I found the first article entitled, In God’s Name, to be very good. The writer basically gives a synopsis of the world and the nations within it and the various political agendas found within each. As one might expect, much of those agendas found their motivation in religion. With much of the Middle East, various sects of Islam influence the political arena. In the States, the religious right involves itself in politics with arguments about abortion, marriage, and issues of faith in practice within the public and state institutions (schools, town hall, etc.). In the Far East, keeping religion out of politics (and life in general) is the preoccupation of those governments.
What intrigued me the most about the article was the author’s mention of modernity’s role in the re-introduction of religion into politics.
Four and five centuries ago, philosophers and scientists began introducing a new era called modernity. Modernity, through modes like the scientific method, was to usher the world out of the antiquity, the ritual and tradition, and the hocus pocus that was religion. Science would rule and God and faith would take a back seat if not become extinct all together.
However, The Economist points out that the newest form of modernity is globalisation. More or less, globalisation has allowed for the entire world to become one community. With the click of a mouse, I can know what is going on in Hong Kong and India and Russia and the Middle East. With incredible technology in avionics, within a day I can be across the world and back again in some cases. In every corner of the globe, exporting and importing is occurring. This is all a product of modernity. Modernity has provided a vast array of possibilities.
What was pointed out in this article is the fact that with possibility and choice (made available by modernity), more people in the past two-three decades have become more interested in religion. In turn, religion has played a bigger part in society once more as it did in antiquity.
Why do I find this interesting? During my short time in seminary, I was turned on to the study of the philosophical paradigms of pre-modernity, modernity, and post-modernity. I became preoccupied with thinking of the church within these paradigms. (I’ll bore the readers here with those thoughts in another post.) That preoccupation has lead me to the study of the early church. Furthermore, my study of the church has found that early on in her life, political agendas intermixed with religious/doctrinal agendas is what helped form her. What I find interesting today is that 2000 years later, politics and religion are still intertwined. It matters not how much we try to keep religion out of politics or vice versa politics out of religion, it is going to happen because it has always happened.
Does it make it acceptable? I’m not quite sure, yet. I want to say no, but I still don’t know. Jesus seemed to want to keep them seperate – “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…” – but a closer look at even his ministry might show otherwise. I suppose the question is: should the gospel permeate politics as well as other aspects of life and culture? And if so, should we help it along or shall we allow it to affect things all on its own as the kingdom of heaven spreads throughout the earth?
