Globalised Religions for a Globalised World

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Globalised Religions for a Globalised World
Gregory Melleuish
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This is a time of great religious vitality for Christianity and Islam, explains Greg Melleuish

Until the presidency of George W Bush and September 11, 2001 there was not a great deal of public interest in the place of religion in the contemporary world. True, Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis had excited some interest in a possible conflict between the West and Islam. In general, however, with declining church membership and attendance in most Western countries it was assumed that the developed world, with America the only major exception, was slowly, but inexorably, on the road to complete secularity. This meant that discussion of religion tended to focus on such matters as the decline of Christianity, the possibility of female and gay priests and ‘moral’ issues such as abortion.

The recent and sudden interest in both Christianity and Islam has been fuelled by the threat that their more robust forms, generically labelled ‘fundamentalism’, are believed to pose to the stability and comfort of the secularised West. Consequently discussion of religious matters has tended to take on an ‘Us and Them’ character with ‘Us’ being seen as the calm and reasonable children of the Enlightenment and ‘Them’ as fanatics and barbarians, be they Christians, Muslims or Jews. This is not to say that there is not a small hard core of extremists amongst these ‘fundamentalists’. Rather it is to point out that the use of a term such as ‘fundamentalism’ obscures rather than illuminates when it is used to encompass the beliefs of millions, even billions, of people.

The Western fixation, particularly amongst its intelligentsia, on secularisation as the inevitable fate of humanity has obscured the fact that we are currently living in one of the great ages of religious vitality and mission, in both the Christian and Muslim worlds. Much of this religious activity is happening in Africa, Latin America and Asia, far from the eyes of the Western media, just as much of the ‘clash of civilizations’ between Christianity and Islam has occurred in places such as Nigeria and the Sudan and has been reported only sporadically elsewhere.

Over the past 40 years both Christianity and Islam have become globalised religions. Much of their progress has occurred outside the view of the West. The consequences of this globalisation are only now coming to be fully appreciated. The heart of Christianity no longer lies in the West. Moreover the forms that Christianity is taking in Africa, Asia and Latin America are often quite different from those currently prevalent in the West.

More: http://www.cis.org.au/policy/winter05/polwin05-3.htm

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