Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education David Chidester HSRC Publishers Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Occasional Paper Series, Number 1 Series Editor: Dr Wilmot James, Executive Director: Social Cohesion and Integration, Human Sciences Research Council Published by the Human Sciences Research Council Publishers Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, South Africa © Human Sciences Research Council First published 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ISSN: 1684–2839 Produced by comPress Distributed in South Africa by Blue Weaver Marketing and Distribution, P.O. Box 30370, Tokai, Cape Town, South Africa, 7966. Tel/Fax: (021) 701-7302, email: blueweav@mweb.co.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za III About the Author David Chidester is a Visiting Fellow at the Social Cohesion and Integration Research Programme of the HSRC. He is Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Cape Town, Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (ICRSA), and Co-Director of the International Human Rights Exchange. He is author or editor of fifteen books in the study of religion, including Religions of South Africa (1992), Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa (1992), Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (1996), and Christianity: A Global History (2000). Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education David Chidester Why study religion and religions? Why should we be involved as educators, students, parents or administrators in the process of teaching and learning about religious diversity? In this essay, I want to test one possible answer: citizenship. As I hope to show, the validity of this answer depends less upon what we mean by religion than it does upon what we mean by citizenship, although both terms will have to be brought into focus. Without exhausting all possible avenues of exploration, at the very least I hope to suggest that the study of religion, religions and religious diversity can usefully be brought into conversation with recent research on new formations of citizenship. Conventionally, the modern notion of citizenship has combined political-legal rights and responsibilities with symbolic-affective loyalties and values into a public status of full inclusion and partici- pation within a society. Located within the constitutional frame- works of modern states, social citizenship has generally been defined as national citizenship. Although the second half of the twentieth century certainly produced declarations of transnational rights and social movements with transnational loyalties, social citizenship formally remained national citizenship. According to many analysts, however, the increasing scope and pace of globalisation since the 1990s has generated new forms of ‘post-national citizenship’, which 1 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za have appeared in both local assertions of different kinds of ‘cultural citizenship’ and transnational assertions of a planetary ‘global citizenship’. In order to test my answer, therefore, I shall need to consider how these changing forms of citizenship affect the terms of inclusion and the conditions of participation in public educational programmes in the study of religion, religions and religious diversity. In spite of its conceptual and practical problems, I will propose, citizenship provides a useful rationale for the study of religion and religions. IMPERIALISTS AND IDIOTS Why should we study religion and religions? In a recent essay published in the Guide to the Study of Religion, I criticised imperial answers, from nineteenth-century British imperialism to twentieth- century American neo-imperialism, which have been based on the assumption that the study of religion and religions is good for maintaining a certain kind of transnational order (Chidester, 2000a). For example, in a series of lectures, The Religions of the World, published in 1847, the British theologian F. D. Maurice proposed that the study of religions provided knowledge that was useful for a nation that was currently ‘engaged in trading with other countries, or in conquering them, or in keeping possession of them’ (Maurice, 1847: 255; see Chidester, 1996: 131–32). Over a century later, in the first edition of his popular survey of world religions published in 1958, The Religions of Man, American scholar of religion Huston Smith reported that his series of lectures to officers of the U.S. Air Force provided useful knowledge because ‘someday they were likely to be dealing with the peoples they were studying as allies, antagonists, or subjects of military occupation’ (Smith, 1958: 7–8; see McCutcheon, 1997: 180–81). Certainly, these recommendations for the study of religion suggest a remarkable continuity from British imperialism to American neo-imperialism in justifying the field of study as an intellectual instrument of international trade, military conquest and political administration of alien subjects. In case we think that such strategic justifications for the study of David Chidester 2 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za religion and religions have disappeared, we can refer to the introduc- tory course offered by Chaplain Ken Stice at the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. In the syllabus for this course, ‘Religious Factors in Special Operations’, Chaplain Stice identified the ‘terminal learning objective’ as enabling a Special Operations soldier to brief his or her commander on the impact of religion and religions on a mission and its forces. ‘Why do Special Operations soldiers need to study religion at all?’ Chaplain Stice asked. ‘Primarily, because of the truth of Special Operations Imperative Number 1: Understand the Operational Environment!’ As an adjunct to military strategy and tactics, the study of religion and religions can be useful in gaining the cooperation or submission of adherents of foreign, unfamiliar religions that Chaplain Stice could characterise as ‘different from our own’ (Stice, 1997). By contrast to this imperial strategy, a different rationale for studying religion and religions has emerged under conditions of increased religious, cultural and linguistic diversity within urban centres of the West. Increasingly, people encounter adherents of other religions not only in international business, military operations or foreign missions, but also at home. To illustrate this local rationale for studying religious diversity, I refer to a popular text, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the World’s Religions. Addressing the reader, the authors reformulate my initial question as ‘Why Bother to Learn?’ As the authors explain, At one point or another, just about everyone has felt some form of anxiety about encountering an unfamiliar religious tradition. This book will not only help you reduce the likelihood of embarrassing missteps, it will also clue you in about the guiding ideas behind just about every religious tradition you’re likely to encounter in today’s world. (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: frontis) Notice the personal reasons for studying religion and religions: we need to deal with personal feelings of anxiety about the unfamiliar; to avoid personal embarrassment in dealing with others; and to live knowledgably, comfortably and confidently in a multicultural, multireligious world. Ultimately, the study of religion and religions is recommended as an antidote to fear of the unknown. ‘Perhaps the most important reason to study faiths beyond one’s own’, the Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education 3 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za authors advise, ‘is that it is a marvelous way to replace fear with experience and insight. It’s hard to be frightened of something you really understand’ (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: 8). The study of religion and religions, therefore, emerges as a kind of therapy for fear. ‘The more you know about other faiths’, the authors promise, ‘the less fear will be a factor in your dealings with people who practice those faiths’ (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: 10). Although the Idiot’s Guide observes in passing that these personal accomplishments are always useful for tourists visiting strange and distant places, the authors repeatedly stress that the problems of anxiety, embarrassment and ignorance urgently need to be resolved at home. In the workplace, the neighbourhood, the school, and even the family, religious diversity is a local fact of life. Accordingly, the study of religion and religions is not a strategy for dealing with foreign subjects but a therapy for dealing with fears that arise in ongoing and regular relations with fellow citizens who live and work in the same operational environment. As any idiot knows, structural and historical causes can be identified for local religious diversity. Addressing an American audience, the authors of the Idiot’s Guide point to the framework of the U.S. Constitution as a legal structure that ensures religious diversity. By ensuring freedom from any religious establishment and guaranteeing freedom for all religious exercise, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution created ‘a pluralistic religious environment’. Recent history of population movements, immigra- tion and diaspora, however, has expanded the scope of diversity. As a result, the authors observe, ‘We live in a society in which true religious diversity, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, is finally becoming a reality’ (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: frontis). In structural terms, the reality of religious diversity can be understood as working out the terms and conditions of the U.S. constitutional framework, ‘Catching Up with the Constitution’, as the authors put it. However, the historical dynamics in and through which people, money, technology, images and ideas move around the world have clearly accelerated the pace of this race to catch up with the U.S. Constitution. ‘In an earlier era, unfamiliar religious systems could be dismissed as “foreign” and left for the scholars to David Chidester 4 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za explore’, the authors note. ‘In this era, that is usually not a realistic option’ (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: 5). Learning about religion and religions has become a necessity for everyone, ‘even if you don’t have an advanced degree in comparative religion’, they urge, adding the tantalising question: ‘Why leave all the excitement to academics?’ (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: 7). By treating adherents of different religions as local citizens rather than as foreign subjects, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the World’s Religions represents a significant alternative to the imperial study of religion. Although the guide does not directly address citizenship, the basic ingredients are there in politico-legal rights and responsi- bilities and the symbolic-affective terms for group identification and shared values. Recognising a citizen’s right to religious worship, the guide spends less time on rights than on responsibilities – the responsibility to exercise religious tolerance, the duty to respect religious diversity, and the civic obligation to ensure that no-one is disadvantaged on the basis of religious difference – that implicitly recognise the reality of an interreligious citizenry. In an aside, the Idiot’s Guide urges employers to avoid discriminating against employees on the basis of religion. Not merely a matter of etiquette, this freedom from religious discrimination in public is a legal right held by all citizens. As the authors warn, Watch It!: Just a reminder: It is completely inappropriate (and usually illegal) to question someone who reports to you about the whys and wherefores of his or her religion as it relates to workplace performance. Stay on the right side of the law; do not give even the barest impression that you are judging someone’s performance, or potential for a job opening, on his or her religious beliefs. (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: 23) While asserting the legal rights and responsibilities of an interreligious citizenry, the guide also promotes an interreligious basis for group identification and shared values in which no-one is defined as ‘the “Other” on the basis of religion’ (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: 9) and all religions are found to hold in common the same elemental truths of humanity’s relation with the eternal, the interconnectedness of all creation, and the limits of the logical mind (Toropov and Buckles, 1997: 11–19). Although this common ground of shared religious values must seem very thin, the Idiot’s Guide Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education 5 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za nevertheless develops a rationale for the study of religions that is based on the mutual recognition of citizens, for all their religious diversity, in a common interreligious society. WORLD RELIGIONS Although I have been busy so far appreciating and applauding The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the World’s Religions for advancing the study of religion and religions within an inclusive framework of interreligious citizenship, the text certainly must also come in for some criticism. In many respects, the Idiot’s Guide is more symptom than solution of the problem of teaching and learning about religious diversity in a common society. Researchers and educators in the study of religion will certainly object to many of its guiding premises, especially its overheated diagnosis of anxiety, its reduction of the field of study to personal therapy, and its superficial assimila- tion of religious diversity into a common core of beliefs supposedly shared by all religions of the world. Certainly, as the Idiot’s Guide suggests, we cannot leave all the excitement of studying religion and religions to academics, but we also cannot simply ignore academic theory and method in the field. In this regard, the most serious problem with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the World’s Religions is its adherence to the very notion of ‘world religions’. The book’s substantive chapters consist of simple reviews of the history, beliefs, and practices of ‘world religions’ as if they were separate systems, continuous with the past and uniform in the present. Among academics, considerable excitement in the study of religion and religions in recent years has been generated by rejecting, for many good reasons, the organising framework of ‘world religions’. First, the framework is arbitrary. How many ‘world religions’ are there in the world? In the 1590s, when the word ‘religions’ first appeared in English, there were two: Protestant and Catholic (Harrison, 1990: 39). During the eighteenth century, there were four: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Paganism (Pailin, 1984). In 1870, the putative founder of the scientific study of religion, F. Max Müller, identified eight: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism and Taoism (Müller, David Chidester 6 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za [...]... Renato 1994 Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy’ Cultural Anthropology 9, 3: 402–11 26 Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Rosaldo, Renato 1997 Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism’ In Flores, W.V., and Benmayor, R., eds., Latino Cultural Citizenship: Reclaiming Identity, Space, and Rights... from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education be elaborated, I am not interested in attempting that task here Instead, I want to suggest that recent formations of global and cultural citizenship, with their multiple identities, shifting locations and new media, can chart the terrain for resituating the study of religion As I have suggested... of world religions was revived in response to new demographic situations In the context of increasing religious, cultural, and linguistic diversity of British society, 8 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education as Eleanor Nesbitt has observed, educational policy was marked by the ‘shift in the content of religious education. .. from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education 1873) As the study of religion developed in the twentieth century, Max Müller’s list of major world religions was altered on account of contingent historical factors to remove Zoroastrianism and add Shintoism Although a recent survey has identified 33 principal world religions (Eliade, et al.,... download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education which religious diversity, even if that diversity is framed in terms of world religions , can be translated into national unity In a draft submission to the Minister of Education that grew out of a Consulting Workshop on Religion in Education in May 2000, a proposed policy sought to... happening In Norway, for example, despite the national mandate to 18 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education cultivate a particular kind of cultural citizenry, educators in the field of religion education have been able to explore the ways in which their pupils identify with multiple cultures, both global and local, and form... Simon and Schuster Hutchings, Kimberly, and Dannreuther, Roland, eds 1999 Cosmopolitan Citizenship New York: St Martin’s Press Jackson, Robert, and Eleanor Nesbitt 1997 ‘From Fieldwork to School Text: Studying and Representing British Hindu Children’ In Trees Andree, Cok Bakker, and Peter Schreiner eds., Crossing Boundaries: Contributions to Interreligious and Intercultural Education Münster and Berlin:... place to think about religion, especially within the sphere of public education In conclusion, I want to reflect briefly on some of the implications of this positioning of the study of religion for teaching and learning about religion, religions and religious diversity in public schools RELIGION EDUCATION In state schools, the process of teaching and learning about religion has often, if not inevitably,... changing world of religious diversity During the 1990s, despite criticisms within the academic study of religion, the notion of world religions underwent a revival on two fronts – global and local – especially as evidenced by the changing role of religion in public education On the global front, a range of interreligious initiatives – the Global Ethic, the Parliament for the World s Religions, the World. .. the Consulting Workshop on Religion in Education, May 2000’ Pretoria: Department of Education Coogan, Michael D., ed 1998 The Illustrated Guide to World Religions New York: Oxford University Press 22 Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Eliade, Mircea, Culianu, Ion P and Wiesner, Hillary S 2000 The HarperCollins Concise . www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Global Citizenship, Cultural Citizenship and World Religions in Religion Education David Chidester Why study religion and religions? Why. developments in global and cultural citizenship that must be taken seriously in thinking through relations between citizenship and religion education. Global Citizenship,