Module 9

GLOBALIZATION
OF RELIGION
 Religion is undeniably an essential part of
human’s spiritual life. Because of this, several
religious beliefs and systems were created, then
propagated in different areas of the world. Thus,
globalizing religion has since been part of man’s
history. The spread of religion went though
developments and innovations which is very
evident why most religion sustained themselves
and get more stronger.
 Objectives

At the end of the lesson, the students are

expected to:
• Explain how globalization affects religious
practices and beliefs;
• Analyze the relationship between religion and
global conflict and conversely, global peace;
and
• Identify the challenges of religion and
globalization.
 Course Outline

• Distinctions between Religion and Globalism,

Isolationist Justification, Realities of Religion
and Globalization, Religion For and Against
Globalization
 Let’s Get Ready

Share your experiences on maintaining and

practicing your spiritual faith during the lock-
down period due to Covid-19 pandemic.
 Let’s Get Ready

Points to Discuss:
• What have you realized during the situation?
• What made you stronger/ weaker during this
time?
• What did you do to continue showing your
faith to the Creator?
• In what ways do different religions reach out
to their believers?
Let’s Get On With It
 Introduction
Religion is concerned with the sacred, while
globalism places value on material wealth. Religion
follows divine commandments, while globalism
abides by human-made laws. Religion assumes that
there is “the possibility of communication between
humans and the transcendent.” “God”, “Allah”, or
“Yahweh” defines and judges human action in
moral terms. Globalism is on how much of human
action can lead to the highest material satisfaction
and subsequent wisdom that this new status
produces.
Religious people are less concerned with wealth
and all that comes along with it (higher social
status, a standard of living similar with that of the
rest of the community, exposure to “culture”, top-
of-the-line education for the children).
Ascetics - they shun anything material for complete
simplicity - from their domain to the clothes they
wear, to the food they eat, and even to the manner
in which they talk.
A religious person’s main duty is to live a
virtuous, sin-less life such that when he/she dies,
he/she is assured of a place in the other world.
 Globalists are less worried about whether
they will end up in heaven or hell. Their skills are
more pedestrian as they aim to seal trade deals,
raise the profits of private enterprises, improve
government revenue collections, protect the elites
from being excessively taxed by the state, and,
naturally, enrich themselves. If he/she has a strong
social conscience, he/she sees his/her work as
contributing to the general progress of the
community, the nation, and the global economic
system.
Globalist trains to be shrewd businessperson;
they value politics as both means and ends to
further the economies of the world.
 Religion and globalism clash over
the fact that religious evangelization is
in itself a form of globalization.

The globalist ideal is largely focused

on the realm of markets which is to
spread goods and services while the
religious is concerned with spreading
holy ideas globally.
 The missions being sent by American Born-
Again Christian churches, Sufi and Shiite Muslim
orders, as well as institutions like Buddhist
monasteries and Catholic, Protestant and
Mormon churches are efforts at “spreading the
word of God” and gaining adherent abroad.
Being a Christian, a Muslim, or a Buddhist
places one in a higher plane than just being a
Filipino, a Spanish speaker, or an Anglo-Saxon.
 Isolationist Justification
The followers of the Dalai Lama “flee”
their communities and create impenetrable
sanctuaries where they can practice their
religions without the meddling and control of
state authorities; they established themselves in
Tibet.
The Buddhist monasteries are located
away from civilization so that hermits can
devote themselves to prayer and contemplation.
 Isolationist Justification
• Rizalistas of Mount Banahaw
• Essenes during Roman-controlled Judea (now
Israel)
• Mormons of Utah
They believe that living among non-
believers will distract them from their mission or
tempt them to abandon their faith and become
sinners like everyone else.
Opposition to authorities on religious grounds
Priestesses and monks led the first revolts
against colonialism in Asia and Africa;
millenarian movements that wish to break away
from the hold of the state or vow to overthrow
the latter in the name of God.
To their “prophets”, the state seeks to either
destroy their people’s sacred beliefs or distort
religion to serve non-religious goals.
REALITIES
• Peter Berger argues that far from being
secularized, the “contemporary world is
…furiously religious. There are veritable
explosions of religious fervor, occurring in major
religious traditions - Christianity, Judaism,
Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Confucianism
and in many places in imaginative syntheses of
one or more world religions with indigenous
faiths.”
REALITIES
Religions are the foundations of modern
republics.
• Malaysian government places religion at the
center of the political system.
• Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini bragged about the
superiority of Islamic rule over its secular
counterparts; Islamic rule was the superior form
of government because it was spiritual.
REALITIES
Religious movements do not hesitate to
appropriate secular themes and practices.
• Nahdlatul Ulama in Indonesia has Islamic
schools; religion was the result of a shift in state
policy .
• The Church of England was “shaped by the
rationality of modern democratic culture”.
• King Henry VIII broke away from Roman
Catholicism and established his own Church to
bolster his power.
REALITIES
• United States - religion and law were fused
together to help build this “modern secular
society”. Alexis de Tocqueville (French historian)
observed in the early 1800s that “not only do the
Americans practice their religion out of self-
interest but they often even place in this world
the interest which they have in practicing it”.

Religion has always been at the very center of all

great political conflicts and movements of social
reform (Jose Casanova).
RELIGION FOR AND AGAINST
GLOBALIZATION

• Christianity and Islam - see globalization less as

an obstacle and more as an opportunity to
expand their reach all over the world.
Globalization has “freed” communities from
the “constraints of the nation-state”.
Religion seeks to take the place of these
broken “traditional ties” to either help
communities cope with their new situation or
organize them to oppose this major transformation
of their lives.
RELIGION FOR AND AGAINST
GLOBALIZATION
It can provide the groups “moral codes”
that answer problems ranging from people’s health
to social conflict to even “personal happiness”.

• Religion is a “pro-active force” that gives

communities a new and powerful basis of
identity. It is an instrument with which religious
people can put their mark in the reshaping of
this globalizing world, although in its own terms.
 RELIGION FOR AND
AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
• Religious fundamentalism continues to use
“the full range of modern means of
communication and organization” that is
associated with this economic transformation; it
has tapped “fast long-distance transport and
communications, the availability of English as a
global vernacular of unparalleled power, the
know-how of modern management and
marketing” which enabled the spread of “almost
promiscuous propagation of religious forms
across the globe in all sorts of directions.”
 RELIGION FOR AND
AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
• It is not entirely correct to assume that the
proliferation of “Born Again” groups, or in the
case of Islam, the rise of movements like Daesh
(popularly known as ISIS or Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria) signals religion’s defense against the
materialism of globalization.
These fundamentalist organizations are
the result of the spread of globalization and both
find ways to benefit or take advantage of each
other.
 RELIGION FOR AND
AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
• World Council of Churches – an association of different
Protestant congregations; has criticized economic
globalization’s negative effects.
• Catholic Church and its dynamic leader , Pope Francis
likewise condemned globalization’s “throw-away
culture” that is “fatally destined to suffocate hope and
increase risks and threats.
• Lutheran World Federation declaration message
included economic and feminist critiques of
globalization, sharing the voices of members of the
Church who were affected by globalization, and
contemplations on the different “pastoral and ethical
reflections” that members could use to guide their
opposition.
 RELIGION FOR AND
AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
• World Bank (1998) brought in religious leaders in its
discussion of global poverty, leading eventually to a
“cautious, muted, and qualified” collaboration in
2000.
• “The preferential option for the poor” is a powerful
message of mobilization but lacks substance when it
comes to working out a replacement system that can
change the poor’s condition in concrete ways. In Iran,
the unchallenged superiority of a religious autocracy
has stifled all freedom of expressions, distorted
democratic rituals like elections, and tainted the
opposition.
CONCLUSION
• Peter Bayer and Lori Beaman - “religion, it
seems, is somehow ‘outside’ looking at
globalization as problem or potential”. The
reason for this perspective is the association of
globalization with modernization, which is a
concept of progress that is based on science,
technology, reason and the law.
• The thesis that modernization will erode
religious practice is often called secularization
theory.
CONCLUSION
• Samuel Huntington - civilizations can be held
together by religious worldviews.
• Max Weber - observed the correlation between
religion and capitalism as an economic system.
• Calvinism - believed that God has already
decided who would and would not be saved;
Calvinists made it their mission to search for
clues as to their fate, and in their pursuit, they
redefined the meaning of profit and its
acquisition. This “inner-worldly asceticism”
contributed to the rise of modern capitalism.
CONCLUSION
• When Spaniards occupied lands in the Americas
and the Philippines, it was done in the name of the
Spanish King and of God.
• McKinley claimed “that after a night of prayer and
soul-searching, he had concluded that it was the
duty of the United States ‘to educate the Filipinos,
and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by
God’s grace do the very best we could by them”’.
• Religious leaders have used religion to wield
influence in the political arena, either as outsiders
criticizing the pitfalls of pro-globalization regimes,
or as integral members of coalitions who play key
roles in policy decision-makings and the
implementation of government projects.
 The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling
already appear at an early stage of
development, as an example in the Psalms of
David and in some the Prophets.

Albert Einstein
 Let’s Strengthen It

• Watch a documentary entitled “The Rise of

ISIS”. Write a reaction paper on this.
 Let’s Test Yourself

TRUE OR FALSE. Write the word TRUE if the statement is correct and
FALSE if it is wrong. Write your answer in the space provided before
the numbers. (10 points)

_________________________________1. Religion is concerned with

the sacred while globalism places value on material wealth.
_________________________________2. Religion and globalism clash
over the fact that religious evangelization is in itself a form of
globalization.
_________________________________3. The ascetics train to
become shrewd business person; they value politics as both means
and ends to further the economies of the world.
 Let’s Test Yourself

_________________________________4. The Essenes believe that

living among non-believers will distract them from their mission or
tempt them to abandon their faith and become sinners like
everyone else.
_________________________________5. Muhammad Ali bragged
about the superiority of Islamic rule over its secular counterparts;
Islamic rule was the superior form of government because it was
spiritual.
_________________________________6. Religion is a pro-active force
that gives communities a new and powerful basis of identity.
_________________________________7. According to Alexis de
Tocqueville, religion has always been at the very center of all great
political conflicts and movements of social reform.
 Let’s Test Yourself

_________________________________8. Religious fundamentalism

continues to use the full range of modern means of communication
and organization that is associated with this economic
transformation.
_________________________________9. Secularization Theory
believes that modernization will erode religious practices.
_________________________________10. Samuel Huntington
observed the correlation between religion and capitalism as an
economic system.
 My Realization

How do you protect, profess, and propagate your faith?

• ___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
 References

Claudio, Lisandro E. and Patricio Abinales. 2018. The

Contemporary World. C & E Publishing, Inc. Quezon City.
Steger, Manfred B., Paul Battersby, and Joseph M. Siracusa, eds.
2014. Chapter 10 of The SAGE Handbook of Globalization. Two
volumes. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Claudio, Lisandro
E. and Patricio Abinales. 2018. The Contemporary World. C & E
Publishing, Inc. Quezon City.
Saluba, Dennis J., Carlos, Abigeil F., Cuadra, Jovy F., Damilig,
Angelita D., Corpuz, Raizza P., Endozo, Maria Lorena A.,
Pascual, Marilou P., Hermogenes, Michael C., and Capacio,
Jocelyn G. 2018. The Contemporary World. Panday-Lahi
Publishing House, Inc. Muntinlupa City.