it is Christianity versus Islam. On the one hand one can note the immense expansion of Christianity there since 1900, reflecting one aspect of colonialism, and, on the other hand, one can observe the recent heavy expansion of Islam southwards. Religion in Asia is a contest between Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, although one must take into account at the same time the many atheists in the Far Eastern communist countries, of which numbers are difficult to estimate accurately.

Europe has a totally different religious map, comprising basically Christians of various kinds and atheists/non-religious. The decline of Protestantism is obvious in the data, which reflects the increase in atheism/non-religious. Whereas Hinduism and Buddhism are virtually non-existent in Europe, there is a not insignificant and growing minority of Muslims, or almost 3 per cent. The relative size of the Jewish community is very small in Europe and Russia today due, on the one hand, to the Holocaust and to emigration to Israel on the other. In the UK Anglicanism is the dominant Christian creed, which may be classified dogmatically as somewhere between Protestantism and Catholicism, perhaps closer to the former than to the latter. The number of Anglicans is also large in Oceania. The Americas harbour almost exclusively Christians, while the Roman Catholics prevail completely in Latin America. North America has an almost even distribution of Protestants (who dominated

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Table 5.3 Worldwide adherence to the major religions as a percentage of the total population: 1900–98

Religion 1900 1970 1980 1990 1994 1998

Christian 34.4 33.7 32.8 33.3 33.6 32.8 Roman Catholic 16.8 18.5 18.5 18.8 18.7 17.3 Protestant 7.4 7.2 6.4 6.9 6.9 5.3 Orthodox 7.5 3.1 2.8 3.2 3.2 3.6 Anglican 2.0 1.7 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.1

Muslim 12.4 15.3 16.5 17.7 18.3 19.6 Hindu 12.5 12.8 13.3 13.3 13.5 12.8 Buddhist 31.7 12.5 11.0 9.3 8.8 12.5 Jewish 0.8 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.2 Atheist/non-religious 0.2 19.6 20.3 20.8 20.5 15.3 Other 8.0 5.7 5.7 5.3 5.1 6.8

Sources: 1900–1980: Barrett (1982); 1990: Barrett (1991); 1994: Barrett (1995); 1998: Barrett (1999).

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highly around 1900) and Roman Catholics, besides a growing number of atheists/non-religious. The decline of Protestantism in North America has been spectacular during the 100 years since Weber published his first study of religion and development, and it is hardly compensated for by recent advances in Latin America.

According to Table 5.4, the former USSR has a very large proportion of atheists, exceeding the numbers of the Greek Orthodox and Muslims there. It will be most interesting to see whether in future the former communist countries will experience a revitalization of their suppressed religions or whether secularization will continue. As there seems to be little secularization within Islam, constituting a constant warning against the prediction that twentieth-century modernization would soften religious beliefs, one may expect atheism to decline in Russia as well as in the new southern and eastern republics along its borders.

One may establish that the only truly expanding religion today is Islam. This force shows up in turmoil along the borders between Islamic countries and their neighbours. The rejuvenation of Islam also affects the internal affairs of the Muslim countries, causing political instability and civil war in some cases. The only similar trend among the other religions is the occurrence of the fundamental Protestantism as in Brazil, Orthodox Judaism in Israel and Hindu nationalism in India.

Another basic observation in relation to Table 5.4 is that religious structure is very stable over time. Only in Africa and in countries under communist rule do we find profound changes during the twentieth century. The sharp decline in the number of people adhering to Judaism reflects the strong currents of anti-Semitism in the twentieth century. Weber devoted a whole volume to the analysis of ancient Judaism but wrote little systematically about Islam, which today is the most rapidly spreading religion. Before the First World War almost all the Islamic countries were under colonial rule, at least with regard to the Arabs, so it is impossible to explain the revival of Islam or Islamic fundamentalism without taking into account the legacy of colonialism. It is not entirely misplaced perhaps to explain Weber’s neglect of Islam as being due to the prevailing Western bias against Arabs.

Although Weber dealt with the chief differences between the world’s large religions, he was very much aware of how many different versions of creed each one of them had come to comprise. At all times he is careful to point out that religion is not a homogeneous entity and that Buddhism, for instance, has several faces. The same is true of Protestantism with its various creeds, from Lutheranism to Pietism. One may research how divided a country is in terms of religious beliefs, bypassing whether one or another religion prevails. Some countries in the world are highly heterogeneous, but most tend to be rather homogenous.

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Table 5.4 Worldwide adherence to the major religions by continental area as a percentage of the total population: 1900 and 1994

Religion Africa Asia Europe Latin America

North America

Oceania Europe (formerly

USSR) 1900 1994 1900 1994 1900 1994 1900 1994 1900 1994 1900 1994 1900 1994

Christian 9.2 48.7 2.0 9.1 96.9 82.0 95.1 85.3 96.6 85.3 77.6 81.9 83.6 38.2 Roman Catholic 1.9 18.3 1.1 3.9 59.8 52.1 92.3 86.8 18.8 34.8 17.3 29.7 9.2 2.0 Protestant 2.3 13.0 0.2 2.6 20.3 14.7 1.5 3.7 63.7 34.5 29.9 27.2 1.8 3.4 Orthodox 3.3 4.2 0.3 0.1 7.9 7.2 0.0 0.4 0.6 2.2 0.1 2.1 72.6 32.8 Anglican 0.5 4.0 0.1 0.0 8.9 6.5 1.3 0.3 4.6 2.6 29.9 20.7 0.0 0.0

Muslim 32.0 40.7 15.7 20.2 1.0 2.6 0.1 0.3 0.0 1.9 0.2 0.4 11.2 15.3 Hindu 0.3 0.2 21.4 22.7 0.0 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.0 0.5 0.2 1.3 0.0 0.0 Buddhist 0.0 0.0 54.4 14.8 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.3 0.1 Jewish 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.1 1.6 0.3 0.0 0.1 1.9 2.0 0.3 0.3 4.2 0.3 Atheist/non-religious 0.0 0.5 0.0 26.9 0.5 14.5 0.6 4.8 1.2 8.7 0.7 15.2 0.2 45.8 Other 58.1 9.9 6.5 6.2 0.0 0.4 3.9 5.5 0.2 1.4 20.7 0.7 0.5 0.3

Note: Other = animist; Buddhist includes Chinese folk religion practitioners, Confucians and Shintoists. Sources: 1900: Barrett (1982); 1994: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1995).

Lane, Jan-E rik, and S

vante E rsson. C

ulture and P olitics : A

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/lib/apus/detail.action?docID =

438388. C

reated from apus on 2020-03-18 08:37:19.

Conclusion

Religion is a source of cultural identity all over the world. Religious creed involves an orientation towards a few major systems of thought, constituting the huge civilizations of the world. It must, however, be recognized that atheists no longer constitute a small group, unlike animists who have declined in numbers. We have also been able to show that countries with one religion around 1900 tend to have the same religion 100 years later. Changes have occurred, particularly with respect to the categories atheists/non-religious and others. Picking 1970 as the basic year for the measurement of religious creed would in fact summarize the entire twentieth century. In Chapter 6 we will look at the outcomes of the major world religions of today, using number of adherents as the weight of the religion.

In this chapter we have looked at various conceptual frameworks for classifying the myriad religious phenomena. There is no one single correct scheme, but the Weber approach is worth pursuing on account of its emphasis on outcomes. We will now turn to the analysis of the configuration of outcomes that characterize the various world religions. We will analyse the variation in outcomes during the last few decades, fixing religious structure to 1970. As religious creed changes slowly, its impact on development may be measured by examining information about outcomes after 1970. This amounts to a cross-sectional approach, as one would want to know, first, if countries that differ in terms of their main religion in 1970 also display differences in outcomes between 1970 and 1995 and, second, if any such country differences really can be attributed to religious creed.

We have not been able to find any cross-sectional evidence for the hypothesis about a crucial link between religion and economic activity. On the contrary, we found a strong relationship between religion and human rights. Does this finding reduce the relevance of Weber’s thesis about a close connection between religion and modern capitalism?

One may very well argue that Weber’s thesis is exclusively a historical argument about the unique rise of modern capitalism in Western Europe. Nothing prevents people in other civilisations to imitate what evolved in Western Europe. And imitation may become so successful that other civilisations become more economically dynamic than the model countries themselves. Such a narrow historical interpretation of the Weber thesis would rescue the argument but it comes with a price. It would undo an effort to employ Weber’s typology in a search for a sociological theory of the outcomes of religion in a cross-sectional perspective upon the world religions today and their social, economic and political outcomes. And it also goes against the effort of Weber to present a general sociological theory of the consequences of the different world religions.

Be that as it may, Weber’s typology, based upon the concepts rational against irrational as well as inner worldly and outer worldly proved highly fruitful in analysing the preconditions for the rise of capitalism. Let us end

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here with a note on these concepts pointing out how they could be employed in an almost too flexible manner. One may use the clear exposition in The Religion of China (1964) where Weber pins down what he derives his typology from, consisting of two ‘yardsticks’:

To judge the level of rationalization a religion represents we may use two primary yardsticks which are in many ways interrelated. One is the degree to which the religion has divested itself of magic; the other is the degree to which it has systematically unified the relationship to the world. (Weber, 1964, p. 226)

One may criticize these concepts as being too imprecise. Is not all religious behaviour in some sense irrational? Even the puritan approaching the world in a rational and systematic manner acts upon beliefs which in the final resort are merely just that: beliefs without any claim to truth. All religions whether primitive or abstract share a basic irrational ambition, namely to master reality by means of the conception of a supra natural entitity(ies) called ‘spirit’ or ‘God’. When some religions are scaled as more rational than others, then it begs the question of what is rationality.

The distinction between inneworldly and outerworldly is even more perplexing. One may certainly make a distinction between life and death, but there is in reality only one world, namely the world as we actually live and perceive it – the innerworldly perspective. All religions add another dimension in the form of a belief in a world that is somehow outside this world here and now. The world religions differ in terms of how they mix these two aspects of religion: innerworldly and outerworldly. Thus, it is somewhat arbitrary to identify one religion as innerworldly and another as outerworldly.

Weber relies heavily upon the distinction between this world here and now on the one hand and a world after death or beyond the senses. And his paradoxical argument amounts to a link between the two, as it is the rational drive within this world which is going to give the puritan his/her ticket to the other world. Thus, innerworldly ascetism promotes the basically irrational search for a place in the outer world. Protestantism was rational by intention rejecting magic but it promoted innerwordly ascetism as a means towards outworldly salvation:

But only the Puritan rational ethic with its supramundane orientation brought economic rationalism to is conclusion. This happened merely because nothing was further from the conscious Puritan intention. It happened because inner-worldly work was simply expressive of the striving for a transcendental goal. The world, as promised, fell to Puritanism because the Puritans alone “had striven for God and his justice”. (Weber, 1964, pp. 247–8)

If the rejection of magic and innerworldly ascetism characterized the Protestantism, then in his The Religion of India (1958) Weber pinpoints the absence of exactly these two factors as crucial for the lack of economic development:

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It was lacking in precisely that which was decisive for the economics of the Occident: the refraction and rational immersion of the drive character of economic striving and its accompaniments in a system of rational inner-worldly ethic of behaviour, e.g. the ‘inner-worldly asceticism’ of Protestantism in the West. Asiatic religion could not supply the presuppositions of inner-worldly asceticism. (Weber, 1996, p. 337)

It was the combination of both mysticism and the ascetism of the philosophy of yoga and nirvana that made modern capitalism impossible in Asia:

Asia’s partly purely mystical, partly purely innerworldly aesthetic goal of self- discipline could take no other form than an emptying of experience of the real forces of experience. (Weber, 1996, p. 342)

Weber’s thesis is paradoxical, as one religion – Protestantism – is both highly distinct in terms of his two ‘yardsticks’, but it may just as well be classified as both rational and irrational as well as both innerworldly and outerworldly. How can there be any ‘experience of the real forces of experience’ with regard to any method of salvation?

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Chapter 6

Religion and its Outcomes

Introduction

Religious belief has been the main outlet for the people’s search for meaning and identity since the dawn of human civilizations 3000 years before Christ. In the previous chapter we attempted to hint at some of the variety of religious belief, offering different classification schemes or typologies. Here, in this chapter, we concentrate on the impact of religion on society, politics and economics.

The debate over the Weber theory, so lauded in 1904, has focused exclusively on historical interpretation. Here, we will attempt a fresh start by focusing on the relevance of his theory for the comparative analysis of culture and development today, asking: what are the macro effects of the world religions today? The assessment of religion urgently needs to be expanded to include not only economic development, but also social and political development. Since religion tends to be fairly stable over time, one can use average measures on developmental indicators in order to find out whether the different world religions tend to be associated with different developmental outcomes, employing measures for the period after 1945.

When attempting to state the present-day relevance of the famous Weber theory about the Protestantic ethic and its economic consequences, it may be emphasized that Weber’s theory was launched in two steps. First, he argued that the rise of modern capitalism as an economic system was influenced by the emergence of Protestantism in Northern Europe and North America. Second, he generalized the finding into a comparative historical assessment of the world religions, examining Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Judaism in depth, but not Islam, aiming at the conclusion that none of the world religions had the same impact as Protestantism. It is the latter part of the argument that we will investigate through a comparative analysis of the situation today.

Macro Outcomes: Weber Again

Weber suggested a theory about the economic implications of different world religions, but the idea could be framed more generally. Weber’s theory of religion focused exclusively on economic development. The argument was that one of the world religions contained a set of beliefs and values which had

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ethical implications for the conduct of action in economic affairs that would result in behavioural consequences conducive to economic growth. The creed of Protestantism would contain the seeds of the spirit of capitalism, which would be the foundation for long periods of economic expansion, resulting in the affluence of Northern Europe and North America.

Weber claimed not only that Protestantism constituted a sufficient condition for modern capitalism, but also attempted to show, in his later comparative studies on religion, that Protestantism constituted a necessary condition for capitalism, in the sense that no other world religion contained ideas that could be linked with the spirit of capitalism. We are not only interested in showing that the necessary condition argument is more dubious than the sufficient condition argument, which has been debated extensively in the literature. We also wish to include other aspects of development, because there is really no reason that one should only deal with economic outcomes and bypass political ones. Generalizing Weber’s thesis about the economic consequences of religion as a culture can be done in two directions. First, the thesis can be deprived of its historical connotation and transformed into a general social science theory that is not bounded or restricted to a specific evolution in time. Second, it can be broadened to cover other kinds of outcome besides the economic ones such as the political and social aspects of development.

It is somewhat astounding that Weber bypassed the coming of democracy, although perhaps it is unjust to make a critical point out of this, as there is no natural limit to the outcomes that can be included in the study of the consequences of religious beliefs and practice. However, the important point is that had Weber included politics, then he might have seen another connection between Protestantism and macro outcomes.

The basic idea in development theory about a ladder of stages, going from a low to a high level of development is questionable. What do we really mean by a ‘developed society’? Whatever the word ‘development’ may mean, one encounters a country variation in outcomes that call for a social science explanation. Development studies have focused on certain outcomes linked with economic development, on the one hand, and social and political development on the other. We included these outcomes in our discussion of ‘What Culture Matters For’ in Chapter 2. Thus, we will introduce a number of variables measuring economic growth in various ways in order to inquire into the economic outcomes of religion as culture. What is the impact of the world religions on economic growth during different time periods after the Second World War? The time periods we have selected here are 1960–73, 1973–85, 1985–94 and 1990–98. The key questions to be examined below include:

1 Are the different world religions of the world today attended by different configurations of outcomes, not only economic but also social and political?

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If religion matters, then it must matter for at least one of the outcomes specified above – that is, for either social, economic or political outcomes. Perhaps each world religion is attended by a specific outcome configuration, one may guess. If so, then question 2 needs to be raised.

2 When the world religions have different outcome configurations, is religion really a key causal factor in bringing about these outcomes?

Question 2 is more difficult to answer than question 1, since we know that each major outcome has a complex causality. But question 1 may be addressed rather easily by examining the present state of development, classifying the countries according to the religious creed of the majority of their populations and measuring their performance record on outcomes. Below, we undertake a performance analysis of where countries with different creeds stand on key indices on economic, social and political outcomes. Such an overview may provide us with a few clues about whether the world religions are attended by outcomes in a systematic, and not merely historical, fashion.

Economic Outcomes: Affluence and Economic Growth

It is a well-known fact that there are enormous differences in affluence or total economic output in the world today. On a per capita basis some countries are ten or even almost 100 times richer than other countries. World Bank statistics classify countries as low-, medium- and high-income countries, but what is the picture like when we group countries according to religion? Table 6.1 has the information about gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in 1990 as well as the data about purchasing power parities (PPP) per capita for 1997, where the countries of the world have been organized according to world religion.

Table 6.1 could be interpreted in a Weberian manner, pointing to the fact that the set of Protestant countries remains the richest in the world almost 100 years after the first publication of the Weberian theory in 1904. But how can we account for a high level of affluence in the set of Buddhist–Confucian countries within a Weberian framework? There are many ways to classify the countries of the world, religion constituting only one possible alternative. The relatively low eta-squared scores suggest that religion capture only part of the country variation in economic wealth, other factors playing a role.

More specifically, the eta-squared scores indicates that the variation within the categories in Table 6.1 is larger than the variation between the categories, meaning that religion is not the critical factor behind the country differences in affluence. Both the set of Roman Catholic and the set of Protestant countries now include Third World countries, which were traditionalist around 1900. These African countries have failed to develop quickly, but this may be due to other reasons than religion. The Muslim countries display low averages, despite the fact that several of the rich Gulf states enter here.

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Table 6.1 also presents another indicator on affluence, the purchasing power parities (PPP) for 1997. Here, we note, even more strikingly, the ascent of the Buddhist/Confucian culture in terms of economic development during the twentieth century. Again, the eta-squared statistic is low, meaning that countries vary more within the categories than between the categories. Yet, the finding is crystal clear – namely that Buddhist countries are now almost on a par with Roman Catholic countries and not far off from the Protestant countries.

Economic development has not been impressive in the Hindu or Muslim world, nor also in the Orthodox world. Islam as religion combines rationality with an extreme outer-worldly orientation, which is more conducive to belligerent behaviour – at least in Weber’s view – than to the peaceful conduct which promotes slow but continuous economic development. The Roman Catholic countries include the former Spanish and Portuguese empires covering large parts of the Third World. Perhaps it is not so much religion that matters here as the Spanish state heritage, and some scholars at least have argued to this effect – see Chapter 9. These sets of countries, classified with religion as basis, cover both rich and poor countries, with the result that the average scores hide a considerable variation. Yet, religion shows up somehow in these numbers, and this requires further research.

Looking, in addition, at data on economic growth substantiates the overall finding here, which is that Buddhism/Confucianism is the religion with the outstanding economic development record in the second half of the twentieth century. Table 6.2 displays four series with average economic growth data for which the eta squares are on par with affluence, meaning that the various sets

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Table 6.1 Affluence and religion: GDP per capita 1990 and PPP per capita 1997 in US$

Major religion GDPCAP90 PPP97

Roman Catholic 6 712 (N=43) 9 010 (N=47) Protestant 11 535 (N=14) 13 087 (N=16) Orthodox 6 320 (N= 5) 4 110 (N=10) Muslim 2 843 (N=34) 4 119 (N=38) Hindu 3 119 (N= 3) 3 993 (N= 3) Buddhist 6 522 (N=13) 9 058 (N=12) Atheist/non-religious 6 598 (N= 5) 7 746 (N= 5) Other 1 059 (N=13) 1 716 (N=12) eta squared .24 .22 sig. .000 .000

Note: The classification of countries according to religious adherence basically follows the one in Table 5.2.

Sources: See Appendix A.

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of world religions contain countries with both low and high average growth rates. Economic growth is, after all, also a function of several factors.

It has been argued (Krugman, 1994) that the economic miracle in South- east Asia was built upon special circumstances (state control, forced inexpensive labour) which, when it started to disappear during the 1990s, would limit the growth potential in this part of the world. Sometimes the recession in 1996–98 is regarded as a validation of this argument about the superficial nature of economic development in South-east Asia. We believe that this is erroneous and amounts to a too negative view of economic growth in this part of the world. Once the overheating process in 1996 has worked itself out, we predict that economic growth will resume. Indeed, recent data seem to confirm that the Asian bubble was a temporary phenomenon. On the other hand, the dismal trend for the Orthodox countries could well continue for some time or until transparent market institutions are put in place instead of the planned economy. The Orthodox countries suffer less from culture than from institutional confusion.

Thus, the countries with a dominant Buddhist/Confucian religion display consistently high growth rates whereas economic growth among the countries with a different religion fluctuates considerably, from periods of sustained growth to periods of zero or even negative growth: indeed, economic growth was negative for several Orthodox and Muslim countries in the 1990s. A long period with high economic growth must result in a doubling or tripling of the

Religion and its Outcomes 171

Table 6.2 Affluence and religion: economic growth 1960–73, 1973–85, 1985–94 and 1990–98 – average annual growth by major religion

Major religion GRO6073 GRO7385 GRO8594 GRO9098

Roman Catholic 2.9 (N=40) 0.6 (N=40) 0.4 (N=45) 1.0 (N=47)

Protestant 3.4 (N=13) 0.8 (N=14) �0.3 (N=16) 0.9 (N=16)

Orthodox 5.4 (N= 3) 2.1 (N= 2) �6.4 (N= 8) �4.9 (N=10)

Muslim 2.7 (N=27) 1.3 (N=28) �1.3 (N=35) �0.8 (N=35)

Hindu 0.9 (N= 2) 1.4 (N= 3) 3.6 (N= 3) 3.5 (N= 3)

Buddhist 3.5 (N=13) 4.7 (N= 7) 4.1 (N= 8) 3.3 (N=12)

Jewish 5.6 (N= 1) 0.4 (N= 1) 2.5 (N= 1) 2.2 (N= 1)

Atheist/non-

religious

2.3 (N= 4) 3.2 (N= 2) 2.2 (N= 3) 3.8 (N= 3)

Other 1.5 (N=11) �0.1 (N=12) �0.2 (N=12) 0.4 (N=12)

eta squared .12 .22 .27 .24

sig. .093 .001 .000 .000

Note: The classification of countries according to religious adherence basically follows the one in Table 5.2.

Sources: See Appendix A.

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level of affluence. But how is affluence distributed? Let us look at social outcomes.

Quality of Life, Gender and Income Equality

The concept of social development is most often seen as being complementary to that of economic development, as it takes into account what economic output means for ordinary people. There are a number of possible indicators on social outcomes, including the Human Development Index (HDI) and income distribution measures (GINI), as well as indicators on gender development (GDI) and gender empowerment (GEM), which will be used below. In the HDI life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate and combined gross enrolment in education is added to the PPP per capita in order to derive a broader index of quality of life than merely aggregate economic output. The GDI is a Gender-related Development Index that measures particularly the position of women in relation to men and the GEM captures the empowerment of women. Table 6.3 shows how countries adhering to the world religions perform on these social outcome measures.

Despite that a number of Third World countries have been entered into the categories of Catholic and Protestant countries it is clear that Protestant countries score very high on social development, both on the Human Development Index and the Gender-related Development Index. At the other end of these scales we find, as before, countries where animism is still strong

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Table 6.3 Religion and social development: the HDI, GDI, GEM and Gini indicators

Major religion HDI99 GDI99 GEM99 GINI90

Roman Catholic .732 (N=47) .757 (N=42) .517 (N=35) 40.0 (N=20)

Protestant .792 (N=16) .789 (N=16) .612 (N=14) 40.8 (N= 9)

Orthodox .750 (N=10) .753 (N= 8) .404 (N= 4) 29.0 (N= 9)

Muslim .598 (N=38) .579 (N=32) .280 (N=18) 40.7 (N=11)

Hindu .591 (N= 3) .573 (N= 3) .334 (N= 2) 34.1 (N= 2)

Buddhist .695 (N=12) .706 (N=11) .414 (N= 5) 37.8 (N= 6)

Jewish .883 (N= 1) .879 (N= 1) .496 (N= 1) –

Atheist/non

religious

.805 (N= 4) .802 (N= 4) .568 (N= 4) 30.7 (N= 3)

Other .445 (N=12) .434 (N=11) .341 (N= 7) 47.3 (N= 7)

eta squared .24 .39 .55 .21

sig. .000 .000 .000 .098

Note: The classification of countries according to religious adherence basically follows the one in Table 5.2.

Sources: See Appendix A.

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or where the dominant religion is Islam, especially when it comes to the GDI and the GEM. One must remember though that these average scores are affected by the number of countries for which data is available; lack of data on many Third World Roman Catholic countries has driven average scores downwards. Buddhist/Confucian countries cannot match the Protestant countries when it comes to social development. Surprisingly, Orthodox countries score higher than Buddhist countries, which cannot be explained by the fact that some traditional Greek Orthodox countries have been placed as atheist. The atheist/non-religious category displays, in some cases, astonishingly high measures. This category covers countries as diverse as China, Cuba, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

Table 6.3 also has information about income distribution, although data is not available for as many countries as one would wish to include in the analysis. The eta squared scores indicate that income distribution has less to do with religion in contrast to the eta squared scores for the other above- mentioned social outcomes, namely gender development or especially gender empowerment (GEM). However, it looks as if the income distribution in Muslim countries tends to be much more evenly than that of Catholic countries which are characterized by substantial income inequalities. Buddhist countries are less egalitarian than Protestant countries, if one may judge from such a limited sample of countries. Matters are different with regard to the status of women, where religion seems to matter very much, especially Islam.

Democracy and Corruption

There are a couple of scales in the literature which measure the implementation of civil and political rights. The scores on these scales correlate highly with each other and tend to be rather stable over time, except when a major transformation takes place in several countries at the same time, such as the wave of democratization initiated in 1989. If religion is connected with democracy, then it would show up in systematic group differences in the human rights scores, ranging from 0 to 10, when countries are grouped by categories of religious creed. It does not really matter which year of measurement one takes for the 1990s. Table 6.4 has the distribution for democracy for 1997 (DEM97), which is truly comprehensive, covering 150 countries. There is a most interesting finding here, namely that the eta squared score is the second highest one for all the distributions concerning development outcome measures included here. Religion really discriminates when it comes to political development, much more than is the case in relation to economic development. Table 6.4 also has the distribution for another relevant political outcome: corruption (CORR98), where high scores signify low levels of corruption.

There exist today such clear differences between the world religions in relation to democracy that one should reconsider the Weberian perspective

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on religion. The Protestant countries are almost exclusively democratic, whereas the opposite is true of Muslim countries. It may be the case that Islam and democracy are not compatible entities (cf. the discussion in Esposito and Voll, 1996), but it may also partly be due to the fact that the measure of democracy is negatively biased against Muslim countries (cf. Bollen and Paxton, 2000). The Catholic countries, whether Roman or Orthodox, are slightly more democratic than authoritarian, while the Buddhist/Confucian countries tend towards dictatorship. The rise in democraticness around the world since 1989 has not changed the basic pattern – that is, Protestantism is associated with democracy, Catholicism is mixed and the other religions tend towards authoritarianism except Hindu India.

A high level of corruption occurs with all the religions except Protestantism. The difference between the three Christian creeds is as striking as the differences between the world religions. Thus, we must ask: does religion matter? On the surface, the connection between religion and political development is much more transparent than the Weber theory about a link between religion and economic development. This calls for further inquiry. Let us use regression analysis in order to test models about religion and outcomes in a more detailed manner. Above we have only looked at countries, classified according to dominant belief. Let us now examine how key variables interact, when we measure more exactly how religious support varies in a country. Here we broaden the analysis to also include political outcomes (democracy, corruption) besides economic and social ones.

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Table 6.4 Religion and political outcomes: democracy index 1997 and corruption 1998

Major religion DEM97 CORR98

Roman Catholic 6.8 (N=47) 4.8 (N=35) Protestant 9.1 (N=16) 7.1 (N=14) Orthodox 5.5 (N=11) 3.3 (N= 7) Muslim 2.4 (N=41) 3.3 (N=22) Hindu 7.2 (N= 3) 4.0 (N= 2) Buddhist 4.2 (N=13) 5.4 (N= 7) Jewish 8.3 (N= 1) 7.1 (N= 1) Atheist/non-religious 3.8 (N= 5) 5.8 (N= 3) Other 5.0 (N=13) 4.3 (N= 4) eta squared .45 .26 sig. .000 .002

Note: The classification of countries according to religious adherence basically follows the one in Table 5.2.

Sources: See Appendix A.

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Does Religion Matter?

The pattern derived above shows that there exist today tremendous differences in macro outcomes between countries when they are classified according to religion. Can we, then, conclude that religion is also the factor that creates these differences? No, because these categories of countries may share many properties other than religion which could account for the configuration of outcomes. It may even be the case that religion merely accompanies more fundamental country differences with regard to outcomes that depend on other factors. To probe deeper into the possible connections between religion and outcomes we resort to the analysis of correlations and the use of regression. Countries may be ranked according to how many believers there are, measured in terms of percentages adhering to a creed out of the entire population. Table 6.5 shows the correlations between religion and outcomes and, following the argument advanced in the conclusion of the previous chapter, we will here rely on religious data referring to 1970.

Religion and its Outcomes 175

Table 6.5 Religion and outcomes: correlations

Outcomes Estimates LnPROT70 LnRC70 LnMUSL70 LnBUDD70

GDPCAP90 r .27 .07 �.38 .04 sig. .001 .199 .000 .315

PPP97 r .21 .07 �.32 .04 sig. .008 .214 .000 .325

GRO6073 r �.030 �.11 �.11 .12 sig. .363 .120 .132 .105

GRO7385 r �.21 �.33 .08 .46 sig. .016 .000 .208 .000

GRO8594 r �.13 �.05 �.17 .48 sig. .077 .301 .035 .000

GRO9098 r �.23 �.07 �.07 .37 sig. .005 .232 .224 .000

HDI99 r .08 .15 �.43 .05 sig. .201 .051 .000 .271

GDI99 r .14 .19 �.50 .06 sig. .068 .017 .000 .275

GEM99 r .55 .32 �.69 �.06 sig. .000 .002 .000 .307

DEM97 r .38 .39 �.57 �.15 sig. .000 .000 .000 .037

CORR98 r .47 �.09 �.36 .03 sig. .000 .227 .001 .409

Note: Ln means that the variables in question have been transformed into their natural logarithms, i.e. LnPROT70 has been arrived at in the following way: LnPROT70: Ln (PROT70 + 1) and so on.

Sources: See Appendix A.

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What emerges from this pattern of correlations in Table 6.5 is the following. Islam tends to be associated with negative developmental outcomes, not only political but also economic. Buddhism is connected with rapid economic growth but with a low level of political development. Roman Catholicism is neutral in terms of economic development but tends, to some extent, to be combined with social and political development. Finally, Protestantism is often, but far from always, associated with economic affluence and democracy but not with rapid economic growth. Corruption is generally low in Protestant countries.

These correlations are at odds with the Weberian theory of religion, if indeed it can be transformed from an historical explanation to a cross- sectional or systematic theory. Buddhism is characterized by extreme economic growth whereas Protestantism seems to have lost its economic growth edge. Islam, which Weber did not examine in a separate volume, tends to occur in countries that do badly on all kinds of developmental outcome except income distribution. What distinguishes Protestantism around the world is the adherence to democracy, more so than Roman Catholicism. Perhaps Protestantism has a deeper connection not so much with economic development, but with other aspects of development – namely, political development interpreted as human rights and low corruption. Using regression models, let us now test whether holding the historical background and the geographical context constant yields a change in the connection between religion and development changes. Thus, we include in the regression model a variable that measures the level of institutional modernization of a country, or the time period that has elapsed since the introduction of modernized leadership (MODLEAD) as well as the distance from the equator (DISEQU). Thus, we regress outcomes onto religion, geography and modernization.

Table 6.6 reports on the impact of religion on affluence (Model (1)) as measured by means of the PPP per capita for 1997 when one holds history and geography constant. The only factors which have an impact when accounting for the country differences in affluence today between more than 100 countries is geography (DISEQU) and modernization (MODLEAD): the further the distance from the equator, the higher the level of affluence; the longer the time since modern institutions were introduced, the higher the level of affluence. Taking these basic factors into account, one may next ask whether religion matters. The answer is that, today, neither Protestantism nor Buddhism has any significant impact on affluence (see Table 6.6).

Let us look at economic growth during the last decade of the twentieth century during which the average growth rates differ considerably between countries. When accounting for economic development in the form of economic growth during a short time interval such as between 1990 and 1998, one needs to take into account other factors than simply religion. Economic growth would be determined by primarily economic factors such as investments, exports and economic stability as well as the business cycle. One

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way to summarize many such economic factors is to include the level of affluence in the regression modelling economic growth. As model (2) shows in Table 6.6, only one factor – Buddhism – proves significant when regressing growth on affluence and types of religion while Protestantism is accompanied by a negative value. One may hold another factor constant – namely, the level of affluence in 1970 (LnRGDPC70). The inclusion of this factor follows the catch-up theme – that is, rich countries grow more slowly than poor countries simply because increases in production will be larger in percentage terms in small economies. If rich countries naturally grow more slowly than poor countries or medium income countries as a result of a mature economy, then perhaps religion may have no impact at all? There is, however, no indication that the catch-up mechanism operates in the variation in economic growth among countries during the 1990s.

Conversely, there is ample evidence that Buddhism is highly conducive to economic growth. Even when the currently rich economies in South-east Asia mature, they may keep displaying impressive economic growth, because Buddhism/Confucianism harbours the kind of economic ethic that Weber thought he had found in Protestantism but failed to recognize outside the occidental countries. When examining and describing religious creeds, Weber perhaps overemphasized the role of the religious elites – the virtuosi – to the neglect of the religious ethics of ordinary men and women. This critique of the Weber model that only Protestantism enhances large-scale capitalist development or rational economic growth is further strengthened when one looks at the country variation in human development as measured by the Human Development Index, shown as model (3) in Table 6.6. In fact, the entire surface impact of Protestantism on economic and social development as measured by the broad HDI is spurious when 128 countries are examined, as the key factors are history and geography. One could argue that Protestantism was the initiator of the process of modernization, but such an interpretation means that the Weber model lacks major relevance for present circumstances. One would, in any case, still want to know whether any of the world religions, as they are practised today, has developmental effects. In Models (4) and (5) we estimate the impact of religion on gender (GEM99) and income distribution (GINI90). Religion has some impact on gender development as Protestantism drives up the empowerment of women, while the opposite is true of the impact of Islam. Religion seems less relevant for understanding the variation across countries for the distribution of income.

Now, we turn to examine the possibility of a connection between religion and political development, which latter concept we interpret as democracy. It was shown above that Protestantism tends to be associated with democracy whereas Buddhism and Islam tend to be accompanied by dictatorship. Can this finding be upheld when we control for other factors?

It is a well-known fact that democracy measured as civil and political rights is to be found in rich countries. There is a persistent and rather high correlation between democracy and affluence, between .60 and .75 depending

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on the time period and the countries selected. In Model (6) we regress democracy on types of religion while holding affluence constant. If religion matters for democracy, then it will have an impact upon democracy in addition to the standard association between democracy and affluence. It could be the case that religion has an impact on both affluence and democracy but, as we have seen above, this connection is not large enough to create a problem when estimating partial effects, the problem of multicollinearity not being troublesome. Table 6.6 shows that religion indeed has an impact on democracy today, besides the clear and strongly positive connection between affluence and civil and political rights. It is obvious that Islam impacts

178 Culture and Politics

Table 6.6 Religion and outcomes: regression analysis

Independent

variables

Dependent variables

Coeffs LnPPP

GRO

9098

HDI

GEM

GINI

DEM

CORR

Model (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

DISEQU coeff 2.062 1.433 .342 .136 �30.889 4.047 3.493

t-stat 3.46 .71 4.00 1.88 �3.57 2.37 2.93

tol .53 .45 .53 .50 .42 .46 .46

MODLEAD coeff .009 .006 .001 .000 �.052 .005 �.004

t-stat 4.86 .97 5.45 .67 �1.74 .87 �.83

tol .41 .33 .41 .31 .26 .36 .31

LnRGDPC70 coeff – .092 – .074 1.166 .701 1.723

t-stat – .26 – 4.87 .56 2.32 6.04

tol – .45 – .37 .24 .45 .32

LnPROT70 coeff .022 �.421 -.009 .027 .231 .128 .588

t-stat .35 �2.11 -.96 3.68 .29 .76 5.09

tol .69 .69 .68 .68 .68 .70 .79

LnMUSLl70 coeff �.018 �.046 -.016 �.026 �1.622 �.771 .182

t-stat �.32 �.25 -1.94 �3.79 �1.95 �5.06 1.51

tol .56 .55 .55 .56 .52 .56 .63

LnBUDD70 coeff .117 .806 .022 .012 �1.637 �.044 .434

t-stat 1.82 3.64 2.36 1.49 �1.91 �.25 3.34

tol .82 .88 .82 .88 .80 .88 .84

Constant coeff 6.909 .064 .481 �.191 48.221 2.137 �10.724

t-stat 25.66 .03 12.42 �1.84 3.46 .02 �5.45

Adjrsq .49 .18 .60 .77 .41 .56 .72

N 129 112 128 80 58 117 78

Notes: coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance. tol = tolerance. Used to measure the occurrence of multicollinearity in the model; if tol is higher than .3/.4 there is no danger for multicollinearity.

Sources: See Appendix A.

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negatively upon democracy even when controlling for affluence, history and geography. Interestingly, we note that Protestantism enhances gender empowerment. Yet, when controlling for affluence, Protestantism does not seem to matter for the level of democracy. It is only when we are moving to the analysis of perceived corruption (Model (7)) that we can find a strong positive impact from Protestantism as well as from Buddhism.

Summarizing the findings in Table 6.6 we may say that Buddhism – but not Protestantism – is conducive for economic growth, that Islam is negatively associated with less gender empowerment and democracy, and that Protestantism is associated with more gender empowerment and less corruption.

Summary

Religion is today as important as it was in 1904 when Weber launched his thesis. Inquiring into a broad set of outcomes we often notice that religion shows up in, or behind, the outcome measures. At the same time, the causality between religious creed and outcomes is far more complex than envisaged in the Weber thesis. This empirical investigation into outcomes linked with religion has followed an approach that is deliberately non-Weberian. We wished to find out whether religion, as one of the basic types of culture, matters systematically for outcomes in society and the state, bypassing any historical connections. Moreover, we employed a far broader approach to the outcomes of religion, emphasizing both social and political outcomes besides the economic ones with which Weber was concerned.

There are two principal findings in the above analysis of religion and three types of outcome: economic, social and political. First, Protestantism has an impact on one kind of development, but it is not economic development as Weber claimed. Protestantism fosters gender empowerment and low corruption. Second, economic development is enhanced by another world religion, namely Buddhism/Confucianism, which at the same time is not conducive to political development. Development in general is quite problematic in the third major world religion, Islam, as it is associated with low levels of democracy as well as low levels of affluence. Thus we should take up the question posed by Weber and broaden it to include all kinds of consequence of religious beliefs and practices. Then, we have one major new finding – namely that Protestantism is very much linked with human rights.

Religious Fragmentation and Outcomes: Macro Level

If religion matters when it is the dominant creed in a country, then perhaps religious diversity also matters? Most scholars writing about religious heterogeneity attribute negative outcomes to religious diversity because, like

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ethnicity it creates conflict. Religious diversity is conducive to religious cleavages, which creates more risks than opportunities. Religious cleavages could bring a country to the brink of disaster, involving civil disorder or anarchy.

Religious fragmentation will be high in societies where more or less compact social groups adhere to different families of religious creed, or where one part of the population tends towards non-confession whereas the other part adheres to one of the world religions. Below we will use two indices of fragmentation: RFL1, which tracks the adherence to the great world religions, and RFL2, which in addition also comprises the major subgroups within Christianity. Data is available for the entire twentieth century as there are estimations for certain points in time – 1900, 1970 and 1995. This means that one may get a glimpse at whether religious fragmentation tends to increase or decrease. Table 6.7 suggests that religious fragmentation has increased considerably during the twentieth century, which may be interpreted as evidence for the multicultural theory. However, one cannot argue, on the basis of these data, that religious conflict has intensified at the same time. It seems apparent, for instance, that many of the tensions within Christianity and Buddhism have ‘cooled down’. Islam and Hinduism constitute the exception to the generalization that the world religions have cooled down internally. But tensions between the world religions remain strong, especially between Christianity and Islam as well as between Islam and Hinduism.

In cleavage theory religion is regarded as equally divisive as ethnicity, and the process of latent cleavages becoming manifest can only be avoided if a mutual understanding is reached concerning the necessity of religious tolerance, often laid down in the constitution or a similar document. Religious heterogeneity will, if left unchecked, sooner or later manifest itself in religious clashes – this is the prevailing generalization in the literature. Consociational theory argues that only one or several mechanisms for the peaceful cooperation between compact religious groups can prevent the divisive implications of religious diversity from spilling over into open confrontation and perhaps civil war. Such conflict resolution devices in deeply divided societies along religious lines may consist of federalism or

180 Culture and Politics

Table 6.7 Religious fragmentation 1900–95

RLF1 1900

RLF1 1970

RLF1 1995

RLF2 1900

RLF2 1970

RLF2 1995

Mean 17.3 26.0 27.8 23.8 37.5 36.6 Median 10.0 18.9 23.1 17.5 40.7 40.0 N 139 135 150 139 135 150

Sources: See Appendix A.

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regionalization, proportional representation or Proporz, and the recognition of mutual veto (Nordlinger, 1972; Lijphart, 1977, 1999).

Correlating religious fragmentation and outcomes offers a first view of the nature of negative religious fragmentation from the perspective of social, economic and political outcomes. Correlating the two fragmentation indices for different periods and various outcome variables mostly referring to the 1990s, the major finding is that religious fragmentation has a negative impact on political and economic outcomes, although the relationship is not a strong one. Over time, the relationship becomes weaker and weaker, which may be a consequence of the successful operation of conflict resolution devices. On the other hand, religious fragmentation has little, if any, impact on social outcomes. The weakening of these connections may also be due to growing religious indifference. Although many people still belong to churches, most of them no longer regularly participate in religious ceremonies or services. The process of secularization is proceeding in some countries, whereas in others it is counteracted by religious fundamentalism.

The clash between various Christian creeds has become much less harmful for economic and political development (RLF2). The correlation coefficients show that the negative consequences for democracy and affluence stem largely from the clash between the major world religions (RLF1). We therefore concentrate on the analysis of the religious fragmentation according to the index RLF1 for both the 1970s and the 1990s. Table 6.8 regresses democracy, prosperity and the level of human development, as well as gender equality, on to religious fragmentation while controlling for historical and geographical factors as well as for the election system. Against consociational theory it has been argued that power-sharing mechanisms do not always help. A few countries, such as Lebanon and former Yugoslavia, afford dramatic examples of the failure of institutional conflict devices in relation to religious cleavages.

When one takes the impact of other factors into account, then religious heterogeneity is far less of a threat than, for example, ethnicity. Political, social and economic outcomes are more conditioned by history (time from modernization) and geography (distance from the equator) than religious fragmentation. Note, however, the positive contribution of proportional representation election formulas on democracy – a power-sharing device.

In sum, religious fragmentation has no distinctive impact on macro-level outcomes. For macro-level outcomes, religion in the form of variation in denominations seems to matter more than religion understood as religious fragmentation. In short, it is the type of religion that matters, not religious cleavages.

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Religious Structure and Party Support

One way of studying in more detail the consequences of religious fragment- ation is to focus on a single country and investigate whether a religiously divided society has consequences for political parties’ electoral outcomes. Such an approach seems highly suitable for societies where religious fragmentation has taken on a geographical dimension, with people belonging to different religions living preponderantly in certain areas of the country. How much does religious structure matter for party electoral support in divided societies such as the USA, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and India?

In most divided societies the regional distribution of the population is highly skewed. Does this carry over into regional disparities in the voters’ support for certain parties, as it does in explicitly religious or explicitly non-religious ones? The countries selected are the same as those analysed for ethnic structure in Chapter 4 but excluding Russia – that is, they all are so-called plural societies.

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Table 6.8 Impact of religious fragmentation: regression analysis

Independent

variables

Dependent variables

Coeffs DEM

DEM

LnPPP

HDI

GEM

RLF195 coeff .017 – .004 – .000 – .002 –

t-stat 1.48 – 1.18 – .45 – 3.50 –

RLF170 coeff – �.004 – �.006 – �.001 – .001

t-stat – �.32 – �1.58 – �1.35 – .79

MODLEAD coeff 3.269 3.74 1.036 1.656 .225 .267 .196 .212

t-stat 1.92 2.10 1.89 3.00 2.92 3.14 2.30 2.17

DISEQU coeff .018 .019 .010 .009 .002 .002 .001 .001

t-stat 3.26 3.45 5.74 5.58 7.29 6.32 5.09 4.34

ELECTSYS coeff 2.156 1.551 .449 .167 .040 .025 .064 .055

t-stat 4.54 3.07 2.97 1.08 1.90 1.03 2.55 1.94

Constant coeff 1.487 2.248 6.692 7.060 .418 .455 .168 .221

t-stat 2.39 3.57 33.09 35.48 14.62 14.84 5.09 5.70

Adjrsq .37 .39 .49 .57 .61 .62 .55 .50

N 144 129 138 123 137 122 88 83

Notes: Ln stands for transforming the variables into its natural logarithm. coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix A.

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The USA: Religion Matters

Estimates suggest that around year 2000 Christians comprise some 85 per cent of the American population and that most of them are affiliated to a church. Among the Christians, Protestants amount to roughly one-third of the population and those belonging to the Roman Catholic Church make up around one-fifth of the population, so that the Protestants outnumber the Roman Catholics. Looking at the distribution among the 51 states of the USA, the Roman Catholics are mainly to be found on the East Coast in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. The proportion of Roman Catholics is lowest in southern states such as North and South Carolina as well as in Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. The Protestants have a stronger presence in the states where the Roman Catholics are weak. Religious fragmentation, taking into account Roman Catholics as well as other Christians and non-Christians, tends to be highest in the states where the Roman Catholics are most numerous. Now, does religion have any impact on the support for the two major parties at the presidential elections? Table 6.9 presents a few regression analyses estimating the impact of religion on party support in the USA. In this analysis we also control for the impact of ethnicity in one of the models estimated. Here we have a confirmation that religion matters.

In the American presidential elections the Democratic vote includes a strong Catholic component, whereas the Republican vote includes the Protestant component. Religious fragmentation per se does not matter. Again, we find that there are ethnic and social attributes connected with strong regional support for the Democrats – namely the size of black community and unemployment. Exactly the opposite structure is typical of the Republican strongholds.

Spain: Anti-clericalism

Spain is a predominantly Catholic society where a high rate of church attendance used to be part of Spanish culture. The religious cleavage in Spanish culture is not between adherents to different denominations, but rather concerns those who adhere to a clerical tradition and those who reject it – the anti-clerical tradition, captured by church attendance. Data from the WVS indicate a continuous decrease from a high of 41 per cent in 1980 to 31 per cent in 1990 to a lower 26 per cent in 1995; these figures covary quite well with similar estimates reported by the Eurobarometer which give 30 per cent in 1990 and 27 per cent in 1995. For the regional level we have data that goes back to the 1970s and we believe that these capture the religious cleavage within Spain. The clerical tradition is strongest in the heartland of Spain or in the Old Castille (León, Zamora, Palencia) but also in the Pais Vasco (Alava, Guipúzcoa), whereas church attendance has traditionally been weak in southern provinces such as Almeria, Huelva, Cádiz and Jaén, but also in

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the major cities like Madrid and Barcelona. Has this religious cleavage any impact on the support for political parties at the regional level in Spain in the 1990s? Table 6.10 reports the findings from the regression analysis.

Religious orientation has an impact on the PSOE vote, since the socialist party is stronger in provinces where the anti-clerical tradition is strong. Controlling for the impact of ethnicity we may note a weak positive impact on the regionalist parties while the religious variable becomes even stronger for the socialist party. The Spanish case corroborates the argument that both ethnicity and religion may have an impact on party support at the regional level.

Switzerland: Strong Religious Effects

Switzerland is a religiously divided society. A plurality of the population belongs to the Roman Catholic Church (46 per cent), while a large minority adheres to the Protestant creed (40 per cent). A not insignificant part of the

184 Culture and Politics

Table 6.9 Religion and party support at regional level in USA: regression analysis

Independent variables

Dependent variables Coeffs DEM96 DEM96 REP96 REP96

CATHOL90 coeff .322 .357 �.398 �.388 t-stat 4.46 5.16 �5.56 �5.66

RELFRAG90 coeff �.065 �.087 .183 .172 t-stat �.47 �.67 1.35 1.35

GSPC94 coeff �.000 .000 �.000 .000 t-stat �.07 .56 �.30 �1.47

UNEM96 coeff 1.798 2.242 �1.336 �2.543 t-stat 2.81 3.03 �2.13 �3.47

BLACK94 coeff – .292 – �.157 t-stat – 3.01 – �1.63

ELF94 coeff – �.125 – .201 t-stat – �1.76 – 2.84

Constant coeff 35.98 32.23 47.21 54.73 t-stat 3.93 3.61 5.25 6.20

Adjrsq .42 .50 .48 .54 N 50 50 50 50

Notes: coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix B.

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population may be classified as either non-religious or belonging to another religion (14 per cent). This means that one major religious cleavage in Switzerland is the Roman Catholic –Protestant divide. At the regional level of the cantons the Roman Catholics constitute a majority of around 90 per cent of the population in cantons such as Valais, Obwalden, Uri and Ticino, while the Protestants have their strongest standing in Bern, Schaffhausen, Zürich and Basel-Stadt. Those adhering to no confession are most numerous in Genève, Basel-Stadt and Neuchatel where the religious fragmentation is, in fact, the highest. Which impact does religion have on party support in Switzerland? In the regression analyses undertaken and reported in Table 6.11 we have not included the cantons which employ a majority formula at the elections, and the number of cantons examined thus numbers 21.

Strong religious effects explain much of the support for the Catholic party (CVP) and the socialist party (SPS). The Catholic party is strong where the Roman Catholic Church is strong, while the socialist party has its stronghold in no-confession areas. This finding also remains valid when a control for regional income and ethnicity is made.

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Table 6.10 Religion and party support at regional level in Spain: regression analysis

Independent variables

Dependent variables Coeff PSOE96 PSOE96 REG96 REG96

RELPRAT75 coeff �.203 �.203 �.013 .179 t-stat �4.71 �5.48 �.13 2.17

REGINC95 coeff �.007 �.003 .022 .019 t-stat �3.53 �1.59 4.83 5.45

INSTAUTO coeff – – – 17.295 t-stat – – – 6.25

NATUN78 coeff – .179 – – t-stat – 4.21 – –

Constant coeff 55.81 39.96 �25.48 �35.70 t-stat 16.78 8.45 �3.21 �5.83

Adjrsq .44 .59 .31 .62 N 50 50 50 50

Notes: coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix B.

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Belgium: Strong Cultural Politics

In religious terms Belgium is a relatively homogeneous country with nearly 90 per cent of the population being considered to belong to the Roman Catholic Church. The religious cleavage in Belgian society thus follows more the strength of one religious orientation than what kinds of religious denomination people belong to. Again, we use church attendance as an indicator of the cleavage between those who are more religious and those who are more secular in their orientations. Data on church attendance in Belgium reported in the Eurobarometer suggest a sharp decline over time from a high level of a claimed 60 per cent weekly attendance in 1970 to around 20 per cent weekly attendance in 1995. When mapping the regional variation in church attendance we rely on data that capture a tradition of church attendance going back to the 1960s. Here we may distinguish between regions where there is a strong religious tradition and regions with more of a secular tradition. In the first group we count Verviers, Tongeren, Arlon and Neufchateu – all located in the eastern part of the country – but some are part of the Flemish regions and others form parts of the Walloon regions. Among the more secular regions we identify certain Walloon regions such as Charleroi, Mons, Liège and Soignies. The religious–secular cleavage does not strictly follow the ethnic cleavage in Belgium.

186 Culture and Politics

Table 6.11 Religion and party support at regional level in Switzerland: regression analysis

Independent variables

Dependent variables Coeff CVP95 CVP95 SPS95 SPS95

CATHOL80 coeff .552 .548 – – t-stat 9.50 9.02 – –

NOCONF80 coeff – – 1.309 1.855 t-stat – – 4.38 5.04

VOLKS90 coeff �.000 �.000 �.000 �.000 t-stat �1.60 �1.21 �1.57 �1.32

OTH90 coeff – �.184 – �1.134 t-stat – �.34 – �2.20

Constant coeff �.42 .21 22.78 26.48 t-stat �.05 .03 4.31 5.20

Adjrsq .84 .83 .47 .57 N 21 21 21 21

Notes: coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix B.

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Table 6.12 displays a regression analysis of the regional variation in voting support for the ethnic parties (ETHNP91) and the Christian-Social Party (PSCCVP91). In addition to the religious variable (RELPRAC68) the model also includes some of the ethnic variables employed in Chapter 4.

In Belgium, astonishingly enough, the religious effect is just as strong as ethnicity. The religious cleavage between religious and secular groups is clearly expressed in the voting for the Catholic Party. The religious effect is not, however, visible for the ethnic parties, since, for them, the ethnic variables clearly outflank all other variables. In the Belgian case both religion, or a religious tradition, and ethnicity matters, depending on whether we look at religious or ethnic parties.

India: Ethnicity More Than Religion

Cultural cleavages in the largest democracy in the world, India, include religion. The regional structure of India is particularly interesting from a cultural perspective. From a jurisdictional point of view, the states in the Federal State of India have been identified on the basis of ethnic criteria, especially language. However, the regional structure of India includes more

Religion and its Outcomes 187

Table 6.12 Religion and party support at regional level in Belgium: regression analysis

Independent variables

Dependent variables Coeff ETHNP

91 ETHNP

91 PSCCVP

RELPRAC68 coeff .112 .000 .322 .294 t-stat 1.33 .01 7.24 5.05

REGECPRO95 coeff .035 .014 �.003 �.003 t-stat 4.04 3.38 �.56 �.61

FLEM47 coeff – .231 – – t-stat – 10.11 – –

FOREIGN81 coeff – .325 – �.123 t-stat – 2.07 – �.76

Constant coeff �17.82 �10.73 12.62 15.02 t-stat �2.65 �2.75 3.53 3.13

Adjrsq .38 .88 .64 .63 N 30 30 30 30

Notes : coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix B.

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than language, as religion and historical heritage also underlie the division of states.

The complexity of the Indian regional structure makes it impossible to separate ethnicity from religion in relation to the major culture of this giant country, namely Hinduism. The Hindu revival during the 1980s and 1990s was not only a religious phenomenon but also a nationalist endeavour, emphasizing the use of Hindi as the native language of the country. Thus, Hinduism is opposed not only by large groups adhering to a different creed – Muslims and Sikhs – but the nationalist drive also encounters resistance from regions speaking languages other than Hindi, such as, for instance, Bengali or Tamil. Those resisting the dominance of Hindi often favour the use of English as the common language of the country.

A huge majority of the population must be counted as Hindus – about 82 per cent according to the 1991 Census of India. Muslims constitute a large minority of about 12 per cent of the population, which in absolute numbers means more than 100 million people. The Christians and the Sikhs constitute smaller minorities each amounting to around 2 per cent of the population. Data on the regional distribution of religious adherence in India suggest that Hindus are most numerous in the northern and western states of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana and Rajastan, but also in Orissa in the eastern part of India. Relatively speaking, the Muslims are strongest in the states of Assam, West Bengal (north-east) and in Kerala (south-west).

Let us examine how these cultural cleavages work themselves out in a regional voting pattern. Table 6.13 focuses upon the two major parties that confront each other in the struggle for power in India, the Congress Party (INC) and the nationalist BJP, the latter party having replaced the former as the hegemonic party of India today.

The regional pattern of voting in India involves a religious effect, but it is only visible for the BJP vote. When controlling for ethnicity – the use of the Hindi language – this effect disappears. The ethnic impact is also visible for the Congress Party (INC), but the impact of Hindi language is negative for the INC and positive for the BJP. We conclude that, in India, ethnicity matters more than religion when explaining the variation in party support in India.

Summary

Religion matters for the regional variation in party support in divided societies. It plays a larger role in the USA and in Switzerland than in India where ethnicity matters more. Ethnicity has more impact in Spain and in India while the impact of religion and ethnicity is equally strong in Belgium. Religion matters more than ethnicity in the USA and in Switzerland.

188 Culture and Politics

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The Role of Religion for People

In the WVS data collected for individuals in various countries religion is tapped by the employment of two variables, namely the attendance at religious services (RELSERV) and adherence/non-adherence to a religious denomination (DENOM). Attendance at religious services, or church attendance, is interesting from the point of view of globalization and secular- ization. Church attendance worldwide is portrayed in Table 6.14, where the aggregated means of attendance at least once a week as a percentage of the population are broken down by the major world regions.

The lowest figures for attendance at religious services are to be found in the most secularized countries – that is, the OECD countries and the post- communist societies. The rates are distinctively higher in Latin American, African and Asian countries. Secularization is an ongoing process, especially in rich countries. Church attendance remains high in Catholic countries as well as in Muslim countries, especially if they are not highly affluent. Does religious practice also matter for individual behaviour?

In Table 6.15 high values will stand for more of church attendance and the presence of a religious denomination; in Belgium, Spain, the USA and Switzerland denomination stands for a Roman Catholic creed, while in India

Religion and its Outcomes 189

Table 6.13 Religion and party support at regional level in India: regression analysis

Independent variables

Dependent variables Coeff BJP96 BJP96 INC96 INC96

HINDU91 coeff .504 .261 �.111 .073 t-stat 2.75 1.53 �.67 .44

URBAN91 coeff .081 .377 .345 .123 t-stat .41 1.99 1.88 .64

SEXRAT91 coeff �.189 – .156 – t-stat �3.58 – 3.12 –

HINDI91 coeff – .235 – �.179 t-stat – 4.66 – �3.51

Constant coeff 154.34 �17.80 �116.20 26.21 t-stat 3.07 �1.23 �2.45 1.86

Adjrsq .35 .46 .27 .31 N 32 32 32 32

Notes: Data in these regression analyses have been weighted by population. coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix B.

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it stands for Hinduism and in Russia for Orthodoxy. Church attendance is associated with people’s life satisfaction. Identification with the Roman Catholic creed is positively related to life satisfaction in Belgium and Spain but not in the USA and Switzerland. In Russia an Orthodox creed is negatively associated with life satisfaction. Thus religion has a certain impact, but income is more important.

We find a stronger impact of religion on the left–right orientation of people. Religion strengthens rightest orientations in the four western countries included in the sample, while religion has no impact on the left–right orientation neither in India nor in Russia. Religion matters for the basic political orientation of an individual, linking church attendance with right leanings. As a matter of fact, religion matters more than income, which factor is positively related to right orientation.

Religion has a less distinct impact on political interest. Church attendance is positively associated with political interest in Belgium, the USA and Switzerland but negatively in Spain, while there is no impact in India or in Russia. If there is an impact from identification with a denomination, then it is rather negative. Membership in voluntary organizations indicates citizen activity. Religions matter. It is true that church attendance is merely an intense form of membership in one organization, the church. But religious activity has a positive impact on activity in other kinds of organization. The impact of church attendance is quite impressive – roughly the same as we find from education (Table 6.15).

Religion motivates people and drives them towards conservative values. Thus, it is no surprise that religion is negatively associated with radical

190 Culture and Politics

Table 6.14 Attendance at religious services at least once a week by regions of the world

Region RELSERV 1980 (%)

RELSERV 1990 (%)

RELSERV 1995 (%)

RELSERV 1990–95

(%)

OECD 22.7 (17) 22.0 (20) 16.8 (10) 21.4 (21) Latin America 42.4 ( 2) 34.0 ( 4) 34.3 ( 9) 34.5 ( 9) Africa 40.3 ( 1) 83.9 ( 1) 72.1 ( 3) 72.4 ( 3) Asia 19.1 ( 1) 26.7 ( 3) 40.2 ( 5) 35.6 ( 6) Postcommunist

countries 11.9 ( 1) 18.0 (10) 14.4 (16) 15.5 (20)

Total 24.6 (22) 24.2 (38) 26.1 (43) 25.4 (59) eta squared .14 .27 .54 .38 sig. .607 .033 .000 .000

Sources: See Appendix A and C.

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political activity such as joining boycotts. When there is an impact, church attendance is negatively associated with joining boycotts in Spain, the USA and India. The impact is even stronger if we look at the second religious variable – denominational identification (Table 6.16).

Summary

Religion matters for life satisfaction, left–right orientation as well as for various kinds of activity. Religion strengthens rightist orientations and is associated with traditional forms of activity, while the reverse applies to non- traditional forms of political activity. The comparative analysis into the individual outcomes of religious creed confirms the standard image of religion as a conservative force in society reinforcing the established order. Table 6.17 summarizes the findings.

Culture as religion is important for citizens’ political orientation and activity. Attendance at religious services appears to be equally important as

Religion and its Outcomes 191

Table 6.15 Religion and membership in voluntary organizations

Indep.

variables

Coeff Dependent variable: membership of voluntary organizations

Total Six Belgium Spain USA Switz. India Russia

RELSERV coeff .140 .234 .257 .175 .421 .148 �.068 .135

t-stat 28.57 18.63 7.50 6.42 19.03 4.22 �1.22 2.98

DENOM* coeff – – �.023 �.043 �.021 �.054 �.097 �.141

t-stat – – �.88 �1.55 �1.36 �2.55 �2.67 �5.54

EDUCAT coeff .266 .460 .285 .183 .270 .366 .119 .333

t-stat 40.74 27.15 6.31 5.58 7.73 6.10 1.92 7.72

INCOME coeff .163 .153 .201 �.004 .144 .226 �.047 .121

t-stat 23.58 8.20 4.15 �.10 5.15 5.76 �.60 2.69

GENDER coeff �.039 �.003 �.078 �.040 �.025 �.074 �.129 �.025

t-stat �11.35 �3.82 �3.67 �2.23 �1.69 �3.48 �4.14 �1.23

AGE coeff .064 .099 .070 .042 .113 .105 .145 �.187

t-stat 11.44 7.11 2.11 1.38 5.01 3.16 2.38 �5.70

Constant coeff .213 .041 .066 .190 .177 .208 .636 .426

t-stat 32.28 2.38 1.45 5.02 4.79 4.46 9.80 9.49

Adjrsq .043 .109 .075 .025 .147 .059 .031 .091

N 81520 11421 2030 2924 2941 2131 1055 2228

Notes: * The denomination variable refers to the following for the different countries: Belgium, Spain, the USA and Switzerland: Roman Catholics; India: Hindus; Russia: Orthodox. coeff: the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix C.

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belonging to a religious denomination. Religion matters more in Belgium, Spain and the USA than in India or Russia.

Conclusion

Besides ethnicity, religion is one of the major forces in human life. It matters for outcomes on all three levels studied here: society, region and individual behaviour. More specifically, the world religions display different performance profiles. In divided societies political parties mobilize religious or anti- clerical votes. And religion is a conservative force in people’s minds. It is impossible to draw a clear-cut distinction between religion and historical tradition. Religious creed or practice changes slowly over time. However, we wish to examine the impact of traditions other than religion and ethnicity, such as, for instance, legacies in the form of colonialism and family traditions. Part IV deals with the impact of legacies.

192 Culture and Politics

Table 6.16 Religion and joining boycotts

Indep.

variables

Coeff Dependent variable: propensity to join boycotts

Total Six Belgium Spain USA Switz. India Russia

RELSERV coeff �.061 .043 .005 �.080 �.045 .010 �.100 .020

t-stat �19.63 5.00 .23 �4.28 �2.37 .28 �3.54 .75

DENOM* coeff – – �.088 �.100 �.042 .013 �.067 �.051

t-stat – – �5.16 �5.34 �3.15 .62 �3.30 �3.48

EDUCAT coeff .158 .201 .262 .120 .397 .458 .196 .113

t-stat 37.70 17.51 8.89 5.38 13.15 7.36 4.80 4.44

INCOME coeff .113 .064 .070 .063 .079 .030 �.079 �.016

t-stat 25.17 5.03 2.24 1.97 3.28 .80 �1.87 �.62

GENDER coeff �.058 �.089 �.077 �.091 �.036 �.001 �.142 �.061

t-stat �26.15 �14.46 �5.53 �7.56 �2.81 �.03 �8.91 �5.04

AGE coeff �.104 �.141 �.032 �.097 �.140 �.230 �.054 �.141

t-stat �28.48 �14.68 �1.49 �4.63 �7.20 �6.84 �1.92 �7.34

Constant coeff .205 .195 .111 .340 .157 .126 .528 .216

t-stat 47.44 16.90 3.79 13.20 4.92 2.82 15.42 8.23

Adjrsq .076 .094 .116 .125 .118 .112 .086 .076

N 78841 10899 1802 2535 2823 1031 1816 1998

Notes: * The denomination variable refers to the following for the different countries: Belgium, Spain, the USA and Switzerland: Roman Catholics; India: Hindus; Russia: Orthodox. coeff = the unstandardized regression coefficient. t-stat = t-statistics. Used to test the significance of the regression coefficients; t-stat showing more than � 2 indicates significance.

Sources: See Appendix C.

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Religion and its Outcomes 193

Table 6.17 Number of significant regression coefficients estimated from the impact of religion by country and dependent variable

Values Distributed by country

Belgium Spain USA Switzer-

land

India Russia Total

Attending

religious

services

3 4 5 4 2 1 19

Denomination 4 3 2 2 2 4 17

Total 7 7 7 6 4 5 36

Values Distributed by dependent variable

Life

satisfaction

Left–right

orientation

Political

interest

Voluntary

organiz-

ations

Joining

boycotts

Total

Attending

religious

services

3 4 4 5 3 19

Denomination 3 3 3 3 5 17

Total 6 7 7 8 8 36

Note: This information is partly based upon a number of estimations not reported in this chapter.

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