Jewel Ysmile L.

De Leon April 05, 2021

1st Year – Intern GE6-TCW

Globalization and Religion

In the context that religious groups and practices have always had permeable borders,
religion has always been global. They've changed, transferred, and connected with one another
all over the world. The differences between Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism,
and other religious traditions, as well as how these traditions are influenced by evolving cultural
backgrounds around the world. Scholars who are intimately familiar with the religious cultures
they research explain how these communities have evolved over time, how they have adapted
to the diverse cultural environments in which they find themselves, and how they are influenced
by contemporary forces of globalization and social change.

While some parts of the world act as dense centres of gravity for specific religious rituals,
most of the world is, and always has been, unsure of its religious identity. Also Hindu India was
a quarter Muslim before the establishment of Pakistan, and 15% of the Indian population reveres
Islam today. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, has a rich Hindu culture in Bali and
one of the world's most important ancient Buddhist shrines at Borabadur. Since China's religious
strata are so complex, with the majority of the people embracing Confucian traditions, Taoist
convictions, and Buddhist worship rituals at the same time, most historians tend to refer to a
multicultural "Chinese faith" rather than either of the three strands separately. The sects of Korea
and Japan are similar in several ways. Haitians are said to be 90 percent Roman Catholic and 90
percent Vodou believers in the Western Hemisphere; needless to say, this is the same 90 percent.
Of course, Jews are found all over the world, and have been since biblical times. Today, it seems
that nearly everybody is around at all times. Los Angeles, for example, is the world's second-
largest Filipino city. It's both the second-largest city in Iran and the second-largest city in
Mexico. Tibetan Buddhists in Southern California do not hide in monasteries in the mountains.
The Chinese government in Beijing is fighting not only modern manifestations of Chinese faith,
such as Falun Gong, but also dissident Chinese Muslims and Christians. (Some data are excerpt
from different Online Sources like Wikipedia and Britannica, so it is possible for some changes
or not exact data)

Almost no place on the planet today is entirely made up of followers of a single strand of
organized religion. The rate of cultural exchange and transition has risen by seemingly increasing
levels in the age of globalization. Furthermore, as religions evolve and intertwine, the map will
need to be updated from time to time, perhaps even from decade to decade.

From the beginning of recorded history, this complex phase of cultural exchange,
extension, synthesis, borrowing, and transformation has been ongoing. Indeed, the oldest epic to
which we have links, the Ark of Noah, written two thousand years before Christ, tells the tale of
a great flood caused by divine wrath, and a human who created an ark to stop it. It's a story that's
been retold in the ancient book of Genesis and is today revered by the world's major religious
religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a religious
scholar, was fond of finding out that even a simple artifact like a string of prayer beads
demonstrates the interaction of faiths. Smith theorized that the rosary was copied from Muslims
in Spain, who were influenced by Buddhist prayer beads from Central Asia, who in turn
appropriated the concept from Brahmans in Hindu India. The spread of Christianity from the
Mediterranean world to Europe was slow, containing "archipelagos of centrality in a sea of
indifference," as historian Peter Brown put it. Many pre-Christian indigenous European cultural
traditions were adopted by Christianity along the way, including the concept of saints and the
Christmas and Easter festivals.

As a result, religion was and still is worldwide, in the sense that religious cultures and
practices have always had border controls. They've changed, transferred, and connected with one
another all over the world. If one considers religion to be the universal representation of a
people's sense of inherent meaning, it's easy to see how these cultural elements will shift as
humans have traveled, and how they will evolve and alter over time. About the fact that most
religious ideologies assert certain unchangeable ultimate anchors of reality. About the fact that
most religious practices assert certain unchangeable ultimate anchors of reality, it is undeniable
that each tradition includes an immense diversity of characteristics and a number of cultural
elements gleaned from its neighbors.

Any of this is a product of religion's globalization. Religion is global in the sense that it is
linked to the global movement of people and ideas. There is also a third context in which faith is
modern, which may be referred to as "religion of globalization," in which emerging religions
appear as manifestations of modern interactive societies.

As a result, religion varies as the culture changes. At the beginning of the twenty century,
different aspects of economic, social, technological, and cultural globalization are serving as
gateways for new religious expressions. Globalization religions evolve as populations converge
in plural communities. It's easy to envision the emergence of a modern society with its own
global faith in an age of mutual contact, history, and ideas. Mohandas Gandhi, Desmond Tutu,
the Dalai Lama, and Mother Theresa can be considered the forefathers of a religion's pantheon of
saints. Religion will undoubtedly evolve in the future as it reacts to developments in the world
around it, much as it does in the past.

Religion and globalization have an odd, contradictory, yet mutually reinforcing

relationship. For decades, religious actors have played and continue to play a role in shaping
globalization, a point that is highlighted as the economic-centric approach to defining religion is
ignored. Of course, even though the Age of Discovery is regarded as the birthplace of
globalization, it must be remembered that it was conceived as a search for "God, Gold, and
Glory." And, while globalization may have profoundly negative consequences for certain
religious actors, prompting them to enter the anti-globalization backlash, the agent-opponent
connection often has a variety of positive consequences for religion. Although historians in the
mid-twentieth century rejected religion as a barbaric manifestation of superstition, believing that
globalization will lead to its extinction, the consequences of cultural interchange and ideational
globalization have contributed to its spread, as well as the rise of diverse movements. Religion is
particularly rapid with a vengeance as a result of globalization. Religions and religious actors of
all sorts have always been important in the globalization process, and as the story above shows,
they can still be. However, if the international community wants to resolve these security issues,
the globalization reaction must be taken seriously, and the concerns of angry religious actors
must be discussed. This can be achieved by collaborating with social justice campaigns,
participating in interfaith dialogue with religious actors of all sorts, and then implementing the
ideas that emerge from these collaborations and dialogues in an effort to minimize the more
harmful consequences of globalization, such as cultural disruption.