JCRT

Conference on Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy (Announcement)

2025-09-07T02:59:34Z

When: Sept. 26-27, 2025

Where: Online

Sponsored by the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory in Collaboration with the University of Denver

You must register in order to receive a participation link for conference. Once you register, the actual link for the conference will be sent to your email address.

Please note that the dates of the conference have been changed from the original CFP due to the very low participation of Western hemisphere scholars. Because of time zone differences, the original schedule of noon on Sept. 25 to late afternoon Sept. 26 has been changed to early morning on Sept. 26 to noon on (Sat.), Sept. 27. Program times are Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) announces an online conference entitled Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy to be held Sept. 26-27, 2025. The proceedings will be published and developed into a special issue of the JCRT in 2026. Prizes of $300, $150, and $100 will be awarded for first, second, and third place in the competition among final submitted papers. Only papers that are submitted and selected for the conference will be eligible for the prize.

The conference seeks to explore the complex and evolving intersection between populism and nationalism and its rejection of the neoliberal global order. It aims to shine a particular spotlight on how religious ideologies and moral value systems, both conservative and progressive, motivate and shape contemporary populist movements as well as their nationalist forms of political expression. Finally, the conference looks to answer the more overarching question: what implications does the growing influence of populist and neo-nationalist constituencies have for the future of democracy?

Program

ALL TIMES ARE GREENWICH MEAN TIME (GMT)

Friday, Sept. 26

13:30 – 14:00 | Jonathan Abernethy-Barkley, “Populism and Conspirituality: ‘Awakening’ As Conversion Narrative For Insurgency”, University of Aberdeen (UK)
14:00 – 14:30 | Hajer Ben Ameur, “The Grammar of Crisis: Far-Right Populism and the Semiotic Afterlife of U.S. Neoliberal Volatility”, University of Sousse (Tunisia)
14:30 – 15:00 | Marlam Donadio, “Democracy in Crisis: Insights from Nadia Urbinati”, Stony Brook University (US)

15:00 – 15:30 | **Break

15:30 – 16:00 | Melinda Ren, “Amor Mundi and the Crisis of Democracy: Arendt’s Response to Populism”, University of Sussex (UK)
16:00-16:30 | Lars Vadjina, “Make Earth Great Again: Nationalist Futurism in Space Policy and Astro-Narratives”, University of Tübingen (Germany)
16:30 – 17:30 | Break

Keynote speaker

17:30 – 19:00 | Carl Raschke, “The Trendline is Toward Global Populism: So Who’s Sovereign Now?”, University of Denver (US)

Respondent: Michel Staudigl, University of Vienna

Carl Raschke

Carl Raschke is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Denver in Colorado (US). He is the author of over 20 books and hundreds of scholarly articles over his more than half century academic career. His most recent books include Sovereignty in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Neoliberalism and Political Theology: From Kant to Identity Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2019, Force of God: Political Theology and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2015), and The Revolution in Religious Theory: Toward a Semiotics of the Event (University of Virginia Press, 2012). He is the co-founder and senior editor of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. He was named University Lecture at Denver for 2020-21. He serves on the board of the Center for Religion and Transformation at the ‘University of Vienna. He is also a regular contributor to thegloboscope.com.

19:00 – 19:30 | Alar Kilp, “Populism, Nationalism, and Moral Politics in Secular Estonia: Religion and Identity from the 1990s to Wartime Securitization”, University of Tartu (Estonia)
19:30 – 20:00 | Kevin Hujing, “Parties of Enmity: Rival Myths, Mimesis, and the Future of Democracy”, Metropolitan State University of Denver (US)
20:00 – 20:30 | Nazmul Arefin, “The Rise of Right-Wing Populism, Anti-Muslim Hate, and De-democratization: Reckoning Global North-South Nexus”, University of Alberta (Canada)

20:30-21:00 | Tomasz‑Łukasz Stanowski, “Populism , Symbolic Violence, and Synodality: A Comparative Study of the Pontificates of John Paul II and Francis”, Jagiellonian University (Poland

21:30 | Adjourn

Saturday, Sept. 27

12:30-13:00 | Marko Krtolica, “Challenging the Global Order: How Radical Right Parties in Western and Eastern Europe Differ”, Iustinius Primus Faculty of Law (North Macedonia)
13:00 – 13:30 | Maria Eduardo Costa and David Geraldes Santos, “Populist mythification and the moralization of politics: André Ventura as the people’s prophet in Portugal”, University of Beira Interior (Portugal)
13:30 – 14:00 | Kamal Makili-Aliyev, “Populism, Nationalism, and the Politics of Irredentism: Lessons from the Miatsum Movement”, University of Gothenburg (Sweden)
14:00 – 14:30 | Jyot S. Singh, “Populist Authoritarianism or Authoritarian Populism? Rethinking Regime Typologies through the Lens of Discourse, Jindal School of International Affairs (India)
14:30 – 15:00 | Joshua J. Ocon, “Between Logos and Loyalty: Does the Fanatic have a place in a Democracy?”, University of the Philippines – Dilman (Philippines)
15:00 – 15:30 | Dean Caivano, “Populism as Alibi: Weekend at Bernie’s and the Narrative Logic of Necro-Sovereignty”, Leheigh University (US)
15:30 – 16:00 | Efimija Zajkovska, “Religion as a Political Resource: Populistic and Authoritarian Abuses of Religion in Post-Socialist European Countries”,
16:00 – 16:30 | Nina Viaznikova, “Building National Identity: The Political Use of Architectural Reconstruction”, ”, Iustinius Primus Faculty of Law (North Macedonia)
16:00-17:00 | Anna Peterson, “Populism, Nationalism, and the War on Woke”, University of Florida.
17:00 – 17:15 | Break
17:15 – 18:00 | Closing Group Session (ALL ATTENDEES ARE ENCOURAGED TO PARTICPATE)
13:00 – 13:30 | Maria Eduardo Costa and David Geraldes Santos, “Populist mythification and the moralization of politics: André Ventura as the people’s prophet in Portugal”, University of Beira Interior (Portugal)
13:30 – 14:00 | Kamal Makili-Aliyev, “Populism, Nationalism, and the Politics of Irredentism: Lessons from the Miatsum Movement”, University of Gothenburg (Sweden)
14:00 – 14:30 | Jyot S. Singh, “Populist Authoritarianism or Authoritarian Populism? Rethinking Regime Typologies through the Lens of Discourse, Jindal School of International Affairs (India)
14:30 – 15:00 | Joshua J. Ocon, “Between Logos and Loyalty: Does the Fanatic have a place in a Democracy?”, University of the Philippines – Dilman (Philippines)
15:00 – 15:30 | Dean Caivano, “Populism as Alibi: Weekend at Bernie’s and the Narrative Logic of Necro-Sovereignty”, Leheigh University (US)
15:30 – 16:00 | Efimija Zajkovska, “Religion as a Political Resource: Populistic and Authoritarian Abuses of Religion in Post-Socialist European Countries”,
16:00 – 16:30 | Nina Viaznikova, “Building National Identity: The Political Use of Architectural Reconstruction”, Iustinius Primus Faculty of Law (North Macedonia)
16:00-17:00 | Anna Peterson, “Populism, Nationalism, and the War on Woke”, University of Florida.

17:00 – 17:15 | **Break

17:15 – 18:00 | Closing Group Session (ALL ATTENDEES ARE ENCOURAGED TO PARTICPATE)

Footnotes

As the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory works toward a special issue on Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy, our goal is to create an interdisciplinary forum to examine these pressing issues. We encourage contributions from a spectrum of perspectives, approaches, and methodologies.

Themes and Topics:

religion, race, class, and secular ideology in the formation of populism cadres and national identity
the varieties of populism with reference to local cultures and national legacies
the tension and conflict between neoliberal concepts of global order and populist movements
competing political theories of democracy and their historical and intellectual sources
forms of “moral politics” (in George Lakoff’s phrasing), or the interaction of socio-ethical value frames and their political manifestations
globalization, the “postmodern” fracturing of social identity, and its impact on democratic governance
religious nationalisms and their significance, or lack thereof
the nuanced meaning of the term “authoritarianism”, including focused case studies
political and religious “mythmaking” in the genesis of populist and nationalist insurgencies

Conference on Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy – Call for Papers and Presentations (Conferences)

2025-04-18T20:11:47Z

When: Sept. 25-26, 2025

Where: Online

Submission deadline: Aug. 1, 2025

Sponsored by the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory in Collaboration with the University of Denver

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) invites proposals for an online conference of Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy to be held Sept. 25-26, 2025. The proceedings will be published and developed into a special issue of the JCRT in 2026. Prizes of $300, $150, and $100 will be awarded for first, second, and third place in the competition among final submitted papers. Only papers that are submitted and selected for the conference will be eligible for the prize.

The conference organizers are seeking proposals of high academic quality that take a reflective and analytical approach in consideration of both general and specific topics that have an international appeal or focus. We are not interested in papers that are de facto advocacy pieces, political screeds, or defamatory harangues against certain nations, peoples, or groups.

Themes and Topics

We encourage submissions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following areas of inquiry:

religion, race, class, and secular ideology in the formation of populism cadres and national identity
the varieties of populism with reference to local cultures and national legacies
the tension and conflict between neoliberal concepts of global order and populist movements
competing political theories of democracy and their historical and intellectual sources
forms of “moral politics” (in George Lakoff’s phrasing), or the interaction of socio-ethical value frames and their political manifestations
globalization, the “postmodern” fracturing of social identity, and its impact on democratic governance
religious nationalisms and their significance, or lack thereof
the nuanced meaning of the term “authoritarianism”, including focused case studies
political and religious “mythmaking” in the genesis of populist and nationalist insurgencies

Submission Guidelines

Submission of Proposals: Contributors should send an abstract of 300-500 words outlining their proposal and its relevance to the theme of the conference/special issue. Panels and oral presentations as well as finished papers are welcome. Proposals should at the top provide the following information: Full Name, Professional Title, Institutional Affiliation, Email, Telephone number, Proposal Title.

Publication: All conference presenters will be invited to submit finished articles no later than Feb. 1, 2026. Submissions will be peer-reviewed and selected for a special issue in 2026.

Important Dates:

Abstract Submission Deadline: Aug. 1, 2025
Notification of Acceptance: Sept. 1, 2025
Full Paper Submission Deadline: Feb. 1, 2026
Notification of Acceptance for Publication: Apr. 15, 2026
Expected Publication: June 2026

Submission Process

All proposals should be submitted as email attachments to the editor via the contact form with the header “Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Demovtsvy – [Title]”.JCRT

Special Issue On Religion and Bioethics (Call for Papers)

2025-01-23T04:03:41Z

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to the intersection of religion and bioethics. This issue seeks to explore how religious beliefs, ethical frameworks, and cultural values intersect with the challenges of medical and biotechnological advancements. We welcome contributions that offer theoretical insights, critique existing paradigms, and propose new avenues for understanding the role of religion in bioethical decision-making.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

The influence of religious traditions on contemporary bioethical debates.
Case studies illustrating the role of religious ethics in healthcare settings.
Comparative analyses of religious perspectives on issues such as euthanasia, organ donation, and genetic engineering.
The impact of religious pluralism on bioethical policy-making.
The role of religious leaders and institutions in shaping public bioethical discourse.
Ethical implications of emerging biotechnologies in the context of religious worldviews.
Intersections of secular bioethics and religious moral frameworks.

We encourage submissions that address these topics through various methodologies and perspectives, including theoretical reflections, philosophical analyses, historical studies, and empirical research. Contributions from diverse religious backgrounds and interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts: Articles should be at least 2,000 words in length, including references.
Format: Submissions must be in PDF or Word form.
Citations: All citations should be in Chicago Manuel of Style.
Deadline: All manuscripts must be submitted by May 1st, 2025.
Submission Process: Please submit your manuscript electronically along with a Curriculum Vitae via to the contact formwith the heading “Religion and Bioethics Manuscript.”

All submissions will undergo a peer-review process. For inquiries regarding this special issue, please contact the chief editor at carl.raschke@du.edu or assistant editors at kev.grane@du.edu.We look forward to receiving a range of insightful and thought-provoking contributions that advance our understanding of the complex relationships between religion and bioethics.

Religion and Bioethics (Conferencee)

2024-12-18T18:23:13Z

When: Jan. 9-10, 2025

Where: Online

Register Now

Sponsored by the The Whitestone Foundation dba The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory in collaboration with the University of Denver.

The conference seeks to explore the complex and evolving intersection between religious beliefs, ethical principles, and bioethical concerns that have become prominent in contemporary social discourse.

The burgeoning field of bioethics, which seeks to navigate complex and often controversial issues in medical practice, biotechnology, and public health, finds itself in constant dialogue with questions of moral and ethical responsibility. Religion, as a fundamental aspect of human life and culture, contributes richly to this discourse, offering frameworks that shape individuals’ ethical orientations and responses to bioethical dilemmas.

Historically, religious traditions have deeply influenced moral philosophy and ethical decision-making. From the Hippocratic Oath to modern-day debates on genetic engineering, assisted reproduction, and end-of-life care, religious thought provides vital insights and moral considerations.

Various religions have taken stances on the inherent dignity of human life, the moral limits of medical intervention, and the sanctity of the human body. These stances continue to significantly impact legislation, medical practice, and public opinion on bioethical matters.

As the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory works toward a special issue on Religion and Bioethics, we aim to create an interdisciplinary forum to examine these pressing issues. This special issue seeks to facilitate a richer understanding by bringing together scholarly contributions that investigate how religious beliefs and ethical principles interact within the realm of bioethics. We encourage contributions from a spectrum of perspectives, approaches, and methodologies.

Program

All times given are Mountain Standard Time (Denver)

Thursday, Jan. 9

8:00 am

Welcome and Introductory Remarks

Carl Raschke, University of Denver

8:30 am

The Sacred End: Ethics and Practice of Sallekhanā in Jainism

Nisha Daga, Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India

9:00 am

Suffering and Dying in Modern Pandemics: A Parallel Reading of I. Illich, G. Agamben and B.-C. Han

Kyriaki Grammenou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

9:30 am

Bioengineering and Religious Mythmaking

J.C. Smith, University of Denver

10:00 am

A Multicultural Approach to Moral Diversity in Religious Bioethics

Chris Durante, Saint Peter’s University

10:30 am

Faith and Transitions: Religious Notions of Accountability and Gender Affirming Care for Youth

Kev Grane, University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology

11:00 am

Religion, Bioethics, and the Juridification of the World: Legal Frameworks and Moral Dilemmas

Malwina A. Tkacz, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University, Poland

11:30 am

What is Conscience Besides Integrity? Secular and Quasi-Secular Justifications for Conscientious Objection in Healthcare

Dennis Lunt, Bemidji State University, Northwest Technical College, University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics

13:00 pm

Panel Discussion: Religion and Bioethics – Foundational Issues for the Near Future

Wylin Wilson, Duke Divinity School; Michael Buratovich, Spring Arbor University; Carl Raschke, University of Denver, Moderator

14:00 pm

Collapse of Confucianism and Intellectual Suicides in Early 20th-Century China

Genn Ruann, University of California; Xiaoqian Zhang, Northeast Normal University

14:30 pm

AI and the Enabling of Violence? Identity, Gnosticism, and Language in the Technological Society

Matthew Vest, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Ohio State University

15:00 pm

Doxastic Neutrality in AI: A New Paradigm for Managing Uncertainty in Medical Decisions

Nesim Aslantatar, Indiana University (Bloomington)

15:30 pm

Eunkang Koh, Seoul National University of Science and Technology

Ethical Issues of CRISPR and Genome Editing through the Lens of Religious Values in South Korea

16:00 pm

Karey Harwood, North Carolina State University

Reconsidering the Significance of Biogenetic Ties

16:30 pm

Isabela Rosales, University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology

Faith, Policy, and Reproductive Healthcare in Colorado: In the Wake of a Forced Migration Crisis

Friday, Jan. 10

These two collaborative sessions will consist in plenary online discussions concerning the shaping of public agendas as well as public discourse about religion and bioethics that will draw on points or themes introduced in the conference presentations. All contributors and attendees are urged to be involved. A transcript will be produced and may be edited into some format for future publication.

8:00 am

Collaborative session I

9:15 am

Break

9:30 am

Collaborative session II

10:45 am

Break

11:00 am

Wrap up

11:30 am

Adjourn

Healing As A Multimedia Practice – Contemporary Spirituality In Turkey, Part 1 (Duygu Sendag)

2024-10-17T23:09:22Z

The following article is published in three installments.

Introduction

Zeynep, a 37-year-old Turkish woman, comes from a secular family background. She has traveled to Bali and India on different occasions to participate in yoga and meditation courses. Her main goal for joining these activities was to heal her childhood traumas and release emotions related to unpleasant memories. During both courses, much to her surprise, the facilitators led the group in a chant of an ‘eastern mantra,’ the zikr^[1] of the phrase La ilahe illallah. Zeynep says, “We all stood up, held hands, and started singing La ilahe illallah accompanied by a guitar, while also turning around hand in hand!”.

She explains that in her friend and family circles, public expressions of Islam, such as reciting religious expressions in Arabic, did not exist and were not appreciated. Therefore, hearing the Arabic phrase during the activity stirred mixed feelings in her; on the one hand, she felt ‘at home,’ but on the other, she could not help thinking how ‘that thing’ found her there—in a yoga and meditation course. Zeynep continues to engage in Sufi readings and practice yoga and meditation, which she sees as instruments that heal her ‘inner child’ on the path to reaching her own truth and finding her ‘authentic’ self.^[2]

What particularly strikes my curiosity in Zeynep’s narrative is how a practice, previously unimaginable for someone like her—a ‘secular,’ ‘modern,’ and ‘free’ woman, as she describes herself—has become imaginable. What are the underlying conditions through which the zikr or chanting La ilahe illallah, laden with political implications, particularly in the Turkish context, becomes a sensible practice in specific situations for a secular individual? What are the processes by which certain religious and traditional practices get delinked from their particular cultural contexts and find new meanings? Lastly, in what ways are new connections and continuities drawn between past and present or old and new, such as between Sufi rituals and therapeutic methods for trauma processing?

To answer these questions, I will present an analysis of contemporary spiritual practices from the theoretical framework of “religion as mediation.” I argue that healing practices emerge as the primary practices of mediation through which individuals seek to transcend the ordinary and form links between a number of culturally meaningful dichotomies, such as external and internal, visible and invisible, conscious and unconscious, constructed and authentic/real. I suggest that the notion of healing acquires its specific meaning through an interplay between religion and psychology, whereby old practices get refashioned within a psychologizing framework and acquire a ‘therapeutic’ label.

Once religious practices are framed as therapeutic, they are rearticulated in scientific terms and rationalized based on their effects on the psychological and physiological functions of the human body. The therapeutic serves as a frame within which individuals reorganize diverse past forms and draw links between them. Hence, the meaning of healing in contemporary spiritual forms extends far beyond a mere elimination of a disease, recovery from sickness, or the transformation of self. It rather refers to a ‘world repairing’ process, occurring at both personal and collective levels, whereby participants of the contemporary spiritual milieu gather the fragments of past forms and recombine them in personalized bricolages through the mediation of the therapeutic. In this way, past and present, old and new, sacred and secular, mystical and rational are recomposed into one coherent, consistent, and continuous whole where the individual can safely dwell.

This study draws primarily on data gathered between 2018 and 2020 during a joint research project funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.^[3] The fieldwork spanned five different cities, and 72 interviews were conducted with individuals who either organized or participated in activities that fall outside of institutional or traditional forms of faith. As part of the research team, I took part in various events, workshops, circles, and retreats which involved different combinations of practices, such as yoga, meditation, shamanic and Sufi rituals, tai chi, qigong, homeopathy, storytelling, art therapy, astrology, breath therapy, energy healing, reiki, detox diets, ayurveda, mindfulness technics, regression therapy, feng shui, aromatherapy, family constellation, and numerology.

Some participants were primarily interested in affecting a change in their personal lives and some others, who saw themselves as ‘changemakers’, believed that change at the individual level would also work as a positive transformative force upon the larger community. The existing literature recognizes that the meaning of healing in contemporary spiritual forms is much more than a simple elimination of an illness or a disease. For instance, Meredith McGuire observed that for adherents of very different healing approaches, healing signified a particular type of ‘self-transformation’.^[4] Beckford (1984) suggested that new religious and healing movements in North America and Europe cultivate and promote a distinctive relationship between ethics, spirituality, and healing.^[5]

The majority of relevant academic works focus on the therapeutic techniques adopted by diverse groups, the different conceptualizations of body, mind, and soul in healing systems, and the ways healing effects and experiences are produced. However, the existing literature has not sufficiently explored the questions of why and how healing has become such a central theme in religious/spiritual discourse.^[6] I believe the reason is because despite the recognition that the signification of the notion varies culturally, ‘to be healed’ is somehow assumed to be a major function and a desired state for all religious and spiritual cultures. In my analysis, I intend to problematize this assumption by providing a brief comparison as to the varying significations of healing in different spiritual and religious cultures existing in Turkey. In so doing, I aim to contextualize the central position of healing in contemporary spiritual forms and relate it to the rise of ‘therapy culture’ and the spread of the therapeutic language.

The paper is structured as follows: First, I review the media perspective in religious studies and explain how I use the therapeutic as a historically specific medium, a product of a scientific endeavor to articulate and manage human processes. Second, I present the meanings that the notion of healing has acquired in various spiritual and religious discourses in Turkey to avoid a generic understanding of the concept and to highlight the distinctive forms it has taken in contemporary spiritualities. Third, I discuss how the therapeutic as a medium interacts with religious mediums and remediates past forms, initiating connections between systems and processes that were previously considered to be discrete and incompatible. Finally, I examine how the initiated connections come to define healing as a ‘world repairing’ act, through which both the individual and the world are constructed as wholes made up of connected parts, rather than disconcerted fragments.

Culture, Mediation, and Therapeutic Media

The line of scholarship that views religion as mediation concentrates on the diverse ways whereby the ‘distance’ between the earthly and the divine or the visible and the invisible are mediated in different religious/spiritual traditions^[7] . The focus, in this approach, is placed on the techniques and technologies referred to as ‘medium,’ through which communication with and about ‘the sacred’ becomes possible.^[8] Here, a medium is not taken as a fixed genre or a simple vehicle of communication that embeds a particular content. Instead, a medium is seen as a cultural construction endowed with the power to serve a particular purpose, the value of which is also generated and embraced by groups or individuals in a given context.

Examples of a religious medium might involve both material and nonmaterial things, such as certain bodily practices, sensations, performances, words, books, images, prayers, prophecies, music, dance, spirit mediums, priests, healers, prophets, amulets, icons, oils, powders, incenses, liquids, shrines, temples, churches, mosques, audiocassettes, or videos (De Witte 2008: 19). In a similar vein, Quran is also a religious medium, and a variety of practices derived from it, such as reciting verses, producing Islamic calligraphy, or chanting the zikr of the phrase La ilahe illallah, are mediation practices through which the sacred word is channeled on earth in various aural and visual forms. Such practices are endowed with power in mediating the assumed ‘distance’ between the sacred and the profane.^[9] Therefore, performing them is considered to incite a process of transformation that will progressively render humans ‘closer’ to the sacred presence.

Mediation is intrinsic to culture; experience is constructed and put into the narrative through the recognized forms of mediation in a particular cultural context. In this paper, the way I use ‘therapeutic’ is also related to a historically specific cultural framework which is termed ‘therapy culture’ to refer to the distinctive influence of psychotherapeutic language in shaping our understanding of what is sensible, possible, communicable, and doable.^[10] My use of ‘therapeutic’ should not be confused with the term’s clinical connotations that inform the relationship between a patient and a therapist. Rather, by ‘therapeutic,’ I mean a range of practices and discursive tools that help mediate between a series of dichotomies, such as internal vs. external^[11] , conscious and unconscious, visible vs. invisible, known vs. unknown, self vs. the other, representation vs. reality, rational vs. irrational, chaos vs. order, discord vs. harmony, and conflict vs. unity.

These tools, which I will refer to as ‘therapeutic media’^[12] from now on, involve a variety of concepts, narrative templates, idioms, causal frameworks, vocabularies, explanatory schemas, methods, techniques, procedures, treatments, and modes of intervention through which human beings build their world and make sense of it. Therapeutic media reifies that world and the ‘therapy culture’ by acting as an institutionally authorized medium, that draws links between various oppositions and oversees a sensible exchange between them. Different from religious mediums, therapeutic media does not necessarily claim to mediate between the sacred and profane. On the contrary, its emergence was a result of a search for materialistic explanations for the ‘higher mental powers of humans,’ which were traditionally associated with the realm of the divine.^[13]

The history of therapeutic media goes back to the emergence of psychology as a modern scientific discipline in Europe and North America in the second half of the 19th century. Though a multiplicity of approaches within psychology and its cognates existed, the discipline evolved alongside and out of the secularization processes. It sought to find laws, procedures, and techniques with which the ‘hidden’ aspects of human thinking and behavior could be rendered not only visible and intelligible but also manageable.^[14] It, therefore, is taken as a ‘technology of self,’ that constructed the contemporary apparatus for ‘being human’.^[15] Thus, therapeutic media does not only incorporate tools for ‘world-building’, but it also directs humans in terms of how to inhabit that world.

Changing Meaning of Healing

Most scholars recognize the central role of healing in contemporary spiritual practices. However, there has been insufficient exploration into the specific meanings this complex notion has acquired within contemporary spiritual forms. I believe that the elevated status of healing in contemporary societies often obscures its potential negative connotations or its peripheral position within various religious and spiritual cultures. The excerpt from Hervieu-Léger’s work, wherein she describes healing as one of the three primary themes of new spiritualities, aptly illustrates my point:

The first thematic focus, and undoubtedly the most central, is that of the representations and expectations relating to health and healing. It will rightly be pointed out that the centrality of the theme of healing in contemporary forms of faith does not present any originality [emphasis added]. Protection against disease concerns the mortality of humans, which is already a central object of all known forms of magic. The return to health constitutes, in all human societies [emphasis added]one of the main purposes of ritual mobilization and supernatural powers. No religion fails to address, though in varying forms, the fundamental human urge to escape suffering and illness (Translation from French is mine).^[16]

In the above passage, an unquestioned relationship is assumed between healing and spirituality, and healing is framed, in a way, as the ultimate function of religion/spirituality. I consider Régis Dericquebourg’s book, Croire et Guérir (To Believe and to Heal), particularly important in this respect, because he adopts a historical perspective and refrains from assigning a fixed position to healing in religious discourse. Dericquebourg’s main argument is that while healing was only peripherical within the matrix of other theological notions, it constitutes the central pillar of practices and doctrines for religions founded through the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.^[17] Moreover, although terms like ‘healing,’ ‘health,’ ‘illness,’ and ‘suffering’ have been fundamental in shaping human cultures, they do not carry fixed meanings or clear positive/negative connotations. Instead, they work as metaphors for understanding how a social reality is constructed in a specific context.

Consequently, I believe that examining the various meanings of healing, while giving due attention to the authorized forms of mediation within the broader cultural context, can offer a more nuanced understanding of the concept. Below, I present a brief outline of spiritism and the signification of healing within the spiritist culture, yet another non-institutionalized form, which emerged and rose in popularity in the 1940s, alongside the secularization policies promoted and imposed by the Turkish Republic. The comparative framework will help to contextualize the therapeutic turn in contemporary spiritualities by allowing to trace the (dis)continuities between these two forms. The particular meaning of healing in these two distinct non-institutional forms is informed by the different positions they have taken vis- à-vis science, in particular, psychology and religion.

My focus, therefore, will be primarily on two things; first, the selectivity at work in how spiritism and more contemporary spiritual forms appropriated certain psychological concepts, and second, their attitude towards Sufi traditions, which have heavily influenced both the institutionalized form of Islam and heterodox religious forms practiced throughout the country.

Duygu Sendag is Assistant Professor at Uskudar University in Turkey. Sendag has a PhD in Civilization Studies from Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul.

Footnotes

Zikr literally means ‘remembering.’ In Sufi culture, it is the practice of repeating the same Quranic expressions over and over as a way of remembering God. La ilahe illallah literally means ‘There is no God but God.’ ↩︎
Pseudonyms are used for all interlocutors throughout the article. ↩︎
This research project was funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Project number 215K300). ↩︎
Meredith B. McGuire, Ritual Healing in Suburban America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988). ↩︎
James A. Beckford, “Holistic Imagery and Ethics in New Religious and Healing Movements,” Social Compass, 31(2-3) (1984), pp. 259-272. ↩︎
I use religion only with reference to the institutionalized forms of belief. My usage of spirituality, however, comprises both institutionalized and non-institutionalized forms. ↩︎
Hent de Vries, “Media Res: Global Religion, Public Spheres, and the Task of Contemporary Comparative Religious Studies,” in Religion and Media, ed. Hent de Vries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 3–43; Birgit Meyer, “Religious Remediations: Pentecostal Views in Ghanaian Video-Movies,” Postscripts 1, no 2/3 (2005), pp. 155-181; David Morgan, “Introduction: Religion, media, culture: the shape of the field,” in Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture*,* ed.David Morgan (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 1-19. ↩︎
Jeremy Stolow, “Religion and/as Media,” Theory, Culture and Society 22/4 (2005), p. 125. ↩︎
Joel Robbins, “Keeping God’s distance: sacrifice, possession and the problem of religious mediation,” American Ethnologist 44/3 (2017), p. 464. ↩︎
Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, (London and New York: Routledge, 2004); Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper Torchbooks, 1968); Eva Illouz, Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions and the Culture of Self-Help (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2008); Nikolas Rose, Inventing our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Eli Zaretsky, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). ↩︎
It is also possible to formulate the distinction between internal and external through more psychological terminology: the ‘demands of the unconscious’ vs. the ‘imperatives of the superego.’ ↩︎
Throughout the article, I use both ‘medium’ and ‘media.’ Though I do not see a difference in meaning, I keep both terms to differentiate between old and new mediums. Therefore, when I mention religious forms, I use ‘medium’ and for therapeutic ones, I use ‘media.’ ↩︎
Wade E Pickren and Alexandra Rutherford, A history of modern psychology in context (New Jersey: Wiley, 2010): 8. ↩︎
Rose, Inventing our Selves, p. 11. ↩︎
Ibid., p. 2. ↩︎
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, “Bricolage vaut-il dissémination? Quelques réflexions sur l’opérationnalité sociologique d’une métaphore problématique,” Social Compass 52/3 (2005): 301. ↩︎
Dericquebourg defines a new category called ‘Healing Religions’ (Religions de Guérison) based on his analysis of the following four religions: Scientology, Christian Science, Antoinism, and Invitation of Life. See Régis Dericquebourg, Croire et guérir – Quatre religions de guérison (Paris: Dervy, 2001): 12. ↩︎

Greening America’s Virtues (Nick Mather)

2024-10-02T11:59:01Z

The United States likes to present itself as a global leader, yet, when it comes to tackling what is arguably the greatest crisis facing humanity, global climate change, we have fallen woefully short of that idea. The nation’s failure to adequately address the climate crisis is in part the product of an American vision of the good life predicated on endless cycles of consumption that drives environmental destruction and contributes to a changing climate.

This vision, partnered with flat-out denial of environmental problems by some politicians, and the inability to cross ideological divides point to something profoundly amiss with America’s values and politics. Stalemate, not reason, rules the day. Given the warnings by the international scientific community as well as the Department of Defense, the inability, or refusal, of the United States government to seriously address global climate change is both a political and moral failure. How can this be fixed? Can it be fixed?

It can be repaired. The answer lies in the republican tradition of virtue. The United States was founded as a republic. Republicanism was the ideology of the Enlightenment.^[1] The term ‘republic’ derives from the Latin res publica, which Knud Haakonssen explains was the “public realm of affairs that people had in common outside their familial lives” and has traditionally been known as the common weal, or commonwealth.

A republic also referred to the “institutional structures of public life” according to which the public would participate in the ways that government structures were organized.^[2] With an emphasis on the common good and citizen participation, a republic was considered the most just form of government. Achieving justice, the virtue of the state, required virtue from the citizens and their representatives.

The republican form of government has its roots in Greek philosophy, particularly within the thought of Plato and Aristotle. Central to their ideas of creating a just government was the concept of virtue, those qualities, traits and dispositions that contribute to the formation of an excellent character. According to Aristotle, virtue is a necessary condition for an individual to achieve a happy, flourishing life. Likewise, virtue is a necessary condition for a republic to achieve both justice and the common good.

Some philosophers have argued that virtues are an essential component of any environmental ethic, which Ronald Sandler defines as the norms of action or norms of character that govern our interaction with the environment and have begun the work of forming an environmental virtue ethic.^[3] Environmental virtues are the appropriate dispositions, qualities, or character traits humans need to cultivate in order to have beneficial interactions and relationships with the environment and non-human animals.^[4]

As Sandler observes, any meaningful changes to environmental policies and practices will require a transformation in human habits towards the environment. As such, a virtuous character is necessary for progressing right action and behavior.^[5] A complete environmental ethic must include virtue. Environmental virtue can provide the necessary wisdom in applying action-guiding rules and principles to particular situations. Environmental virtue may also aid in weighing conflicting moral demands or arbitrating between a plurality of value sources and justifications. ^[6]

In her book *Dirty Virtues,^[7] * Louke Van Wensveen reviewed environmental literature, including works by social ecologists, deep ecologists, animal rights activists, creation theologians, ecofeminists and environmental philosophers published after 1970 and identified 189 virtues and 174 vices.^[8] The virtues Van Wensveen discovered were largely drawn from the traditional Aristotelian concept of virtues. However, she claims that ecological virtue language differs from this tradition in that some of the traditional vices and virtues are reinterpreted and reversed.

For example, mastery is a traditional virtue with positive connotations; in environmental literature mastery over nature is seen as a primary cause of environmental crises and as such is a vice.^[9] The environmental virtue language unearthed by Van Wensveen is an emerging, diverse discourse in which different thinkers stress different virtues and vices.

Yet, it is a distinct moral vocabulary in which certain virtues like benevolence, care, compassion, frugality, gratitude and vices such as anthropocentrism, arrogance, greed and ignorance, constitute the moral landscape.^[10] She claimed that in her research she had yet to discover a work of “ecologically sensitive philosophy, theology, or ethics that does not in some way incorporate virtue language.”^[11] Virtue, it would seem, is an inherent part of the language of environmental ethics.

Environmental virtue ethicists such as Geoffrey Frasz, Philip Cafaro and Ronald Sandler have largely focused on extending classical virtues such as benevolence, gratitude, compassion and moderation to environmental concerns. They have also examined the lives of persons who could be considered environmental exemplars and the virtues that they embodied.

Environmental virtue ethicists have also investigated the ways in which the natural world informs human character. What has largely been missing is the possibility of deriving environmental virtues from civic virtues. In her review of some of the primary publications in the field of environmental virtue ethics, Marilyn Holly observed environmental virtue theory lacks an accompanying political theory.^[12]

John Barry commented the “language of civic republicanism has been largely absent from debates within green politics and theories of the politics and ethics of sustainability.”^[13] Given that virtue is a necessary requirement for the success of a republic and that virtue is a primary component of environmental ethics, its absence in political and ethical debates is surprising.

A possible explanation for this is that modern, liberal governments like that of the United States have focused on rights rather than virtue. This tends to emphasize the democratic process, liberty, and freedom rather than the character of the citizen. Rights are essential in protecting the interests of minority communities from what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the tyranny of the majority.” Yet, de Tocqueville also recognized the importance of traditional customs and virtues, what he called “the habits of the heart,” in tempering individualism and the tyranny of the majority. As such, rights are not free from virtue; rights are supported by virtue.

Brian Treanor notes much of the literature on environmental virtue ethics focuses on personal rather than public virtues. He suggests that the reason political virtues have largely been ignored is because it is easier to determine how an individual may act versus an entire citizenry. Furthermore, he notes there is a contemporary inclination to treat environmental virtues as private personal choices that may contribute to one’s personal happiness but are “neither essential for flourishing nor social in scope.”^[14] However, Treanor argues that public virtues, in particular political virtues that he identifies as a subset of public virtues, are the “keystone” for environmental virtue ethics. Without these political virtues, Treanor claims, “the whole edifice of environmental virtue is doomed to fall.”^[15]

A few environmental virtue ethicists have taken steps to rectify the lack of political virtue in environmental virtue ethics. By using Plato’s Republic as a model, Melissa Lane argues that we must recognize ourselves as citizens of eco-republics who take responsibility in creating a common good in which we all share.^[16]

Treanor also contributes by arguing the importance of recognizing that humans live in community, often in several overlapping communities at once, so the individual’s flourishing cannot be isolated from the communities in which they live. Treanor argues that “environmentalism must come to be thought of in terms that are explicitly and unavoidably political” because “in a commons, either we are all saved or none of us is saved.”^[17]

I believe we can develop a more comprehensive environmental virtue ethic that is informed by the civic virtues required of American citizens and which is also consistent with our religious past and spiritual present. In his 1984 book After Virtue. Alasdair MacIntyre argued that moral philosophy must begin in historical and social tradition. He wrote:

I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point. This is in part what gives my life its own moral particularity.^[18]

Building on MacIntyre’s idea of grounding an ethic in history and social tradition, it can be demonstrated that there is an American tradition of virtue that can be utilized to inform a uniquely American environmental virtue ethic. By examining the primary writings of American politicians, religious leaders, and intellectuals a set of core American virtues can be identified.

After discovering these virtues within the American tradition, they can be compared with the virtues identified by Van Wensveen to see if they can also serve as environmental virtues, demonstrating that civic virtues can also be environmental virtues. My hope is that this will provide a path forward from the current political stalemate regarding environmental policy. Encouraging virtues in American citizens can both strengthen our government and lessen our impact on the natural world.

Perhaps the best place to begin exploring the tradition of American virtue is with Benjamin Franklin, the epitome of the self-made man. Franklin believed the key to his success, and therefore success for anyone, could be found in the practice of virtue. He devoted an entire chapter of his autobiography to his pursuit of virtue and identified thirteen virtues to be practiced in the pursuit of moral perfection including temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility.^[19]

Although he clearly identified as a deist who rejected the idea of divine revelation, Franklin believed that “religious practices were beneficial because they encouraged good behavior and a moral society.”^[20] Indeed, that was the role many of the founders believed churches served the fledgling republic—instilling virtues into the citizenry. This is the reason Franklin supported a religious revival, the First Great Awakening, which swept through the colonies in the 1730s and 40s. The Great Awakening would help set the stage for American democracy. At its center was the evangelical preacher Jonathan Edwards who, like Franklin, would teach the necessity of virtue.

Although Edwards is more often than not associated with the hellfire and eternal damnation described in his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, that is not entirely representative of his thought. Edwards viewed the natural world as evidence of God’s eternal love and creativity. Since God’s creation was good, the natural world could be a source of virtue. In his The Nature of True Virtue, Edwards wrote that true virtue “consists in benevolence to Being in general…it is that consent, propensity and union of heart to Being in general, that is immediately exercised in a general good will.”^[21]

George Marsden explains that for Edwards, a loving God was at the center of creation who was constantly pouring forth His love to His creation so “the highest good is to return that love to God. If we truly love God, then we should also love what God loves, which is everything in creation, excepting evil or the negation of love.”^[22] According to Edwards then, to live virtuously is to love God’s creation. We should love others, and the natural world, regardless of personal benefit or self-interest. Furthermore, in “Beauty of the World”, Edwards suggests that the beauty of the natural world mirrored the beauty of virtue:

The fields and woods seem to rejoice, and how joyful do the birds seem to be in it. How much a resemblance is there of every grace in the fields covered with plants and flowers, when the sun shines serenely and undisturbedly upon them. How a resemblance, I say, of every grace and beautiful disposition of mind; of an inferior towards a superior cause, preserver, benevolent benefactor, and a fountain of happiness…How great a resemblance of a holy and virtuous soul in a calm serene day.^[23]

By emphasizing the goodness of creation and that true virtue lies in benevolence towards the natural world, Edwards’s theology can help inform an environmental virtue ethic that can appeal to American religious sentiments. Perhaps appealing to the founder of American evangelicalism and his theocentrism can help counter a strain of anti-environmentalism that runs through contemporary evangelical thought and help open a dialogue with the evangelical community.

Because Jonathan Edwards died in 1758, did not live to see the American Revolution. There is no denying, however, that he was influential in the creation during subsequent decades of the American character and culture. The Revolution was considered a moral as well as a political revolution.

In the 1760s and 1770s, enormous attention was paid to the issue of virtue, which was seen as more political and historical than theological (Gaustad 1993, 54). However, the political and religious observance of virtue cannot be so easily separated. Perhaps due to their religious heritage, many colonists held the view that there was something uniquely virtuous about Americans. Some viewed the success of the revolution as evidence of divine favor.

Given the opportunity to create a government, there was little question that Americans would attempt to construct a republic. All of the colonies had republican forms of government based on the republics of England.^[24] The question was whether Americans were truly virtuous enough to maintain a republic. As such, virtue was on nearly every American mind even before the daunting task of creating a national government presented itself to a fledgling nation.

The writers of the constitution drew upon over 2,000 years of political philosophy that taught that for a republic to succeed, citizens and elected officials had to be persons of virtue. Many colonists held the view that there was something uniquely virtuous about Americans, evidenced by the success of the revolution. Given the opportunity to create a government, there was little question that Americans would attempt to construct a republic. Indeed, the founders believed they were creating a republic of virtue led by virtuous men chosen by virtuous people to represent them.

Most Americans know the apocryphal story of a six-year-old Washington telling his father that he could not tell a lie after admitting to using a hatchet that he received as a gift to hack at a cherry tree. It is a didactic tale used to demonstrate Washington’s honesty, and also that virtue was an innate characteristic of the president. The tale is pure fiction though, invented by one of Washington’s earliest biographers who wanted to portray Washington as a moral exemplar for Americans

Although the story of the cherry tree is an American myth, Washington’s virtues are apparently based in reality. Gordon Woods writes that “Washington’s genius, Washington’s greatness, lay in his character” and that it was his “moral character that set him off from other men.” Washington was praised as being the “living embodiment of all the classical republican virtues the age was eagerly striving to recover” which included “restraint, temperance, fortitude, dignity, and independence.”^[25]

These were also arguably on display when Washington declined a third term as president, thus initiating one of the most important of American traditions – the peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders. His surrender of power and the integrity of his character would lead to comparisons with Cincinnatus, a classical Roman politician who was known for his virtue.

Thomas Jefferson, elected president in 1800, idealized America as a pastoral republic with a virtually endless frontier where democracy was intimately connected to the land and the virtues of its agrarian citizens. Nature, virtue, and equality were all connected in Jefferson’s thought. He envisioned a pastoral America where independent farmers would tame wild nature by transforming it into cultivated farmland whereby, they would be instilled with the virtues necessary for the citizenry of a democratic republic.

In his Notes on the State of Virginia he wrote that “those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”^[26] Farming inculcates the virtues of independence and industry, along with “patience, resourcefulness, tranquility of mind, love of order, moderation in material expectations, as well as physical and spiritual well-being” which are all fortified by sustained contact with nature.^[27]

While the president is to serve as a moral exemplar, the moral failings of the founding fathers, especially Jefferson ought to be acknowledged The American dream of opportunity and self-sufficiency was largely made possible through slavery, stolen land and genocide. Jefferson consistently railed against the institution of slavery, although he owned slaves himself and impregnated one six times.

He feared what the institution of slavery entailed for the nation’s future “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.”^[28] He believed that attitudes towards slavery were changing and hoped that eventually slaves would be emancipated by a change of consciousness rather than by force. Jefferson preferred harmony, not war, with the indigenous population; however, he prized their lands over peace. Despite the moral failings of the founders, I think it is important not to throw the virtuous baby out with the viscous bathwater. Virtue is not about perfection, but moral progress. The republic we were given is a more perfect union, not a perfect one, and we can still learn valuable moral lessons from flawed individuals.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, changes to the nation’s land were so profound that American diplomat George Perkins Marsh warned that the unbridled exploitation of natural resources was having a devastating and permanent impact on the land. Fortunately, there were intimations of a fledgling environmental ethic, including, in addition to Marsh, the American Transcendentalist movement centered on Ralph Waldo Emerson that stressed a relationship to nature. Emerson’s concern for nature was developed in the context of mystical insights grounded in the natural world. Sydney Ahlstrom described Emerson as a “new kind of romantic pagan” who abandoned his religious heritage and traditions for a “pantheistic view of man, nature and God.”^[29] Nature, God and mind were one for Emerson as well as the source of virtue.

Fellow Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who was mentored by Emerson, remained grounded to the earth while hoeing beans during his two-year stay at Walden Pond. Thoreau observed nature with the eye of a scientist while writing as a prophet of the wild, pointing out the nation’s moral failures and criticizing the turn towards industrialization. According to Philip Cafaro, Thoreau’s sojourn at Walden Pond was an experiment to “become a better person defining this broadly to include increased knowledge, an enriched experience, character development, creative achievement, and greater personal integrity” making Walden a work of virtue ethics.^[30]

Cafaro identified over one hundred virtues lauded by Thoreau in Walden including bravery, civility, compassion, contentment, economy, gratitude, humility, independence, industry, justice, prudence, purity, self-knowledge, self-reliance, simplicity and wakefulness.^[31] Although most think of Thoreau as separating himself from society to live on the shore of Walden Pond, he did not shy away from the political, having authored the influential essay Civil Disobedience which called on Americans to be persons of good character and conscience before being good citizens.

A few decades after the publication of Walden, John Muir would write of the glory of the American wilderness. In terms of his spirituality, Muir has been identified as “a pantheist, a Transcendentalist, a mystic, an ecocentric evolutionist, an idiosyncratic Protestant Christian, or a post-Christian Romantic.”^[32]

While each representation has its merit, perhaps it is best to say that for Muir nature was his religion. For Muir, the canyons, mountains, and valleys of the American wilderness were sacred spaces where one could develop environmental virtues including reverence, awe, wonder, humility, respect and an ecological consciousness. Although these virtues are grounded in his religious experiences, Muir’s attempts to preserve the wilderness required the classical republican virtue of political participation and as such, Muir is a role model for environmental advocacy, perseverance, and preservation.

But like the founders, his treatment of the indigenous populations who were on the land he wished to preserve was morally problematic, so nuance is required. Together, Emerson Thoreau, and Muir can provide an environmental virtue ethic that also informs civic virtues for Americans who may be spiritual, but less religiously inclined and particularly for those who find their spirituality rooted in nature.

If there was anyone who shaped American attitudes towards preservation and conservation more than Muir and Gifford Pinchot who served as the first head of the US Forest Service, it would be Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a naturalist and prolific writer who connected the health of the republic with the health of its environment. He was hard pressed to put pen to paper without invoking virtue. Roosevelt insisted that character, which he defined as the “assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities,” was the true measure of nation and citizen.^[33]

The virtues that lead to national greatness included “sobriety, steadfastness, the sense of obligation toward one’s neighbor and one’s God, hard common-sense, and, combined with it, the gift of generous enthusiasm toward whatever is right.”^[34] In a 1910 speech titled “Citizenship in a Republic” Roosevelt identified “self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution” as necessary republican virtues.^[35]

Other virtues extolled by Roosevelt include efficiency, honesty, altruism, justice, moderation, respect, self-reliance, patriotism, hope, frugality, strength, and courage, all of which appear on Van Wensveen’s list of environmental virtues. Roosevelt also demonstrated the environmental virtues of long-range thinking, prudence, ecological sensibility, clarity of vision, endurance, stewardship and collective action

Roosevelt is also responsible for beginning a Progressive Movement that sought reform in American politics. Contemporary with this was the Social Gospel, which was evangelicalism “awakened to the possibilities of a social salvation.”^[36] There had long been a social aspect to evangelicalism in the United States, especially in the form of the Great Awakenings that always had “social, political, and economic overtones and results.”^[37] However, this connection was made more explicit with the Social Gospel which had as its aim the remaking of society by gaining control of social forces and breaking the bonds of evil. The chief concern of the Social Gospel was the virtue of justice so the common good was emphasized in conjunction with the salvation of souls. With their deep concern of battling poverty, the ideas of Social Gospel can be especially pertinent to addressing environmental and social justice.

Virtues got Americans through the Great Depression and World War II. In his inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt explicitly called on the “old and precious moral values” to guide the recovery from the Depression. He invoked the virtues of honesty, boldness, hope, optimism, gratitude, courage, discipline and wisdom. “This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly,” he told Americans. Although he claimed, “only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment,” he assured Americans that the nation “will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” Because “nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it,” he reminded Americans they “have still much to be thankful for.” No problem, he said, is unsolvable if faced “wisely and courageously.”^[38]

In his fireside chats FDR invoked the virtues of honesty, boldness, hope, optimism, gratitude, courage, discipline, wisdom, patience, and cooperation. Likewise, during World War II it was believed that virtue at home would win the war abroad. Americans were urged to come together, to set aside individualism for the common good and embrace the virtues of determination, sacrifice, self-denial, industriousness, courage, endurance, loyalty, and cooperation. All of the virtues of the Great Depression and the Second World War can also serve as environmental virtues.

Much more can be said. My focus in this brief survey has been on prominent individuals, which has unfortunately excluded the voices of women and persons of color, though for a fuller exploration of a tradition of virtue in the United States, it is essential they not be ignored. No accounting of the moral tradition of the United States would be complete without including persons such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., George Washington Carver, sojourner truth, Jane Addams, and Rachel Carson.

Recognizing the limitations inherent in a shorter work, the purpose of this essay was to demonstrate a tradition of virtue in the United States that is informed by politics, religion, and nature. Although it is easy to think that Americans have abandoned the republican virtues for the vices of consumerism, the importance of civic virtues have never been entirely lost on the majority of Americans. The language of virtue can cut across political divides and encourage interreligious dialogue. It is an integral ethic that connects individual, community, and environment. The American tradition of virtue can guide political and community engagement as well as environmental activism. I believe it is by reviving and greening the American tradition of virtue that has run through the course of American history, that we can best meet the political, social and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century and beyond.

Footnotes

Wood, Gordon S. 1998. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, viii. ↩︎
Haakonssen, Knud. 1995. “Republicanism.” In A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, edited by Robert Goodin and Philip Pettit, 568–74. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 569. ↩︎
Sandler, Ronald. 2005. “Introduction: Environmental Virtue Ethics.” In Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro, 1–12. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1. ↩︎
Ibid, 2. ↩︎
Ibid, 3. ↩︎
Ibid, 6. ↩︎
Van Wensveen, Louke. 2000. Dirty Virtues: The Emergence of Ecological Virtue Ethics. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. ↩︎
Van Wensveen 2000, 163. ↩︎
Ibid, 32. ↩︎
Ibid, 11. ↩︎
Ibid, 5. ↩︎
Holly, Marilyn. 2006. “Environmental Virtue Ethics: A Review of Some Current Work.” Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics 19, no. 4 (August): 393. ↩︎
Barry, John. 1999. Rethinking Green Politics: Nature, Virtue, and Progress. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 5. ↩︎
Treanor, Brian. 2010. “Environmentalism and Public Virtue.” Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics 23, no. 9 (March): 9–28. ↩︎
Ibid, 10. ↩︎
Lane, Melissa. 2012. Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ↩︎
Treanor 2010, 21. ↩︎
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue. 2nd edition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 220. ↩︎
Franklin, Benjamin. (1771) 1997. “Autobiography.” In Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography, Poor Richard, and Later Writings, edited by J. A. Leo LeMay, 565–729. New York, NY: The Library of America., 664 – 665. ↩︎
Isaacson, Walter. 2004. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 46. ↩︎
Edwards, Jonathan. 1995. A Jonathan Edwards Reader. Edited by John Smith, Harry Stout, and Kenneth Minkema. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 245. ↩︎
Marsden, George M. 2008. A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 129. ↩︎
(Edwards [1725] 2003,14-15). ↩︎
Wood, Gordon S. 1998. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 133. ↩︎
Ibid, 42. ↩︎
Jefferson [1787] 1984, 290. ↩︎
Yarbrough, Jean. 1998. American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 88. ↩︎
Jefferson [1787] 1984, 289. ↩︎
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. 2004. A Religious History of the American People. 2nd edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 604. ↩︎
Lineweaver, Tara T., Richard I. Naugle, Alyce M. Cafaro, William Bingaman, and Hans O. Lüders. “Patients’ perceptions of memory functioning before and after surgical intervention to treat medically refractory epilepsy.” Epilepsia 45, no. 12 (2004): 45. ↩︎
Ibid, 54-55. ↩︎
Gatta, John. 2004. Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 149-150. ↩︎
Roosevelt, Theodore. (1900) 2009. “Character and Success.” In The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses, edited by Janet Baine Kopito, 53–57. Dover Thrift edition. Mineola, NY: Dover, 53. ↩︎
Roosevelt, Theodore. (1900) 2009. “Grant.” In The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses, edited by Janet Baine Kopito, 97–105. Dover Thrift edition. Mineola, NY: Dover, 102-103. ↩︎
Roosevelt, Theodore. (1910) 2004. “Citizenship in a Republic.” In Theodore Roosevelt: Letters and Speeches, edited by Louis Auchincloss, 778–98. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 783. ↩︎
White, Ronald, and C. Howard Hopkins. 1976. The Social Gospel. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 3. ↩︎
Ibid, 5. ↩︎
F. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, [1933] 2001. ↩︎

Conference on Religion and Bioethics – Call for Proposals

2024-09-26T02:18:17Z

When: Jan. 9-10, 2025

Where: Online

Submission deadline: Nov. 20, 2024

Sponsored by the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory in Collaboration with the University of Denver

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) invites proposals for an online conference of Religion and Bioethics to be held Jan. 9-10, 2025. The proceedings will be published and developed into a special issue of the JCRT in late 2025.

The conference seeks to explore the complex and evolving intersection between religious beliefs, ethical principles, and bioethical concerns that have grown prominent in contemporary social discourse.

Themes and Topics

We encourage submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following issues:

Genetic Engineering and CRISPR Technology: Ethical implications of genome editing from various religious perspectives. Considerations include the manipulation of human embryos, potential consequences of genetic “enhancement,” and the moral duties toward future generations.
End-of-Life Decisions: Religious and ethical analysis of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Discussions may involve doctrinal stances, cultural practices, and the protection of vulnerable populations.
Reproductive Rights and Technologies: The moral and religious dimensions of assisted reproductive technologies, such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy. Topics can include the status of embryos, parental responsibility, and the implications on family structures.
Healthcare Inequality: Examination of religious teachings on justice and equity in the distribution of healthcare resources. Analyses of how religious groups respond to disparities in healthcare access and outcomes.
Pandemic Ethics: The intersection of religious doctrine and policy-making during global health crises, such as COVID-19. Ethical issues involving vaccine distribution, quarantine measures, and the impact on religious communities.
Transgender Health: Ethical and religious perspectives on transgender medical interventions, including hormone treatment and gender-affirming surgeries. Considerations of bodily autonomy, identity integrity, and religious freedom.
Neuroethics: Religious insights into brain-computer interfaces, cognitive enhancement, and the implications of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Discussions on the nature of human identity, consciousness, and moral agency.
Human Enhancement Technologies**: Theological and ethical perspectives on cybernetics, including prosthetic enhancements, bionics, and brain-machine interfaces. Examination of notions like the human body’s sanctity and integrated wholeness from various religious traditions.

Submission Guidelines

Publication: All conference presenters will be invited to submit finished articles no later than May 1, 2025. Submissions will be peer-reviewed and selected for a special issue in late 2025.

Important Dates:

Abstract Submission Deadline: Nov. 20, 2024
Notification of Acceptance: Dec. 1, 2024
Full Paper Submission Deadline: May 1, 2025
Notification of Acceptance for Publication: Sept. 15, 2025
Expected Publication: December 2025

Submission Process

All proposals should be submitted as email attachments to contact form with the header “Bioethics Conference Proposal – [Title]”.

Sikh Environmental Ethics-Theory and Praxis Part 2 (Harpreet Kaur)

2024-08-24T00:50:15Z

The following is the second installment of a two-part series. The first can be found here.

Kinship with and Gratitude for Nature

Many verses can be retrieved to prompt human beings to be thankful for the bounties of nature. For instance: “The One [who] gave you the invaluable air; The One gave you the priceless water; The One [who] gave you fuel of fire” ਜਿਨਿ ਦੀਆ ਤੁਧੁ ਪਵਨੁ ਅਮੋਲਾ ॥ ਜਿਨਿ ਦੀਆ ਤੁਧੁ ਨੀਰੁ ਨਿਰਮੋਲਾ ॥ ਜਿਨਿ ਦੀਆ ਤੁਧੁ ਪਾਵਕੁ ਬਲਨਾ ॥ (SGGS, M.5, 913).

Such examples inspire a soul to be grateful and care for conserving this precious nature in all forms. It instills a feeling of solicitude for the planet. Capitalizing on spiritual guidance can thus protect nature’s bounty, benefiting all living beings who share this earth with humans.

The universe comprises five primary elements- air, water, fire, earth, and sky. Sikh cosmogony proclaims that air and water were created out of the primal void^[1] ਪਉਣੁ ਪਾਣੀ ਸੁੰਨੈ ਤੇ ਸਾਜੇ ॥ (SGGS, M.1, Maaru, 1037). Guru Nanak thus proclaims: “From the True Lord came the air, and from the air came water, and from the water came three regions into existence…” (2) ਸਾਚੇ ਤੇ ਪਵਨਾ ਭਇਆ ਪਵਨੈ ਤੇ ਜਲੁ ਹੋਇ ॥ ਜਲ ਤੇ ਤ੍ਰਿਭਵਣੁ ਸਾਜਿਆ ਘਟਿ ਘਟਿ ਜੋਤਿ ਸਮੋਇ ॥ (SGGS, M.1, Sri, 19). He further speaks of the creation of the world: “He created water, fire, and air, and then combined them to form the world” (3) ਜਲੁ ਤਰੰਗ ਅਗਨੀ ਪਵਨੈ ਫੁਨਿ ਤ੍ਰੈ ਮਿਲਿ ਜਗਤੁ ਉਪਾਇਆ ॥ (SGGS. M.1, Prabhati, 1345).

The final passage of the morning Sikh prayer Japji Sahib, which regards air as a guru, water as the father, and the earth as the mother, relays the message that nature sustains life on this planet and that we must treat her with the utmost respect^[2] . However, the passage merits a thorough interpretation to gauge its significance. Air is the medium through which sound flows and makes the chanting of the mantra accessible to the mind.

The consciousness immersed in the Guru’s mantra leads to gnosis (ਸਬਦੁ ਗੁਰੂ ਸੁਰਤਿ ਧੁਨਿ ਚੇਲਾ ॥) (SGGS, M.1, Raamkali Goshti, 943). Breath, the vehicle for the mantra, has no existence without air. Therefore, air must be treated as sacred. Such reevaluation can motivate followers to consider reducing their carbon footprint.

The appellation Mother Earth is universal. It has been frequently used in SGGS. For example, “The womb of Mother Earth births everything”^[3] ਉਦਰ ਸੰਜੋਗੀ ਧਰਤੀ ਮਾਤਾ ॥ (SGGS, M.1, Maaru, 1021). Chahal has also explored ecofeminist strands in the scripture along these lines. ^[4] ^[5] Similarly, water deserves the status of a father as it is another vital life force on the earth. The Japji passage continues: “The entire world plays in the lap of the nurses called day and night” ਦਿਵਸੁ ਰਾਤਿ ਦੁਇ ਦਾਈ ਦਾਇਆ ਖੇਲੈ ਸਗਲ ਜਗਤੁ ॥ (SGGS, Jap, M.1, 8). Here, day and night bear the connotation of solar energy (There can be no life without sunlight). They represent yang and yin, respectively.

Singh highlights the kinship among all beings through the following verse of Guru Ram Das: ^[6] “There is only one breath (air), all are made of the same clay, and the light within is the same” ਏਕੋ ਪਵਣੁ ਮਾਟੀ ਸਭ ਏਕਾ ਸਭ ਏਕਾ ਜੋਤਿ ਸਬਾਈਆ ॥(SGGS, M.4, Maajh, 96). An essay’s alternative expression of this interconnectedness reads, “We are the rock and the stars, the leaves, and the trees…we are the eyes through which the universe looks at itself. We are the minds through which the universe contemplates itself.”^[7]

Hence, we must heal the planet by healing ourselves. This discussion of cosmic unity entails the reciprocal relationship between different entities of existence, and many other verses in SGGS articulate this interrelationship. SGGS declares, “What pervades the cosmos dwells in the body; whoever seeks finds it.” ਜੋ ਬ੍ਰਹਮੰਡੇ ਸੋਈ ਪਿੰਡੇ ਜੋ ਖੋਜੈ ਸੋ ਪਾਵੈ ॥ (SGGS, Peepaa, Dhanaasari, 695). Such verses unite panentheism, ecocentrism, and deep ecology themes. Virk remarks that the revelation that we all are born of the same matrix breaks the sense of hierarchical order of existence. It instills feelings of justice and compassion.^[8] The crux of the argument is that tampering with these elements will bring harm to us eventually because we live in an interconnected web of life.

Sustainable Living

Capitalism and neoliberalism are held responsible for the current environmental crisis. This is why activists believe that eco-justice should be viewed within the broader context of social justice and human development. The present situation has presented the challenge of ensuring continuing development at this rate without compromising the needs of future generations. Sahota^[9] et al. reckon that sustainability requires a shift from anthropocentrism, which implies acknowledging the reciprocity of human beings’ relationship with nature.

Drawing a parallel between Sikh gurus’ teachings and Saint Francis’ philosophy, the authors offer a unity-in-diversity approach to developing a sustainable management model. This model assumes embracing diversity in all its complexity and developing a practical kinship through shared interests. Such a model accounts for equality and justice and leads to the value of selfless service in Sikhi.^[10]

Sikhi believes in balancing Seva (service) and Simran (contemplating the name of God). The phrase Sarbat da Bhalaa (welfare of all) from ardaas (the Sikh petitionary prayer) is unequivocally invoked in the context of socioeconomic justice. However, this ideal must be viewed as intertwined with environmental concerns to extend the act of service to planetary well-being.^[11]

The guidance for this reevaluation should be sought in the historical examples where Gurus and their Sikhs protected adversaries, and their altruism included nonhumans. A story has already been discussed in this review before. This is directly related to Hukam*,* which is not seen separately from Naam (the name of God, also the energy of creation). In this regard, the Sikh ideal of communal wellbeing –Sarbat da Bhalaa— is comparable to the African ubuntu philosophy or the Latin American buein vivir.

The three pillars of Sikhi are Naam Japnaa (Contemplating the name of God), Kirt Karnaa (living by the sweat of brow), and Vand Chhaknaa (sharing resources). Sikhi does not approve of asceticism or renunciation.^[12] This one verse by Guru Nanak says it all: “One who eats by earning one’s livelihood by the sweat of their brow and shares one’s fortune with others, finds the path [of righteousness], says Nanak” ਘਾਲਿ ਖਾਇ ਕਿਛੁ ਹਥਹੁ ਦੇਇ ॥ ਨਾਨਕ ਰਾਹੁ ਪਛਾਣਹਿ ਸੇਇ ॥(SGGS, M.1, 1245).

Therefore, some have also stressed the belief in earning an honest living by hard work. Singh draws attention to the fact that a Sikh must actively engage with the world’s affairs by highlighting the blend of Miri (the temporal) and Piri (the spiritual) advocated and practiced by the Sikh gurus.^[13] This is the driving force for all activism, which can be harnessed to adopt a holistic approach to solving environmental issues.

However, the interconnectedness of the three ideals needs to be appreciated more. For instance, those willing to ascend the levels of Naam must do seva. Furthermore, if haumai (ego) persists, sevacannot be called selfless. This implies that one’s spiritual journey is incomplete without actively involving worldly concerns and extending unqualified compassion to all creation. The faith leaders and activists can draw on this understanding to encourage environmental sensitivity and action among the devotees.

Many activists emphasize the role of frugality in saving the environment. It is also a pre-condition for inner happiness and one of the founding principles of eco-philosophy.^[14] This is because choices made in one place have an impact and repercussions for the rest of the world when all are interdependent and interconnected.^[15] A frugal lifestyle and sharing of resources promise sustainable living. Saryal and Saryal^[16] note that water was meant to be a shared resource in the gurdwaras, with large pools built by Sikh gurus.

The Gurus also built towns and cities around gurdwaras, serving as models of social justice and communal living. The fifth Sikh master, Guru Arjan Dev, initiated the practice of dasvandh (the one-tenth share of one’s earnings/resources), which many devout Sikhs follow. The Sikhs do not confine it to the financial resources only. Each Sikh decides, without the mediation of the priests, what and where they want to contribute. Imagine a world where everyone contributed their dasvandh to help the underprivileged!

Moreover, the value of contentment is also critical to realizing these ideals. A lot has been said about this value in SGGS, which can be used as an impetus for sustainability discourses. Suffice it is to quote one line here: “A content mind with compassion for all beings” ਮਨਿ ਸੰਤੋਖੁ ਸਰਬ ਜੀਅ ਦਇਆ ॥ (SGGS, M.5, Gaudi, 299). Compassion is the reason devout Sikhs adhere to a vegetarian diet. Cruelty to animals is strictly condemned in Sikhi. A categorical directive in this can be read in this quote: “Kabeer states that those mortals who consume marijuana, fish, and wine – no matter what pilgrimages, fasts, and rituals they follow, will all go to hell” ਕਬੀਰ ਭਾਂਗ ਮਾਛੁਲੀ ਸੁਰਾ ਪਾਨਿ ਜੋ ਜੋ ਪ੍ਰਾਨੀ ਖਾਂਹਿ ॥ ਤੀਰਥ ਬਰਤ ਨੇਮ ਕੀਏ ਤੇ ਸਭੈ ਰਸਾਤਲਿ ਜਾਂਹਿ ॥ (SGGS, Bhagat Kabeer, 1377).

Recognizing the inalienable rights of all living beings is crucial to achieving sustainability targets and building a harmonious world society. The foundation of the sovereign commonwealth of Khalsa by the tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, in 1699 was a momentous step in this direction. Guru Gobind Singh included people from different castes, regions, and occupations in this new socio-political fold.

The Khalsa was ordained to follow Sikh spiritual discipline and stand up for the rights of the oppressed and disenfranchised. It was thus a radical model of political autonomy and solidarity, wherein all members lived as saint soldiers. Singh^[17] writes that the Khalsa army fought the tyrant Mughal rulers in the 17th and 18th centuries and against the atrocities of the British colonists and Indian government subsequently. The ideal was to strive for justice for all.

The Sikh gurus condemned casteism and class distinctions and upheld the intrinsic worth of all beings. The tenth master, Guru Gobind Singh, asked his Sikhs to recognize all human races as the same. The Sikh scripture contains verses from saints affiliated with different spiritual traditions (with a unified philosophy) who were treated as outcastes, like Naamdev, Kabeer, and Ravidas. Guru Nanak started the tradition of langar, serving food to the needy and the visitors, where all classes and castes sat together. It was a revolutionary step toward creating an egalitarian society in those times as caste divisions were rigidly followed. Saryal and Saryal^[18] describe this as a spiritual and political practice because it historically allowed the Sikhs to practice food sovereignty. Gurdwaras thus supported local farmers.

Sikh Gurus also accorded high respect to women. Celebrating femininity, all Sikh Gurus depicted human souls, regardless of gender, as brides/females longing for the Beloved Lord in their verses. Guru Nanak reminded us that all great men were born of women. The Sikh historical narratives honor the contribution of women as saints and warriors. The Sikh history offers many examples of what Arturo Escobar calls “politics in the feminine.”^[19]

The Khalsa honors Sahib Kaur, the wife of Guru Gobind Singh, as their mother. She played a crucial role in inspiring the Khalsa to blend valor with compassion. She embodied this ideal by adding sugar to the holy water churned by a sword during the first initiation ceremony of the Khalsa. The tradition continues to this day. Therefore, the principles of bio-civilization—diversity, autonomy, solidarity, collective action, simplicity, justice, equity, etc.—as outlined by Kothari are enshrined in Sikh history and scripture.^[20]

Historical and Modern Praxis

This section examines how Sikh Gurus embodied the themes of kinship, community, biocentric equality, or reverence for nature and how these memories were historically constructed. It gives examples of reconstructing those memories and traditions in alignment with the ecological themes. These examples include initiatives by the spiritual leaders and organizations in the community. Further, it critiques why and where there are disjuncts when living the ideals laid down by the Gurus and endorsed by the spiritual leaders.

Sikh spiritual leaders have judiciously reconstructed the story of trees in various environmental campaigns. Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Master, describes the Creator as a grand tree and the creation as its branches (SGGS, M.5, Maajh, 102; M.5, Aasaa, 387). Guru Har Rai, the seventh Master, planted many trees and plants. There are 58 historic Sikh shrines named after 19 species of trees. Each has a saakhi (historical account or anecdote from the life of Gurus) centering on the tree it is named after.^[21] One quote from SGGS sums up the status of trees in Sikhi: “ [If ] aspiring to be a dervish, bear the patient endurance like a tree” ਦਰਵੇਸਾਂ ਨੋ ਲੋੜੀਐ ਰੁਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਜੀਰਾਂਦਿ ॥ (SGGS, Fareed, 1381).

Guru Har Rai is often cited for his eco-sensitivity. One of the stories recounts his remorse at breaking a flower from brushing his cloak against it. The young Har Rai expressed remorse for the inadvertent harm to the plant and carefully gathered his clothing around him for the rest of his life. His native place, Keeratpur Sahib, was a town of parks and gardens and was an idyllic place in his lifetime, which attracted many birds and animals to it. Here, he also built a large garden with medicinal plants. It was called Naulakhaa Baagh, meaning a garden with 900,000 trees.

Many agencies have collaborated to research those ancient plants and revive the garden and the indigenous medicine.^[22] The Sikh Environment Day, March 14, is dedicated to Guru Har Rai, who ascended to the position of Guru on this day.^[23] Similarly, the Tri-cultural Sikh Society, a gurdwara near Pittsburgh, named their arboretum after Guru Har Rai in 2013. The arboretum features plant species native to Pennsylvania.^[24]

Sant Seva Singh from Khadoor Sahib, a historic town in Punjab graced by the visit of eight Sikh Gurus, is a much-respected religious figure in the region. Known as The Tree Man, he was appointed the Faith for Earth counselor by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2021. He presented the Sikh Plan on Environment to Ban-ki-Moon at Windsor Castle in 2009. On the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak’s avatar in 2019, he set up a goal of planting 550 small dense forests, called Guru Nanak Memorial Forests, with 50 different varieties of trees.

He has planted 272 so far. He has planted 6.5 million trees all over India.^[25] Comparing his environmental venture to langar (the Sikh tradition of serving food to the needy), he believes these initiatives serve the environmentally sick generation.^[26] He distributes saplings among devotees as a Prashad (a gift of grace usually offered as food). He has worked tirelessly to reclaim the green zone in Punjab. He has revived many native species of plants and persuaded farmers to prefer orchard farming to less sustainable crops.^[27] He runs a charitable organization, Nishan-e-Sikhi, which works for education and social welfare besides environmental causes.

Another excellent example of reconstruction is the Museum of Trees in the capital of Punjab, Chandigarh, which was established in 2020. It was conceived and curated by DS Jaspal on his personal property and promoted by the Chandigarh Nature and Health Society. Inspired by his book ‘Tryst with Trees-Punjab’s Sacred Heritage,’ this storytelling museum recounts customs, traditions, and historical events associated with every tree planted here. As a former high-ranking civil servant with a background in forestry, Jaspal employs both scientific and marketing techniques to conserve genetic clones of 12 sacred trees associated with historical Sikh shrines. Besides, it has a section devoted to medicinal plants. Environmental education for school children and the community is part of this conservation project, particularly on endangered species.^[28]

A similar eco-aesthetic endeavor can be found at a place sanctified by the visit of four Sikh Gurus— historical gurdwara (Sikh place of worship), Guru-Sar Sahib, in Patto Hira Singh village in the Moga district of Punjab. It is a botanical garden (baagh) featuring more than 58 species of trees mentioned in SGGS. EcoSikh, a US-based Sikh environmental organization in collaboration with a local non-profit, PETALS, inaugurated it in 2021. Named Guru Granth Sahib Baagh, it has about 6,000 trees and shrubs spread over 5 acres of land.

Each tree carries relative references from the scripture calligraphically inscribed on big round stones. This environmental initiative aims to highlight the message of the Sikh Gurus to connect with nature. Dedicated to the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak’s avatar, it aims to offer a platform for environmental education.^[29]

Sant Balbir Singh Seechewal is another saintly figure in the Sikh community who has lived the ideals of Sikh ecosophy. He was named one of Time magazine’s ‘Heroes of the Environment’ 2008 for his monumental river-cleaning project in 2000. He spearheaded the community enterprise of cleaning the 170-kilometer-long river Kali Bein, a tributary of the longer river Beas in Punjab. He took the initiative by entering the river and manually removing the water hyacinth.

This river holds a deep significance in Sikh history because Guru Nanak took a dip here, disappeared for three days, and reappeared after being enlightened. The river, however, had become polluted over time with an overgrowth of water hyacinth, industrial effluents, and agricultural run-off. Its successful cleaning by the local community, without any help from the government, is an excellent example of ecosystem conservation. The project has now been extended to other rivers in Punjab.^[30] So, Sant Seechewal, known as the Eco-baba, exemplified Gurbani’s ideals to restore rivers. He addressed the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 and spoke of how Sikhi is an ecological religion that teaches holding natural elements in deep reverence.

No Sikh environmentalism discourse is complete without reckoning the far-sighted activism of Bhagat Puran Singh ji, the bearded Mother Teresa of Punjab. Bhagat ji, who practiced the discipline of Naam, believed in transforming the face of the earth through work on both mind and matter. The prefix Bhagat (an imbued devotee) was assigned to him because of his exalted spiritual state. He was the epitome of the Sikh ideals who carried the legacy of eco-philosophy forward. He spoke about the denudation of the Himalayas as early as 1928.

Making people aware of the impending ecological hazards was his spiritual mission. He published extensively and raised red flags about the environmental crisis.^[31] Bhagat ji published his pamphlets on recycled paper and distributed them free of cost. He also organized many tree plantations and environmental awareness campaigns.^[32]

Bahgat Ji founded a charity home called Pingalwara, which means home for the destitute. He died in 1995, but the Pingalwara Society carries his legacy forward. Pingalwara is running a zero-budget farm and collaborating with farmers on organic farming. It has planted 90,000 trees in India.^[33] The Kheti Virasat Mission (meaning Agricultural Heritage Mission), a civil society group dedicated to organic farming and founded in 2005, is another organization that has invoked the Sarbat da Bhalaa ideal and established a holistic model of advocacy working with various stakeholders to promote agroecology in Punjab.

Their work extends beyond farming to women empowerment, forests, ecology, and resource management. Their focus is sustainability within the socio-cultural framework of Punjab.EcoSikh, which came into existence in 2009 in response to an initiative of the United Nations Development Program and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, works globally and has built an impressive network of environmental programs. It provides guidelines for environment-friendly religious processions and biodegradable plates for customary food distribution. Besides working with the Green Pilgrimage Network (GPN), a global collaboration of 28 pilgrimage sites worldwide to promote environmental care by reclaiming the sense of place, it is also active in interfaith environmental initiatives.

Disjuncts and Gaps

Punjab is primarily an agrarian economy. According to the official statistics of the Punjab Government’s Department of Forests and Wildlife Preservation, the state’s forest coverage is 6%. Expansion of agricultural land and developmental projects are responsible for this dismal proportion. Environmental organizations are, therefore, working earnestly to restore the green zone. However, many other severe environmental challenges need urgent attention.

One of the most pressing issues facing Punjab, the breadbasket of India, is the depletion of groundwater and unsustainable farming practices resulting from the Green Revolution of the 1970s. According to Saryal and Saryal, state farmers were misled by subsidies and federal food procurement policies to rely heavily on water-intensive wheat and paddy farming.^[34] This overuse of groundwater, fertilizers, and pesticides has resulted in soil and water contamination, as well as a water crisis, high cancer rates, and an alarming number of farmers’ suicides. Prill also points out the incongruity of social practices like lavish weddings, materialistic lifestyles, and the growth of motor vehicle usage among Sikhs.^[35] She adds that expensive tractors and combine harvesters contribute to high fossil fuel combustion.

The rise of plastic pollution results from a mindless consumption culture, which is opposed to the ideas of restraint and contentment. While the tradition of washing dishes manually is intact in Punjab’s gurdwaras, plastic plates, cups, cutlery, and mineral water bottles are comparatively more prevalent in events outside gurdwara and among diaspora Sikhs. The devotees quote numerous verses extolling nature but inadvertently overlook the impact of their plastic use on land, air, water, and other earth species.

Prill observes that Sarbat da Bhalaa has often been quoted in socio-economic justice but not explicitly in the ecological context.^[36] This vast gap needs to be filled with the help of religious leaders by emphasizing the direct relation between our consumption habits and the environmental state. An environmental activist from Punjab confided in the author how challenging it was to fight the plastic demon compared to organizing tree plantation campaigns. Her NGO, Action Group Against Plastic Pollution (AGAPP), submitted a letter of appeal to the Akal Takht Jathedar—the supreme Sikh authority, like the archbishop— and Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee—the organization managing gurdwaras in Punjab—in this regard in November 2023. The AGAPP, invoking the Sikh ideal of Sarbat da Bhalaa, has requested these authorities to lead the Sikh community in refraining from using single-use plastic.

Sri Harmandir Sahib (known as the Golden Temple) is the pre-eminent Sikh spiritual site in Amritsar— one of the prominent sites in the GPN. It holds the same place in the Sikh community as the Vatican does for the Catholics or Mecca for the Muslims. The fireworks display in its arena conflicts with the interests of the GPN since it causes air and noise pollution, besides eroding its gold plate and marble.

Although the number of occasions and fireworks has downscaled over the last decade, the idea of fireworks is still questionable and has implications for the community. The supreme religious authority figure in Sikhi is Jathedar of Akaal Takht, the Sikh spiritual and temporal center located in the precincts of Sri Harmandir Sahib. If he issues a proclamation to abandon the fireworks display in Sri Harmandir Sahib and urges the Sikh community to refrain from crackers, it will serve as a great example of upholding Sikh environmental ethos. Both Sikh and Hindu communities cause obnoxious air pollution in Punjab on the night of Divali/ Bandi Chhod Divas by exploding firecrackers, which can be curbed by sending a practical, positive message of cracker-free holiday from the holy shrine.

Future Directions

The sense of mystique and beauty associated with the creation has been superseded by the modern, reductionist view of the capitalist culture today.^[37] Many spiritual traditions, however, use wonder and enchantment as ways of knowing. Therefore, they can play a significant role in reviving the full appreciation of nature. This appreciation, or eco-aesthetics, must extend beyond the sensual experience. The sense of wonder and awe (*Vismaad)*in Sikh scripture holds epistemological value.

Nature symbolism has been profusely employed to induce Vismaad in Sikh scriptures. It is important to emphasize this interconnection between all manifestations of nature and Vismaad. A rift implies serious environmental repercussions. For example, Prill describes Guru Nanak’s composition Barah Maha (poetry on the theme of months) as an impressive portrait of the pre-modern Punjab ecosystem.^[38] Each passage, corresponding to a month, vividly paints the ambiance, flora, and fauna: “We hear of the blossoms and the bumblebees of springtime and the greenery, snakes, and mosquitoes of the monsoon season; in the summer, the blazing sun scorches the ground.”^[39] However, the difference between this imagery and the current Punjab climate is noticeable. This distorted state of nature reflects the erosion of the human mind.

The law of reciprocity and symbiosis sustaining the complex web of life has not yet been deconstructed fully and explicitly by Sikh religious leaders. As pointed out in an earlier section, Sikh theology can be understood around Hukam and haumai. Prill^[40] observes that haumai, or egocentrism, is the root cause of environmental destruction, but this aspect has not been fully integrated into the Sikh environmental rhetoric.

Shiva remarks that separation is the key feature of capitalist values.^[41] It not only alienates humans from nature but also humans from each other on the lines of race, gender, ethnicity, etc. This alienation causes all violence in mind and actions. The leaders and educators engaging with Sikh environmentalism must place haumai, or the idea of separation, in the center stage of capitalism and consumerism.

Ecological catastrophes are born of short-sightedness. McMichael contrasts the short-term ‘economic time’ with ‘geochemical-biological time controlled by the rhythms of nature’ by showing how shrimp aquaculture destroys coastal mangroves. ^[42] He concludes that the seed of the past is always buried in the present. Gurbani echoes this insight: “Do not indulge in the wrongdoing at all; use thy foresight to see [the consequences].” ਮੰਦਾ ਮੂਲਿ ਨ ਕੀਚਈ ਦੇ ਲੰਮੀ ਨਦਰਿ ਨਿਹਾਲੀਐ ॥ (SGGS, M.1, Aaasaa, 474).

It will, therefore, be a great initiative to have emerging Sikh scholars and leaders in seminaries study basic environmental science, political discourses on the environment, policies, and different eco-philosophical traditions. They can then explicitly address the environmental crisis by presenting Sikh environmental ethics more eloquently and persuasively. Their social and political clout in the community will make a huge difference in saving the planet.

Educators in Sikh schools in Punjab and beyond and those engaged in non-formal sectors can also use faith-based approaches in their critical pedagogies. They can use ecocriticism from the lens of Sikh philosophy. Singh and Kaur define ecocriticism as a theory that makes people aware of their contribution to environmental devastation.^[43] It examines literature from an ecological perspective.

The authors clarify that ecocriticism is not confined to how a lion, a tree, or a flower is depicted in literature. Instead, it focuses on the overall representation of nature in cultures and communities. They conducted an ecocritical study on William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Bhai Veer Singh (1872-1957) – The giants of English and Punjabi poetry, respectively. Though they lived apart in time and space, their poetry is a lighthouse for all nature lovers and those who seek ecological awareness in literature. William Wordsworth profusely registered his protest against distance from nature in the wake of industrialization in ‘The Excursion’:

When on the darker side

Of this great change, I look, and there

Behold such outrage done to nature as compels

The indignant power to justify herself;

Yea, to avenge her violated rights,

For England bane (412).

In Bhai Veer Singh’s poetry, one cannot help but notice his deep fascination with nature.

In the vein of Saint Francis of Assisi, he addresses Mashobra— a hilly paradise in the Himalayas—as a brother. In another poem, Brichh (the tree), he gives voice to a tree to criticize deforestation:

O selfish owners of the land,

Why do you fight us?

We don’t grow out

We grow tall and straight.

Our rings and breadth

Extend only in space;

We take but a palm of land,

Even then, you grudge us?” (415)

Bhai Veer Singh is deeply revered in Sikh circles. He was a soul imbued in divine love. His poetry can inspire the masses to protect nature. More scholars need to look in this direction, as the interdisciplinary nature of ecocriticism can be a creative mode of environmental education.

Conclusion

Although a gap between theory and practice has existed in all ages and civilizations, it cannot be a ground for rejecting ideals and values advocated by different faith systems worldwide. The fact that people have not always lived up to these ideals cannot and should not negate the significance and implications of these lofty ideas.^[44] The fact that a large section of society still draws their inspiration from religion has significant implications for solving the challenges of the 21st century.

Therefore, Sikh religious leaders, scholars, and teachers must respond proactively and creatively in working with activists, scientists, lawyers, politicians, and educationists to mobilize resources and motivate people for environmental action. This requires a systematic collaboration among all stakeholders to rewrite and propagate Sikh environmental ethics in the new age language for the action to gain momentum.

Sikhi encompasses more than individual liberation and does not promote denial of the world around us. Its rich traditions and history reflect the belief that true transcendence can only be achieved by embracing the realities of our world and actively participating in its evolution. This is why religious fervor has often been present in social and political movements from Punjab, such as the massive 2020 farmers’ protest. There is a tremendous opportunity for Sikh leaders and scholars to tap into this faith-based approach and leverage spiritual resources to benefit our environment. They can make a meaningful and lasting impact by inspiring new ways of thinking, being, and acting rooted in the care of our shared planet.

Guru Nanak called the earth a place to practice righteousness (dharma). In many Indic languages, the word ‘dharma’ is used to denote both religion and righteousness. It serves as a reminder that many Eastern spiritual traditions, including Sikhi, believe that the essence of a religion lies in the practice of its vision of cosmic unity. Guru Nanak emphasized the importance of dharma in human life and did not simply refer to the Earth as a metaphor. It is his reminder to all of us to recognize the presence of the spirit in every life form, from the smallest unit (cell) to the most complex ecosystem, and to re-establish our connection with the Earth.

Harpreet Kaur is a Business and Human Rights Specialist at the UNDP’s Regional Bureau of Asia and the Pacific, where she oversees a regional project aiming at promoting responsible business practices through partnerships in Asia. She provides technical and advisory support to governments and businesses on how to mitigate and address human rights risks and impacts in operations and supply chains in Asia.

Footnotes

Singh 2021a, 1-2 ↩︎
Singh 2021a, 10; Prill 2015, 227; Singh 2010, 2. ↩︎
Chahal 2015, 4. ↩︎
Chahal 2015. ↩︎
Ibid, 11. ↩︎
Singh 2021a, 8. ↩︎
Skolimowski, Henry. 1997. “The World Is a Sanctuary.” The UNESCO Courier, March 1997, 48. ↩︎
Virk 2014. ↩︎
Sahota, Parminder Singh, Maurizio Sajeva, Mark Lemon, and Mehar Brar. 2016. Philosophy of Management 15: 21-34. ↩︎
Ibid, 31-32. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 234-235 ↩︎
Prill 2015, 235 ↩︎
Singh 2001. ↩︎
Skolimowski 1997, 48 ↩︎
Singh 2010, 7 ↩︎
Saryal, Sutapa, and Rajnish Saryal. “Environmental Crisis and Religion: An Analysis of Textual Source and Practices of Sikhism.” 2023. Research Review International Journal of Multidisciplinary 8, no. 12 (December): 50–59. ↩︎
Singh 2010, 15. ↩︎
Saryal and Saryal 2020, 55. ↩︎
Escobar, Arturo. 2020. “Thinking about the Pot/Pandemia- Notes from Latin America.” Global Tapestry of Alternatives, October 2, 2020. https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:02:arturo. ↩︎
Kothari, Ashish, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Frederico Demaria, and Alberto Ecosta. Introduction. 2019. In Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary, xxi–xl. New Delhi, India: Tulika Books and Authorsupfront Publishing Services Pvt. Ltd. ↩︎
Singh 2021b, 23. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 231. ↩︎
Ibid, 238. ↩︎
Ibid, 234. ↩︎
“Environment Conservation Project.” Nishan-e-Sikhi, 2023. http://environment.nishan-e-sikhi.org/archives/1919. ↩︎
“Baba Sewa Singh– The Tree Turbanator.” Punjabis4BetterWorld (blog), March 15, 2017. <https://punjabis4betterworld.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/baba-sewa-singh-the-tree-turbanotor/. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 237. ↩︎
Singh 2021b, 23; Prill 2015, 232-233. ↩︎
“Guru Granth Sahib Bagh.” EcoSikh, 2021. https://ecosikh.org/guru-granth-sahib-bagh/. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 236-237. ↩︎
Pirta 2013, 149. ↩︎
Singh 2021b, 22; Prill 2015, 236. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 236. ↩︎
Saryal and Saryal 2023, 53. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 225. ↩︎
Ibid, 235. ↩︎
Tucker and Grim 2017, 4. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 230. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Shiva, Vandana. 2019. “Development– for the 1 per cent.” Essay. In Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary, edited by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Frederico Demaria, and Alberto Ecosta. 6–8. New Delhi, India: Tulika Books and Authorsupfront Publishing Services Pvt. Ltd. ↩︎
McMichael, Philip. 2019. “The Development Project.” Essay. In Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary, edited by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Frederico Demaria, and Alberto Ecosta.12–14. New Delhi, India: Tulika Books and Authorsupfront Publishing Services Pvt. Ltd. ↩︎
Singh and Kaur 2017, 411. ↩︎
Ikeke 2020, 88. ↩︎

Sikh Environmental Ethics-Theory and Praxis Part 1 (Harpreet Kaur)

2024-08-07T00:43:28Z

The following is the first installment of a two-part series.

Eco-philosophy, or ecosophy, offers insight into the relationship of living beings with their environment. The intersection of faith and eco-philosophy is known as religious environmentalism. This alliance of religion and ecology has been gathering momentum lately. Ikeke^[1] notes that science and policy alone cannot tackle environmental challenges. One must act responsibly with conviction, primarily rooted in philosophical ethics. So, he makes a case for mobilizing religious resources to solve the grand challenges of the environmental crisis. Tucker and Grim^[2] also support incorporating cultural and religious values as critical aspects of environmental discussions.

The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess introduced Deep Ecology, an eco-philosophy, in the 1970s. It is a holistic view of ecology based on harmony and equilibrium. This ecosophy challenges the mechanist and reductionist worldview and lends a transcendent dimension to the understanding of ecology. Naess advocates for wisdom focused on ‘deep experience, deep questioning, and deep commitment’ and situates the philosophy of ecology in ‘being, thinking, and acting.’ (What is Deep Ecology, n.d.).

These are all hallmarks of religion, which has always acted like a lighthouse for human civilization. The existential wisdom about the connection among different entities of the cosmos has long been enshrined in world religions and other ancient spiritual traditions.

Although much has been written about the eco-philosophy of different religions, it is a pity that some philosophies have either been omitted or inadequately and inaccurately represented in scholarly literature. It is a severe loss and epistemic injustice when people are deprived of particular ideological wisdom. For instance, despite being the fifth-largest religion in the world, Sikhi^[3] is still not very well represented in academic discourses. According to Prill, Sikh environmentalism has received scant scholarly attention despite its potential to contribute significantly to ecological rhetoric. ^[4]

Donaldson points out that Jainism and Sikhi are conspicuously absent from the Norton Anthology of World Religions. ^[5] She remarks that these traditions have typically been relegated to the “footnote” status. Likewise, Sikhi is inadequately represented in Houston Smith’s The World Religions as a three-page appendix to the 75-page chapter on Hinduism. Jainism is missing altogether in this volume. The scholars are yet unprepared to address their philosophical insights.

Therefore, this essay explores Sikh environmental ethics as deduced from its eco-philosophy. It follows a thematic organization to discuss various aspects of its ecological theology. It attempts to retrieve wisdom enshrined in Sikh theological sources to examine and reevaluate their environmental significance and implications. It further critiques the reconstruction of this wisdom in practice to meet the current environmental challenges. Finally, reviewing all the gaps and misinterpretations, it offers suggestions for examining the intersection of Sikh ecosophy with other disciplines, such as education, science, politics, and literature.

Historical Context of the Sikh Faith and Scriptures

The Sikh religion, with an estimated 26 million followers, originated in Punjab in the 15th century. Following the division of Punjab between India and Pakistan in 1947, it is now the world’s fifth-largest religion. Its origin dates back to Guru Nanak’s avatar*^[2:1] *** in 1469, and it flourished under nine successors (Gurus). In 1708, the tenth spiritual master, Guru Gobind Singh, installed Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS), the compilation of revealed teachings, as the eternal living guru.

The verses of this holy text*,* a collection of the compositions of six gurus and other saintly figures alluding to Hindu and Muslim traditions, are called Gurbani. It is a multilingual text in Gurmukhi, the literaryscript of the Punjabi language in India. As a living embodiment of the founder masters, it is ceremoniously enthroned on a high seat under a canopy.

Singh defines Sikhi as an independent and autonomous prophetic religion, not a blend or mix of other creeds or religions.^[6] . He establishes its validity as a complete and whole faith using scientific inquiry, thereby rejecting the arguments that it is a derivative of Hinduism or Islam. According to Singh, Sikhi is the only prophetic religion of the East. In his scholarly essay about the basics of the Sikh faith, he explains the three principles that define Sikhi’s essence.

He argues that the absence of a separation between matter and spirit, the ability of humans to participate in evolution consciously, and the ultimate goal of aligning God-consciousness with earth consciousness make Sikhi unique.^[7] These principles ensure that Sikh ontology and theology are relevant to worldly matters.

Many theological sources, including SGGS, Dasam Granth authored by Guru Gobind Singh, Janam Saakhis (historical accounts and anecdotes from the lives of the Gurus), compositions of Bhai Gurdas ji, and others, are in the Gurmukhi script. These texts cover Punjabi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and other vernacular languages. English translations may not capture the original texts’ true spirit and subtleties. However, efforts have been made to convey the general meaning faithfully. The translations have been sourced from reliable sources and occasionally modified to retain the original connotation.

Methodological Approach and Conceptual Framework

Tucker and Grim observe that the scale and complexity of the environmental crisis require a fresh approach to understanding religious traditions, teachings, and ethics and applying them to contemporary situations.^[8] They suggest a threefold methodological approach to resolve this matter—retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction. Retrieval is a scholarly investigation of scriptures or historical sources to discover religious perspectives on the environment. It clarifies how ethics have been translated into practice through rituals, customs, and traditions.

Reevaluation evaluates the relevance of traditional teachings to contemporary circumstances: What is the significance of nature? What is the worldly versus transcendent orientation of the faith? What ideas promote ecologically sensitive attitudes and behaviors? Reconstruction is the creative adaptation of traditional ideas to the current circumstances, using modern modes of expression without challenging the essence.

It must be noted, however, that reconstruction is the most sensitive part of religious environmentalism since who interprets what and how is the most critical part of the creative dialogue between the practitioners and scholars of religion.^[9] Singh suggests that auto-interpretation is a valid way to comprehend and value religious wisdom. ^[10] This approach involves analyzing the religion’s central precepts, practices, and history without relying on external theories.

Sikhi does not endorse any hetero-interpretation based on ideas not aligned with its core teachings. Therefore, the author, a practicing Sikh, has leveraged her study of the scriptures, oral discourses by Sikh scholars, and academic papers in deference to the essence of Sikh doctrines to research the topic hermeneutically.

Ecological Inspiration in Sikh

Although there is no direct allusion to environmental ethics or ecology in SGGS, the scripture is prolific in nature symbolism and explicit references to natural phenomena, forces, and various species. Therefore, the verses enshrined are a rich source of ecological wisdom. Prill affirms that Sikhs find their ecological inspiration from SGGS by recovering wisdom from the verses and life stories of the Gurus, which serve as a parallel body of religious knowledge. ^[11]

She adds that the hagiographical accounts are conveyed orally, though multiple textual sources are available. Pointing to the observation of Roger Gottlieb that the resource of eco-theology is “neglected parts of the tradition, reinterpretation of the familiar, the adaptation of the old to the unprecedented demands of the present, or radical innovation,”^[12] she emphasizes how certain verses and historical events in Sikhi are highlighted for environmental advocacy.^[13]

Singh presents the environmental orientation of the Sikh faith compendiously. ^[14] He remarks that Sikhi does not view ecology and ethics as disjunct. They must be understood in the broader dharma (righteousness) context that enjoins humans to treat all creation respectfully. The premise of retrieval is best understood through a quote from the first Sikh morning prayer composed by the first master, Guru Nanak: “Dharma is the progeny of compassion that holds the earth patiently in place” ਧੌਲੁ ਧਰਮੁ ਦਇਆ ਕਾ ਪੂਤੁ ॥ ਸੰਤੋਖੁ ਥਾਪਿ ਰਖਿਆ ਜਿਨਿ ਸੂਤਿ ॥ (SGGS,Jap, M.1, 3)^[15] . Sikhi’s explanation of the interconnected web of life can be interpreted in this context.

Deep Ecology Characteristics

The theory of deep ecology proposed by Arne Naess in 1973 rejects the notion of nature as inanimate and subordinate. It sees intrinsic value in all things of nature and places humans in the organic scheme of a participatory universe. It calls for reevaluating our understanding of nature and the conception of the human self so that humankind can address environmental degradation at the grassroots level. Naess urges us to identify our ego self with the larger ecological self. Drengson^[16] clarifies that this is achievable by identifying with other living beings.

In other words, we must recognize the cosmic unity that binds all life and matter. Sikhi calls this cosmic principle or Divine Will/Command/Order as Hukam. It is Hukam that maintains harmony and equilibrium in the universe. When an individual functions in the ego mode, assuming a separation from other independent ego selves, it lays the ground for anthropocentrism. This intersects with the idea of haumai (egocentrism) in Sikh theology. Sikh ecology can, therefore, be studied through the [antagonistic] concepts of haumai and Hukam.

Since Hukam is the cornerstone of Sikh belief, Lourdunathan^[17] describes Sikhi as an ecosophical tradition. He points to the repeated assertion of the self-conceited nature of the human mind in SGGS. He elaborates that as the mind sees itself as separate from the rest of the creation, it loses the sense of integrity, which is at the root of ecological imbalance. Furthermore, he writes that SGGS obligates humans to live the ideals of justice and equality by declaring the earth a place for practicing dharma.

Declaring the earth thereby a sanctuary echoes the tenets of eco-philosophy.^[18] This world is a sacred place to be treated with reverence and care. The Sikh morning prayer Jap expresses it thus: “Nights, days, weeks, and seasons; Wind, water, fire, and nether regions; In the midst of these, He installed the earth as an abode for dharma. Upon these are placed the various species of beings; Countless are their names; their deeds and actions shall be judged” ਰਾਤੀ ਰੁਤੀ ਥਿਤੀ ਵਾਰ ॥ਪਵਣ ਪਾਣੀ ਅਗਨੀ ਪਾਤਾਲ ॥ਤਿਸੁ ਵਿਚਿ ਧਰਤੀ ਥਾਪਿ ਰਖੀ ਧਰਮ ਸਾਲ ॥ ਤਿਸੁ ਵਿਚਿ ਜੀਅ ਜੁਗਤਿ ਕੇ ਰੰਗ ॥ਤਿਨ ਕੇ ਨਾਮ ਅਨੇਕ ਅਨੰਤ ॥ਕਰਮੀ ਕਰਮੀ ਹੋਇ ਵੀਚਾਰੁ ॥ (SGGS, Jap, M.1,7).

Nature as a sacred and living entity is another deep ecology principle that resonates with Sikh cosmology. Prill^[19] and Singh^[20] write that God is the Creator of the universe, who is immanent and transcendent simultaneously, according to SGGS. Therefore, nature is sacred and real, not illusory, as believed by some schools of thought on the Indian subcontinent. While Prill^[21] seems unable to resolve the apparent ambiguity of ‘the world as a palace of smoke’ referenced in SGGS and the reality of the creation, Singh clarifies that the Creation (nature) is real by the immanence of her Creator. Still, it is subject to decay and death.^[22]

The intrinsic value of nature, human and nonhuman life included, and the biocentric equality is a direct corollary of the holistic view of the living environment. Singh asserts that the expansion and regression of the Creation are governed by Hukam(the divine law), which ensures equilibrium in the cosmos.^[23] He narrates an anecdote to illustrate this: A devotee, Bhai Jiva, cooked and served food daily to Guru Angad Dev, the second guru. One evening, when a storm rose, he became anxious because he could not light a fire to cook.

He beseeched Guru to halt the storm, and the prayer was answered. However, the Guru turned His face away when the devotee brought Him a fresh meal the following day. The Sikh begged to know where he had erred. Upon this, Guru revealed that storms and rain bring sustenance to many living beings. God had intended to spread food grains through the wind to a remote place where many insects were starving. The devotee understood that he dared to violate the Hukam*, preventing* those beings from receiving nourishment.

SGGS illustrates the integrated web of life by describing the food webs and ecosystems: “Some eat meat, while others eat grass. While some relish delicacies, others live in soil and eat particles in it; Some live on air, and their food is in the air” ਇਕਿ ਮਾਸਹਾਰੀ ਇਕਿ ਤ੍ਰਿਣੁ ਖਾਹਿ ॥ਇਕਨਾ ਛਤੀਹ ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤ ਪਾਹਿ ॥ਇਕਿ ਮਿਟੀਆ ਮਹਿ ਮਿਟੀਆ ਖਾਹਿ ॥ਇਕਿ ਪਉਣ ਸੁਮਾਰੀ ਪਉਣ ਸੁਮਾਰਿ ॥ (SGGS, M.1, Maajh, 144). This is a magnificent example of the scientific vision of religion since it classifies species as herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, autotrophs, and chemotrophs.^[24]

One can also discover the food chain concept in another composition: “Nanak, do not be anxious; you are in the care of the Lord. He created organisms in the water and nourished them; There are no stores nor anyone farms there, no business is ever transacted there; no one buys or sells; One animal eats another; this is His provision of food. He provides for the creatures of the ocean” ਨਾਨਕ ਚਿੰਤਾ ਮਤਿ ਕਰਹੁ ਚਿੰਤਾ ਤਿਸ ਹੀ ਹੇਇ ॥ ਜਲ ਮਹਿ ਜੰਤ ਉਪਾਇਅਨੁ ਤਿਨਾ ਭਿ ਰੋਜੀ ਦੇਇ ॥ ਓਥੈ ਹਟੁ ਨ ਚਲਈ ਨਾ ਕੋ

ਕਿਰਸ ਕਰੇਇ ॥ ਸਉਦਾ ਮੂਲਿ ਨ ਹੋਵਈ ਨਾ ਕੋ ਲਏ ਨ ਦੇਇ ॥ ਜੀਆ ਕਾ ਆਹਾਰੁ ਜੀਅ ਖਾਣਾ ਏਹੁ ਕਰੇਇ ॥ ਵਿਚਿ ਉਪਾਏ ਸਾਇਰਾ ਤਿਨਾ ਭਿ ਸਾਰ

ਕਰੇਇ ॥ (SGGS, M.2, Raamkali, 955).

Incredible natural shifts occur when human activity tampers with cosmic order and balance. For instance, a YouTube video shows a goat-eating fish. ^[25] We also know that the Sahara Desert was once an ocean. An explicit description of these phenomenal changes is recorded in SGGS:

Tigers, hawks, eagles, and falcons- the Lord could make them eat grass. Those who eat grass- He can make them eat meat; He thus makes them follow the way of life. He could raise dry lands from rivers, and turn the deserts into bottomless oceans” ਸੀਹਾ ਬਾਜਾ ਚਰਗਾ ਕੁਹੀਆ ਏਨਾ ਖਵਾਲੇ ਘਾਹ ॥ ਘਾਹੁ ਖਾਨਿ ਤਿਨਾ ਮਾਸੁ ਖਵਾਲੇ ਏਹਿ ਚਲਾਏ ਰਾਹ ॥ ਨਦੀਆ ਵਿਚਿ ਟਿਬੇ ਦੇਖਾਲੇ ਥਲੀ ਕਰੇ ਅਸਗਾਹ ॥ (SGGS, M.1, Maajh, 144).

These colossal changes in geological time can be construed as consequences of ecological imbalance and the breaking of the food chain. Therefore, Guru Nanak ordains living in harmony with the Hukam, and interference in natural affairs is considered folly*.* This is an illustration of the reevaluation of Hukam applied to ecological conservation.

Panentheism

Sikhi is a panentheistic faith that does not worship natural elements. The Sikhs are ordained to worship only one Timeless Creator, although they consider everything a manifestation of the Creator. SGGS has numerous verses that speak of the Lord’s presence in one and all. One, for instance, says, “Out of the same clay, the elephant, the ant, and many sorts of species are formed. In stationary life forms, moving beings, worms, moths, and within every heart Lord is contained” ਏਕਲ ਮਾਟੀ ਕੁੰਜਰ ਚੀਟੀ ਭਾਜਨ ਹੈਂ ਬਹੁ ਨਾਨਾ ਰੇ ॥ ਅਸਥਾਵਰ ਜੰਗਮ ਕੀਟ ਪਤੰਗਮ ਘਟਿ ਘਟਿ ਰਾਮੁ ਸਮਾਨਾ ਰੇ ॥ (SGGS, Naamdev, Maali Gauda, 988).Prill^[26] (2015) cites a passage from the daily Sikh prayer recited at sunset, wherein Guru Nanak praises the Lord Almighty: “Your Light is in Your creatures and Your creatures in Your Light; Your almighty power is pervading everywhere” ਜਾਤਿ ਮਹਿ ਜੋਤਿ ਜੋਤਿ ਮਹਿ ਜਾਤਾ ਅਕਲ ਕਲਾ ਭਰਪੂਰਿ ਰਹਿਆ ॥ (SGGS, M.1. Aasaa, 469).

Singh extends a few more insightful examples for our consideration: “You (The Creator) are the bumble bee, the flower, the fruit, and the tree. You are the water, the desert, the ocean, and the pool. ^[27] You are the great fish, the tortoise, the Cause of causes; Your form cannot be known” ਆਪੇ ਭਵਰੁ ਫੁਲੁ ਫਲੁ ਤਰਵਰੁ ॥ ਆਪੇ ਜਲੁ ਥਲੁ ਸਾਗਰੁ ਸਰਵਰੁ ॥ ਆਪੇ ਮਛੁ ਕਛੁ ਕਰਣੀਕਰੁ ਤੇਰਾ ਰੂਪੁ ਨ ਲਖਣਾ ਜਾਈ ਹੇ ॥ (SGGS, M.1. Maaru, 1020). The next verse expresses the same theme: “You are the River of Life; all are within You. There is no one except You” ਤੂੰ ਦਰੀਆਉ ਸਭ ਤੁਝ ਹੀ ਮਾਹਿ ॥ ਤੁਝ ਬਿਨੁ ਦੂਜਾ ਕੋਈ ਨਾਹਿ ॥ (SGGS, M.4, 11).

Even the natural forces are not considered outside of that Presence. The Lord abides in all elements: “Air, water, earth, and sky are the Lord’s home and temple” ਪਉਣ ਪਾਣੀ ਧਰਤੀ ਆਕਾਸੁ ਘਰ ਮੰਦਰ ਹਰਿ ਬਨੀ (SGGS, M.4, Tilang,723). Alternatively, consider this one: “The Lord infused His Light into the dust and created the world, the Universe. The Sky, the Earth, the trees, and the water – all are the Creation of the Lord” ਖਾਕ ਨੂਰ ਕਰਦੰ ਆਲਮ ਦੁਨੀਆਇ ॥ ਅਸਮਾਨ ਜਿਮੀ ਦਰਖਤ ਆਬ ਪੈਦਾਇਸਿ ਖੁਦਾਇ ॥ (SGGS, M.5, Tilang, 723).

Chahal proffers another example to expand on the concept of Sikh panentheism**:** “From His state of absolute existence, He assumed the immaculate form; from formless, He appeared in the form” ਅਵਿਗਤੋ . ^[28] However, the ability to recognize the One creative force in all requires the dissolution of ego: “Knowing the True Lord as the One and only, egoism and duality are done away” ਏਕੇ ਕਉ ਸਚੁ ਏਕਾ ਜਾਣੈ ਹਉਮੈ ਦੂਜਾ ਦੂਰਿ ਕੀਆ (SGGS, M.1, Raamkali, 940).

The most recited quote from Guru Nanak’s composition Jap with an explicit environmental lesson is: “Air is Guru, Water is father, and the great Earth our mother” ਪਵਣੁ ਗੁਰੂ ਪਾਣੀ ਪਿਤਾ ਮਾਤਾ ਧਰਤਿ ਮਹਤੁ (SGGS, Jap, M.1, 8). Such spiritual affiliation with nature has implications for the ecological footprint of the Sikhs. It is meant to inspire Sikhs to act in an environmentally sensitive manner to avoid violating their sacred and tender relationship with nature.^[29] Virk has elaborated on the concept of nature in his treatise Man-Nature Relationship: The Sikh Perspective.^[30]

He gives a historical background for Guru Nanak’s selection of the Arabic term qudrat over the Sanskrit one prakriti to speak of nature. He asserts this is a clear rejection of the Samkhya school of Indian philosophy, comparable to the Cartesian dualism of object and subject. He avers that Guru Nanak rejected the Vedantic philosophy that only God is real and His creation is only Maya or an illusion. Sikhi esteems nature as real and an abode of God. He notes that all species originating from the same source is a constant reminder of equality in SGGS, and this theological data is a pathway to intimacy with the Infinite and a springboard to ethical behavior.

Anthropocentrism or Ecocentrism?

As an ideology, anthropocentrism believes in the centrality of human beings in the scheme of existence.^[31] Conversely, ecocentrism values all nonhuman forms for their worth. Thus, ecocentrism assigns a meaningful identity to humans who are “in awe of life and part of the greater planetary existence.” Therefore, an ecocentric approach respects the web of life and attributes values to animals, trees, rivers, and landscapes. Anthropocentrism, by contrast, is an egotistical stance.^[32]

As discussed before, the verses in SGGS explain the intricate web of life delicately balanced by Hukam. How can humans be supreme in this philosophy when God permeates all forms in the Universe, and the same Hukam governs everything in the cosmos? However, mentioning Sikhi’s comparative emphasis on the human body is crucial. This body is considered sacred and a privileged means to ascend consciousness and merge with the Supreme. So much so that, according to SGGS, even angels long for this body (ਇਸ ਦੇਹੀ ਕਉ ਸਿਮਰਹਿ ਦੇਵ ) (SGGS, Kabeer, Bhairo, 1159). At the same time, there is a constant reminder from the Guru that this lofty aim is unattainable without acknowledging the presence of the Divine Light through all forms, without any distinction whatsoever.

Though the human is painted as a summum bonum of creation in Sikhi, it comes with a caveat. The Sikh scripture frequently reminds the mind of the inherent flaws that constantly threaten the vast potential of this gifted body. One example would suffice to drive home this message: “The deer, the fish, the bumble bee, the moth, and the elephant–each is destroyed by one flaw; what can be hoped for one [human] who houses five incurable (lust, rage, greed, attachment, and ego) vices within oneself?” ਮ੍ਰਿਗ ਮੀਨ ਭ੍ਰਿੰਗ ਪਤੰਗ ਕੁੰਚਰ ਏਕ ਦੋਖ ਬਿਨਾਸ ॥ ਪੰਚ ਦੋਖ ਅਸਾਧ ਜਾ ਮਹਿ ਤਾ ਕੀ ਕੇਤਕ ਆਸ ॥ (SGGS, Sri Ravidas, Aasaa, 486). It is the agency that places human beings in an advantageous position and necessitates ethical behavior on their part. Hence the warning: “As you sow, so shall you reap. Such is the field of karma.” ਜੇਹਾ ਬੀਜੈ ਸੋ ਲੁਣੈ ਕਰਮਾ ਸੰਦੜਾ ਖੇਤੁ ॥ (SGGS, M.5, Majh, 134).

The only exception among Sikh scholars, Chahal, offers a statement of qualified anthropocentrism in Guru Nanak’s philosophy that warrants censure.^[33] He reasons that Guru Arjan declares man to be the ruler of the earth in one of His verses: “Other species may be at your service; you may be a ruler on this earth and possess all the wealth…but your carnal instinct causes your downfall” ਅਵਰ ਜੋਨਿ ਤੇਰੀ ਪਨਿਹਾਰੀ ॥ ਇਸੁ ਧਰਤੀ ਮਹਿ ਤੇਰੀ ਸਿਕਦਾਰੀ ॥ (SGGS, M.5, Aaasa, 374). Unlike other scholars, Chahal has not inserted the modal [may] in his interpretation.

He probably wanted to highlight man’s anthropogenic behavior when he remarked, “Although anthropocentrism is respected…it is discussed in a different sense”^[34] because he does take note of human failure in the face of irresponsible behavior. Kopnina^[35] comment that since humans are the only species with an evolved consciousness to recognize morality, the focus on values is anthropogenic. Still, it does not inevitably imply anthropocentric overtones.

Even if the quote used by Chahal is inferred to imply that a human being is a king of the earth, the hermeneutical approach requires a scholar to extend their investigation to the concept of a king in Sikhi.^[36] The Sikh scripture is replete with examples of worldly kings acting corruptly. Ideally, a king is responsible for providing for his subjects, like a guardian or steward. In this regard, Guru Nanak declares: “There is no other king, except Him” ਤਿਸੁ ਬਿਨੁ ਰਾਜਾ ਅਵਰੁ ਨ ਕੋਈ ॥ (SGGS, M.1, Raamkali Oankar, 936).

In his composition, Akaal Ustat, under the title Savvaiye (34), Guru Gobind Singh writes: “At all times, He (God) sustains all—animals, birds, mountains, trees, serpents, and men; In an instant, He nourishes all living beings in water and doth not judge their actions. The Merciful Lord sees the blemishes but doth not fail in His bounty.” ਪਛ ਪਸੂ ਨਗ ਨਾਗ ਨਰਾਧਿਪ; ਸਰਬ ਸਮੈ, ਸਭ ਕੋ ਪ੍ਰਤਿਪਾਰੈ ॥ ਪੋਖਤ ਹੈ ਜਲ ਮੈ ਥਲ ਮੈ; ਪਲ ਮੈ, ਕਲਿ ਕੇ ਨਹੀ ਕਰਮ ਬਿਚਾਰੈ ॥ ਦੀਨ ਦਇਆਲ ਦਇਆਨਿਧਿ; ਦੋਖਨ ਦੇਖਤ ਹੈ, ਪਰੁ ਦੇਤ ਨ ਹਾਰੈ ॥ Let us consider another example. As part of their daily morning prayer, Sikhs recite this line too: “Even kings and emperors, with heaps of wealth as tall as mountains and empires vast as oceans, cannot equal an ant that does not forget the Lord” ਸਮੁੰਦ ਸਾਹ ਸੁਲਤਾਨ ਗਿਰਹਾ ਸੇਤੀ ਮਾਲੁ ਧਨੁ ॥ ਕੀੜੀ ਤੁ ਲਿ ਨ ਹੋਵਨੀ ਜੇ ਤਿਸੁ ਮਨਹੁ ਨ ਵੀਸਰਹਿ ॥ (SGGS, Jap, M.1, 5). This implies that a life’s value lies in its complete identification with the Hukam.

Singh^[37] refutes all arguments of anthropocentrism by clarifying that notwithstanding a man’s privileged position in the universe, he can still not claim to be better than an animal. He cites Bhagat Kabeer: “When a man dies, he is useless, but an animal serves in many ways even after death.” ਨਰੂ ਮਰੈ ਨਰੁ ਕਾਮਿ ਨ ਆਵੈ ॥ ਪਸੂ ਮਰੈ ਦਸ ਕਾਜ ਸਵਾਰੈ ॥ (SGGS, Kabeer, Gond, 870). A religion that fairly weighs an animal’s merits against a man’s vices can, by no means, be labeled as anthropocentric.

Footnotes

Ikeke, Mark Omorovie. 2020. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 19, no. 57 (Winter 2020): 81–95. ↩︎
Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John Grim. 2017. “The Movement of Religion and Ecology.” Essay. In Routledge Handbook of Ecology and Religion, edited by Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Joh Grim. 3–12. New York: Routledge. ↩︎ ↩︎
I refer to the Sikh faith and wisdom as Sikhi, unlike the usual practice of calling it Sikhism, for two reasons. One, it retains the original flavor of the tradition by using a Punjabi equivalent. Two, it renders the discipline free from the usual connotations of isms. ↩︎
Prill, Susan E. 2015. “Sikhi and Sustainability: Sikh Approaches to Environmental Advocacy.” Sikh Formations 11, no. 1–2: 223–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2015.1023112. ↩︎
Donaldson, Brianne. 2015. “Jainism and Sikhism: The Value of Being ‘Footnote’ Traditions.” Patheos, March 9, 2015. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionnow/2015/03/jainism-and-sikhism-the-value-of-being-footnote-traditions/. ↩︎
Singh, Devinder Pal. 2021a. “Air- A Classical Element of Life in Sikh Theology.” Asia Samachar. September 19, 2021. https://asiasamachar.com/2021/09/19/40575/. ↩︎
Ibid, 56 ↩︎
Tucker and Grimm 2017, 8. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Singh, Kapur. Sikhism and The Sikhs. Kapurthala, Punjab (India): Baldev Singh: 2011, 34-35. ↩︎
Prill, Susan E. 2015. “Sikhi and Sustainability: Sikh Approaches to Environmental Advocacy.” Sikh Formations 11, no. 1–2: 223–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2015.1023112. ↩︎
Ibid, 240. ↩︎
Ibid, 224. ↩︎
Singh 2021a., 3. ↩︎
The notation in this paper (SGGS, M.1, 3) should be read as the verse composed by the first guru and enshrined on page 3. If the verse is from another saint, their name replaces M.1. In other verses, raga is also mentioned. The raga is the specific melodic composition in which the verse can be sung. Except for a few verses at the beginning and end of the scripture, all verses have been arranged under 31 ragas. Therefore, the raga’s name and page number can be used to look up verses. The printed scripture does not mention the publication year. ↩︎
Drengson, Alan. 1999. “Ecophilosophy, Ecosophy and the Deep Ecology Movement: An Overview.” Ecocentrism Homepage. http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/DrengEcophil.html?i=1. ↩︎
Lourdarnathan, S. 2012. “Sikhism and Global Living.” In Many Heavens, One Earth: Reading on Religion and Environment, edited by Clifford Chalmers Cain. 165–70. Lanham: Lexington Books. ↩︎
Skolimowski, Henry. 1997. “The World Is a Sanctuary.” The UNESCO Courier, March 1997, 48. ↩︎
Prill, Susan E. 2015. “Sikhi and Sustainability: Sikh Approaches to Environmental Advocacy.” Sikh Formations 11, no. 1–2: 223–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2015.1023112. ↩︎
Singh, Nirmal. 2013. “Environmental Stewardship: Sharing Sikh Thought and Some Sikh Perspectives.” In Exploring Sikh Spirituality and the Paradox of Their Stereotyping in Contemporary American Setting, 71–80. Hartford: Sanbun, 2003. https://www.sikhnet.com/news/environmental-stewardship-steps-and-mis-steps. ↩︎
Prill, Susan E. 2015. “Sikhi and Sustainability: Sikh Approaches to Environmental Advocacy.” Sikh Formations 11, no. 1–2: 223–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2015.1023112. ↩︎
Singh, Nirmal. 2013. “Environmental Stewardship: Sharing Sikh Thought and Some Sikh Perspectives.” In Exploring Sikh Spirituality and the Paradox of Their Stereotyping in Contemporary American Setting, 71–80. Hartford: Sanbun, 2003. https://www.sikhnet.com/news/environmental-stewardship-steps-and-mis-steps. ↩︎
Singh, Nirmal. 2001. “A Forum on Religion and Environment.” Proceedings of A forum on Religion and Environment,October 4, 2001. Hartford, CT: Hartford Seminary. ↩︎
Chahal, Devinder Singh. “Environmental Ethics Perspective from Nanakian Philosophy.” 2015. Understanding Sikhism-The Research Journal 17, no. 1 (December): 3–15. ↩︎
“Goat eating fish – only in India, WildFilmsIndia, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzFQkSEgGck. Accessed June 3, 2024. ↩︎
Prill, Susan E. 2015. “Sikhi and Sustainability: Sikh Approaches to Environmental Advocacy.” Sikh Formations 11, no. 1–2: 223–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2015.1023112. ↩︎
Singh, Devinder Pal. 2021b. “Prime Environmental Teachings of Sikhism,” Sikh Philosophy Network. April 9, 2021, 13. ↩︎
Chahal 2015, 7. ↩︎
Prill 2015, 228 ↩︎
Virk, Hardev Singh. 2014. Man-Nature Relationship: The Sikh Perspective. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260790809_Man_Nature_Relationship_The_Sikh_Perspective ↩︎
Kopnina, Helen, Haydn Washington, Bron Taylor, and John J Piccolo. “Anthropocentrism- More than Just a Misunderstood Problem.” 2018. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (January 18, 2018): 109–27. ↩︎
Ibid, 123. ↩︎
Chahal 2015, 9. ↩︎
Ibid, 9. ↩︎
Kopning 2018, 122. ↩︎
Chahal 2015, 9. ↩︎
Singh 2001. ↩︎

Religious Faith In Pursuit of Environmental Justice (Chris Durante)

2024-07-25T23:59:15Z

Introduction

In recent years, the world’s religions, including the Abrahamic faiths as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and various indigenous forms of spirituality, have been increasingly turning their ethical gaze toward the intersection of social, economic and ecological justice issues. This gives me hope because I believe many environmental injustices persist because the values of the neoliberal capitalist ethos have become so ingrained in our global social systems over the course of the past few generations that for most people today, it is the values of this economic paradigm, rather than the values of their faith traditions, that are predominant in governing their social lives and molding their daily lifestyles.^[1]

The neoclassical paradigm of economics that now dominates global society in its neoliberal manifestation ultimately aims for perpetual profit via perpetual financial growth and material expansion and functions according to a utilitarian mindset that seeks to commodify both an array of living beings as well as all forms of creative human activity in the process.^[2] It posits a view of the human person as an intrinsically self-interested and rationalistic individual seeking to maximize her own benefits and satiate her own desires, at almost any cost.^[3]

As such, this dominant socio-economic paradigm envisions the natural world as being replete with interchangeable resources for consumption and manipulation with the ultimate goal of social life as the competitive maximization and accrual of individual capital and wealth, which is to be used for the satiation of unmitigated desire. These elements of the neoclassical/neoliberal paradigm of socio-economic thought stand in stark contradiction to the relational view of personhood, the view of the natural world as kindred being, and communal life as striving for excellence in a state of mutual well-being that are to be found within most of the world’s religious traditions.

Many of the world’s faiths denounce the vices of gluttony and greed that drive this socio-economic system and uphold the view that persons flourish when they live in community with other persons, and when we hold a proper degree of respect, if not reverence, for the natural world.

Toward an Interfaith Integral Ecology

Despite the fact that some environmentalists, following Lynn White’s *“The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,”^[4] * have accused the Judeo-Christian tradition for promoting the exploitative domination of nature, many Christian eco-theologians have noted that the term “dominion,”^[5] found in Jewish and Christian scriptures, is more accurately translated as “stewardship” and have argued that care for the poor and for the earth are interrelated insofar as an attitude of domination underpins exploitation and mistreatment of humans, animals and ecosystems alike.^[6]

While this was a perspective that may have been considered marginal in decades past, such views are no longer to be found within the periphery of Christian thinking, as they have been espoused by Christianity’s most senior hierarchs. For example, the concept of “environmental sin,” first expressed in 1997^[7] by Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Orthodox Christian tradition, was more recently adopted by Pope Francis in his 2015 encyclical *Laudato Si’,^[8] * where he promotes an integral ecology in which the social, economic, cultural and ecological dimensions of reality are understood holistically as inter-related aspects of life on planet earth.In Laudato Si’, and in his 2023 companion encyclical: Laudate Deum,^[9] Pope Francis criticizes the individualism, consumerism, and perpetual growth economics that he correctly views as driving the ecological catastrophes currently taking place, and which are predominantly affecting the poorest people and poorest nations most dramatically.^[10] So how should we reform and redesign our economy?

Prohibiting the Sin of Usury

To begin, we must grapple with the fact that the global economy pursues infinite growth on a finite planet and is intimately intertwined with financial systems that rely upon interest to fuel this exponential process of economic growth. However, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have all traditionally been critical of the practice of charging interest, with both Christian and Islamic civilizations having historically even gone so far as to legally prohibit usury — or charging interest on monies loaned — in one form or another.

Up until recently, laws regulating interest on loans, sometimes referred to as “usury bans,” were commonplace even within the secular legal paradigms of many States in the U. S.; with most usury laws unfortunately being overturned at the behest of credit card companies during the mid to late twentieth century. Sadly, the majority of Christians are not even aware that their faith tradition has historically condemned this practice since most denominations no longer hold this view; for instance, the Catholic Church overturned its prohibition on usury during the nineteenth century as a means of accommodating the industrial capitalist paradigm that had come to dominate social life.

While many Muslims are also accommodating of the practice of usury, it is still considered to be a sin in Islam and therefore some Muslims still engage in an Islamic form of banking in which riba (interest) is still deemed haram(prohibited), and hence, do not practice usury.^[11]

Given the fact that our ecological crisis is so deeply wedded to the infinite growth model of economic ‘development’ in which interest plays a crucial role, especially in the financial sector, as the world’s largest religious tradition, Christianity might re-consider its modern acceptance of usury and once again begin to take the sin of usury seriously. Christian organizations may consider developing alternate forms of banking, as some Muslims have done, and may even be able to forge interfaith economic collaborations and banking partnerships with Muslims as they mutually adopt the dual cause of combatting socio-economic inequities while enacting more ecologically sustainable modes of economic behavior.

While on its own this will certainly not solve the aforementioned problems, it may however, help create global networks of anti-usury banking systems that could potentially serve as a solid foundation upon which to build an alternate global socio-economic system. One that it is not tied to the goal of perpetual growth and which may uphold an ideal of the common good shared amongst many of the world’s faiths.

Work as Serving the Common Good

In the 1970s, the Buddhist economist E.F. Schumacher had argued that a good economy ought to be designed in such a way as to provide all members of society with a sufficient degree of well-being and livelihoods that do not cause harm to others, and which promote service to the public good of the communities in which they live. Schumacher’s Buddhist economics shares much in common with Catholic Social Teaching and many of the ideas he espoused foreshadow those expressed by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’.

For instance, Schumacher argued that work should not be conceived of solely as a means to acquire wealth but should also serve the common good, promote communal solidarity and help cultivate virtue, as he critiqued excessive consumerism, promoted moderate consumption practices, argued for sustainably produced and locally sourced products and endorsed renewable forms of energy.^[12]

Performing certain types of work, or engaging in certain types of professions, can be inherently antithetical to the Buddhist conception of the ethical life, which is primarily informed by the notions of karuna (compassion for all beings), ahimsa (avoid causing harm to sentient life), and nirodha, or the idea that we must attempt to overcome our materialistic desires if we are to free ourselves and others from anguish and suffering; which are all part and parcel of striving to attain the ultimate goal of nirvana, or liberation from suffering, especially as conceived in the Mahayana tradition.

Without going into too much detail, one of the principles of the eight-fold path that is to govern and guide a Buddhist’s life is “right livelihood.” Consequently, to hold professions that intentionally aim to manufacture desire for unnecessary items for the sole aim of creating profit while intentionally neglecting the harms that certain products and modes of production may cause to ecological and human health and well-being, would be to fail to maintain the principle of “right livelihood,” and thereby would divert one from the path toward nirvana.

Expressing views that I believe resonate well with the Buddhist concept of right livelihood, Basil the Great of Caesarea (a saint recognized and revered by the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican branches of Christianity) wrote, “we should serve through our skill those who seek to satisfy their real needs,” believing that the “aim is simplicity and frugality” and argued that “we must avoid pandering to the foolish and harmful desires of men by working for the ends sought after by them”.^[13]

In other words, Basil is saying that through our work we should not be attempting to satiate people’s unreasonable desires nor seek to supply them with the objects of their impetuous wants. Instead, through our work we ought to seek to provide them with the highest quality of goods and services that genuinely satisfy their needs and contribute to their wellbeing. Basil endorses livelihoods capable of earning a sufficient amount of profit while simultaneously contributing to the common good of society and the welfare of the local community in which one lives; a view which foreshadows the ideas of Schumacher and Francis.

Living in the fourth century, St. Basil is best remembered for pursuing a life committed to the ideal of philanthropia, or love of humanity, grounded in active service and for establishing the world’s first hospitals, hospices, orphanages, soup-kitchens and old-age homes in complexes he called “the New City” that eventually became know as “Basileads.”^[14] As a bishop who engaged in the socio-political world of his day, and as an abbot of monks who was responsible for the creation of a communal and socially transformative model of monastic-lay cooperation, Basil is one of the best historical models we have for understanding how religious communities can create alternate cooperative socio-economic systems in pursuit of economic and ecological justice.

With the sole goal of perpetual growth in profits at the expense of all other values, our current neoliberal/neoclassical economic system is designed to achieve precisely the opposite of the type of society Basil developed and is grounded upon principles that are diametrically at odds with either Schumacher’s or Francis’ visions of the good society.

With its dual obsession with novelty and profit, the current neoliberal economy pressures companies to produce inexpensive disposable products that are intentionally designed to fail in order to create a fabricated ‘need’ for individuals to replace them in a strategy known as “planned obsolescence” for products that are often not even remotely required for human flourishing and which may even be harmful to us or negatively impact our overall wellbeing. Smartphones and computers, for example, are designed in such a manner that ‘consumers’ are forced to dispose of, or ‘upgrade,’ their ‘outdated’ models in order to continue to use the electronic devices that are demanded of them in the modern workplace.

Aside from the non-durability of electronic products, everything from the industrial garment industry to the automotive industry has come to employ the rationale of “planned obsolescence” as a means of creating a need where one did not previously exist. While this applies to items that have become requirements for social functionality in the modern world, most of the products produced and sold satisfy no actual biological or psychological human need nor are they actually required for social functionality, even in the modern world. We must pursue work that contributes to our earthly flourishing and find ways to resist the insidious global encroachment of neoliberalism. But, how?

Re-localizing our Global Economy

Both secular and religious environmentalists have called attention to the need for global society to reform our unjust global (neoliberal) economic system, with many arguing for forms of localism as a solution. They do so because in addition to ecological and health benefits, enacting forms of economic localism may also help empower regional communities by fostering local entrepreneurial endeavors as well as collaborations amongst local businesses, which would help prevent the extraction of wealth from smaller locales by transnational corporate conglomerates and contribute to the local retention of wealth creation. While these ideas have been promoted by ecological economists and social justice advocates, they may also find support in traditional religious principles and practices as well.

One example is the principle of subsidiarity found within Catholic Social Teaching (CST), which maintains that local communities ought to be afforded the power and authority to manage their own affairs when they are capable of doing so, rather than have a centralized governing body attempt to manage the affairs of distant regions. Subsidiarity entails the empowerment of local communities because it upholds a social vision in which society is comprised of smaller local and regional communities, which are in turn comprised of even smaller units, until we reach the level of the family, which is the foundation of society in CST.

If implemented in the context of ecological justice, the principle of subsidiarity could be used to support local family and cooperatively owned businesses, especially small-scale sustainable farms, and empower local farming cooperatives as well as farmers’ markets and other such organizations that enable small local producers to bring their goods to market.

This is of utmost importance because the industrialization of agriculture is one of the primary contributors to the ecological crises we face. By using energy intensive machinery industrial agriculture is one of the largest producers of carbon emissions, far exceeding even automotive emissions. Further, with its reliance on a monocultural paradigm of cultivation, industrial agriculture is deteriorating soil quality due to its lack of crop diversity, which helps keep soils fertile.

As a result, this monocultural paradigm requires the constant use of chemical fertilizers that not only pollute groundwater but which are also polluting the bodies of the humans that consume food items produced with the use of these toxic chemicals. Additionally, industrial agriculture is also contributing to deforestation, due to the rampant destruction of forestlands so that they may be converted into farmlands, as well as water-waste, as a result of turning deserts into farmlands and the high levels of freshwater required for food production. This is a shame because, agriculture was a profession that Saint Basil believed was the noblest of all because it provides the necessities of life.^[15]

Unfortunately, like almost every other form of livelihood in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, agriculture has succumb to the pressures of the neoclassical economic system’s demands for overspecialization and perpetual growth that has transformed farming from a life-sustaining practice that helped contribute to local prosperity and empowerment into the food production arm of the global capitalist system. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of meat production. Corporate food production conglomerates are constantly creating Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), colloquially referred to as “factory farms,” in order to produce enough meat, often beef, to meet rising global demands as a result of the proliferation of the “western,” or “American,” diet and excessive consumerist lifestyle.

The global proliferation of CAFOs and monocultural industrial farming, that goes hand in hand with the heightened demand for unsustainably produced animal products, is in direct opposition to the virtues and values of moderation, prudence, temperance, and respect for nature that the world’s faith traditions hold out to us as ideals of excellence.

One source of insight into how the agricultural industry can be transformed via sociopolitical action may be found within Islamic ideas pertaining to the distribution of zakat, or charitable taxation, and would involve targeting the ways in which our taxes are redistributed in society. Like the Roman Catholic idea of subsidiarity, Islamic principles governing the distribution of zakat also endorse a form of localism, insofar as it is taught that such monies ought to remain within the local communities from which they are taken as a means of increasing local solidarity and preventing exploitative extraction of wealth from a local community.

The idea here is that when zakat monies were not used locally, transparency and accountability diminished and hence, the chances for corruption increased. This is currently the case with government subsidies for corporately owned industrial methods of farming that not only harm the earth but which also oppress laborers^[16] as they extract resources^[17] from local communities. The same type of monies that CAFOs and other corporately owned farms receive as government subsidies are not available to small-scale farms, and are especially not offered for ecologically sustainable farming practices such as regenerative agriculture, permaculture or agroforestry.

Implementing the logic involved in the distribution of zakat to farming in the United States, for example, could be used to support reforming what gets included into congressional Farm Bills as well as for endorsing the enactment of State-level subsidies for local small-scale farming operations engaged in sustainable agricultural methods and fair labor practices.

Conclusion

If we continue to allow it to self-perpetuate, the global neoliberal system will be our demise because it fails to realize how intimately connected the well-being of our natural world is with our own and misunderstands what it means for our species to flourish together with other living beings as an earthly community. Ultimately, there is much ethical wisdom that global civilization can learn from the world’s religions in regard to how we can transform our global neoliberal system and begin to adopt alternative socio-economic systems that promote rather than stifle environmental justice. Therefore, what is required is an active reevaluation of our values that leads to a transfiguration of our consumption and production practices, forms of work and modes of living so that we can come to collectively embody resistance to the neoliberal order.

Chris Durante, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theology at Saint Peter’s University in NJ as well as a Fellow of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics & Human Rights, where he serves on the Organizing Committee of the Bioethics, Multiculturalism & Religion workshops. His publications have appeared in a number of academic journals such as: the American Journal of Bioethics; the Journal of Medical Ethics; Medicine, Healthcare and Philosophy; the Journal of Global Ethics; the Journal of Religious Ethics; and the Journal of Church & State.

Footnotes

Sallie McFague. Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril. (Minneapolis, Minn: Fortress Press, 2001), 84. ↩︎
Philip Cafaro. 2011. Taming Growth and Articulating a Sustainable Future: The Way Forward for Environmental Ethics. Ethics & the Environment, 16(1): 10. ↩︎
Herman Daly & John Cobb Jr. For the Common Good: redirecting the economy toward community, the environment and a sustainable future. Second Edition (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994), 87. ↩︎
Herman Daly, “Economics for a Full World,” Great Transition Initiative (June 2015). ↩︎
Herman Daly & John Cobb Jr. For the Common Good: redirecting the economy toward community, the environment and a sustainable future. Second Edition (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994), 159. ↩︎
Sallie McFague. Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril. (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, Minn: 2001), 81. ↩︎
Sallie McFague. A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming. (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, Minn: 2008), 83. ↩︎
White, Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155.3767 (1967): 1203-207. ↩︎
The term “radah” in Hebrew. ↩︎
Boff, Leonardo. Liberation Theology & Ecology in: Ecology & Poverty: Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995). ↩︎
Address of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Environmental Symposium, Saint Barbara Greek Orthodox Church, Santa Barbara, California. November 8, 1997. ↩︎
Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ Of The Holy Father Francis On Care For Our Common Home (official English-language text of encyclical)”. June 2015. ↩︎
Encyclical Letter Laudate Deum Of The Holy Father Francis On Care For Our Common Home (official English-language text of encyclical)”. October 2023. ↩︎
In a sad irony, these people and nations tend to be those who have contributed the least to either causing or exacerbating the ecological crises currently unfolding. ↩︎
Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee. The Concept of Riba’ and Islamic Banking. (Malaysia: The Other Press: 2016) ↩︎
E. F. Schumacher. Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered. (London, U.K.: Blond & Briggs 1973) ↩︎
Basil. The Long Rules. The Ascetical Works. The Fathers of the Church. M. Monica Wagner, C.S.C., Trans. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1950), 311. ↩︎

What Black Disabled Bodies Can Teach Us About Environmental Justice (Robert Monson)

2024-07-10T12:13:39Z

As early as 2014, governmental officials in the city of Flint, Michigan made a series of decisions that would prove to have deleterious effects on the people and environment of Flint. As officials sought to make room in the budget, they decided to switch the city’s water supply to the polluted Flint River without a plan to treat the water appropriately. The fallout from citizens being poisoned has largely impacted the city’s Black population in disastrous ways. In fact, one study has found that:

Analyzing health records from 2008 to 2015, researchers found that fertility rates in Flint dropped by 12 percent and fetal deaths rose by 58 percent after the water was switched to the Flint River in 2014. Additionally, babies who were born at full-term during the water crisis had lower birth weights. The lead exposure also increased the risk of hypertension for pregnant women and may have interfered with their choice of whether or not to breastfeed. Moreover, the health effects of lead exposure in children in Flint increased the risk of impaired cognition, behavioral disorders, hearing problems and delayed puberty.”^[1]

It is clear that budget concerns were deemed more important than the health of Flint citizens, animals, and infrastructure. In this way, it seems that various levels of disabling events were enabled to take place.

Since the inception of this country, Black people have found themselves disabled for a variety of reasons. Some of these factors include genetics, environmental issues, brutality of all sorts, as well as systemic racism. This paper will primarily analyze the social implications of Black disabled people here in America, Christian messaging, and how they should shape environmental justice discourse. It is important to note that while Christianity is not the only religion that Black people practice here in America, it still represents a religion that the majority ascribe to (I will share more on this later in the paper.).^[2]

It is sufficient to say here that, while many Black Americans, while holding space for nuance, say that “they believe in God as described in their religion’s holy scripture (such as the Bible for Christians or the Quran for Muslims).”^[3] As a Black, disabled, theologically trained man, I will utilize Black theologians, scholars, and artists to point to a model of environmental justice that includes those who are most marginalized by this ableist society. First, I will go more in-depth on my own positionality and the tools that I use to analyze Black disability. Next, I will talk about Black disabled bodies and environmental justice, and lastly, I will turn to looking closely at what is “Good News” to Black disabled bodies.

My positionality

It is always important for me, when writing or speaking on a given topic to note my social location. It is my hope that doing so allows for others to locate themselves and to note that I am absolutely biased in what I am thinking through. First, I am a disabled Black man who grew up in the southern part of Chicago. This is especially important because often there are assumptions that are made when Black folks speak about God and the universe.

Despite most of the people I grew up around having loyalty to the systems of the church, I did not. I did have ethics and a form of spirituality that I could never quite label though. I prided myself on being more moral than the Christians I knew around me. Second, after becoming a Christian later in life, I went on to study theology in a few different spaces and obtained Bible certificates, an MA concentrated on womanism/Black liberation theology, and am now in a PhD program for Religious Studies.

As a Black theologian that has been positively impacted by womanist theology, I ground many of my observations with knowledge that I have gained from womanist ethicists and womanist theologians. Womanist scholar Delores S. Williams defines womanism in this way: “Womanists not only concern ourselves about the liberation of women, we also struggle along with Black men and children for the liberation, survival and positive quality of life for our entire oppressed Black community.”^[4] This definition is beneficial to me as I write about Black disabled bodies, and environmental justice. I am clear, in approaching the topics of environmental justice and Black disability, that I am seeking for the liberation and thriving of all people. A womanist lens helps to keep me grounded in my research and writing. I bring forth the knowledge and beauty of Black disability even as I strive alongside other Black bodies to create a future that is full of liberation and life.

Definitions of Environmental Justice and Disability

In the quest for environmental justice, it is essential that we start from some sort of working definition of the term as well as how we think of disability. According to the United States Protection Agency, environmental justice is defined as

Environmental justice means the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, Tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making and other Federal activities that affect human health and the environment so that people:

are fully protected from disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects (including risks) and hazards, including those related to climate change, the cumulative impacts of environmental and other burdens, and the legacy of racism or other structural or systemic barriers; and
have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment in which to live, play, work, learn, grow, worship, and engage in cultural and subsistence practices.^[5]

This definition serves to ground us because it points to an equitable outcome for all human beings. Environmental justice work should be about providing an equitable world that allows every person, regardless of status, to have a healthy environment. Human beings being able to enjoy the benefits of an environment that allows them to work and play in a sustainable way should be paramount to how we define the contours of environmental justice.

Now that we have a starting place to consider environmental justice, it is also important to note how we think of disability for the rest of this paper. According to the CDC, disability can be defined as “any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions).”^[6]

This definition is crucial as we consider invisible and visible disabilities. While our society is just now beginning to make headway in considering the ways that visible disabilities impact our society and one another, there is so much work to be done in considering the full spectrum of disabled bodies. Some live in immense pain while others do not. Some experience their disability as a superpower while others are ashamed of their disability. No two people are the same and as such, we must consider nuance when we speak of disabled peoples: particularly Black disabled people.

Black people are disabled at a higher rate in the United States than any other ethnic group. Recent studies show that one out of every four Black people live with some sort of disability.^[7] Sometimes, when I speak at academic conferences, I like to poll the crowd before I give this statistic. I ask people what they would guess our disability rates are. I also poll the crowd and try to get them to name the amount of Black disabled people they know in academia, in movies, and personally.

I do this exercise to frame the disparity between the statistics rates of Black bodies and the representation/space that Black disability takes up in the imaginations of people. Black people being disabled in such a way is massive for realizing that in a crowd of Black people, quite a bit are disabled in one or multiple ways. Some would label this positively. Still others are reeling from systems and environments that have disabled them.

What does all of this have to do with environmental justice? In the journey to create policies that seek to remedy the damage that humans have done to the planet, it is imperative that we consider all bodies when we protest, write, and legislate. In my earlier exercise to poll different crowds about Black disabled people, it is apparent that Black disabled people are rarely considered. If this is the case in a teaching venue, one can easily see how this effect is amplified on a larger scale. If Black disabled people aren’t even considered, then of course they aren’t at the table making decisions.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when churches and many organizations were forced to shut down, many expressed their confusion at how to create meaningful online platforms. As so many scrambled for answers, there seemed to be an ignorance of the ways in which disabled people have had to create community with one another; how they had been forced to do this for many years. Disabled people have wisdom to share. I offer these concrete examples because perhaps, if disabled people, particularly Black, were asked to help form creative online spaces, we all could have coped with the pandemic in more engaging ways. Rather than trying to dream of something from scratch, churches could have asked their chronically ill to explain the ways that they have had to cultivate community when they cannot gather in person.

America as a Disabling Apparatus

I want to underscore how disability manifests for Black bodies as America itself is a disabling apparatus. The way this nation was colonized and made great was through brutalization, maiming, and the spread of disease. Productivity and success remain as American ideals that measure the success of individual and communal lives. It is because of this that I say that America is a disabling apparatus. How does this apparatus influence the lives and futures of Black people? Dr. Rheeda Walker wrote a book entitled The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health where she discusses, among other things, the different avenues that this country employs to harm Black bodies.

She notes that “African-American men, women, and children are mistreated and sometimes killed for doing normal things that white people do or could do without a second thought or consequence.”^[8] This reality impacts Black mental health in very deleterious ways, as Black people are forced to live in a world where anxiety and fear are commonplace. Racism, in its many forms, has a maiming, disabling, and disheartening effect on Black bodies in this nation.

Inherent in writing about America in this way is the knee-jerk reaction that many face to defend America as no more brutal than any other developing nation. It is at this juncture that I must readily say that the systems of heteronormativity, ableism, and racism that have been embedded into this country were created. They are not simply a byproduct of evolution. The rise in work fatigue and mental health breakdown in America cannot be ignored as Americans, irrespective of ethnicity, eventually break down over the demands that the workforce place upon their bodies and minds.

If this weren’t a problem, then the American Psychological Association would not have noted in recent studies that “Nearly 3 in 5 employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest, motivation, or energy (26%) and lack of effort at work (19%).”^[9] These statistics are compounded when people face work exhaustion, stress, fatigue, and racial discrimination. Bodies develop disabilities that they weren’t born with simply due to the way this country chooses to legislate work.

In light of the disabling apparatus known as America, I point to a model that aims for progress. Black disability politics can help us as we put disability, race, and gender into conversation with environmental justice. Dr. Sami Schalk defines Black disability politics as “anti-ableist arguments and actions performed by Black cultural workers. Black disability politics are often performed in solidarity with disabled people…they prioritize an understanding of disability within the context of white supremacy.”^[10]

Black disability politics and Black disability studies are frameworks that have been and are being used by scholars and activists today to study the relationships between Blackness and disability. Furthermore, organizations such as the Black Panthers were early performers of Black disability politics. In Dr. Schalk’s book, she does extensive work to explore the history between the Black Panthers and the ways in which they fed needy people, strengthened families, and fought for the disabled. Her work clearly shows that even in the 1970s, the Black Panther Party was not ignorant of the rights of Black disabled bodies.

The Good News for Black Disabled People.^[11]

In Christianity, the crucifixion of Jesus has been a place to rally many to view suffering and resurrection. Pain and discomfort can be seen as sacramental and desirable by some within Christianity. Researcher and scholar Robert Orsi, in his book Between Heaven and Earth, does a phenomenal job of looking at some of the history of Catholicism, suffering, and disability. He makes note of the ways that people have utilized the Bible to understand disabled bodies and any suffering that they may go through.

At one point he notes that a common thought was that “pain was a ladder to heaven.” And in another place he notes a common phrase that “God always has a reason for sending pain.”^[12] While it would be beyond the scope of this writing to trace the entire history of pain, suffering, and disability within Christian history, I bring some of Orsi’s thoughts here to broach the topic of how disabled people have been treated throughout history in relation to Christianity. Many have been ignored, some have been incorporated into churches for menial tasks, and still others have been treated as sinners who have displeased God in some way.^[13]

While the predominant message of the Good News that Christianity seeks to provide revolves around Jesus’ suffering and disabling marks, perhaps it is time to consider those who are already disabled. What happens when those who are or who have been made disabled take a seat at the foot of the Cross hypothetically speaking? Good News to these bodies is not that they are invited to suffer more with Jesus. This society, built around ableism, heteronormativity, and racism has already made life harder for these bodies. Instead, a spirituality that calls them into the resurrecting life^[14] is truly Good News.^[15] In this resurrecting life, Black disabled people are consulted as society is reshaped in a way that makes a thriving environment for all.

On this resurrected life, I must point out the Christian doctrine of salvation. Many write about and speak about salvation in terms of what God saves humanity from, namely, sin, death, and hell. Fear of punishment in an eternal lake of fire aligns perfectly with the need for salvation. In the spirituality and the lived experiences that Black disabled people have to offer, hell is not the primary concern.

Instead, many Black disabled people would join with the vision of salvation that Delores Williams points to when she says that “Womanists and Black male liberation theologians can make a special contribution to this resurrection. They can provide ideas about salvation in a social context for Black Christians who want to understand how Black people can be saved in the material world.” This reflection is necessary because Black disabled people, and really all people, need to explore what salvation looks like in the material world. Rather than being mostly concerned with spirit and soul, we must work together to create a world that offers life. In this framing, Black disabled people are pointing out what we need to be saved from (systemic inequities, environmental hazards like global warming, poverty, etc.) and unto.

Conclusion

Black disabled people have fought for this nation in various wars, in the Civil Rights’ Movement, in the classroom, and in modern digital spaces. From Harriet Tubman to Fannie Lou Hamer, Black people have been working, against oppressive odds to make society equitable. I note these women because they were maimed and disabled in their quest to seek liberation. As we consider how to fight for environmental justice, it is important to listen to current Black disabled activists like Talila Lewis, Verton Banks, Lamar Hardwick, Shelby Lynch, Ola Ojewumi, and Keith Jones.

Not all of these activists claim an expressly Christian religious identity, but what is noteworthy is that they have a passion to make an inclusive society. And so, how can they be ignored in talks of environmental reparations and justice? Their voices, and the voices of many other Black disabled bodies are critical. Their reflections on community, the systems that disable, and how different progressive models of environmental justice impact real lives, are extremely nuanced.

Black people in this country have had to make a way out of no way as they have utilized their spirituality and concept of God to advocate for their rights and the rights of their children as referenced earlier. At different intersections of American history, Black lives have served as a reminder that we are not all free and that our liberation is bound with the futures of one another.

In that same way, Black disabled people stand as a witness in this nation that things can be different. Black disabled people remind us that this society was made this way and that we can remake it. They remind us that we cannot fight for the environment outside of knowing the stories of real people. We can work together to create a world where people can flourish.

As we consider environmental justice, I offer another concrete way that Black disabled people, especially in the ones that claim Christian religious identity, can be helpful to society, and that is in framing priorities. When policies such as paper straws are enacted to cut down on plastic waste, who gets the power to say that this particular thing is a priority? The answer is typically found at the top of an organizational chart filled with able-bodied men who are not part of the global majority. These types of policies, that, while done with good intentions, can seem crass when compared to Black disabled people being harmed in public. Furthermore, when Black disabled people are met with poverty, racism, lack of access to wealth, job scarcity, and hunger, we must consider that disabled people can help us to frame the priorities that we have when we strive for equality.

As I close this writing, I am reminded of a scene from Toni Morrison’s famous novel, Beloved. In this novel, Morrison creates a scene known as the Clearing. This beautifully depicted, woodland scene is a staging ground for Black men, women, and children to come and display their full selves. In this powerful scene, the main character, Baby Suggs, holy, someone who has been disabled, invites them all to come.

She reminds them that they are valuable, and worthy to be nurtured. As she watches them lament and dance, she states that “’Here, in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh.’” This beautiful depiction of a woodland scene, with bodies expressing themselves is a picture of what is possible in a reparations model that makes room for Black disabled people. Perhaps this Clearing scene will be a future scene where all bodies, regardless of ability can be at peace with nature and one another.

Robert Monson is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies in the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology joint doctoral program. He hosts two podcasts “Black Coffee and Theology” as well as “Three Black Men” and is a co-director of the nonprofit organization Enfleshed.

Footnotes

“Lead Poisoning in Flint, Michigan – National Partnership for Women & Families,” accessed December 6, 2023, https://nationalpartnership.org/report/clean-water-case-study-flint/#. ↩︎
In February of 2021, Pew Research Center published their findings on the religious beliefs among Black Americans. In this study, they found that the belief in some sort of higher power was almost universal (97%) with the vast majority of those studied ascribing to some form of Christianity. They also noted in their study that at least six-in-ten Black adults noted that religion was very important to them. ↩︎
Pew Research Center, “3. Religious Beliefs among Black Americans,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project(blog), February 16, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/02/16/religious-beliefs-among-black-americans/. ↩︎
Dolores S. Williams, Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation, ed. Emilie Townes (Orbis Books, 2015), 97. ↩︎
OEJECR US EPA, “Learn About Environmental Justice,” Overviews and Factsheets, February 13, 2015, <https://web.archive.org/web/20160929060846/https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/learn-about-environmental-justice. ↩︎
DC, “Disability and Health Overview | CDC,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 15, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/disability.html. ↩︎
CDC, “Infographic: Adults with Disabilities: Ethnicity and Race | CDC,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October 25, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/materials/infographic-disabilities-ethnicity-race.html. ↩︎
Rheeda Walker, The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health: Navigate an Unequal System, Learn Tools for Emotional Wellness, and Get the Help You Deserve (New Harbinger Publications, 2020), 46. ↩︎
“Burnout and Stress Are Everywhere,” https://www.apa.org, accessed March 20, 2024, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-burnout-stress. ↩︎
Sami Schalk, Black Disability Politics (Duke University Press, 2022), 5. ↩︎
The Good News I refer to here, that, while disputed in various aspects of Christianity on specifics, is in essence, the message of Jesus as God and the proclamation of his triumph over sin, death, and destruction. It is also referred to in many spaces as the “gospel.” ↩︎
Robert A. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them(Princeton University Press, 2013), 23. ↩︎
For more thoughts on disability, suffering, and Christianity, I would recommend womanist scholar M. Shawn Copeland’s book Enfleshing Freedom. ↩︎
By referring to “resurrecting life” I am pointing at the Gospel accounts of Jesus rising from the dead. In the biblical account of John 20, Jesus appears to his disciples. With one disciple in particular, Thomas, he shows that even in his resurrected body he still has wounds in his hands and his feet. Rising from the dead in such a miraculous fashion did not erase his disabilities that he suffered at the hands of Romans. ↩︎
In writing on the Good News for disabled bodies, I also want to note that there have been so many innovations around accessibility that started with disabled people in mind that have later helped everyone such as speech recognition, captioning, and other assistive technology. ↩︎

Metaphysical Protestantism-A Comparative Literary Ecology (Zane Johnson)

2024-06-05T14:50:13Z

The influence of religions on human attitudes toward the non-human, whether beneficent or deleterious, has been the subject of serious scholarly debate since at least the publication of Lynn White Jr.’s important essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”^[1] in the 1960s. This essay issued a near-wholesale condemnation of western Christianity for providing the fallow ground upon which the western world would cultivate its abuse of the non-human. Some have looked to the early modern period to corroborate this, finding supporting evidence from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment and sometimes a brief but potent organic worldview in the humanism of the 16th and early 17th centuries.^[2]

In contribution to this ongoing dialogue, careful to eschew a search for culprits and benefactors, I would like to focus on a phenomenon that I believe recurs in these accounts but has not yet been sufficiently born out in the scholarly literature: the way that religious change and conflict are mapped upon the environment and inform environmental attitudes. Oriental^[3] sources since the Renaissance have been enlisted in debates about the nature of matter and the human relationship to it. In the early modern period, Hermes Trismegistus, Plato, and the language of alchemy were commonly enlisted in imagining the environment, as in the Metaphysical poetry of Henry Vaughan.

Similarly, Confucius and the Bhagavad Gita, in addition to these former, were enlisted by Thoreau and Emerson to define new conceptions of the human relationship to the non-human, illuminating the contours of a genealogy of a pliable orientalism meant to cleanse our perceptions of “nature.” In this essay I will focus particularly on these two literary camps, the metaphysical poets and divines of the 17th century and the Transcendentalists of the 19th, to bear out the continuity of the project of Anglo-Protestant self-fashioning against the politically and philosophically fraught non-human. These are themes that I argue run through Western environmental rhetoric since the early modern period. I have chosen to focus on literature due both to the discursive and aesthetic nature of modern environmentalism and to build on previous ecocritical work.^[4]

A rich literature exists on the history of and relationship between Protestantism and modern environmentalism. In his 2015 book Inherit the Holy Mountain, historian Mark Stoll charts the history of the 20th century American environmental movement, showing that behind the nation’s first conservation efforts were artists, activists, and religious leaders with deep roots in Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches.

He argues that certain attitudes of Calvinism, evident both in the 16th century writings of its founder and in the attitudes it would inspire in its English adherents, gave birth to a definite environmental ethic and aesthetic that took concrete shape in the mid-19th century and shaped the ensuing movement of the 20th. Primary among these was the impulse to seek God in creation. Stoll examines the aestheticization of the American landscape by Reformed landscape painters, an artistic production influenced byReformed suspicions of iconography, but which echoes Calvin’s own views on the emblematic nature of God’s creation.^[5]

Other works of environmental intellectual history, such as Keith Thomas’s Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility and Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, chart the changing attitudes toward the non-human in early modern England*,* from the late medieval conception of human supremacy over the natural world to the problematizing of this in the Enlightenment, which maintained that the world was meant for human purposes but also decentered the human being from the cosmos. Drawing on largely artistic and literary sources, Stoll and his predecessors intuit the power of religious aesthetics, for good or for ill, to form an environmental ethic in modernity.

However, what I wish to highlight is that, while the new science and the Reformation alike influenced the modern environmental ethic of their own and in conjunction, both produced crises of Euro-Christian identity that projected upon the natural world and have continuing ripple effects in how Euro-American, religiously inflected environmentalism is presented today. The following is a creative attempt to illustrate the continuity between early modern and properly modern anxieties of religious identity.

Metaphysical Poetry and Embattled Nature

In beginning this survey, the most obvious point of departure is George Herbert, Anglican poet and priest of the early 17thcentury. Not only was Herbert beloved of radical New England Protestants, including the early Anglo-American poet Edward Taylor, but he was also quoted directly by Ralph Waldo Emerson himself in his essay“Nature,”one of the primary texts of 20th century American environmentalism*.* George Herbert’s poem titled “Man” best exemplifies, in Emerson’s words, that “wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing.”^[6] Or, in Herbert’s words, from this poem:

Man is all symmetrie,

Full of proportions, one limbe to another,
          And all to all the world besides:

                   Each part may call the farthest, brother:
                     For head with foot hath private amitie,

                       And both with moons and tides.^[7]

This impulse to see the sympathy between the human being and the natural world is a product of the intermediate position that Herbert occupied within shifting attitudes toward materiality in this period. The new science of Descartes and Francis Bacon—the latter of whom was a friend and associate of George Herbert, who translated Bacon’s Advancement of Learning into Latin—instituted a sharp divide between mind and matter, which is trespassed by Herbert’s meditation on human sympathy with the non-human.

Here, Herbert extolls the curative opportunities for human traffic with nature, transgressing the Cartesian divide with the analogical reasoning of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, in which the universe is arranged in a system of correspondences, mapped upon the human body: “Man is one world, and hath another to attend to him”. Against the assumptions of the new science, Herbert presents a vision of right relationship based on the Calvinist understanding of God’s providential creation and the Renaissance trope of the great chain of being.

Elsewhere in Herbert, this issues in a more clearly defined environmental ethic. Carolyn Merchant in her ecofeminist classic The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution noted the preponderance of imagery of sexual violence in the writings of Bacon to describe the mission of the new science to uncover the secrets of the natural world. Despite Herbert’s connections to Francis Bacon, his image in “Vanitie (I)” of The subtil Chymick can devest / And strip the creature naked, till he finde / The callow principles within their nest”^[8] presents these associations—the “Chymick” as plunderer and the misogynist notion of nature as female^[9] —towards an image of ethical constraint against the earth’s plundering.

Stanton J. Linden suggests that Herbert may be “mocking the natural philosopher who, following the propositions of Francis Bacon and the New Science, was increasingly concerned with the ‘rational’ and empirical investigation of the world.” He further suggests that the poem might represent “an early literary reflection of the historical passage of alchemy into chemistry,” an acknowledgment that underscores the historical hybridity of Herbert’s poetry, and that of his literary disciples, in their intellectual attitudes toward self and nature.^[10]

For Herbert and others, the divorce of mind and matter enables something of a communion, albeit a one sided one: the “earth is our cupboard of food and cabinet of pleasure” as much as “all things unto our flesh are kind,” both sentiments expressed in his poem “Man”. While Herbert is certainly not abdicating his throne as lord of the universe here, the prevailing attitude well beyond early modernity, he envisions a benevolent universe in which the human microcosm is at home, and which is emblematic of God’s own providence over creation. It is easy to see here the affinity that Emerson held with this contemplative vision of the divine household (Greek oikos)through which the human being finds its fulfillment.

The “nature” of materiality itself was embattled in the 17th century, enmeshed in actual wars over the precise mechanisms of God’s work in the world, and his mediation in it by human ecclesial-political formations. On the aesthetic front, poets and artists skeptical of both the legacies of medieval scholasticism and the emerging new science enlisted other models of God-world relationship, drawn from the discourses available in the Hermetic Renaissance. Vaughan’s poem, “And do they? have they a sense” criticizes the medieval Scholasticism of a previous age and the new mechanical philosophy alike:

And do they? Have they a Sense

Of ought but Influence?

Can they their heads lift, and expect,

And groan too? why th’Elect
Can do no more: my volumes said
They were all dull, and dead,

They judged them senseless, and their state
Wholly inanimate.^[11]

In “Cock-Crowing,” Vaughan offers another model of divine working in the world drawn from Hermeticism, which asserted that heavenly rays magnetically attract and infuse earthly objects:

Father of lights! what sunny seed,
What glance of day hast Thou confined
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busy ray Thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night,
And dreams of paradise and light.^[12]

The “cock” is an emblem of alchemical Sulphur, the fiery principle of creation which quickens earthly beings. While Herbert reasserts the microcosm-macrocosm cliché of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, his poetic disciple Henry Vaughan engaged more fully in the occult. This syncretism is the result of a number of historical factors. New translations of classical Hermetic and alchemical texts from the Arab-Muslim world in Florence in the previous century made these texts available to the intelligentsia of the period.

A return to Platonism in Northern Europe was evidenced by the Cambridge Platonists led by former Puritan Henry More, whom Stoll cites as a particularly important influence upon the Calvinist theological schools of the 19th century United States, an “ally” to them “against the twin threats of materialism and philosophical atheism.”^[13] Vicious debates on the nature of matter were spurred on both by the infusions of classical sources, such as Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, and by the Reformation itself.^[14]

As Katherine Eggert has argued, alchemy was a particularly useful framework for “forgetting” Roman Catholic dogmas, especially transubstantiation, and esoterically reimagining the processes by which the divine interacts with the mundane.^[15] Alchemy represented a mythopoetic mode of natural inquiry that tended to emphasize an occult “tie of bodies” which Herbert’s later disciple, Henry Vaughan, brother of alchemist Thomas Vaughan, marveled at. Herbert, for example, in his poem “Whitsunday,” the contemporary English term for the feast of Pentecost, saw an appropriate metaphor for the descent of the holy spirit in the Hermetic “hatching” of the fiery seed of the spirit in material creation, leading to a metallurgical eschatological vision of the Creation transformed:

Listen sweet Dove unto my song,

And spread thy golden wings in me;
Hatching my tender heart so long,

Till it get wing, and fly away with thee.^[16]

While the image here is surely of the Holy Spirit descending at Pentecost, according to Jonathon Nauman, such ‘hatching’ by the Holy Spirit had even wider implications. Rather than merely describing by extended metaphor the action of God at the regeneration of a human soul or the creation of the universe, it was accepted as a straightforward physical description of all processes performed by God on man and matter.^[17]

Alchemy was a tool for thinking about human situatedness in divine and natural economies for Herbert and Vaughan and challenging both emerging and forgoing religio-scientific frameworks.

What is most interesting about Vaughan for my purposes, however, is that he seems to presage a certain trend in modern environmentalism by which supposedly ancient—and invariably “eastern,” as Hermes and his science were Egyptian—authorities and concepts are enlisted towards an environmental aesthetics. Henry Vaughan and contemporary neopagans alike draw on sources from what we now call the current of Western esotericism to imagine the environment in a pristine past amidst present turmoil and change.

Emerson and Thoreau’s fascination with both Plato and Vedic scriptures represent a continuation of this discursive tradition, as European colonialism gathered more source texts for thinking about the God-world relationship amidst Euro-American spiritual and political crisis. Closer to late modernity, beat poet Gary Snyder locates early and pre-modern esotericism in a perennial stream of ecological thought he has discovered through Zen Buddhism in his Earth House Hold.^[18] In any case, the Platonic and Hermetic currents that undergird Henry Vaughan’s and to a lesser extent George Herbert’s poetics leads to an emblematic representation of nature wherein creatures are either shadows of the divine mind, sometimes illuminated by an individual poetic insight, or else they are enlivened directly by astral energies. It is important to bear in mind that this rhetorical move has historically been polemical.

Transcendental Orientalism and Emblematic Nature

The tenets of Transcendentalism are well known: self-reliance, breaking from tradition for new pastures, immersion in nature for spiritual renewal. Both the role of New England Protestantism and fascination with oriental sources are also well-attested. I turn now to the continuities with the poet-priests of the English Renaissance that these themes represent. Orientalism emerges more definitely as a popular concern in the 19th century.^[19] As Tomoko Masuzawa has argued, struggling with the legacy of Enlightenment rationalism and emerging notions of race, a Euro-Christian intellectual pursuit was underway to search for alternative origins for Christendom to divorce it from its problematic Semitic origins which it found in Aryan philology and religion.^[20]

This mirrors the search for alternative origins among the 17th century divines discussed above, but introduces new factors, namely the prospect of leaving Christianity behind altogether. Indeed, both Emerson and Thoreau were deeply versed in the literature of the English Renaissance, as evidenced both by Emerson’s quote of George Herbert introduced at the beginning of this paper and in Thoreau’s frequent allusions to John Milton and John Donne throughout Walden.

These authorities, alongside quotations of Confucius and Mencius, are employed to a critical end, as in Thoreau’s invocation of Donne’s “To Sir Edward Herbert, at Juliers” to rail against the slovenliness of modern urban life and advocate a Platonic ascent above such dross: “I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.” Predictably, it is to the “Hindoo lawgiver” we should look to order our material affairs and re-dignify again human life.^[21]

Despite writing in distinct times and places, there are notable similarities and continuities between the concerns of 17th century England and 19th century America, namely an intensifying crisis of religious identity. It is somewhat predictable that white, educated New England Protestants would look to Anglophone literature to substantiate their critiques. More than this, however, they participate in the same cultural work of searching for alternative origins and ideals for modern life, which they locate in Renaissance poetry itself and in Asian sources.

According to her biographer, Waldo’s aunt, Mary Moody Emerson offered the prototype to her nephew of individualism and contemplative refuge in nature that she saw “more centrally than either Calvinist or Hindu belief … [in] the English poet-priests” and the strong tradition of Renaissance Platonism.^[22] Consistent with what I am describing, she attempted to revive New England Protestantism “by infusing it with energies not its own.^[23] Emerson’s life is in some ways emblematic of the tension between orthodoxy and fidelity to traditional Reformed doctrine, and a more expansive, Platonist-inflected view that in some cases supplements and others criticizes that. In his own life, the church to which he was ordained was in the process of splitting between orthodox Calvinist and progressive Unitarian camps.

Emerson’s aunt encouraged him to hang on despite the tension, and herself and her writings served as source texts for his own Platonist-Transcendental thought, and indeed has been acknowledged as the primary influence upon his life and thought.^[24]

In terms of how this plays out upon the screen of “nature,” both the Metaphysicals and the Transcendentalists appropriated a correspondence model of reality in parts, as in Thoreau’s statement that the universe responds to the human imagination and will and Emerson’s originating impulse to this line of thinking, as well as a Platonism that sees in nature the shadow of the Divine Mind (“nature is a symbol of spirit”^[25] ), the former of which sometimes must be cast off to realize the individual’s spiritual nature. Thus, their conception of the non-human environment is emblematic.

Emerson sees in Herbert’s emblematic depiction of the divine-natural economy in “Man” a benevolent cosmos rigged for human benefit; Thoreau sees in Walden Pond a cosmic mirror: “A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. … We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it.”^[26] Here is an attempt to breach the Cartesian divide that the Transcendentalists’ Metaphysical forerunners sought to attempt, looking at the environment through the dual hermeneutic of Calvinism’s providential creation and Renaissance Platonist esotericism.

It is interesting to consider the influence of the Renaissance emblem book format upon this line of thinking, books of emblematic images accompanied by explanatory verse or prose text. Their image-laden religious poems engage in this tradition, sometimes taking concrete geometric shapes on the page, such as Herbert’s “The Altar” and “Easter Wings,” but most often in the use of concrete images, such as the cock as image of alchemical fire in Vaughan’s poem “Cock-Crowing”. Stoll identifies the emblem as an early source in the stream of Reformed art, recalling controversy around the proper Reformed use of images. While not icons or sacramentals in the proper sense, the emblem book format was useful in aestheticizing an embattled nature in this period, while also performing a catechetical function. An early popularizer of the format, Francis Quarles, describes the hieroglyphic nature of God’s creatures, mirrored in the emblem:

“An emblem is but a silent Parable … Our blessed SAVIOUR … in holy scripture … is sometimes called a Sower; sometimes, a Fisher; sometimes, a Physitian; And why not presented so, as well to the eye, as to the eare? Before the knowledge of letters, GOD was knowne by Hieroglyphicks; And, indeed, what are the heavens, the earth, nay every Creature, but Hieroglyphicks and Emblemes of his glory?”

Emerson states it even more explicitly: “Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significant but what we consciously give them? The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.” Henry Vaughan and other Metaphysicals such as Thomas Traherne have been called predecessors to Romanticism, which birthed Transcendentalism in America, a progenitor in turn of the modern environmental movement. Their historical situatedness between late medieval Catholicism and the emergent new science provided a unique set of rhetorical tools to think about the relationship between humanity, nature, and God in such turbulent times.

As religious writers, they used images to encourage ethical constraint upon the rapacious use of the environment for human benefit—the express goal of the New Science in Descartes’ understanding—while thinking about their entanglement in this natural economy through Reformed principles and alternative theories of matter and spiritual-material economies. This is precisely what the Transcendentalists are trying to achieve and with similar discursive tools. The providential creator becomes the oversoul in Emerson which is best read in the pristine text of nature, a site of theophany in the Protestant imagination since the beginning.^[27]

Transcendental depictions of nature continue the English Renaissance tradition, even as they strove for “new lands, new men, new thoughts,”^[28] as Emerson calls for in his introduction to “Nature.” However, due to their historical situation in the 19th century and the new, albeit limited, availability of East and South Asian literatures in translation, the primary sources of Transcendental orientalism lie in India and China and thus approach our current understandings of spiritual exoticism.

As recent studies of metaphysical religion—the strand of American popular religion that was largely influenced by Emerson and later New Thought proponents through to the New Age and historically unrelated to Metaphysical poetry—have shown, this is a complicated legacy that has continued unabated in 20th and 21st century America, despite recent pushback from indigenous and immigrant communities from these largely white, commercial appropriations.^[29] Contemporary metaphysical religionists draw on a continued tradition of rejection of institutional religion championed by Emerson and the movement known as Transcendentalism. Yet, it is important to remember that Transcendentalism arose from a discursive stream of Protestant self-understanding that began in the early modern period.

Rather than arguing for an unbroken Christian Platonist tradition that extends from the early modern period to the middle of the 19th century, I wish to highlight here a continuity in the ways that religious change and religious criticism have invariably been expressed in terms of relationship to the environment and have constituted a discursive pattern in Euro-American literature and culture. Both Henry Vaughan and Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau turned from the profanity of the worlds around them, marked by unjust wars (and slavery in the Transcendentalist context), and attempted to retreat to their respective natural worlds.

Today, metaphysical religion in America, profoundly influenced by Emerson and Transcendentalism—though I wish to be careful to not conflate contemporary New Age spirituality with Renaissance Platonic Christianity and Transcendentalism^[30] —is split on the issue of materiality between those that adhere to a “mind over matter” metaphysics and those that seek a relinquishment of self to the cosmos.^[31] In all cases, nature serves as the foreground to self-transformation and also the site of theophany in their particular contexts.

Conclusion

In this essay I have attempted a comparative reading of the Metaphysical poets and the Transcendentalists to bear out what I have identified as a rhetorical pattern about the “nature” of man, nature, and God that have arisen at particular times of religious crisis in Euro-Christian history. The Metaphysicals were responding to the Reformation, already a generation old at the point of their writing, and the emerging new science, challenging these with appeals to Calvinist ethical understandings of God’s providential creation and with what we would call “esoteric” infusions of the language of Renaissance Hermeticism and Platonism, a manifestation of what Wouter Hanegraff calls “Platonic orientalism.”

The Transcendentalists, reading and citing this milieu and other English works of the same period, draw on the language of Platonism, which mingles with their own New England Protestant inflections and the influx of South and East Asian materials to recast the spiritual-material economy as a corrective to a wayward society. The widely documented influence of Emerson on New Age spirituality transmitted to the 20th century and beyond the tenets of positive mind metaphysics, a rejection of institutional religion, and a proclivity for seeking spiritual growth in the non-human world.

Yet even within the New Age milieu we can see a similar rhetorical pattern, initiated in the Renaissance, of enlisting “oriental” sources to think about religious identity in the midst of a fraught and changing world, and thereby what the essential “nature” of that world is. The rejection of Christian roots is near total among metaphysical religionists today, yet this discourse, which continues to have great purchase, arises from a great tradition of contesting and defining those very roots.

Zane Johnson is a doctoral candidate in the University of Denver-Iliff School of Theology joint doctoral program. He received his MA from the University of Munich where he studied early modern English literature and religion, literary translation, and the environmental humanities. He currently serves as sacristan of Saint John’s Cathedral in Denver, CO.

Footnotes

Lynn Jr. White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 3–14. ↩︎
Cf. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980). ↩︎
I use this term following Hanegraaf to describe the rhetoric of appealing to ancient “eastern” wisdom sources, usually Plato, Zoroaster, and Hermes Trismegistus from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance. Modern environmental primitivism exemplified by Thoreau prefers east and south Asian and indigenous American cultures but follows the same rhetorical thread. Cf. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 5-73. ↩︎
Zane Johnson, “‘All Things unto Our Flesh Are Kind’: Corporality and Ecology in The Temple” 52, no. 1 & 2 (2019/2018): 128–45; Zane Johnson, “Starhawk, Henry Vaughan, and the Environmental Imagination,” Seeing the Woods: A Blog by the Rachel Carson Center (blog), 2020, <https://seeingthewoods.org/2020/11/18/starhawk-henry-vaughan-and-the-environmental-imagination/. ↩︎
Mark Stoll, Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 10-53. ↩︎
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte (New York: The Library of America, 1983), 44. ↩︎
George Herbert, The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 332. ↩︎
George Herbert, The English Poems, 308. ↩︎
See Ynestra King, “The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology,” in Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, ed. Judith Plant (Toronto: Between the Lines, n.d.). for an ecofeminist appraisal of the trope of nature as woman. ↩︎
Stanton J. Linden, Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1996), 192. ↩︎
Henry Vaughan, “[And Do They so? Have They a Sense],” in George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978), 154. ↩︎
Henry Vaughan, “Cock-Crowing,” in George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978), 167. ↩︎
Stoll, Inherit the Holy Mountain, 24. ↩︎
See Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011). ↩︎
Katherine Eggert, Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 55-109. ↩︎
Herbert, The English Poems, 213. ↩︎
Jonathon Naumann, “Herbert the Hermetist: Vaughan’s Reading of The Temple,” George Herbert Journal 17, no. 1 (1993): 30. ↩︎
Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold (Cambridge, MA: New Directions Publishing, 1969), 114-115. ↩︎
Though Masonic and para-Masonic bodies flourished in Europe throughout the 18th century, retaining the earlier fascination with secret “Asiatic” brotherhoods and lineages deriving from Egypt. ↩︎
Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, or How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005), 147-178. ↩︎
Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003), 174. ↩︎
Phyllis Cole, Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 178. ↩︎
Cole, Mary Moody Emerson, 180. ↩︎
Cole, Mary Moody Emerson, 174. ↩︎
Emerson, Nature, 20. ↩︎
Thoreau, Walden, 150. ↩︎
Stoll, Inherit the Holy Mountain, 22. ↩︎
Emerson, “Nature,” 7. ↩︎
Mark Silk and Christopher White, eds., The Future of Metaphysical Religion in America (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2022), xiv. ↩︎
Though as Grainger notes, there are remarkable similarities between early modern European occultism and New Age religion: The doctrine of correspondence central to harmonialism [a tenet of New Age spirituality] has a long history in Western thought, including ancient practices of astrology and the alchemical traditions of the Hermetic Renaissance.” Brett Malcolm Grainger, “The Place of Nature in Metaphysical Religion: A Brief History,” in The Future of Metaphysical Religion in America, ed. Christopher White and Mark Silk, Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2022), 26. ↩︎
Grainger, “The Place of Nature in Metaphysical Religion,” 37. ↩︎

The Image of God and Our Vocation of the Soil, Part 2 (Mick Pope)

2024-05-24T20:12:53Z

The article is published in two installments. The first can be found here.

Humans from the Hummus – life as royal gardeners

It is generally recognised that the Garden story is more environmentally friendly. As Jewish scholar Ziony Zevit observes, agricultural themes are clearer in the Garden story.^[1] As we saw earlier, Habel identifies it as a more Christian text than P’s mandate, a view I have refuted. To fully appreciate this narrative as a potential root for a biblically informed environmental justice principle, it is important to liberate Eden from a simple, paradisiac prelapsarian past.^[2]

The first observation from this passage is that of human solidarity with the rest of creation. In Gen 2:7, the man (haadam) was formed out of the earth, aphar min haadamah. Zevit sees as significant in in contrasting the adam from the animals. The word adamis related both to the soil adamah, but also the colour red adom, and blood dam, hence referring to the soil terra rossa.^[3] Theodore Hiebert notes that adamah is used in a precise sense, as cultivable soil, as opposed to the more general erets.^[4]

The breathed upon clod became a nephesh hayyah, as was domestic and wild animals (Gen 1:24). We shall see shortly the difference that being created from the dust of the earth makes compared to directly from the earth. Yet the common origin ties to the use of the formula “these are the generations of (toledot)” (Gen 2:4) that the Garden story describes the origin of the Earth family.^[5] We are all earthlings.

The second observation, following Walter Brueggemann, is that our creation from the dust (aphar) of the earth in Gen 2:7, rather than simply straight from the earth as with the garden trees and animals implies a royal identity for the adam. Comparing Gen 2:7 with 1 Kgs 16:2, and 1 Sam 2:8 (paralleling Ps 113:7–8) reveals that aphar can refer to a pre-royal status:

1 Kgs 16:2 I lifted you out of the dust (aphar) and made you ruler over my people

1 Sam 2:8 // Ps 113:7–8 He raises up the poor from the dust (aphar); and he lifts the needy from the ash heap to set them among princes

Of course, aphar can refer to literal dust, as in the curse of the serpent (Gen 3:14) and is also indicative of our mortality (Gen 3:19). However, these parallels beg the question of where Eden was, who the adam was, and what was their role?

Several factors link Eden to the Tabernacle and hence serving the Garden with serving God. First, the Garden was entered from the east (Gen 3:24). The entrance to the tent of meeting was to the east (Num 3:28), as was the entrance to the temple in Jerusalem (Ezek 8:16). Second, Gordon Wenham observes that these guardian cherubim (Gen 3:24) feature in Solomon’s temple in the inner sanctuary, decorating the walls and doors (1 Kgs 6:23–32), and the top the Ark of the Covenant (Exod 25:18–22).^[6]

Third, as Geoffery Harper has observed, the divine presence in both Eden and the sanctuary is indicated by Yhwh walking to and fro within them. The hithpael of halak (Gen 3:8), is also used in connection with the Tabernacle being carried with the people (2 Sam 7:6–7), the divine presence within the camp (Deut 23:14), and throughout Canaan (Lev 26:12).^[7] The implication is that as in other parts of the ancient Near East, gardens were associated with temple cults and the wise royal rule. Such temple theology is not dissimilar to that found in P’s creation account, where creation is described as a protological temple.^[8]

Who then is the adam? Geoffrey Harper examines the relationship between the Garden narrative and H in the Holiness Code and examines the dating of H.^[9] Of the options for pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic, I find the latter most convincing. Julia Rhyder argues for a post-exilic setting because H assumes the presence of the temple. The purpose of H is therefore to ensure the success of the second temple cult.^[10] If this is the case, then the adam represents all of Israel. Such a view makes sense of the above discussion of reverencing the temple and keeping the Sabbath as being central to lay Israelite holiness.

Zevit reveals much of what is understood life in the garden to be like to be a projection from Greek mythology.^[11] God planted a garden and put the adam in there to work it. Eden likely means bountiful or abundant, based on its shared consonantal root ednah, and Assyrian parallels.^[12] Hiebert notes that this bounty was of rain–based highlands, and not irrigated lowlands (Gen 2:5 cf. Dt 11:10–11).^[13] Elsewhere, Eden is described as well watered and agriculturally endowed (Gen 13:10; Joel 2:3). Hence, life in Eden meant hard, but rewarding agricultural labor.

Davis comments further on the nature of this labor. The Hebrew abad is often translated as work done for someone, except where it refers to soil, where it is usually translated as work done on or with something (e.g., Gen 2:5). From this, Davis concludes that the human pair were to work for the soil, serving its needs.^[14] Likewise, shamar, usually translated as keep as in a flock (e.g. 1 Sam 17:20) can also mean observe, as in keeping the Sabbath (e.g. Ex 31:13). Davis takes from this the need to observe the soil, learn from it, and respect its limits. These limits of the soil are instantiated within it by God and provides us with a lesson that human ingenuity cannot always overcome limits.^[15]

Given that Eden is the tabernacle in Jerusalem, what then of the return to dust warned in Gen 3? The most obvious reference is to human mortality, but Brueggemann also suggests dethronement language, the opposite of the enthronement found in other passages that use aphar. Given the likely post-exilic setting, exile itself must be in mind. Leviticus 18 places Israel on the same tentative footing in the land as the nations before them and promises they will be “vomited out” by the land for covenant breaking. Likewise, Lev 26 echoes Gen 3 in the reversal of its blessings.^[16] The ejection from the Garden therefore is the reminder of the possibility of exile.

However, the divine presence is not limited to the land, suggesting that even in exile, relationship with God via good earth care was possible. God’s care of creation is described in two ways. Rain provides the needed moisture to cause both the human gardener to be formed to tend domesticated plants, and to water the wild plants outside of the garden (Gen 2:5–9).^[17] Likewise, the river out of Eden divides into four to water the world.^[18]

Hence, while Israel’s vocation was to care for its own soil, the world outside of it, and its agricultural concerns was not outside of divine care. Yet, the goal was always return to Eden, and Lev 26 points towards the “Edenization of Caanan” and to land care as an exercise of lay Israelite holiness, as discussed earlier. This Edenization was anticipated elsewhere in the prophetic literature (e.g. Ezek 36:3; Isa 51:3).^[19] As we shall see below, this Edenization is not confined to Canaan in the New Testament but extends to include all of creation.

The roots of environmental justice in the non-Priestly Garden story lie in its understanding of connection between God’s Tabernacle presence, and the imagery of tending the Garden. Gardens were usually a symbol of kingly wisdom to rule, be it the king of Persia (Esth 7:7) of Nebuchadnezzar with his hanging gardens of Babylon.^[20] By analogy, the adam as gardener points to a broader rule and hence responsibility for the adamah beyond the garden.

As noted earlier, Rhyder argues that H integrates the Garden narrative into its promotion of the temple cult in the Persian period.^[21] As such then, the royal cultic role is that of the lay Israelite and demonstrated in the reverencing of the temple and keeping of the Sabbath, which as noted above, includes care for the land. Hence, the two stories (Gen 1:1–2:3 and 2:4–3:24) point in the same direction. In an agrarian society, land care is assumed to be a part of lay holiness. The non-agriculturally related creation shares in this, even if it is not as clearly prioritised.

Returning to the soil

We have seen that the two origin stories in the Hebrew bible present proper care of land as a holy and sacred task, part of the good ordering of creation so that human needs for nourishment are met, we can procreate, and bear the divine image. The Anthropocene demonstrates a lack of wisdom, particularly with regards to limits. Western society in the 21st century is not agrarian in nature. Farming in the west continues the trend of a small number of laborers producing a large amount of food via mechanization, or the use of cheap labor.

As discussed already, agriculture has led to the pushing of several of the planetary boundaries which support human flourishing and that of the more-than-human. What then does the relationship of the image of God and its relationship to agriculture tell us about human vocation for the non-farmer?

Themes from Gen 1–3 and H are echoed in the New Testament. The so-called Nazareth Manifesto of Luke 4 hints at a Jubilee year, with Jesus’ proclamation of the “year of the Lord’s favour” (v. 19) and release of captives (v. 18 cf. Lev 25:40–41).^[22] Unmentioned, but unavoidable in my analysis, is Sabbath rest for the land. Likewise, John’s gospel incorporates both origin stories. Jesus is both the agent of creation and new creation in John 1 (c.f. Gen 1) and the new Adam in the new creation in John 20 (c.f., Gen 2).

There are seven signs in John’s Gospel, echoing the heptadic creation story. The eighth sign is the resurrection, indicating the new creation.^[23] Hints of the struggle of the creation and its futility to human misrule are found in Romans 8, together with Exodus language promising a return from exile for people and land.^[24] Finally, Rev 21–22 explicitly uses imagery from Gen 1–3. In Rev 22:2, the tree of life is for the blessing of the nations, and hence Edenization moves out from the church into the whole world.^[25]

My argument, albeit tentative, is that if the creation accounts point to an intimate human connection to soil, and a warping or frustrating of the relationship is part of our alienation from God, then part of being redeemed is being reconnected to soil. This does not suggest that humanity must return to an essentially agrarian way of life, but that given that part of the Anthropocene is an abuse of soil, all humans are called to better respect the soil. Such respect can take three forms.

First, all human labor should indirectly nurture and serve the needs of soil. Any human activity that undercuts agriculture is a breaking of our mandate, let alone a lack of wisdom. This is a principle broad in application. As noted, giving land Sabbath rest from human economic activity is key.

Second, it is important that all humans see themselves as bi-vocational. Gardening represents a return to the soil, a re-grounding and reconnection to natural cycles that has been lost in modern life, and indeed is being disrupted by climate change. This is not a call to reduce human society to entirely agrarian, but a call to attentiveness. Miriam Pepper has catalogued the variety of community gardens, demonstrating that garden can provide spaces for reconciliation, meditation, education, and becoming rooted to place.^[26]

Third, for those of us living in colonised lands, reconnecting with soil is an opportunity for reconciliation. Bruce Pascoe demonstrated has that Aboriginal people engaged in agriculture in a sustainable manner before colonization.^[27] Learning to reground ourselves in an Australian context is intimately tied up in reconciliation. Potawatomi botanist Robin Kimmerer calls us to learn the “grammar of animacy,” which is necessarily local in nature, and reflective of the traditional peoples of a place.^[28] While we need to understand the whole earth as temple, i.e., think globally, we need to act locally if environmental justice is to take root in our own contexts.

Mick Pope heads up the Australian environmental think tank Ethos. He completed undergraduate theological studies and a PhD in Meteorology at Monash University. He is Professor of Environmental Mission at Missional University and speaks regularly on the interaction with environmental ethics, science and mission. He has a number of published book chapters and journal articles in this area, including A Climate of Hope: Church and Mission in a Warming World, with Claire Dawson (2014), and Climate of Justice (2017).

Footnotes

Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). ↩︎
Nicholas Wyatt, “A Royal Garden: The Ideology of Eden,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 28, no. 1 (2014): 1–35. ↩︎
Zevit, What Really Happened, 82. ↩︎
Hiebert, The Yahwist’s Landscape, 34. ↩︎
Mick Pope, From Canaan to Creation: Biblical Hermeneutics for the Anthropocene (Eugene: Pickwick, 2024), 58. ↩︎
Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in “I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11, ed. Richard S. Hess (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 401. LeFebrve, “Adam Reigns in Eden,” 32. ↩︎
G. Geoffrey Harper, “I Will Walk Among You” The Rhetorical Function of Allusions to Genesis 1–3 in the Book of Leviticus (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 194. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism,” 401. ↩︎
Pope, From Canaan to Creation, 39–42. ↩︎
Harper, “I Will Walk Among You,” 88–97. ↩︎
Julia Rhyder, “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult in the Holiness Legislation: A Reassessment,” JBL 138, no. 4 (2019): 721. ↩︎
Zevit, What Really Happened, 86. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Theodore Hiebert, The Yahwist’s Landscape Nature and Religion in Early Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 36–37. ↩︎
Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 29. ↩︎
Ibid, 30-31. ↩︎
Pope, From Creation to Canaan, 82–83. ↩︎
Ibid, 64-65. ↩︎
Ibid, 77. ↩︎
Ibid, 79. ↩︎
LeFebvre, Adam Reigns in Eden, 30–31. ↩︎
Julia Rhyder, “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult,” 721. ↩︎
R. B. Sloan, “Jubilee,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scott McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 396. ↩︎
Margaret Daly-Denton, John: An Earth Bible Commentary: Supposing Him to Be the Gardener, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2017). ↩︎
Mick Pope, “With Heads Craning Forward: The Eschaton and the Non-human Creation in Romans 8,” in Ecotheology in the Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Divine in Nature, ed. Melissa Brotton (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 161–78. ↩︎
Mick Pope, *All Things New: God’s Plan to Renew Our World (*Reservoir: Morning Star Publishing, 2018), 135–136. ↩︎
Miriam Pepper, “Church-based Community Gardening: Where Mission Meets Ecology in Local Contexts,” Australian Journal of Mission Studies, 6, no 2 (2012): 54-59. ↩︎
Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (London: Scribe, 2018). ↩︎
See Robin W. Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species (London: Penguin Books, 2021), 1–23. ↩︎

The Image of God and Our Vocation of the Soil, Part 1 (Mick Pope)

2024-05-03T22:51:43Z

The article is published in two installments.

Agriculture and the Anthropocene

Earth history has entered a new geological era known as the Anthropocene.^[1] The commonly agreed origin of this era was the 1950s with the “Great Acceleration,” a period of rapid economic growth.^[2] With its onset, several key elements of the Earth system which represent a “safe operating space for humanity” have been disrupted. This disruption is measured by nine planetary boundaries, which represent conditions present in the preceding era known as the Holocene.^[3] Several of these boundaries are associated with agriculture.

Land use changes due to agriculture and other human activities contribute to global warming via carbon dioxide emissions. Croplands represent the largest contribution to this as the cleared forest biomass releases carbon dioxide, as does the soil profile.^[4] Land clearing contributes to defaunation – the loss of species and populations – due to habitat loss.^[5] Further, land use changes and intensive agriculture are implicated in zoonotic diseases such as COVID19 ^[6] and Japanese encephalitis.^[7]

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas with anthropogenic sources related to agriculture. Rice is a staple for more than three billion people, accounting for up to 11% anthropogenic of methane emissions.^[8] Ruminants – domestic sheep and cattle – are also a significant source of anthropogenic methane emissions.^[9] Both nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers result in the deoxygenation of aquatic ecosystems. Nitrogen is also implicated in congenital heart defects in newborns, and some cancers.^[10] Nitrogen from fertilisers produces 60–70% of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas.^[11]

There is an estimated 100,000 novel entities in global commerce today that have “the potential for unwanted geophysical and/or biological effects.”^[12] The agricultural pesticides was first implicated in the death of North American birds by Rachel Carson with her book Silent Spring.^[13] More recently, neonicotinoid insecticides have been experimentally shown to be implicated in the decline of insects,^[14] including wild bees.^[15]

The modern Anthropocene did not emerge ex nihilo in the form of the Great Acceleration, but has several historical antecedents, which includes the origins of agricultural society. Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin note that the origins of agriculture have “long-lasting environmental impacts” while not in of itself satisfying a geologically measurable origin to the Anthropocene.^[16] Agriculture first occurred at the end of the last ice age, after a brief cold period known as the Younger Dryas.

Its onset has been linked with a shift from semi-sedentary foragers to the first farmers in the Levant.^[17] With the onset of agriculture, energy extraction from the biosphere increased from less than 0.01% to about 3%. A return to hunter gathering became difficult due to agricultural surplices, more frequent births, and the increased labor requirements of agriculture.^[18]

The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis suggests that human activity has modified the current interglacial cycle, with carbon dioxide emissions associated with the loss of forested land beginning about 8,000 years ago in, and methane emissions associated with increased rice agriculture and an expansion in the populations of sheep and cattle from about 5,000 years ago.^[19]

Agricultural changes are also associated with the so-called New–Old World collision which began with the arrival of Europeans in the Caribbean in 1492. Apart from the exchange of food stuffs and feral animals, the invasion of north America by Europeans in resulted in an estimated 48 million deaths due to disease and conflict by 1650.^[20] This population collapse resulted in the reversion of over 50 million hectares from farmland to forests, producing a measurable increase in global carbon dioxide levels. Heather Davis and Zoe Todd identify the ideological origins of the Anthropocene in colonization and the origins of capitalism, and like many scholars, prefers the term Capitocene.^[21]

Raj Patel and Jason Moore observe that the production of cheap food from agricultural surplices has played a key role in the rise of capitalism. Rather than the earlier land based politically produced surpluses, capitalism focusses on labor and market solutions. Labor becomes more efficient such that fewer people work the land, and food is kept cheap to enable cheap labor. The land is transformed into monocultures designed to bring in profit.^[22] Such an agricultural system soon gives rise to exhaustion of the land.

This summary of the impacts of agriculture on the planet would appear to ignore the obvious benefits of providing humans with sufficient nutrition. Zero hunger is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.^[23] Yet the key word here is sustainable. How can humanity continue to pursue agriculture in such a way that continues to support our existence, together with the flourishing of non-human species? This essay examines the Priestly creation story (Gen 1:1–2:3), and the non-Priestly Garden narrative (Gen 2:3–3:24).

Can these accounts provide ‘roots’ for environmental justice in the way in which we relate to soil? I propose that these texts are, among other things, fundamentally agricultural in outlook. It is a fundamental aspect of our humanity to seek our own wellbeing, and agriculture is one such way of doing so. Hence the Imago Dei implies a vocation of the soil, which is our shared origin with all other creatures.

Agriculture and Disorder

The first creation story has traditionally been identified with the Priestly (P) school, with its interest in temple, sacrifice, and Sabbath keeping. The Priestly political imaginary may be the work of more than one generation of scribes, including P in dialogue with older sources.^[24] It is possible to divide P further into the Holiness School (H).^[25] The bulk of this material is found in the Holiness Code of Leviticus 17–26, while some H-like theology is evident in Gen 1:1-2:3.^[26]

There are numerous hints in the P’s creation account to indicate that agriculture was central to their worldview. The first is the use of the Hebrew words tohu and bohu, typically translated as “formless” and “void” respectively. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, bohu is only ever found with tohu, in Isa 34:11 and Jer 4:23. Isaiah 34 describes judgment on the nations (vv. 1–4), in particular Edom (vv. 5–10) in vindication of Zion (v. 8). Verses 11 – 15 form a chiasm, where the central focus is on the judgment on the rules of Edom (v. 12) in the form of environmental destruction.^[27] This makes better sense than the NRSV, which translates v. 11b as “He shall stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plummet of chaos over its nobles.” The structure is as follows:

vv. 8–10 introduction. The smoke from the pitch of sulphur shall rise forever and the land will be a waste or dried up (charab)
v. 11a the land is full of wild animals: hawk, hedgehog, owl, and raven
v. 11b God stretches out the line of confusion (tohu) and the stones of emptiness (bohu)
v. 12 the human rulers will be nothing
v. 13a thorns, nettles, and thistles shall be found in Edom’s strong places
vv. 13b–15 wild beasts of the desert and demons inhabit the land

The NASB follows the thought that if thorns, etc are found in stronghold and fortresses (v. 13a), that the subject of the tohu and bohu must be the rulers, since it is their places of power that have been abandoned. However, v. 9 curses both the land (erets) and dust (aphar). The extent of judgment is all inclusive. The parallel of wild animals (v. 11a cf. vv. 13b-15) indicates a breakdown in order, with wild beasts of the desert (v. 14) overtaking the land. Likewise, tohu and bohu describes the spread of weeds indicative of a breakdown in agricultural tending of the aphar.

Jeremiah 23 describes invasion of Judah. Language of uncreation is employed, with the formula “I beheld (ra’ah)” and “behold (hinneh)” echoing the language of P’s creation account (Gen 1:31). The earth is tohu and bohu and there are no lights in heaven (Jer 4:23b cf. Gen 1:2). The mountains and hills shook (Jer 4:24 cf. the creation of dry land Gen 1:9–10). There were no people (Jer 4:25a cf. Gen 1:26) or birds (Jer 4:25b cf. Gen 1:20–22). In summation, the fruitful land (karmel) was a desert (midbar) and the cities in ruins. As in Isaiah 34, tohu and bohu is associated with destruction, particularly of agricultural lands.

Agriculture and Order

Hence, in Genesis 1, agricultural order is imposed on the pre-existing agricultural disorder over six days. On day one, time is created by the creation of light and its separation from darkness. On the second day, space is created by the separation of the waters above from the waters below by the firmament. On the third day, food is created by separating the waters into one place and the dry ground in another where vegetation can grow. On day four, the sun, moon, and stars are installed in the firmament to rule the day and night and mark the seasons, necessary for agriculture. Finally, God creates the living creatures (nephesh hayyah), and humans in God’s image, and grants them plants to eat (vv. 29-30).

Ellen Davis identifies agricultural theme running through P’s narrative,^[28] stressing the key role seeds play. On day three, the dry land called earth (erets) is created as the waters below the heavens were gathered into one place (Gen 1:9). From the erets comes forth sprout–out sprouts, plants seeding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit. There is an emphasis on selfperpetuation and abundance with greenery of various kinds.^[29]

The closing bracket on seeds is in v. 29 as every plant and fruit tree seeding seed is for human consumption. All other greenery is for animals (v. 30). Following Walton, from a functional perspective, soil, water, and the principle of seed bearing are all tied to the production of food. The account of the emergence of dry land mirrors the annual appearance of soil after the flooding of the Nile.^[30]

This extended discussion is an awkward and departure from the conciseness of the first two days of creation. This points towards the particularity of place and the genetic diversity of the region at the time.^[31] The region of the Fertile Crescent marks one of the locations of the origins of agriculture.^[32] Hence “read in this way, the Priestly account of creation seems not far removed from the overtly agrarian character of the Yahwist’s ‘drama of soil.’”^[33]

The concept of the imago Dei is linked to our relationship to soil. The Priestly vision for human life is realized in Israel and its holiness as a people (Lev 11:44–45; 19:2 etc). This vision of holiness emphasized the land and covenanted creatures along with the people. Gen 1:26–28 shows us how life in God’s image is meant to conform with other forms of life into a “harmonious whole.”^[34] What follows then is the most essential task of securing food along with the other animals (vv. 29–30).

Understanding the text to be exilic, although it is equally compatible with a post-exilic setting, Davis interprets vv. 29–30 in the context of a Mesopotamian temple centerd agricultural system. Hence, the image of God represents a democratization of the priestly and kingly role to all those involved in the agricultural system.^[35] This theme is also present in the Garden story as we shall see.

Agriculture and limits

The securing of food is not ultimately determinative. Concern is often shown over the verbs radah and kabash, which are translated as “rule” and “subdue.”^[36] Normal Habel concludes that we should abandon Gen 1:26–28 for the “green” text of Gen 2:15.^[37] Two responses may be made. First, alternative understands of these concepts are possible. Davis understands the basic means of radah as “the travelling around of the shepherd with his flock.”^[38] Hence, it is rendered as “exercise mastery among” rather than “have dominion over,” and hence according to Richard Middleton is an exercise of communal power.^[39] Moreover, this communal power must be related to the task of securing food, as the agricultural themes running through the Priestly creation account suggest.

Second, the work of harvesting is ultimately limited by the concept of ceasing or shabat. The “religious life” of the Hebrew laity, and agriculture is noted in a lexical connection between the creation account and the list of festivals in Leviticus 23. Genesis 1:14 reads

Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons (moadim) and for days and years.

Leviticus 23:2 identifies moadim as representing more than a climatological reference

These are the appointed festivals of the Lord (moadi Yhwh) that you shall proclaim as holy convocations, my appointed festivals.

The moadi Yhwh are religious festivals linked to a harvest. Hence for the Hebrews, agriculture was a mnemonic for salvation history. That this list includes the weekly Sabbath, as well as the cessation of work on several of the other festivals, demonstrates another important aspect of a religiously rooted environmental justice principle.

Sabbath is key to H. The seventh day is sanctified (qadesh) because God ceased (shabat) from the work of creation (Gen 2:3). While there is no command to keep the Sabbath, the creation of sacred time after the completion of the work of creation implies that such a command will follow, and that it will encompass all of creation (erets).

This idea is taken up in Leviticus, where the land (erets) is to find its rest from human agricultural activity. The seventh year Sabbath is portrayed as being for theland to take a complete rest (shabat shabaton, Lev 25:4–5). The land must observe a total cessation to Yhwh from its customary vocation (Lev 25:2). That the land is active in Sabbath keeping, rather than the passive recipient of human Sabbath observance, is suggested by comparison with Lev 23:32 where the people are to “celebrate your Sabbath.” The underlying Hebrew is the same.

Furthermore, the land has a relationship with Yhwh that precedes that of Israel, although now they appear to share the same covenant (Lev 26:42). There is a parallel between Leviticus 25 and the creation story: creation of the erets (“earth”) by God precedes that of the adam just as Yhwh has prior relationship with the erets (“land”) before the arrival of Israel. The adam as the divine image bearers are blessed to multiply, to subdue the erets (for agriculture) and have dominion (Gen 1:26–30). The adam is the divine image bearer in God’s creation, with the implied responsibility to allow all the erets to enjoy the Sabbath (Gen 2:2–3).

What can we conclude at this stage for any sense of roots of environmental justice in the Priestly tradition of the Pentateuch? First, any sense of environmental justice is subsumed into the assumption of the priority of agriculture. It is the primary way in which the Israelites knew and experienced what we now refer to as the environment. Environment can be seen as a modern abstraction, and artificial separation between the human and the more than human.

Instead, agriculture represents a concrete relationship between the human and soil. This relationship is tenuous, with fallowing for the land essential without chemical fertilizers.^[40] Such fallowing would have to be more frequent than the Sabbath year of Lev 25:3–7, and hence according to Michael LeFebvre, the “septennial land sabbath was an economic practice embodied within a theological institution.”^[41]

Second, this theological institution necessarily prescribes lay Israelite holiness, and that includes Sabbath keeping (Lev 19:30; 26:2). Hence, given the land was allowed its Sabbath, and that human Sabbath keeping was to be inclusive of this (Lev 26:35), Israelite holiness included giving rest to the land. In the Anthropocene, where humans affect all areas of the globe from our economic activity,^[42] me we might rightly argue that the Holiness tradition instructs us to give the entire planet rest.

Third, while the Priestly tradition accepts a domestic/wild binary, it does not do without including all the earth in this rest. Recall the blessing of the seventh day comes after the completion of the work of creation, and that this includes (Gen 1:24) domestic (behemah) and wild animals or beasts of the earth (chayah haerets). Likewise, the septennial Sabbath (Lev 25:7) allowed domestic (behemah) and wild animals (chay) that are in the land (erets) to eat off the land.

Since urbanization is a key aspect of the Anthropocene,^[43] most human beings are separated from the process of agriculture, yet it continues to be the key manner of survival for most of humanity. As we have seen, it is also one of the ways in which we impact the non-domestic world, if such a thing can be said to exist. Hence, this suggests that for humanity to move through the Anthropocene, we must at once become both more deeply connected with the ways in which our food is produced, but also more connected to the principles of Sabbath rest from precisely these ways. While Sabbath is a pragmatic practice, in the Priestly tradition, it is also an act of holiness, and hence the church too should seek to understand our vocation of the soil as a sacred task.

Footnotes

Paul Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415 (2002): 23. ↩︎
Will Steffen, Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Deutsch, Owen Gaffney, and Cornelia Ludwig, “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration,” The Anthropocene Review 2 (2015): 1–18. ↩︎
Will Steffen, Katherine Richardson, Johan Rockström, Sarah E. Cornell, Ingo Fetzer, Elena M. Bennett, Reinette Biggs, Stephen R. Carpenter, Wim de Vries, Cynthia A. de Wit, Carl Folke, Dieter Gerten, Jens Heinke, Georgina M. Mace, Linn M. Persson, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Belinda Reyers, and Sverker Sörlin, “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development on a Changing Planet,” Science 347 (2015): 1–17. ↩︎
R.A. Houghton, “How Well Do We Know the Flux of CO2 from Landuse Change?” Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology 62, no. 5 (2010): 337–351. ↩︎
Rodolfo Dirzo, Hillary S. Young, Mauro Galetti, Gerardo Ceballos, Nick J. B. Isaac, Ben Collen, “Defaunation in the Anthropocene,” Science345, no. 6195 (2014):401–6. ↩︎
Odette K Lawler et al., “The COVID-19 Pandemic is Intricately Linked to Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Health,” The Lancet 5 (2021): 840–850. ↩︎
Andrew F. van den Hurk, Scott A. Ritchie, Cheryl A. Johansen, John S. Mackenzie, and Greg A. Smith, “Domestic Pigs and Japanese Encephalitis Virus Infection, Australia,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 14:11 (2008): 1736–1738. ↩︎
Marte Nikolaisen, Jonathan Hillier, Pete Smith, and Dali Nayak, “Modelling CH4 Emission from Rice Ecosystem: A Comparison Between Existing Empirical Models,” Frontiers in Agronomy 4 (2022). doi:10.3389/fagro.2022.1058649. ↩︎
I. Tapio, T.J. Snelling, F. Strozzi, et al. “The Ruminal Microbiome Associated with Methane Emissions from Ruminant Livestock,” J Animal Sci Biotechnol 8, no. 7 (2017). doi:10.1186/s40104-017-0141-0. ↩︎
Vaclav Smil, “Global population and the Nitrogen cycle,” Scientific American July 1997: 76-81. L Knobeloch, B. Salna, A. Hogan, J. Postle, and H. Anderson, “Blue Babies and Nitrate-contaminated Well Water,” Environmental Health Perspectives 108, no. 7 (2000): 675-678. ↩︎
S.Y. Pan, K.H. He, K.T. Lin, et al. “Addressing Nitrogenous Gases from Croplands Toward Low-emission Agriculture,” npj Clim Atmos Sci 5, no. 43 (2022). <https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-022-00265-3. ↩︎
Steffen et al., Planetary Boundaries, 7. ↩︎
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (London: Penguin, 2001). ↩︎
S.H. Barmentlo, M. Schrama, G.R. de Snoo, PmM. van Bodegom, A. van Nieuwenhuijzen A, and M.G. Vijver, “Experimental Evidence for Neonicotinoid Driven Decline in Aquatic Emerging Insects,” Proc Natl Acad Sci 118, no. 44 (2021):e2105692118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2105692118. ↩︎
B. Woodcock, N. Isaac, J. Bullock, et al., “Impacts of Neonicotinoid Use on Long-term Population Changes in Wild Bees in England,” Nature Communications 7 (2016): 12459. Doi:10.1038/ncomms12459. ↩︎
Simon L. Lewis and Mark A Maslin, “Defining the Anthropocene,” Nature 519 (2015): 171-180. ↩︎
Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Climatic Fluctuations and Early Farming in West and East Asia,” Current Anthropology 52, no. S4 (2011): S174 – 93. ↩︎
See Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (London: Pelican Books, 2018), 115–16. ↩︎
Lewis and Maslin, The Human Planet, 144. ↩︎
Lewis and Maslin, The Human Planet, 164–68. ↩︎
Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 16 (2017): 761–80. ↩︎
Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things (Carlton: Black Inc, 2018), 140. ↩︎
For the Sustainable Development Goals, see <https://sdgs.un.org/goals. ↩︎
Mark G. Brett, Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 56–57. ↩︎
David P. Wright, “Holiness in Leviticus and Beyond: Different Perspectives,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 53, no.4 (1999): 351–64*.* ↩︎
For a discussion of why the Priestly creation account is limited to this passage, and evidence for a Holiness redactor, see Mick Pope, From Creation to Canaan: Biblical Hermeneutics for the Anthropocene (Eugene: Pickwick, 2024). ↩︎
Pope, From Creation to Canaan, 42. ↩︎
Ellen F. Davis, “Learning Our Place: The Agrarian Perspective of the Bible,” Word & World 29 (2009):109–120. Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). ↩︎
Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 48. ↩︎
John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), 58. ↩︎
Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 50. ↩︎
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). ↩︎
Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 50. ↩︎
Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 56–7. ↩︎
Middleton, Liberating the Image, 291. ↩︎
Norman Habel, An Inconvenient Text: Is a Green Reading of the Bible Possible? (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2009), 2–6. In Numbers, kabash is used in the context of the conquest of Canaan (Num 32:22, 29). ↩︎
Habel, An Inconvenient Text, 77. ↩︎
Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 55, quoting Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1190. ↩︎
Richard Middleton, Liberating the Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), 52. ↩︎
Michael LeFebvre, “Theology and Economics in the Biblical Year of Jubilee,” BET 2, no. 1(2015):33. ↩︎
LeFebvre, “Theology and Economics in the Biblical Year of Jubilee,” 34. ↩︎
On the declining place of “wilderness” see Mick Pope, “The Earth is Full of your Creatures: A Theology of Wilderness,” Anglican EcoCare Journal of Ecotheology 1 (2014): 65–78; Mick Pope, “Rediscovering a Spirituality of Creation for the Anthropocene,” in The Nature of Things: Rediscovering the Spiritual in God’s Creation, ed. Graham Buxton and Norm Habel (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2016), 92–102. ↩︎
Steffen, et al., “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene.” ↩︎

The Environmental Ethics of Pope Francis – Parsing Key Terms and Claims In Laudato Si’ (Thomas Massaro, S.J.)

2024-04-17T14:02:56Z

On October 4, 2023, Pope Francis published the apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum (“Praise God”), an 8000-word document advocating for urgent action to counter climate change.^[1] Its date of publication is significant on two accounts. First, it was released on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, the thirteenth-century Italian mystic who is recognized as the patron of animals and of ecology, and who inspired the twenty-first pontiff to select this papal name.

Perhaps more significantly, the document appeared exactly eight weeks before the start of COP 28, the latest in a series of global summit meetings addressing the existential challenge of global warming. In an unprecedented turn of events, Pope Francis at that time announced his intention to attend in person and to address the delegates at the conference to be held in Abu Dhabi—something that no pope (and few top religious leaders of any faith) had previously done at any such gathering. Clearly, the leader of 1.3 billion Roman Catholics around the world was sending a clear message regarding the great significance of the upcoming meeting involving nearly all the world’s nations.

This was not the first time that this same pope had signaled his deep commitment to the cause of halting climate change. From the very start of his papacy, Francis had identified care for the environment as among his highest social priorities, eclipsing even his relentless protection of refugees, promotion of economic justice and advocacy for peace—causes that had clearly long appeared very close to his heart.

The first foray of Pope Francis to put into writing his wide-ranging reflections on ecology was of course the encyclical letter Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.^[2] Published in June 2015, eight years before the follow-up message of Laudate Deum and over five times longer in the English translation of the original texts in Latin, Laudato Si’ was similarly timed to exert the maximum influence on the proceedings of a global climate change conference—in this case the momentous COP 21 meeting in Paris at which global partner nations were engaged in setting key goals for reductions in carbon emissions in future decades. Pope Francis most evidently aims for timeliness as well as originality in tailoring his contributions to the global crisis of climate change.

The remainder of this essay describes the many pivotal contributions of Laudato Si’ to the cause of countering climate change, including the introduction of several original intellectual concepts and categories that provide valuable resources to the ecological movement. This article is thus divided into three sections. The first section describes some of the context (both historical and intellectual) which led Francis to address the climate crisis.

The second section examines the content of the authoritative teaching document Laudato Si’, focusing on six particularly influential components of the message of Francis as he analyzes the causes and potential solutions to the contemporary ecological crisis. The third section explores the key effects and outcomes of the effort of Pope Francis in this momentous document. Without in any way diminishing the many accomplishments of other religious leaders (either before or since Francis arrived on the global scene in 2013), this article proposes the argument that Laudato Si’ is the most valuable and prominent expression of religious advocacy to protect the natural environment and to promote ecological justice.

Context

Before the veritable explosion of faith-based environmental concern and activism in recent decades, religious voices were not consistently supportive of ecological sustainability. Unfortunately, Western religious traditions too often justified and propped up the untrammeled exploitation of natural resources by portraying the divine will as supportive of unfettered human dominion over created things. The concluding verses of the first chapter of the book of Genesis depict a God who, at least on a superficial level, grants unlimited prerogatives to the first humans to fill the earth and subdue it (see Gen. 1: 28-30).

The strand of theological ideology known as contemptus mundi and the impulse towards a fuga mundi attitude only fed the inclination to disregard the health of the earth and exacerbated the unfortunate tensions between Christian faith and environmental responsibility. The disastrous effects of a theology that allows or even favors unregulated human dominion over creation were treated by Dr. Lynn White, Jr.’s famous 1967 article “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.”^[3] White blamed the legacy of a distorted picture of God for many of the problems of pollution, environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity that were just beginning to snowball a half-century ago.

But of course, acknowledging a creator God who places humanity at the top of a hierarchy of life does not necessarily justify wanton rape of natural resources and the utter subordination of other species. A theistic worldview can also support a theological model of stewardship, one which understands humans as called to be sensitive caretakers of earth and all its resident species. It can even inspire a creation-centered spirituality that emphasizes ecological co-responsibility and deep kinship with our fellow species—themes found in Franciscan spirituality and many venerable religious traditions.

After many missed opportunities, full-throated concern for the environment within official Roman Catholic teachings began to sprout around 1990 with the publication of some landmark teaching documents (though still rather brief ones) on sustainability emanating from the Vatican and from local bishops’ conferences around the world.^[4] As welcome as this new attention to protecting the environment was after a long history of neglect, the Catholic response to the ecological crisis in word and deed was still fragmentary and incomplete, in need of further momentum.

We witnessed a few paragraphs lamenting pollution and toxic over-consumption here, a short pastoral letter encouraging energy conservation there. Even Pope Benedict XVI, who at the time earned the moniker “The Green Pope” for his many commendable words and deeds to protect the earth,^[5] was only barely catching up to consciousness-raising commitments of other Christian communities. Eastern Orthodox Christians, especially under the visionary leadership of Patriarch Bartholomew,^[6] and Protestants, especially those within the fold of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, each enjoyed a major head-start in adopting the theme of “the Integrity of Creation” as a major social objective alongside justice and peace.

Enter Pope Francis. From the very start of his papacy in 2013, he has signaled an eagerness to embrace a genuine spirituality of creation, has invited broad audiences to reimagine humanity’s place in the natural world, and has proved himself even greener than the “Green Pope” who preceded him. The publication of his social encyclical Laudato Si’ (aptly translated as “Praise Be to You, Lord” and subtitled “On Care for Our Common Home’ ‘) was of course the most important landmark in this constructive development.

Even before examining the content of this authoritative teaching document, it is important to recognize how Francis framed this encyclical. First, he consistently hastened to portray it not as some narrowly cast position paper aimed at the debate over a single issue, but rather Francis invited his audiences to view it as a holistic contribution to the overall social mission of the church, which includes many inter-related dimensions of justice and elements that comprise the common good, of which the environment is an integral feature and concern. Second, as noted above, Pope Francis deliberately timed the release of the encyclical, the writing process of which took well over a year to complete, for June 2015, a full six months before the convening of the Paris Climate Conference (or COP 21 in United Nations parlance) in the final weeks of that same year.

This publication timetable felicitously allowed the document to exert maximum effect on the international community and its climate change deliberations, granting adequate lead time for dissemination but not excessive time that would render it stale or outdated by December 2015. Indeed, several other world religions (including certain leaders of Islam, Judaism and Buddhism) wrote and released their own climate change documents that followed Laudato Si’, though each of these was much briefer and of course had their own distinctive tone and message. Nevertheless, Francis emerged at that time as a preeminent voice of faith-based environmental concern, and with his good friend Patriarch Bartholomew continues to play exactly that role.

The 40,000 words of Pope Francis’s encyclical letter Laudato Si’ are divided into 246 paragraphs, with 172 footnotes citing the work of previous popes, local bishops’ conferences, philosophers, spiritual writers and the international community, with especially frequent reference to the 1992 Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development and subsequent U.N. climate change documents.

The encyclical is available free on the Vatican website in numerous languages and has been printed in many formats throughout the world. Its six chapters bear titles such as “What is Happening to Our Common Home,” “The Gospel of Creation,” “The Human Roots of the Ecological Crisis” and “Ecological Education and Spirituality.” The methodology of the document follows the see-judge-act paradigm common in documents of Catholic social teaching.

A word about each of the three steps. Pope Francis first surveyed the damage done to the environment, observing in paragraph 21 that “earth, our home, is looking more and more like an immense pile of filth.” The second (or judgment) phase includes pointed analysis of the human-induced causes of global warming, confirming the general consensus among scientists and making no concessions to climate change deniers. As the bold moral teacher he is, Francis does not shy away from making stern ethical judgments about the selfishness and myopia that have long supported crass exploitation of God-given natural resources, including vital rain forests such as the Amazon and the Congo, which the pope (in paragraph 38) dubs the two vital lungs of our planet.

When he reaches the third phase, the action stage of the paradigm, Francis strongly recommends a thorough about-face in human approaches to the natural environment and our fellow creatures on earth. The recommended actions, including abrupt changes in lifestyle, economic practices and political policies, all depend upon an underlying change in consciousness regarding our place in the universe and our relationships to all creatures we encounter and the ecosystems we inhabit.

In the course of the pope’s ethical analysis in Laudato Si’ there arise several motifs that had rarely or never before appeared in papal writings. The numbered list of six items that follows can only provide the briefest glimpse of these themes and concepts.

Integral ecology. This phrase, which serves as the title of chapter 4 of Laudato Si’, captures the holistic perspective Francis seeks to emphasize regarding the entire topic of climate justice. In order to fashion an adequate response, we need to see and appreciate the big picture regarding the climate crisis, where its many dimensions come together into an underlying unity. On a dozen occasions throughout the text, Francis invites the reader to recognize the insight, worded in various ways, that “everything is interconnected” or “all things are inter-related” or that “nothing can be considered in isolation.”

More than a verbal tic, this repeated insistence on recognizing the unity of all things reflects a common theme in Christian mysticism, especially in the spirituality associated with the 13th century Saint Francis of Assisi, who is so obviously an inspiration for the environmentalism of the first pope to choose this name. It also advances an argument regarding the connection between the environmental crisis on one hand, and the social crisis of injustice and inequality (rightly called diseases of social ecology), on the other hand. To foreground the phrase “integral ecology” as Francis does is to insist on a unified response to these social and ecological crises.

We cannot solve one without addressing the other, since they are two faces of the same pathology. In sum, the relationships we share with the earth and with our fellow creatures can only be healthy in the aggregate. Injustice, dysfunction and disorder in any relationship poisons all the other relationships, and manifests in exploitative attitudes and practices towards other people and things. Ultimately, it is easy to discern that the phrase integral ecology says everything Pope Francis seeks to affirm about the centrality of a socially responsible approach to living today.

Intergenerational solidarity. This is another term rarely heard in previous Catholic social teaching, though it represents a logical extension of the church’s long advocacy for the virtue of fellow-feeling and commitment to the greater good of society. Paragraphs 159-62 of Laudato Si’ treat the seminal concept of “justice between generations” which is a creative adaptation of familiar religious notions regarding social responsibility. One of the master concepts of Catholic social thought is the common good, which emphasizes our obligations to attend to needs that are more broadly defined than by our own individual interests.

Pope Francis here is expanding our perception of the common good to include not just the needs of currently living people, but even those yet to be born—both humans and even members of other species. If our wasteful practices and profligate lifestyles disadvantage future persons and other beings by harming their ecosystems and exhausting available resources, then we are acting irresponsibly. We not only harm them but also dishonor God, who creates all beings for the purpose of their flourishing. To frustrate the intentions of God in this way is to sin grievously. We must not, the pope entreats here, ignore our solemn obligations to preserve the earth, and to safeguard the sustainability of the planet that Francis repeatedly calls “our common home.”

The technocratic paradigm. Francis is far from the first commentator to launch a critique of how the indiscriminate reliance on technology threatens key human values. It is not technology itself that is objectionable—Francis is no crass Luddite—but rather the myopic and self-centered employ of technologies that introduces distortions in human relations, including in our interactions with the natural environment. This danger grows especially vivid when humans foolishly imagine that the introduction of new technologies will provide quick fixes to deeply rooted social and cultural problems.

As Francis writes in paragraph 109: “The technocratic paradigm tends to dominate economic and political life… Some circles maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems.” The illusion of easy progress through cutting corners has indeed far too often driven approaches to climate change abatement. This conviction has prompted Francis to question (in paragraphs 23-26 and 171 of Laudato Si’) the adequacy of cap-and-trade and carbon credit tax policies as a sufficient response to global warming.

It is not that such market-based public policies will necessarily fail, but rather that they fall short of inspiring and enacting the comprehensive change of approach that would be the true game-changer we so desperately need in the struggle against climate change. Francis has no interest in disparaging such incremental approaches or technological advances as creating carbon sinks, but as a moral leader, he is primarily intent on overcoming the distortion of deeply-rooted priorities and socially responsible behaviors such as humble self-control and simplicity of lifestyle.

Tyrannical anthropocentrism. Like the technological paradigm, this multisyllabic label represents a brand of reductionism that Pope Francis seeks to refute and urges us to resist. This particular distortion prevents us from seeing ourselves honestly, as part of creation rather than as its rightful and undisputed master. Much like political tyrants, humanity comes to engage in collective acts of abuse of power, to the detriment of other creatures, their habitats, and eventually with boomerang evil effects on ourselves.

We thus arrogantly displace God and unduly exploit other species and our shared planet. Just as the technocratic paradigm boils down to an exaggerated reliance on a scientific model, tyrannical anthropocentrism places humans so firmly at the center of our perception of the universe that all other beings and values are eclipsed. Together these two attitudes threaten to stunt the moral imagination and render impossible the transformations required for people to rise to the occasion of the ecological crisis.

Ecological conversion. This motif, developed by Pope Francis in some detail in paragraphs 216-21 of the final chapter of Laudato Si’, represents the antidote to much of what has gone wrong up to this point in human history. The primary carrier of hope for a better and more sustainable future is changed people. Before those people will ever imaginably exhibit more responsible external behavior, both in their private lives and in the public policies that they collectively determine, they must adopt new interior attitudes and orientations.

The transformation required is at root a matter of a renewed spirituality. In paragraph 216, Pope Francis affirms that “spirituality can stir up a more passionate concern for the protection of our world.” To move the needle or bend the arc in the direction of true ecological progress, we must resolve to transcend the level of mere tinkering. As with so many of his teachings in other areas of social justice, Francis is proposing and endorsing a culture-based approach rather than merely a market-based or policy-based approach. If we sincerely desire a healthier earth, we need to be healthier people. If we wish to see improvement in our external environment, we must first foster improvement in the interior environment within each of us, nurturing our souls in prayer. This is the profound challenge of ecological conversion.

The challenge to hear both “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”. This stirring phrase from the world of liberation theology,^[7] quoted in paragraph 49 of the encyclical, illuminates the linkage between the suffering of under-resourced people and the egregious exploitation of the natural world which exacerbates social inequalities. Francis is right to call attention to the many ways in which abuses of the environment in the past have most often damaged the life prospects of the least privileged; continued inaction to address the ecological crisis will further disadvantage those already harmed.

The best example may be climate change refugees—vulnerable “people on the move” whose ancestral lands have been rendered infertile by the effects of desertification or rising sea levels that wipe out their customary farming and herding activities, as Francis explains in some detail in paragraph 25. Those who formerly scratched out a modest living through subsistence farming have become highly vulnerable to drought and coastal flooding, all too often becoming refugees, fleeing through perilous itineraries for new havens that might hold the promise of a more secure life. The “cry of the earth” for relief from this human onslaught and the “cry of the poor” for relief from grave injustice are closely linked and impossible to ignore by people of conscience, who will see, judge and act in justice and mercy.

This list of six motifs in the pages of Laudato Si’ could easily be expanded. Many other important topics are covered in the encyclical, for example, advocacy to preserve biodiversity and the right to potable water, both of which represent significant advances in how the Catholic Church has spoken about ecological priorities in the age of Pope Francis.

Key Effects and Implications of Laudato Si’

By further developing Catholic teachings on ecology and specifically by going on record as a strong advocate for the strict limitation of greenhouse carbon emissions, Francis has provided us with valuable resources for establishing a more just and sustainable world. There is certainly no dearth of evidence that his 2015 document has delivered considerable results. Many first-hand observers of the global climate change debates have testified to the positive impact of Vatican voices and interventions in recent international deliberations, including in the negotiating process leading up to the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

Opinion polling, including several recent Pew surveys, consistently find that Roman Catholics are increasingly familiar with their church’s developing environmental teachings and exhibit elevated consciousness and marked commitment to engage in climate change activism, although a certain amount of backsliding has also been documented.^[8] Pope Francis has taken ambitious steps to maintain this momentum of deepening environmental concern, most recently by rolling out a creative “Laudato Si Action Platform” geared toward engaging and sustaining the energies, especially among young people, already generated on a worldwide basis to address and reverse climate change and environmental degradation.^[9] This is just one of many initiatives, at both local and global levels, to mobilize Catholics to put their faith into action to fight climate change.

While Pope Francis, in Laudato Si’ and through other vehicles and activities, has made many distinctive contributions, his messages often echo other responsible voices, both religious and secular, regarding environmental sustainability. For example, the most recent climate assessment report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made this familiar point: “We actually have all the knowledge we need, all the tools we need. We just need to implement it.”^[10]

Pope Francis would agree entirely about the pressing need to muster the political will to make practical progress on care for the environment. His constructive engagement on this urgent issue serves as a reminder of the role of religious traditions and faith communities as the locus where humanity so often raises and pursues the most important ethical questions of any age.

In the end, religion is the realm of human life where people stir up their consciences, confront whatever despair they might feel, and overcome indifference, apathy and resistance to change. In their faith lives, people find hope and energy for fostering social change, articulate values and develop virtues that will motivate and empower them to challenge injustices and threats like climate change. Bold and prophetic religious leaders like Pope Francis revitalize the constructive contributions of faith traditions, but it is of course up to each of us to play our role in the transformation required to sustain our world, which is indeed our common home, as a hospitable place of beauty and abundant life for all God’s creatures.

Thomas Massaro, S.J., is Professor of Moral Theology at Fordham University. A Jesuit priest of the East Province, he served as professor of moral theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Boston College, and at Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, where he also served as Dean. Six years after his arrival at Fordham, he was awarded the McGinley Chair of Religion and Society in 2024.

Footnotes

Pope Francis, Laudate Deum, Apostolic Exhortation on the Climate Crisis, 4 Oct., 2023, <https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost\_exhortations/documents/20231004-laudate-deum.html ↩︎
Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: Encyclical Letter on Care for Our Common Home, 24 May 2015, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. Note: although dated May 24 (the day on which the Roman Catholic observance of the Solemnity of Pentecost fell in 2015), the text was not actually released and available until 18 June 2015. ↩︎
Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (1967): 1203-07. ↩︎
See, for example: Pope John Paul II, “Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation,” Message for World Day of Peace, 1 Jan. 1990, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19891208_xxiii-world-day-for-peace.html; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Renewing the Earth: An Invitation to Reflection and Action on Environment in Light of Catholic Social Teaching,” 14 Nov. 1991, https://www.usccb.org/resources/renewing-earth. ↩︎
Pope Benedict XVI demonstrated his commitment to promoting renewable energy by, for example, ordering the installation of thousands of photovoltaic cells on the roofs of Vatican buildings. He also dedicated several stirring paragraphs of an encyclical letter to the topic of the ecological crisis; see pars. 48-52 of Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), 29 June 2009, <https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf\_ben-xvi\_enc\_20090629\_caritas-in-veritate.html. ↩︎
For a full account of the impressive moral leadership of Patriarch Bartholomew on environmental issues, see John Chryssavgis, ed., On Earth as In Heaven: Ecological Vision and Initiatives of Patriarch Bartholomew, Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought Series (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011). ↩︎
This phrase indeed provides the title of an influential work from a prominent liberation theologian from South America, the home continent of Pope Francis; see Leonardo Boff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, trans. Phillip Berryman, Ecology and Justice Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997). ↩︎
The Pew data immediately after the release of Laudato Si’ recorded a particularly strong effect of the encyclical on Catholic opinion. Subsequent surveys have called into question certain aspects of this “Francis effect” on the attitudes of the Catholic faithful, at least in the United States, regarding climate change and activism to counter it. A particularly insightful account of the mixed picture presented by serial Pew data is Aleja Hertzler-McCain, “Pew Study: U.S. Catholics More Motivated by Climate News than Other Americans,” National Catholic Reporter, 1 Nov. 2023, https://www.ncronline.org/earthbeat/politics/pew-study-us-catholics-more-motivated-climate-news-other-americans ↩︎
The landing page for the Laudato Si’ Action Program, maintained by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (the Vatican office charged with environmental concern) is https://laudatosiactionplatform.org/ ↩︎
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report, 19 March 2022, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/ ↩︎

Religious Sacrificial Sympathy- How Man Became More Valuable Than Beast (Kevin S. Grane)

2024-03-15T13:53:12Z

The religious attitude of the West today demonstrates a consumerist ethos that would have been deeply foreign to the religious discourse of old. Perhaps one of the earliest forms of religion, Shamanism, provides the modern critic with a unique insight into the ethos of the spiritual man of the ancient world. Compared with the post-modern religious consumer, significant changes may be observed in environmental ethics.

Beginning with Shamanism, it is by identifying changes in dietary practices and animal sacrifice that we observe the development of a growing indifference for non-human life, which contradicts one of the most prominent pillars of ancient religiosity, empathy, and respect for life regardless of form. Such a gradual loss of sympathy for the object of sacrifice for nourishment or divine intervention is but a microcosm of the religious man’s indifference and even abuse of the world around him.

Shamanism

Some of the first evidence of religious practice in human history comes from the cave of Lascaux in the Dordogne, France, dated between 15,000 and 20,000 BCE. This artwork is pictured below:^[1]

The scene is typically interpreted as a hunting scene showing an eviscerated bison beside the hunter who mimicked or shared in the same wounds he inflicted upon the animal.^[2] This evidence points to a profound sympathy and concern for the subject of the hunt. Such sympathy, as demonstrated above and practiced through the popularization of the shaman, is partially but significantly tied to how these communities thought about the afterlife and reincarnation.

The earliest understanding of reincarnation was that life did not exist in one permanent category, meaning the essence of life may be found in a man for one lifetime and an animal in the next. The system of hierarchical structure of these life forms came about thousands of years later in Hindu texts such as Pursha Sukta (1500-1200 BCE).^[3] Therefore, little consideration was given to the form in which one’s essence or the spark of life would find itself.

Given the potentiality of one’s essence to be embodied as an animal in the next life, community members relying on the shaman were so concerned with the process of the hunt that the shaman predominantly dictated the location of the hunt. The shaman functioned as an intermediary between the community and the divine, enacting a spiritual flight from the temporal to the transcendent. This flight took different forms across traditions, with some shamans experiencing an ecstatic experience or dream. In contrast, others seemed to believe shamans took a physical flight from Siberia to Tierra del Fuego.^[4]

At his return, the shaman conveyed the insight from the divine to guide the hunting efforts of the community so as only to kill those elected by the divine. Belief systems surrounding the God known as the “Animal Master” evidence a symbiotic relationship between man and animal wherein the divine regularly sends flocks to be killed and eaten by man. In return, man assures the divine that the rights necessary for a posthumous life will be conducted. Some of these practices included hunters sharing in the sorrow of animals until their time of death, dawning animal costumes, ritualistically laying out bones and pelt, and proper burial.^[5]

Shamans were both hereditary and spontaneously selected for this responsibility, yet both were accompanied by morbid phenomena furthering the association with death and the divine.^[6] This association is principally reiterated in the common practice of shaman candidates’ death and resurrection at some point during the initiation process.^[7]

As candidates dawn the death itself, they become interconnected with the divine. As they rise again, this experience was believed to naturally embed a connection between the new shaman and the divine, which could be called upon again. This connection was often associated with natural imagery, such as the shaman’s symbolic climbing of a tree or a rainbow the shaman would ride.

Animal Sacrifice

As anthropologist Walter Burkert has pointed out, men in the Paleolithic period felt a deep sympathy with the animals they slaughtered for nourishment, so much so that they relied on the shaman and their divine insight. The introduction of ritual sacrifice seen as early as the 4th Millennium BCE in Mesopotamia prompted animal commodification and religious distancing from animals. Animals were offered to gods to intrigue them to influence temporal affairs such as weather, fertility, and moral absolution.

By offering animals as sacrifices, man asserted dominance over animals, suggesting their lives were justly taken to improve the lives of man because the lives of man were of more excellent value. Ritual sacrifice also profoundly affected the development of early reincarnation hierarchical structures such as in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh traditions. Where previously there had been a more sporadic understanding of reincarnation where one may be reincarnated as any creature at random, the assertion of man’s value over animals led to a hierarchal development where it was more desirable to be human than animal.

British anthropologist Edward Tylor’s evolution of animal sacrifice proposed that animal sacrifice was initially intended to appease the ferocity of gods toward humans.^[8] Such a view seemed to validate the view of tribes relying on the shaman, namely that their consumption of non-ordained animals was offensive to the gods as they understood them. However, causes for displeasure with humanity were as numerous as the stars, yet immensely important for primitive cultures to ascertain in hopes of influencing cosmic agents favorably, thereby delivering them from trials such as natural disasters and famine.

Nevertheless, it is pretty clear that as the practice of animal sacrifice became more commonplace, animals were commodified and became assets to be offered for the appeasement of humanity’s violation of the virtuous ethic. What is not clear is why so many ancient religious communities concluded that their violation of the divine was more likely attributed to other practices than the unordained taking of life. We see in the Yajurveda (1200 BCE) ritual practices a preference for offerings of grain or milk rather than meat, demonstrating a hesitance to adopt animal sacrifice and a lasting reverence for the sanctity of non-human life.

However, this shift must have occurred, for if it had not occurred, it would have been necessary to atone for the very means of atonement. Alongside the depreciating value of non-human life was the depreciation of the divine’s perceived interest in posthumous rituals for the deceased. Had the divine’s demand for posthumous ritual been viewed as significant by the divine, animal sacrifice could never have been considered a viable means of evocation.

Tyler goes on to suggest how, over time, societies questioned the efficacy of animal sacrifice when it did not achieve their desired outcomes. Such an enduring desire for divine intercession contributed significantly to the evolution of sacrifice from animal to symbolic. These rituals were seen early on as substituting animals for grain or other produce as the subject of the offering.

Examples of this shift can be seen in the historical evolution of rituals such as Navaratri, Pongal, and the Passover Seder. This made offerings more affordable, yet the flexibility of ritual sacrifice demonstrates the dysfunctionality with the previous practices of animal sacrifice Tyler referred to. Should the desired outcome of divine intercession be achieved, evoking the divine would have remained the same, regardless of the price, due to the immense value of the outcome.

As animal sacrifice fell from widespread practice, an ideological shift took place that further devalued the sanctity of non-human life as it was no longer enough even to rouse the interest of the divine. Functionally, less non-human life was being taken, yet it was not for the inherent or economic value of non-human lives that animal sacrifice fell from widespread practice.

This shift brought about a further commodification and value depreciation of non-human life as it lost significant value in the eyes of these communities. Previously, the divine valued this life so highly that its sacrifice was believed to be enough to rouse the divine. With the shift to symbolic sacrifice, non-human loss was no longer believed to be valuable enough to rouse the divine.

Examples of this shift include the early Christian movement, which not only confronted the practice of animal sacrifice (see Hebrews 10:1-18, Matthew 9:13, Mark 12:33, and Romans 3:21-26) but also challenged dietary restrictions of non-human carnivorous consumption, specifically the scene in Mark 7:14 where Jesus stated:

“Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile’” (see also Acts 10:9-16).^[9]

Other examples of Tyler’s progressive shift away from animal sacrifice and further devaluing the sanctity of non-human life include the Hindu Ashvamedha Yajna, or horse sacrifice, which gradually shifted away from the killing of an actual animal in place of a symbolic sacrifice.^[10] Other examples of this shift can be seen in the historical evolution of rituals such as Navaratri, Pongal, and the Passover Seder.

Dietary Restriction

It is no surprise to find codified dietary restrictions early on in religious practice. We see dietary restrictions as early as 1500 BCE in the Rigveda expressing reverence for various animals and a preference for vegetarianism. Similar ideological orientations wherein meat consumption is discouraged can be seen in early Buddhist movements such as in the Jivaka Sutta (number 55) of the Majjhima Nikaya. In this text, readers are privy to a teaching of the Buddha wherein he states that consumption of meat is ethically acceptable under the condition that the animal is not killed specifically for the person who intends to consume its flesh.

Furthermore, there should be no suspicion of the animals killing for personal consumption. Otherwise stated, meat consumption was permissible only in the instance that the death had occurred by natural causes, not intentionally for consumption by the consumer or an outside party.

Dietary restrictions further support Tyler’s evolutionary progression as we see the emergence of more lenient doctrines of meat consumption over time. For example, while Theravada Buddhism highly encouraged non-carnivorous dietary practices, later practices like Mahayana Buddhism were less concerned with meat consumption.

The same sentiment of early concern for restrictive consumption of animals can be seen in Leviticus 11, which discusses the distinction between kosher and non-kosher animals. Interestingly, it seems that even from the earliest scriptures of Judaism, killing and consumption of at least some animals was a foundational practice that would place Judaism as one of the pioneering traditions opposed to exclusively vegetarian diets catalyzing progressively de-valuing the sanctity of non-human life regardless of its intention to do so or not. Validation for meat consumption is first seen in Genesis 9:3, which states:

“Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”^[11]

Given Judaism’s progressive ideology on the consumption of meat, it is not surprising to find animal sacrifice also prevalent even in its earliest scriptures. For example, early descriptions of animal sacrifice may be found in Exodus 20:24, Leviticus 1-7, 17:11, and Numbers 28-29.

Judaism’s early ideologies on the consumption of meat and animal sacrifice are likely due to its theological understanding of the soul’s stasis. Disbelief in reincarnation supposed there is no possibility of man’s soul being embodied by an animal; therefore, the motivation to exercise empathetic consideration for animals based on the possibility of one’s embodiment as such was null. The Jewish motivation for the sacrality of non-human life was instead founded in its production by divine means and man’s responsibility to care for the earth. This theological orientation allowed for a distinct division between the life of man and the life of animals, allowing for a much easier process of hierarchal imposition of man’s life as more valuable than that of animals.

Contemporary Context

This division between man and animal has grown exponentially as we approach the modern day. Today, very few religious communities practice animal sacrifice, such as Santería and Vodou communities, select Hindu and Chinese folk traditions, and traditional African traditions. However, the practice of animal sacrifice has fallen out of widespread practice significantly today instead of symbolic sacrifices or fasting practices are used instead. Rather than interpreting this change as a shift toward the sanctity of non-human life, this demonstrates an even further devaluation of non-human life as expressed by religious communities, as the sacrifice of non-human life is no longer sufficient to evoke intercession of divine agency.

Dietary restrictions remain theologically relevant in today’s contemporary context. Muslims and Jews are forbidden to eat pork, Hindus are generally averse to eating beef, and Buddhists belonging to certain branches should refrain from meat-eating altogether. However, in a recent study by the Pew Research Center, eight in ten Indians limit meat in their diets, and four in ten consider themselves vegetarian.^[12] In a 2020 study, the Pew Research Center found that only 17% of Jews keep kosher in their homes.^[13] Interestingly, 90 percent of Muslims surveyed said they abjure pork. Finally, only 4% of Buddhists abide by a vegetarian diet.^[14] Though to be fair, the Buddha only recommends vegetarianism or those of a higher path, not everyone.^[15] Additionally, Christian theology expresses no concern for the restriction of meat and even goes so far as to condone it in Mark 7:18-19 expressly.

So why is the demand for meat in the United States today so high? According to the USDA, U.S. consumers, on average, ate about 227 pounds of poultry, beef, and pork in 2022, despite 81% claiming theistic belief. Furthermore, the booming industrial farming industry exemplifies this cognitive dissonance as animals are treated as no more than possessed capital whose lives may be forfeited for profit. Matthew C. Halteman further expands on the varieties of serious harm to animals that are pervasive in industrial farming systems by highlighting procedural harm and institutional oppression as further areas of immorality.^[16]

For the religious populations in America, the religious man has traveled a long way from their roots of weeping with their dinner as it gave its life for man’s nourishment. Even with the theological assertion of animals’ uncleanliness or sacrality, religious populations are unwilling to restrict themselves from asserting their superiority over animals as they divvy death to their fellow life-bearers regularly. The religious man of America today highlights how far man has come in his perceived superiority and subjugation of nature and how hard his heart has become. This is but a microcosm of the religious man’s trend toward pillaging and abusing nature from which he emerged.

Conclusion

As we have seen, some of the earliest religious traditions were profoundly concerned with meat consumption and the sanctity of non-human life. These views came partially from their understanding of the reincarnation process, and I argue simply a greater reverence for all life. This concern may be observed in Eliade’s work documenting the function and purpose of the Shaman in early religious communities as the necessary intermediary between man and the divine, ordaining only the most specific instances of meat consumption as permissible.

Early practices of dietary restriction and refrain from animal sacrifice further illustrate the origins of religious reverence for non-human life. However, the explosion of animal sacrifice demonstrates a process of de-sacrality of non-human life culminating in its gradual decline not to preserve non-human life but instead, because the value of non-human life was further devalued when it became apparent that its sacrifice was not enough to rouse the intersession of the divine. This shift was not only the result of a depreciating view of non-human life, but it also propagated it in the eyes of the community by clearly demonstrating the insufficiently of animal sacrifice to influence the divine. A similar trajectory may be observed in the initial fervor for dietary restrictions to today’s context of varying adherence despite the endurance of doctrinal command.

The conclusion leads us to believe that the value of non-human life has gradually lessened for many religious populations. This shift is symptomatic of the larger project demonstrating a depreciating concern of major religious traditions for environmental sanctity and preservation of non-human life.

Kevin S. Grane is a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology joint PhD program in the study of religion.

Footnotes

Wallis, Robert J. “Art and shamanism: From cave painting to the white cube.” Religions 10, no. 1 (2019): 54. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Later narratives such as this describe a cosmogeny of value structured chiefly around the veneration of the human form. Unique nuances exist within the human form, with Brahmins or priests at the top of this hierarchy and Sudras or servants at the bottom. Nevertheless, any human form has been understood as superior to even the most privileged animal form. ↩︎
Campbell, Joseph, and Bill Moyers. The power of myth. Anchor, 2011, 85-87. ↩︎
Walter Burkert, Homo Necans; the anthropology of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual and myth, trans-Peter bring. Betkely, los angeles, and London 1983, 16-22. ↩︎
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. Princeton University Press, (2024). 21. ↩︎
Elkin, Adolphus Peter. “The rainbow-serpent myth in North-West Australia.” Oceania 1, no. 3 (1930): 349-352. ↩︎
Tylor, Edward Burnett. Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. Vol. 2. J. Murray, 1871. ↩︎
Coogan, Michael David, Marc Zvi Brettler, Carol Ann Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, USA, 2010. ↩︎
Landrus, Mallica Kumbera. “Vijayanagara Art: A Political and Historical Metaphor.” Editorial Board (1999): 77. ↩︎
Coogan, Michael David, Marc Zvi Brettler, Carol Ann Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, USA, 2010. ↩︎
Corichi, Manolo. “Eight-in-ten Indians limit meat in their diets, and four-in-ten consider themselves vegetarian.” Pew Research Center, July 8th, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/08/eight-in-ten-indians-limit-meat-in-their-diets-and-four-in-ten-consider-themselves-vegetarian/ ↩︎
Mitchell, Travis. “Jewish Practices and Customs.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, May 11, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-practices-and-customs/. ↩︎
Hussain, Grace. “Do Buddhists Eat Meat? What Did Buddha Say about Meat?” Sentient Media, November 1, 2022. <https://sentientmedia.org/do-buddhists-eat-meat/ ↩︎
Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter 8. ↩︎
Halteman, Matthew C. “Varieties of harm to animals in industrial farming.” Journal of An**imal Ethics 1, no. 2 (2011): 122–131. ↩︎

Sikhs As Subalterns – Voice, Inequality, And Power, Part 3 (Nirvikar Singh)

2024-02-08T17:50:32Z

The following is the third installment of a three part series. The first can be found here, the second here. It is published as a catalogued .PDF in article in the latest issue of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (22.2).

That knowledge of source languages is not the only problem is illustrated by citation practices. Axel, Fox, Leonard and Oberoi are all frequently cited in analyses that emphasize a foreshortened view of Sikh history and tradition. On the other hand, critiques or South Asian sources (Grewal, M. Singh, N.-G. K. Singh) tend to be ignored. While some of the literature that builds on these works considers topics that had been neglected or treated unsatisfactorily, such as gender, the foreshortening and selection in other dimensions introduces new limitations. For example, typical histories of colonial period Sikh reform efforts include struggles with questions of caste and social equality.^[1]

The reformers discussed this issue in the context of verses of the GGS, and reached conclusions that favored inclusiveness in religious activities, and a normative position against caste distinctions, something that Oberoi ignores.^[2] This was, indeed, an attempt to change common practices, but it had its antecedents in the institution of the Khalsa. On the other hand, the “pluralist” Sanatan Sikhs explicitly advocated for caste hierarchies.^[3]

Caste hierarchies have persisted, even in religious contexts,^[4] and are documented in diaspora contexts,^[5] although some practices did change.^[6] Nicola Mooney provides some innovation in this direction, considering gender and caste together, but the unbundling of Sikh precepts from Punjabi, especially Jat, patterns of patriarchy is lacking. Indeed, issues of patriarchal structures are a South Asian phenomenon, as is the phenomenon of caste.^[7]

When one recognizes these complexities, the simple binary of an “older pluralist paradigm of Sikh faith,” and a “monolithic, codified and closed culture” created by those who “aggressively usurped the fight to represent others,”^[8] turns out to be both theoretically and empirically problematic.

Perhaps the most significant example of what is missing from the popular scholarly consensus of colonial-era transformation is the role of the Sikh masses, consisting mainly of peasants, that category also including a large number of ex-soldiers of the British Indian army.^[9] While the most cited accounts of Sikhs in the colonial period focus on aggressive or traumatized so-called cultural elites, the inflection point in this era was the agitation for control of historically significant Sikh sites of worship (gurdwaras) all over Punjab. This became a non-violent mass movement in which thousands of Sikhs went to jail.

Again, Fox credits the British with creating the requisite consciousness,^[10] but an alternative explanation is in the ethos of the Khalsa, which sustained Sikh political control of Punjab for almost a century, before the British conquered the region. The motivations for this movement came from moral and emotional factors:^[11] the managers of gurdwaras were viewed, with considerable justification, as increasingly corrupt and immoral in their conduct, while at the same time, many of these sites were associated with the lives of the Sikh Gurus – where they (and sometimes their families and followers) had been born, lived, and died.

The Sikh community gained control of Punjab’s historic gurdwaras in 1925, over half a century after the creation of the first colonial-era reform organizations. Arguably, this control has shaped the community’s subsequent history as much as, if not more than, intellectual debates, because these are the sites where members of the community publicly practice their faith together, and connect with their history.^[12]

Recognizing the role of the Sikh masses in defining the community’s position in the 20th century offers a perspective that is consistent with prior Sikh history, namely, an emphasis on some degree of solidarity and inclusiveness in the religious sphere, engendered by a sense of righteousness and connection to the message of the Gurus, as embodied in their words and their lives. This is a perspective that recognizes the subaltern and their agency, as opposed to scholarly treatments that assign historical significance to elites, whether heroic or misguided.

Recent scholarship that ignores the agency of the Sikh masses and simultaneously downgrades Sikh intellectual debates imposes a dual subalternity, both in the sense of class structures, as in Gramsci and the Subaltern Studies group, but also in the sense of religious identity and the muting of voices, as in Spivak’s extension of the concept.^[13]

The final piece of the analysis involves the invisible (and not-so-invisible) hand of the Indic, to adapt the framing of Judge.^[14] One can see this in an example that he does not consider, one which was discussed in the previous section. The claim of a Sant tradition and Nanak’s membership in it (as a relative latecomer and a follower of that path) has become embedded in much recent scholarship that ignores the roots of the idea in one aspect of the project of Hindu nationalism – this hand of the Indic is not acknowledged, even though it is in plain sight.^[15]

It must be noted that the analysis is easily muddied by the multiple uses of the term “sant,” since it appears frequently in the GGS, where the contexts suggest a general term for people with some characteristics of spirituality, a usage that persists today.^[16] Matters are complicated further because the term is also a title used for a wide range of factional religious leaders, including the leader of the Radhasoamis (where the idea of a “Sant” tradition was used by their founder to increase legitimacy),^[17] and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Khalsa Sikh who became prominent in the Punjab conflict of the 1980s.

More centrally, the idea that Sikh, like Hindu, was an amorphous category until the colonial period is explicit in recent scholarly framings.^[18] This narrative also fits with some aspects of the claim of a Sant tradition. It is beyond the scope of the current analysis to examine the empirical foundations of this narrative of colonial-era religion-making for the Sikhs, one which allows for diversity but also attempts at establishing boundaries. What is of interest here is the subtext of the Indic. The normative position associated with this narrative is quite explicitly aligned with what one might consider a modern, liberal sensibility.

For example, the post-colonial situation is at odds with “the Sikh tradition’s rich, plural, and inclusive past.”^[19] Colonial-era reformers were “ideologues [who] employed Protestant categories of Christian missionaries to redefine Sikh concepts. As such, modern Sikhism became a well-defined ‘system’ based on a unified tradition.”^[20] This framing is what appeals to scholars who want to posit a cozy cosmopolitanism that should be the norm for migrant outsiders (Leonard, 2007).^[21] This narrative, aimed at one audience, fits readily into another, “This concept of unity, like Abrahamic religions, is alien to Indic faiths.”^[22]

In a nutshell, the framings of a colonial-era rupture in Sikh tradition, all involving a foreshortened (and arguably selective) view of its history, present a choice between two forms of intellectual subalternity for contemporary Sikhs. Post-colonial Sikhs have lost their liberal pluralism, whether that was rooted in the Indic or some other, unspecified, sensibility of cosmopolitanism.^[23] Either way, they are framed as intellectually subaltern. Their lack of voice to contest this position is itself a product of inequalities of power, so one kind of subalternity engenders another.

Conclusion

The argument presented here has been about an intellectual subalternization of Sikh tradition(s) in a particular academic sphere. The claim is that an exaggerated and over-simplified narrative of Sikhs’ interactions with colonialism and modernity has dominated recent scholarship. In particular, this narrative neglects the agency of Sikh masses (subalterns), instead focusing on elite actions. Alternative interpretations of Sikh history and tradition that do not accept this dominant framework have received much less scholarly attention (as measured, say, by citation counts), which can be attributed to an inequality of power in the particular academic arena in question.

The hidden sources of power come from the appealing frame of liberalism and pluralism, shared across a range of intellectual currents, both modern and post-modern. Orientalist tropes also continue to be present. Less obviously, some of the framings used by Hindu nationalists fit well with the claim of colonial-era rupture in the Sikh tradition. Murphy brings this out in a broader frame:^[24]

As cultural critics in the U.S. have made clear, the ‘melting pot’ of U.S. multi-cultural society has also been assimilationist, involving the encouraged and sometimes forced shedding of identity, community affiliation, and the like. As van der Veer…notes, this same dynamic is a feature of valorization of the syncretic in India, as ‘this tolerant and pluralistic spirit of India is essentially Hindu. This, unfortunately, is the other side of a happy tale of syncretism and ‘hybridity’: the denial of articulated Khalsa (and other) identities (with an emphasis on the plural), and an erasure of the cultural dynamics of difference (with all of their problems). This is indeed a dangerous route to take.

Challenging a particular account of the heterogeneous Sikh interaction with colonialism does not imply accepting traditional narratives that take a particular normative stance, nor claiming that any historical account represents stable truth. Methodologically, “all versions of the past deserve an equal measure of critique in order to understand the intellectual as well as material interests that drive them.”^[25]

In this essay an attempt was made to provide an account of Sikh history that was stripped of as many normative claims and interpretations as possible, to make the point that, rather than a neglect of consciousness of boundaries or a fuzzy fluidity, self-identification involved drawing boundaries for the community, however contested.^[26] This contestation is an ongoing process, with many debates that began in the 17th century continuing to the present day.

As indicated earlier in this paper, a key aspect of all these debates is the nature and degree differentiation from Hindu metaphysical thought and social practices associated with that conglomeration, with both being intertwined, of course. The legal and political innovations of colonial rule certainly required greater attention to clarity of boundaries in dimensions that might have been less important earlier, although pre-colonial reform movements (the Nirankaris and Namdharis) had sought sharper delineation based on what they saw as consistency with the Sikh Gurus’ teachings.

An interesting example of the complexities of boundary definition was the intense debate over Ambedkar’s plan to convert his followers to another religion. One possible reason for preferring Sikhism over Christianity or Islam was apparently, that “According to Ambedkar, if the untouchables converted to Sikhism, they would leave the Hindu religion but not Hindu culture.”^[27]

Many of the complexities of beliefs and practices and their role in constructing boundaries for the Sikh tradition are beyond the scope of this paper. However, ideas of social justice and inclusiveness are present in the writings of Guru Nanak, his successors, and the bhagats included in the GGS. These ideas presumably contributed to lower status Hindus becoming followers of the Gurus, at least as early as the beginning of the 17th century. Conflict with the Mughal empire added a posture of militant resistance to oppression, and this is combined with social equality in the framing of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh. While many Sikhs balked at losing social status and the connection to their larger clan groupings,^[28] there is no question that the Khalsa initiation was a radical move in favor of social equality, which has continued to influence the Sikh imagination.^[29]

In terms of the original idea of the subaltern, in the context of those in positions of subordination, this aspect of the history of the Sikh tradition, in its attempts to overcome the inequalities of caste and to oppose the unjust exercise of political power, is consistent with a subaltern sensibility, and consistent with Gramsci’s original framing, as well as the Subaltern Studies group’s development of his ideas.

It certainly antedates colonialism.^[30] At the same time, as in the case of any other religious tradition, there are numerous examples of deviations from this ideal, both in detailed formulations and in practice, with respect to caste and gender, in particular, but also when members of the Khalsa achieve political power.^[31] Continued heterogeneity in beliefs and practices, and vigorous debates among Sikhs, are enough evidence to question the claim of a “monolithic closed culture,” but the main point to be made here goes beyond assessing a particular narrative of the past.

What is common among many of the different narratives of the colonial period, as well as its antecedents, is a pattern of viewing the evolution of the Sikh tradition as largely a function of elite manipulation. This is a conventional approach to history, in which leaders dominate the determinants of how events unfold. Of course, traditional religious accounts represent this model even more strongly. What has gone unremarked in assessing recent scholarship on the Sikhs is that elites are given a similar dominant role in these narratives.

There is little acknowledgement of the agency of members of the community, or else they are viewed as pliant or susceptible or even dupes. At this very basic level, Sikh studies has not incorporated the lessons of Subaltern Studies, despite the Sikh tradition having, as we have argued, significant subaltern sensibilities. Arguably, this assessment is an illustration of one of Spivak’s original perspectives on unequal power in various academic institutional structures.^[32]

Recent events arguably bear out the agency of the Sikh masses. In 2020-21, massive farmer protests rocked India, in response to what was perceived as threatening legislative changes in the regulation of agricultural markets. These protests featured a large proportion of Sikhs. The farmers were articulating their fear of monopoly capital, domestic as well as global, and their anger at a government that is aligned with those sources of power.^[33] What was striking was how songs of protest that emerged used historical analogies from the 18th century Khalsa period, in which the oppressed stands up to the oppressor.^[34]

The teachings of the Sikh Gurus were evoked as justification. The language used was Punjabi and there was no intellectual framing of orthodoxy or Protestant ethics. At the same time, the protests were heavily sustained by Sikh community kitchens, free health care, and other ways of self-consciously performing Sikh ideals of service. All of this was in contrast to the views of the Sikh masses in the studies considered earlier in the paper.

There are two additional, deeper, layers of critique that emerge from the analysis. First, Subaltern Studies typically focuses on material conditions and instrumental motives, but religious movements have also been treated in this context.^[35] One does not have to go as far as, for example, Dipesh Chakravarty, and choose between two different kinds of approaches to history, analytical vs. affective, in considering religious or religion-based social movements.^[36] Religion is not a sui generis category, and can be certainly treated as one kind of cultural formation.^[37]

However, one can also recognize that it has some distinctive features in terms of affect and consciousness. Many of the studies considered here fail to engage with this aspect of religion, implicitly treating it as inferior to more generic ideals of universalism and pluralism.^[38] Indeed in the studies critiqued here, there is little or no engagement with Sikh religious teachings, what they reveal about the Sikh past, or how they shaped that past.^[39]

The third and final layer of subalternization can be considered as an example of a more general problem, as described by Russell McCutcheon, that of a “cleverly disguised paternal strategy that enables scholars to portray themselves as being in solidarity with the Other while retaining the right not only to distinguish Others from other Others but also to inform both groups where their stories ought to start and end.”^[40] Judge uses this quote to contextualize the “invisible hand of the Indic.”^[41]

What is argued in the current paper also goes beyond a general lack of humility of scholars to postulate a specific combination of power and inequalities at work in the intellectual arena where the Sikh narrative is now being contested and seemingly shaped.^[42] Within the academy, Sikh traditions are implicitly subalternized to multiple sources of power, in ways that are yet to be fully excavated. This paper offers a beginning to a project of excavation, but without retreating to unquestioned acceptance of tradition, and without claiming to offer any incontestable truth.

Nirvikar Singh is Co-Director of the Center for Analytical Finance at UCSC, of which he was the founding Director. From 2010 to 2020, he held the Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair of Sikh and Punjabi Studies at UCSC. He has previously directed the UCSC South Asian Studies Initiative. He has served as a member of the Advisory Group to the Finance Minister of India on G-20 matters, and Consultant to the Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He is currently serving on the Expert Group on post-Covid-19 economic recovery formed by the Chief Minister of Punjab state in India. At UCSC, he has previously served as Director of the Santa Cruz Center for International Economics, Co-Director of the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, and Special Advisor to the Chancellor.

Footnotes

Grewal, The Sikhs. ↩︎
Murphy, “Allegories.” ↩︎
Avtar Singh Vahiria, Khalsa Dharam Shastar (Amritsar: Sodhi Ram Narain Singh, 1914). ↩︎
Surinder S. Jodhka, “Changing Manifestations of Caste in the Sikh Panth,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014): 583–93. ↩︎
Opinderjit Kaur Takhar, Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups among Sikhs (London: Routledge, 2005). ↩︎
Sikhs who are converts from outcaste groups are accorded full equality in major Sikh houses of worship, though not necessarily in rural areas. By contrast, in the early 20th century, these former outcastes could not then enter the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar by the same door as other Sikhs: Edmund Candler, The Mantle of the East (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1910): 127. ↩︎
See Nicola Mooney, “‘In Our Whole Society, There Is No Equality’: Sikh Householding and the Intersection of Gender and Caste,” Religions, 11(2) (2020): 95; <https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11020095. Even many Muslims and Christians in India acknowledge caste identities: Pew Research Center, Religion. Jodhka and Mooney appear to be exceptions in fully engaging with caste in the context of the Sikh tradition and contemporary practices, but do not allow for such attitudes and comparisons in their analysis. ↩︎
Oberoi, The Construction, 25. ↩︎
Singh, The Akali; Tai Yong Tan, “Assuaging the Sikhs: Government Responses to the Akali Movement 1920-1925,” Modern Asian Studies, 29 (3) (1995): 655-703. The movement itself began with protests by outcast converts to Sikhism over unequal and exclusionary treatment by the functionaries of the Darbar Sahib, such as what was noted by Candler, The Mantle: see Singh, The Akali. ↩︎
Interestingly, Tan (1995), who uses colonial sources almost exclusively, liberally uses the term “extremist” to describe the agitating Sikhs, illustrating the limits of claims of identity consciousness being a product of British manipulation and control. ↩︎
Tan, “Assuaging.” ↩︎
Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Inderjit N. Kaur, “Sikhism,” in Rituals and Practices in World Religions (Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach, Vol. 5), David Bryce Yaden, Yukun Zhao, Kaiping Peng, and Andrew B. Newberg, eds. (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020): 151-165. ↩︎
Note that debates about universality vs. specificity or West vs. East, some of which dominated the discourse around Chibber, Postcolonial, are moot when both universal desires for material well-being and specific religious expressions as instruments of communal solidarity are involved, as is the case of the Sikhs. ↩︎
Judge, “The Invisible Hand.” ↩︎
This is particularly obvious in Barthwal, The Nirguna School. ↩︎
Singh, “Guru Nanak.” ↩︎
Juergensmeyer, “The Radhasoami.” ↩︎
Oberoi, The Construction. ↩︎
Singh, “Re-imagining,” 27. ↩︎
Pashaura Singh, How Avoiding the Religion–Politics Divide Plays out in Sikh Politics, Religions, 10 (5) (2019): 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10050296. ↩︎
Leonard, “Transnationalism.” This is not to revert to the position that tradition must be uncontested and homogeneous. As Murphy, “Allegories,” 63, puts it in critiquing Oberoi, there is danger in “nostalgia for a lost and idyllic past – whether it be ‘syncretic’ or ‘pure’.” ↩︎
Sanjeev Nayyar, “Is Modern day Sikhism a Colonial Construct?” eSamskriti, December 13, 2019. https://www.esamskriti.com/e/History/Indian-History/Is-Modern-day-Sikhism-a-Colonial-Construct–1.aspx. ↩︎
The argument being made here is not controverted by the fact that conflict with neo-Hindu movements in 19th and 20th century Punjab was a strong motivator for Sikh reformers in this period (Jones, Arya Dharm.). In fact, it reinforces the visibility of the hand of the Indic. In this context, the claim that attempts to strengthen the formation “Hindu” (or, alternatively, Brahman, using Romila Thapar’s distinction between Brahman and Śraman traditions: see Romila Thapar, “Imagined religious communities? Ancient history and the modern search for a Hindu identity,” Modern Asian Studies, 23 (2) (1989): 209-231) were a novel phenomenon and a unique product of colonialism seems to be at odds with history: see Frank Usarski, “Facets of the relationship between Buddhism and Hinduism: Interview with Perry Schmidt-Leukel,” Revista de Estudos da Religião, September (2007): 157-164. ↩︎
Murphy, “Allegories,” 64. ↩︎
Ethan Kleinberg (individual communication, 2022): I am grateful to him for this observation on an earlier version of the paper, although he is absolved of all responsibility for remaining shortcomings in this iteration. Ethan Kleinberg, Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017) lays out this theoretical position in depth. ↩︎
Chann, “Rahit Literature;” Gill, “The Works.” ↩︎
Rohit Wanchoo, “The Question of Dalit Conversion in the 1930s,” Studies in History, 36 (2) (2020): 206–229. ↩︎
See Hardip Singh Syan, “Debating Revolution: Early eighteenth century Sikh public philosophy on the formation of the Khalsa,” Modern Asian Studies, 48 (4) (2014): 1096-1133. The accurate term here would be biradari, theoretically the exogamous subdivisions of the endogamous got, itself a subdivision of the broader concept of jati, and from there leading to the classical varnas, which are referenced in the GGS. For an analysis of how biradaris worked in practice among Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs under the rule of Ranjit Singh, see Charles Joseph Hall, Jr., The Maharaja’s Account Books. State and Society Under the Sikhs: 1799-1849. PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1981. ↩︎
Historians have differed with respect to the degree to which the Khalsa represented (to use the currently fashionable term) a “rupture” in Sikh tradition, e.g., Gokul Chand Narang, Transformation of Sikhism, 5th edition (New Delhi: New Book Society of India, 1960); and Niharranjan Ray, T**he Sikh Gurus and the Sikh Society: A Study in Social Analysis, 2nd edition (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1975). Another aspect of the Khalsa identity, one which extends to many Sikhs who are not formally initiated, is the idea of standing up for justice for all. This has traveled through time and continents, and is visible in how (at least some) contemporary Sikhs see themselves. For example, a recent news story about a young Sikh American with long hair and turban, and his challenges in participating fully in US society quotes him as saying, “To me, the whole reason we look different is so we stick out and can be a pillar of support for people in need.” See Simran Jeet Singh, “Samrath Singh, first turbaned Sikh to play NCAA baseball, is more than the challenges he has overcome,” Religion New Service: Articles of Faith, August 5, 2021, <https://religionnews.com/2021/08/05/samrath-singh-first-turbaned-sikh-to-play-ncaa-baseball-is-more-than-the-challenges-he-has-overcome/. More strongly, for some Sikhs, the Khalsa is the mystical embodiment of the Guru: for example, see Fenech, “The Khalsa,” 241. ↩︎
Rahuldeep Singh Gill, “Ante-Colonial Anti-Imperial Sikh Tradition, Reflections on the 550th Anniversary of Guru Nanak’s Birth,” presentation at Institute for South Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, November 14, 2019 available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR5k-cw44nI&ab\_channel=IsasDepartmental. ↩︎
Dhavan, When Sparrows Became Hawks. ↩︎
Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” ↩︎
This example connects closely to the underpinnings of the use of the term subaltern, in a context of material conditions and unequal social relations, as in Chibber’s critique of postcolonial theory’s treatment of subalternity in its narrative of South Asian history (Chibber, Postcolonial). As background, Sikh peasants enjoyed a few decades of relative material prosperity with the success of the so-called green revolution in the 1960s. When Punjab was the most well-off state in India, the idea of subaltern status might have seemed incongruous. However, inadequate water supplies were looming just a few years later. The system that has evolved in the past decades has left (mostly Sikh) peasants in the region in a state of precarity, without easy alternatives. Punjab’s material prosperity has lagged, even as it faces environmental disaster: Nirvikar Singh, “Breaking the Mould: Thoughts on Punjab’s Future Economic Development,” in Economic Transformation and Development Experience of Indian Punjab, Lakhwinder Singh and Nirvikar Singh, eds. (Singapore: Springer, 2016): 451-466. The peasants may still be better off than their compatriots elsewhere in India, but they face devastation once the groundwater table declines a little further. Note that the farmers who died during the protests, from a variety of causes, were not large landholders – their average holding was under 3 acres: Vivek Gupta, “Most Farmers Who Died at Delhi’s Borders Owned Less Than 3 Acres Land: Study,” The Wire, November 7, 2021, <https://thewire.in/agriculture/most-farmers-who-died-at-delhis-borders-owned-less-than-3-acres-land-study. ↩︎
Sikh Research Journal, Songs and Poems of the Farmers’ Protests, 6 (1) (2021): 139-159. ↩︎
Partha Chatterjee, Caste and Subaltern Consciousness, in Subaltern Studies VI: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Ranajit Guha, ed. (Delhi; Oxford University Press, 1989): 169-209. ↩︎
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). ↩︎
Russell T McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). ↩︎
In a different context, Saba Mahmood reflects on critical theory’s reluctance to engage with “religion’s metaphysical and epistemological commitments.” See Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, Is critique secular?: blasphemy, injury, and free speech (New York: Fordham Univ Press, 2013): 91, and her piece is pointedly titled, “Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?” ↩︎
Again, Grewal*, The Sikhs*, is a major exception to this lacuna, though relatively unacknowledged in the studies critiqued in this paper. ↩︎
Russell T McCutcheon, ”‘It’s a Lie. There’s No Truth in It! It’s a Sin!’: On the Limits of the Humanistic Study of Religion and the Costs of Saving Others from Themselves,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74 (3) (2006): 744. ↩︎
Judge, “The Invisible Hand.” ↩︎
Going back to the issue of the claim that there was a “Sant” tradition in which Guru Nanak must be placed, McLeod uses the devices of academic power by asserting that those who disagree with him do so because of religious devotion – this assertion attempts to preempt the very idea that his claim can be subject to legitimate scholarly questioning: Wystan Hewat McLeod, Sikhism (New York: Penguin Books, 1997): 101. ↩︎

Sikhs As Subalterns – Voice, Inequality, And Power, Part 2 (Nirvikar Singh)

2024-01-26T17:09:44Z

The following is the second installment of a three part series. The first can be found here. It is published as a catalogued .PDF in article in the latest issue of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (22.2).

Another common scholarly position is that Nanak and his successors could not have created a separate religious tradition, because such a concept did not exist in Indic culture. Many scholars have made this claim for the Sikhs, and it can be supported by observations such as intermarriage among what are now called Sikhs and Hindus, lack of distinct life cycle rituals, and acceptance of a range of beliefs and practices that do not fit within a clear, commonly accepted definition of what it means to be a Sikh.

This is contrasted with more clear-cut creedal definitions for religious communities. This is a more complicated and deeper issue than the current scope allows,^[1] but the equation of “religion” with non-Indic or Christian definitions is at odds with much of the social science literature, which takes a more inclusive position on how the word is used.^[2] Furthermore, Islam had been present in South Asia since the 7th century CE, so it would have been well known as a model of spiritual beliefs and practices when Nanak lived, though the community of Islam encompasses its own heterogeneities.

Finally, 16th and 17th century Sikh writings in the GGS and by Gurdas Bhalla explicitly mention Hindus and Muslims in terms of their beliefs and practices, identifying Sikhs as being neither of these communities.^[3] If the principle is one of self-definition of identity based on spiritual beliefs and associated practices, then the nomenclature issue is arguably of second-order importance, possibly even leading to mischaracterization.

The role of the Khalsa in Sikhism also elicits a range of positions. Some scholars characterize it as one of many expressions of Sikh tradition, and view it primarily as a militaristic subset of the broader community.^[4] Others recognize its importance to the Sikh conception of community, even to the point of the Guru being embodied in the collective of the Khalsa, as the Guru Panth (panth meaning community) complementing the Guru Granth.^[5] Less metaphysically, many Sikhs view the Khalsa as representative of an ideal of service and sacrifice, associated particularly with the example of Guru Gobind Singh in his own life. At the same time, it is accepted that practice falls short of ideals, even in traditionally heroic contexts such as the 18th century.^[6]

Scholarly positions that put less weight on originality, distinctiveness and a common core in the first two centuries of Sikh history align with what has become the dominant perspective on Sikhism in the Western academy, that its contemporary beliefs and practices are fundamentally different from pre-colonial history. Harjot Oberoi’s narrative is the most well-known, arguing that there was no sense of a definite Sikh identity, prior to the colonial era.^[7] Instead, there were a range of traditions, beliefs and practices, all within a larger collection of such traditions that was separately distilled into Hinduism.^[8]

Sikhs who created a new, restricted Sikh identity were “aggressive usurpers,” displacing a more pluralistic, tolerant tradition. An alternative account of a rupture associated with colonialism and modernity is that of Arvind-Pal Mandair, who accepts the existence of a prior Sikh tradition, but also views it as fundamentally different, in terms of its philosophical underpinnings as well as its practices.^[9] He emphasizes trauma and shame as drivers of this colonial-era rupture in Sikh tradition. Richard Fox, on the other hand, claims that the Sikh community in its modern form is a product of the British, who nurtured the Khalsa identity and brought it back from near extinction.^[10]

What is common in all three narratives is that the colonial power causes a transformation of the community, either directly, or through the efforts of elites who are either aggressive or traumatized. An alternative perspective is more nuanced, recognizing the influence of earlier Sikh tradition and thought, as incorporated in the GGS, or the role of the Sikh masses, consisting chiefly of the peasantry, as well as the complicated negotiations in which representatives of different interests and ideologies within the Sikh community engaged, and how they sought compromises to balance inclusion and distinctiveness.^[11]

Much of the process of definition of the Sikhs in scholarship situated in the Western hemisphere begins in the 1980s, at a time of political turmoil in Punjab, and focuses on the Sikh diaspora, which is particularly numerous in Anglophone countries (Canada, Britain and the United States). Adopting the perspective that contemporary Sikh identity is almost wholly a modern construct, literally, “a gross transgression of Sikh doctrine,”^[12] Sikh identity in the diaspora is described as a recent phenomenon. For example, Brian Axel states, “Khalistan [the name of a projected independent Sikh nation] is an idea that…has become a generalized trope of social practice and representation central to the post-1984 (re) constitution of the Sikh diaspora.”^[13]

A similar approach leads to assertions that early Sikh migrants to California saw themselves as cosmopolitan Punjabis or even Hindus, rather than as followers of narrowly religious Sikh tradition.^[14] Other academic writing on the Sikh diaspora follows similar lines, though not exclusively so.^[15] Building sometimes on some early ethnographic studies,^[16] there has been a tendency to emphasize Punjabi rather than Sikh identity, with the latter being reduced to a manifestation of “identity politics.”^[17]

Voice, Inequality and Power

This section develops the central arguments of this paper, by analyzing the intellectual genealogy of the kinds of debates outlined above, uncovering the effects of inequality and power in that process. As a prelude, note that scholarship on the Sikhs – as that term is used in the modern academy – begins during the colonial period, and it has two strands. One strand is work by Sikhs, in modern Punjabi, which is part of the project of reform and “modernization.” Some of this effort is doctrinal in nature, explicating or interpreting the GGS, and because of its language and goals, it is internally directed.

It is intertwined, however, with attempts to construct a unified historical narrative that is empirically based. The second strand consists of historical narratives in English, written initially by colonial observers, and then by non-Sikh Indians who were part of the new colonial higher education system. Post-independence, the second strand also begins to include Sikh academics. As one might expect, even the second strand includes a variety of perspectives and interpretations, especially on questions of identity, and how sources are used and weighted.

One example of the second strand that gets elevated in status, to the point that it is projected as a driver of the Sikh engagement with colonialism, is the work of Ernst Trumpp.^[18] Trumpp was commissioned by the colonists to translate the GGS. He was a German Indologist, Sanskrit scholar, and sometime missionary. While he was charged with translation into English, he admitted later that his own knowledge of English was imperfect. He eventually produced a partial translation, accompanied by a summary history of the Sikh tradition. Trump himself was a latecomer to an established tradition, one which has subsequently been labeled “Orientalism.”^[19]

In the 19th century, German Indologists “discovered” the sacred classical traditions of India, and formalized these as Hinduism, recognizing the enormous diversity of practice as well as the evolution of beliefs over time, but nevertheless creating a category that could be viewed in more Western terms. When they came to the Sikhs, as was the case for Trumpp, their reference point was this older Hindu, Sanskritic tradition, as defined by the Indologists, but also by Hindu scholars. The use of Hindu terms and mythological metaphors in the GGS made it easy to take the position that the Sikh tradition was an inconsequential and inferior gloss on classical Hinduism, which Trumpp stated in blunt and uncomplimentary language.

Members of a new Sikh intelligentsia tried to respond to Trumpp’s work, because of its implications for how the community would be treated by the colonial political and legal system. They encouraged and supported the work of Max Arthur Macauliffe, who collaborated with members of the community to produce an alternative narrative, which also consisted of a partial translation of the GGS, combined with a historical account of the community.^[20] While some Sikhs have seen this as a reclamation of the truth about the community, the perspective of scholars that currently dominates the Western academy frames this dialectic as one of response to shame and trauma, either through defense or aggression,^[21] while Fox sees the material incentives to Sikhs provided by the British as an essential part of these developments.^[22] All of these perspectives tend to deny the mass of the community any real agency, reducing them to objects of elite manipulation. A more nuanced position has been somewhat lost in this popular framing.

Before considering the specifics of history again, one has to trace the intellectual development of the two strands of scholarship identified above. Essentially, while scholarly writing in Punjabi continued, it has been swamped by writing in English. This new scholarship has claimed to offer two kinds of improvement. First, it has emphasized a return to sources, and a more critical use of these sources, in terms of not taking them at face value. The exemplar of this claim is McLeod in his re-examination of traditional stories of the life of Guru Nanak (janamsakhis), pointing out lack of reliable or consistent evidence for almost all of them.^[23] Much of this effort has gone into challenging the modern reformist position that Sikh tradition has been well-defined and continuous. As Oberoi states, this effort is meant to parallel a much larger project that offered a revisionist account of Hinduism.^[24]

A second intellectual current that is prominent in newer scholarship on the Sikhs is an acknowledgement of different subjectivities and interpretations, so that there is not necessarily a final, unquestionable narrative. Of course, this is a central intellectual feature of scholarship in a range of disciplines and topics of inquiry. In the case of scholarship on the Sikhs, this has led to greater attention to groups that are downgraded or ignored in the dominant reformist narrative, including various sects, challengers to what became the main line of development of the Sikh community, members of erstwhile outcaste groups, and so on.

A greater awareness of issues of gender and sexuality, social inequalities, and the validity of normative positions has also come from this approach. Much of this work has complemented the first kind of development: for example, in challenging an idealized normative account of the role of women in Sikh tradition by reconsidering historical evidence or documenting contemporary practices.^[25]

A significant aspect of the newer scholarship on the Sikh tradition is in how it brings theory to historical narratives. For example, Fox might easily be considered to have an Orientalist approach. He repeatedly plays off the literal translation of “Singh” as “lion,” with chapter and section titles such as “Singh Nature and Habitat,” “British Methods of Obedience Training,” and “An Endangered Species.”^[26] But he also quotes or appeals to Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Foucault, Touraine and Williams.^[27] This is with the goal of critiquing the “standard anthropological treatment of culture and cultural patterns.” Sikhs are innocent bystanders in this project. The teachings of the Sikh Gurus receive one page in Fox, the 18th century history of the Khalsa does not get a mention, and the later Singhs (effectively the Khalsa) are described airily as “one segment of the great arc of Sikh potential.”^[28]

Oberoi provides a different causal story for the Sikh transformation in the colonial period, but a similar theoretical basis. He uses Foucalt’s concept of an episteme: “the totality of relations that can be discovered for a given period.”^[29] Some generic discussion of these ideas is followed by raising the problem of what can explain the shift from one episteme to the next. Here, Oberoi appeals to Bourdieu. By contrast to Fox, who states that Bourdieu cannot explain historical change, Oberoi interprets the “unceasing intervention of human practices” as the drivers of change.^[30]

However, Bourdieu is not quite adequate for this explanation, and Oberoi turns to the work of Sherry Ortner, and her framework of three modes of human action: routine activity, intentional action and praxis.^[31] The ensuing discussion of praxis by Oberoi is vague, even though it is made into the driver of changes in epistemes. Bourdieu, Foucault and praxis all then disappear from the rest of the narrative, until the ending assertions that the reconstituted Khalsa episteme of the early 20th century represented an epistemic shift or rupture with the past.

In another example of appeals to theory, Karen Leonard uses the theoretical binary of “cosmopolitans” versus “transnationals” to characterize the evolution of the Sikh community in California.^[32] In doing so, she compares immigrant Sikh men who married immigrant Mexican women before the Second World War, with Sikh men who married Sikh women from Punjab once immigration policies were changed in 1965. The general normative connotation of “cosmopolitan” is problematic in this context, as is the manner of translation from the original work of Stuart Hall and Pnina Werbner.^[33]

But the lack of accounting for changing societal circumstances and constraints itself brings the analysis into question. Indeed, Leonard’s initial framing of the temporally earlier case as “making ethnic choices,” and as an example of cosmopolitanism and the unimportance of Sikh religious identity, conflicts with her own examples, such as the Sikh who “changed his name from Singh to Ram because, having taken off the turban and beard, he felt he was no longer a Sikh and did not want to dishonor the Sikh religion.”^[34]

Oberoi’s historical narrative is also subject to the criticism of lacking an empirical anchor. For example, Jagtar Grewal, in assessing the pluralistic Sanatan Sikh category that Oberoi uses as a foil to the aggressive reformers, concludes, “His [Oberoi’s] hypothesis of Sanatan Sikhism in the early nineteenth century appears to be vague and vacuous.”^[35] N.-G. K. Singh, Grewal, and Murphy are among those who offer detailed critiques of Oberoi’s analysis based on features of Sikh history.^[36] These critiques admit the reality of diversity of views, and disagreements within the community.

But they place the colonial period in the context of a longer arc of history, one that is reasonably well-documented. For example, attempts to define boundaries, or to institute reforms designed to bring practices closer to what the reformers viewed as the message of the Sikh Gurus, go back to the late 17th century,^[37] and the early 19th century,^[38] before the colonial period in Punjab. Murphy appreciates Oberoi’s attempt to delineate “the diverse religious worlds of early nineteenth century Punjab,” but points out that his “tying of ‘Sanatan Sikhism’ and folk traditions in opposition to the Khalsa episteme” has a shaky empirical basis. She details how Oberoi’s construction does not match the actual historical circumstances, instead enacting nostalgia for a non-existent “proto-multiculturalism.”^[39]

Continuing with the theme of empirical foundations, what is noteworthy about the development of scholarship on the Sikhs in the last few decades is that use of primary sources has been relatively light. For example, Leonard relies entirely on Oberoi for her characterization of Punjab in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.^[40] Even Barrier relies primarily on English language sources,^[41] and McLeod, while a prolific analyst of early Sikh sources, is not always completely accurate or reliable.^[42] For many scholars of the Sikhs, lack of knowledge of modern Punjabi, let alone Persian or the language forms used in the GGS, constitutes a barrier to accessing aspects of the contemporary historical record, except if a translation is available. Language is not a determinative factor, and information is not automatically authentic even if the source is read in its original language, but this issue adds a layer of complication to scholarship in the field.

Footnotes

[italics are mine]

Analyses of the applicability of the term “religion” include Talal Asad, Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: JHU Press, 1993); Mark Taylor, “Refiguring Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 77 (1) (2009): 105–119; Gil Anidjar, “The idea of an anthropology of Christianity,” Interventions 11, no. 3 (2009): 367-393; and Gil Anidjar, “Christianity, Christianities, Christian,”Journal of Religious and Political Practice 1, no. 1 (2015): 39-46. ↩︎
For a comprehensive overview of this approach, see Ara Norenzayan, Azim F. Shariff, Will M. Gervais, Aiyana K. Willard, Rita A. McNamara, Edward Slingerland and Joseph Henrich. The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e1, (2016): 1-65 ↩︎
Rahuldeep Singh Gill, “The Works of Bhai Gurdas,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 147-158. ↩︎
For example, see Pashaura Singh, “Re-imagining Sikhi (‘Sikhness’) in the Twenty-First Century: Toward a Paradigm Shift in Sikh Studies,” in, Re-imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. Neufeldt, Pashaura Singh and Michael Hawley, eds. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill ,2013): 27-48; and Susan E. Prill, “Sikhi Through Internet, Films, and Videos,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 471-481. ↩︎
For example, see Louis E. Fenech, “The Khalsa and the Rahit,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 240-249 ↩︎
Dhavan*, When Sparrows Became Hawks*. ↩︎
Harjot S Oberoi,.The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). ↩︎
However, as noted, Hindu leaders such as Gandhi never accepted this separateness. ↩︎
Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). For example, he states (p. 32), “neither Sikh experience nor the broader Indic culture from which it is derived can claim to possess a word for “religion” as signifying either a mystical or theological core or a unified faith community.” ↩︎
Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). ↩︎
These three perspectives are treated, respectively in Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, “Review of The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition by Harjot Oberoi,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 55 (3) (1996): 760-762; Mohinder Singh, The Akali Movement (Delhi: The Macmillan Company of India, 1978); and N. Gerald Barrier, “Competing visions of Sikh religion and politics: The chief Khalsa Diwan and the Panch Khalsa Diwan, 1902–1928,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (2000): 33-62. ↩︎
Oberoi, The Construction, p. 323. ↩︎
Brian Keith Axel, The nation’s tortured body: Violence, representation, and the formation of a Sikh “diaspora” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020). ↩︎
Karen Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); and Leonard, “Transnationalism, Diaspora, Translation: Comparing Punjabis and Hyderabadis Abroad,” Sikh Formations, 3 (1) (2007): 51-66. ↩︎
For example, N. Gerald Barrier and Verne A. Dusenbery, The Sikh diaspora: Migration and the experience beyond Punjab (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1989). ↩︎
For example, Arthur W. Helweg, “Punjab Farmers: Twenty Years in England,” India International Centre Quarterly, 5 (1) (1978): 14-22. ↩︎
For example, Sunit Singh, “On the Politics of the Sikh Diaspora,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 14 (1) (2005): 157-177. ↩︎
Ernst Trumpp, The Adi Granth, or The Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs, Translated from the Original Gurmukhi, with Introductory Essays (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1877), available at https://archive.org/details/cu31924023913217. ↩︎
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). ↩︎
Max Arthur Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909) For a summary of the relationship of the Sikh community and leadership to Macauliffe and his work, see, Harbans Singh, “Max Arthur Macauliffe,” Encyclopedia of Sikhism, Volume 3 (Patiala: Punjabi University, 1998), 1-4. ↩︎
Oberoi, The Construction; Mandair, Religion and the Specter. ↩︎
Fox, The Lions. ↩︎
McLeod, Guru Nanak. ↩︎
Oberoi, The Construction. One example of the argument for Hinduism is Richard E. King, Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and “The Mystic East” (London: Routledge, 1999). ↩︎
Doris Jakobsh, Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); and Jakobsh, ed., Sikhism and Women: History, Texts and Experience (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010). ↩︎
Fox, The Lions. ↩︎
In particular, he relies on Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York, Pantheon Books, 1980); Alain Touraine, The Self Production of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); and Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977). ↩︎
Fox, The Lions, p. 8. ↩︎
Oberoi, The Construction, 28, quoting Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Pantheon Books, 1972), 191. ↩︎
Oberoi, The Construction, 28. ↩︎
Sherry Ortner, High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). ↩︎
Leonard, “Transnationalism.” ↩︎
Stuart Hall, “Politics of Identity,” in Culture, Identity, Politics: Ethnic Minorities in Britain, Terence Ranger, Yunus Samad, and Ossie Stuart, eds. (Brookfield, VT: Avebury, 1996): 131–32; and Pnina Werbner, “Global Pathways, Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds,” Social Anthropology, 7 (1) (1999): 17-35. ↩︎
Leonard, Making, 127. ↩︎
Jagtar Singh Grewal, Historical Perspectives on Sikh Identity (Patiala: Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, 1997): 29. As Anne Murphy explains, the term ‘Sanatan’ is anachronistic and inappropriate for the early 19th century: see Anne Murphy, “Allegories of difference and identity: Reflections on religious boundaries and ‘popular’ religion,” International Journal of Punjab Studies. 7 (1) (2000): 53-71. The term was introduced into the discourse of Hindu reformers and their conservative opponents in the Punjab of the 1870s, and only adopted by a section of Sikhs a decade later: John Zavos, “Patterns of Organisation in Turn of the Century Hinduism: an examination with reference to Punjab,” International Journal of Punjab Studies. 7 (1) (2000): 29-52. ↩︎
Singh, “Review;” Grewal, Historical; Murphy, “Allegories.” ↩︎
Naindeep Singh Chann, Rahit Literature, in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism, Volume I: History, Literature, Society, Beyond Punjab, Knut A. Jacobsen, Gurinder Singh Mann, Kristina Myrvold and Eleanor Nesbitt, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2017): 183-191. ↩︎
Man Singh Nirankari, “The Nirankaris,” The Punjab Past and Present, Vol. 7 (1973): 1-11; Bhagat Singh, “The Kuka Movement,” The Punjab Past and Present, Vol. 7 (1973): 153-161. ↩︎
Murphy, “Allegories,” 59, 60. The import of these criticisms is not that theory is harmful or unimportant. Indeed, theory can be used very effectively in analyzing the case of the Sikhs. In fact, it is Murphy’s theoretical analysis, combined with a more careful reading of the historical record, that reveals the problems with Oberoi’s narrative. In another example, Rajbir Judge offers a theoretical analysis of Sikh tradition as a mode of continual resistance that is not bounded by the colonial encounter: Rajbir Singh Judge, “There is No Colonial Relationship: Antagonism, Sikhism, and South Asian Studies,” History and Theory 57 (2) (2018): 195-217. In another theoretically rich account, he explores how the “invisible hand of the Indic” lurks in different ways in accounts of religious boundaries and authenticities in South Asia, but also in supposedly secular democratic formulations: Rajbir Singh Judge, “The Invisible Hand of the Indic,” Cultural Critique, 110 (Winter) (2021): 75-109. The current analysis is more elementary. Indeed, its message might be conveyed by the words of Sherlock Holmes, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” See Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Strand Magazine, July, London (1891). ↩︎
Leonard, Making; Leonard, “Transnationalism.” ↩︎
Barrier, “Competing.” ↩︎
For illustrative examples, see Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, “Poetic Rhythm and Historical Account: The Portrait of Guru Nanak Through Bhai Gurdas,” International Journal of Punjab Studies, 5 (2) (1998): 127-158; and Nirvikar Singh, “The Challenge of Translating the Guru Granth Sahib: An Illustration and Preliminary Reflections,” Sikh Research Journal, 3 (1) (2018): 1-22. ↩︎

Sikhs As Subalterns – Voice, Inequality, and Power, Part 1 (Nirvikar Singh)

2024-01-10T16:51:29Z

The following article is the first of three installments. It is published as a catalogued .PDF in article in the latest issue of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (22.2).

Introduction

Beyond this broad characterization, the concept can be difficult to define sharply. Gyan Prakash, in explicating the field of Subaltern Studies, states that the term ‘subaltern’ “refers to subordination in terms of class, caste, gender, race, language, and culture and was used to signify the centrality of dominant/dominated relationships in history.”^[2] Partha Chatterjee points out that Gramsci used the term as a substitute for “proletariat,” to avoid censorship, but that this expanded the scope of its application to peasant-dominated societal contexts, laying the foundations for Guha’s launch of Subaltern Studies.^[3]

On the other hand, Peter Thomas returns to Gramsci’s notebooks to extract multiple concepts of the subaltern that are more general than those of the marginalized or the oppressed, extending to the ordinary citizen within the modern state.^[4] Nevertheless, El Habib Louai, retracing the terminology through the work of Gramsci, Guha and Gayatri Spivak, suggests that, “Throughout its history since the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of the subaltern remains one of the most slippery and difficult to define.”^[5]

Spivak explores how social markers other than class can delineate subaltern status. She focuses particularly on gender, but religion, race and sexual orientation can also be part of the bounding conditions, and this intersectionality is arguably in Gramsci as well.^[9] Spivak also criticizes the role of academics, even well-meaning ones, in maintaining power structures and denying subalterns a true voice: an idea that will be one of the foci of this paper.^[10]

Subaltern Studies is itself situated within post-colonial studies. Though the concept of the subaltern may be disputed or malleable, it occupies an important place in the broader discourse of postcolonialism. Indeed, Vivek Chibber, in his critique of postcolonial theory, focuses on Subaltern Studies, which he characterizes as, “The most illustrious representative of postcolonial studies in the scholarship on the Global South.”^[11] Chibber’s critique revolves around capital and capitalism, the extent to which Subaltern Studies succeeds in providing useful insights into the evolution of capitalism outside the West, and whether it accurately captures the role of subaltern groups in this evolution.^[12]

The outline of the argument is as follows. Sikhism began as a religious formation in the 16th century CE, appealing to a broad cross-section of South Asian society within its home region of Punjab. Many of its doctrines and characteristics challenged subalternity, though with limitations. The origin and evolution of the Sikh community took place within the context of the complete arcs of two successive imperial powers – the Mughals and the British. The specifics of that process of evolution included two crucial markers, those of religion and language, where inequalities of power tended to perpetuate aspects of subalternity, including the scope for self-expression. Ironically, the study of the Sikhs in Western academia has perpetuated and expanded this subaltern status, in ways that the paper describes.^[13]

Key features of this latter process have been a foreshortened account of Sikh history and tradition, and a denial of agency to the Sikh community in these academic accounts, so that the subaltern (the community) effectively is not allowed to speak. The foregoing summary uses ‘Sikh’ in a unitary sense, but, like any other tradition or grouping, there is considerable diversity, and that will be addressed as the arguments are laid out.

Rather, it is an excavation in the archeology of knowledge production, one that is informed by the perspective of subalternity to highlight inequalities in the reception of certain voices. The final section concludes by summarizing its intended contribution, that of using the case of the Sikhs to highlight aspects of subalternity that are often buried, and using the 2020-21 farmer protests in India to illustrate the weakness of some recent theorizing.

Sikhs: A Summary^[14]

The Sikh tradition begins with Nanak (1469-1539 CE), considered a Guru, or spiritual teacher, by his followers. To what extent his intention was to establish a new religious community, whether the term “religion” is appropriate, and how much his message was a reworking of those of others who came before him, are all matters of scholarly debate. Even within the Sikh community, there are varied opinions on these matters. However, it is reasonably well established that he traveled widely during his lifetime, seeking to spread his message, before settling down in a specific place in the Punjab region of South Asia, where he was surrounded by followers. These followers were also in other places where Nanak had previously traveled.

Nanak composed verses that were meant to be sung to musical measures (raags), which consist of praise of the Divine, reflections on the nature of the Divine, and moral and ethical guidance. In his verses, he criticized unjust uses of power by government officials and rulers, as well as the insincere practices of figures of religious significance or authority, including Brahmin priests (pandits), Muslim clerics, and members of yogic orders (siddhs). He advocated for personal internal transformation, through “truthful living,” which included reflection on the Divine, charity, and purity of thought and action. “Sikh” means student, learner or disciple, and it is used by Nanak in this sense in his writings for his followers. Another term used in this sense is gurmukh, literally someone who faces the Guru, and the terms are used together, or combined (gursikh) in ways that convey the general normative meaning of being a “Sikh.”

Nanak had nine human successors, each of whom used the signature “Nanak” in their own writings. Contemporary verses by bards in the Sikh community indicate that this was seen as a continuity of spirit or “light,” the same divine inspiration that was in Nanak. In most cases, the successor was chosen by the incumbent Guru, unless the latter met an unexpected end. In two cases, the fifth and ninth Gurus, this was at the hands of Mughal authorities, in the first case after some form of physical torture, in the second, in a public execution by beheading.

A strong Sikh tradition holds that the tenth and last human Guru, Gobind Singh, appointed the canonical text as the Guru of the Sikhs, and it firmly holds that status in the community, being the center of worship in multiple forms (recitation, singing, listening, interpretation, discussion, and ceremonial actions). This tradition is documented in contemporaneous sources of that time, the early 18th century. The text is now known as the Guru Granth Sahib (GGS), the last term being meant to convey respect. Often, additional terms of respect are added.

The text was originally authenticated by Guru Arjan, and immediately began to be copied and distributed to Sikh congregations wherever they were in South Asia. The GGS is written in a regional script, systematized by the Sikh Gurus, and now always known as Gurmukhi, because of its association with the text. The languages in the GGS are a range of regional vernaculars of the period.^[15]

According to the collected verses in the GGS, the goal of a Sikh was to make a connection to the Divine, by becoming free of a sense of separation from the Divine and Divine creation. This had to be achieved while engaging in worldly responsibilities, and not through asceticism or renunciation. Therefore, honest work and material success are acceptable, but within boundaries of fairness, justice and equity, and without allowing material success to engender pride or arrogance. Actively sharing the fruits of material success is important.

As the Sikh community evolved and expanded, the message of the Gurus attracted a wide range of followers, including erstwhile outcastes, and lower castes such as artisans and peasants. A major numerical component of the growth of the Sikh community came from the Jats, a range of clans that had migrated into the region in earlier centuries. They were originally pastoralists who were, in this period, adopting agriculture and local religious identities. Evidence from early 17th century writings, of a prominent Sikh (Gurdas Bhalla) suggests that some Jats were part of the Sikh community by this time, and they constitute a majority in the contemporary community.

They were to abandon caste ties by adopting the common surname “Singh,” – as did Gobind himself at this time – and adhere to a code of conduct and dress, including carrying a dagger or sword (kirpan), and keeping uncut hair (kesh), covered with a turban. These visible markers of identity have been associated with an ideal of fearlessness, and willingness to stand up against any form of oppression. A metaphor that came to be commonly used was that the creation of the Khalsa would turn sparrows into hawks.^[16]

The significance and position of the Khalsa within the Sikh community has been a matter of continual debate from its inception, including its meaning, status, precise markers, and so on. Scholars of the Sikhs have participated in these debates, in ways that, as will be discussed later in the paper, are often at the center of issues of subalternity. In contemporary India, about three quarters of Sikhs keep uncut hair, but only 20-30 percent of this number have undergone the formal Khalsa initiation.^[17]

The latter half of the 19th century saw the Sikh community becoming entangled in the British colonial project, and they followed Hindus and Muslims in negotiating this new situation, in terms of legal and political structures, language, jobs and new technologies. All three communities worked to define themselves to fit the colonial legal and political framework, as well as pursuing educational and other projects to position their members more favorably. For Sikhs, as a relatively small community with a short history and no national level presence, defining themselves as distinct was particularly important. This need was heightened by claims of inclusion in a larger “Hindu” tent,^[18] and explicit efforts at conversion.^[19]

This period is, of course, the focus of post-colonial studies, and Sikhs are variously viewed as having reformed their tradition, or as having reinvented it. The Sikhs who led this project are viewed as inspirational heroes, aggressive usurpers of tradition, or victims of the trauma of colonization. In all these cases, there is a strong focus on leadership and elites of various kinds, very much the opposite of an approach that would be consistent with the Subaltern Studies project.

An important feature in historical accounts of the late 19th and 20th centuries, as British colonization was negotiated, then opposed and rejected by the indigenous populations, is the minority status of the Sikh community, even within the region of Punjab, where they were, and remain, concentrated. When Punjab was partitioned as the British left in 1947, being a numerical minority almost everywhere created a situation of extreme precarity. Sikhs have continued to struggle with minority status, even after the creation through division of a Sikh-majority state of Punjab in 1966, and conflicts of various forms with the national government have been persistent, including a period of violence and repression in the 1980s and 1990s. Much of the growth of scholarship on the Sikhs has occurred during this period and its aftermath, and it has arguably shaped that scholarship, as well as its perception by members of the Sikh community.

Defining the Sikhs

Many of the issues relating to the definition of the Sikh community revolve around issues of identity and origins. One complication is that the community is heterogeneous, and there are different perspectives from within the community. However, it is not clear that these features are any different or more extreme than for other religious traditions. This assessment, and possible special features of analysis of the Sikhs are taken up in the next section.

However, the category of Sants was created in the 19th century, whereas the concept of bhaktas/bhagats existed at the time of the early evolution of the Sikh tradition.^[21] Furthermore, Nanak does not mention or otherwise acknowledge the bhagats: their introduction into the Sikh tradition comes with Nanak’s second successor, and the structure of the GGS, as well as specific verses, indicate their conceptual subordination to the line of Nanak and his successors. None of Nanak’s successors label the bhagats as Sants. Claims that the language of the GGS was that of the “Sants” turn out to be circular.^[22]

Introduction

The term “subaltern” comes from the work of Antonio Gramsci, and was used by South Asian historian Ranajit Guha to conceptualize “Subaltern Studies,” encapsulating “history from below,” history as shaped by the non-elites, the subalterns.^[1:1] Beyond this broad characterization, the concept can be difficult to define sharply. Gyan Prakash, in explicating the field of Subaltern Studies, states that the term ‘subaltern’ “refers to subordination in terms of class, caste, gender, race, language, and culture and was used to signify the centrality of dominant/dominated relationships in history.”^[2:1] Partha Chatterjee points out that Gramsci used the term as a substitute for “proletariat,” to avoid censorship, but that this expanded the scope of its application to peasant-dominated societal contexts, laying the foundations for Guha’s launch of Subaltern Studies.^[3:1] On the other hand, Peter Thomas returns to Gramsci’s notebooks to extract multiple concepts of the subaltern that are more general than those of the marginalized or the oppressed, extending to the ordinary citizen within the modern state.^[4:1] Nevertheless, El Habib Louai, retracing the terminology through the work of Gramsci, Guha and Gayatri Spivak, suggests that, “Throughout its history since the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of the subaltern remains one of the most slippery and difficult to define.”^[5:1]

Spivak herself cautions against an overly broad use of the term, that “subaltern” is not “just a classy word for oppressed,” but that “everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern – a space of difference.”^[6:1] But Chatterjee credits Spivak with giving the concept of “subalternity” a “new inflection,” taking it beyond class to questions of gender, race and so on.^[7:1] In fact, Spivak asks, “Can the subaltern speak?” querying the possibility of using the hegemonic discourse, and answering in the negative.^[8:1] Spivak explores how social markers other than class can delineate subaltern status. She focuses particularly on gender, but religion, race and sexual orientation can also be part of the bounding conditions, and this intersectionality is arguably in Gramsci as well.^[9:1] Spivak also criticizes the role of academics, even well-meaning ones, in maintaining power structures and denying subalterns a true voice: an idea that will be one of the foci of this paper.^[10:1]

Subaltern Studies is itself situated within post-colonial studies. Though the concept of the subaltern may be disputed or malleable, it occupies an important place in the broader discourse of postcolonialism. Indeed, Vivek Chibber, in his critique of postcolonial theory, focuses on Subaltern Studies, which he characterizes as, “The most illustrious representative of postcolonial studies in the scholarship on the Global South.”^[11:1] Chibber’s critique revolves around capital and capitalism, the extent to which Subaltern Studies succeeds in providing useful insights into the evolution of capitalism outside the West, and whether it accurately captures the role of subaltern groups in this evolution.^[12:1]

This paper engages with the idea of the subaltern, and with post-colonial theoretical framings, but in a different and novel manner. We argue that the idea of the subaltern in useful for understanding the Sikh community and its evolution in its original South Asian context, but also for the manner of its representation in Western academia. In fact, the subalternization of Sikhs in Western academia is significantly influenced by their subaltern history in a materialist sense. The outline of the argument is as follows. Sikhism began as a religious formation in the 16th century CE, appealing to a broad cross-section of South Asian society within its home region of Punjab. Many of its doctrines and characteristics challenged subalternity, though with limitations. The origin and evolution of the Sikh community took place within the context of the complete arcs of two successive imperial powers – the Mughals and the British. The specifics of that process of evolution included two crucial markers, those of religion and language, where inequalities of power tended to perpetuate aspects of subalternity, including the scope for self-expression. Ironically, the study of the Sikhs in Western academia has perpetuated and expanded this subaltern status, in ways that the paper describes.^[13:1] Key features of this latter process have been a foreshortened account of Sikh history and tradition, and a denial of agency to the Sikh community in these academic accounts, so that the subaltern (the community) effectively is not allowed to speak. The foregoing summary uses ‘Sikh’ in a unitary sense, but, like any other tradition or grouping, there is considerable diversity, and that will be addressed as the arguments are laid out.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section provides a bare bones account of the evolution of the Sikh community, trying not to prejudge issues that have been subject to debate, but attempting to justify claims of subaltern status. These debates are discussed in the third section of the paper, where an attempt is made to evaluate different positions, albeit briefly. Section four then discusses the manner in which different scholarly positions are weighted and reproduced, and the reasons for this situation. This is where – we claim – the problem of subalternity arises in a surprising and ironic manner, within postcolonial theorizing. At the same time, the paper is not a defense of tradition or of religious belief. Rather, it is an excavation in the archeology of knowledge production, one that is informed by the perspective of subalternity to highlight inequalities in the reception of certain voices. The final section concludes by summarizing its intended contribution, that of using the case of the Sikhs to highlight aspects of subalternity that are often buried, and using the 2020-21 farmer protests in India to illustrate the weakness of some recent theorizing.

Sikhs: A Summary^[14:1]

Before his demise (1606 CE), the fifth Guru, Arjan, compiled the writings of the first five Gurus into a single canonical text. Later in the 17th century, the verses of the ninth Guru were added to this compilation. This text also included verses of over a dozen others: some who are now associated with what is termed the bhakti movement, bards within the Guru’s darbar (court), and one Sufi Muslim spiritual leader. The Sikh Gurus themselves used the appellation bhagat (the Punjabi equivalent to bhakta) for a defined set of individuals, indicating that this grouping was understood as such in the 16thcentury. A strong Sikh tradition holds that the tenth and last human Guru, Gobind Singh, appointed the canonical text as the Guru of the Sikhs, and it firmly holds that status in the community, being the center of worship in multiple forms (recitation, singing, listening, interpretation, discussion, and ceremonial actions). This tradition is documented in contemporaneous sources of that time, the early 18th century. The text is now known as the Guru Granth Sahib (GGS), the last term being meant to convey respect. Often, additional terms of respect are added. The text was originally authenticated by Guru Arjan, and immediately began to be copied and distributed to Sikh congregations wherever they were in South Asia. The GGS is written in a regional script, systematized by the Sikh Gurus, and now always known as Gurmukhi, because of its association with the text. The languages in the GGS are a range of regional vernaculars of the period.^[15:1]

In their writings, Guru Nanak and his successors viewed caste markers and associated social and spiritual hierarchies as irrelevant for, and even inimical to, spiritual advancement. This was aligned with the caste status (including outcastes) and writings of several of the bhagats whose work is included in the GGS, although the Gurus themselves were all from a merchant caste. According to the collected verses in the GGS, the goal of a Sikh was to make a connection to the Divine, by becoming free of a sense of separation from the Divine and Divine creation. This had to be achieved while engaging in worldly responsibilities, and not through asceticism or renunciation. Therefore, honest work and material success are acceptable, but within boundaries of fairness, justice and equity, and without allowing material success to engender pride or arrogance. Actively sharing the fruits of material success is important.

The century and a half after Arjan’s death was marked by intensified disputes over succession, doctrinal differences connected to those disputes, and a pattern of conflict and accommodation with successive Mughal emperors and their representatives. This pattern also included imperial attempts to control the succession to the mantle of Guru. A key event in the community’s evolution occurred at the end of the 17th century, when Gobind Singh created a new initiated order of Sikhs, the Khalsa. The Khalsa were to have direct allegiance to the Guru, without the intermediaries who had played an institutional role as the community had grown and spread. They were to abandon caste ties by adopting the common surname “Singh,” – as did Gobind himself at this time – and adhere to a code of conduct and dress, including carrying a dagger or sword (kirpan), and keeping uncut hair (kesh), covered with a turban. These visible markers of identity have been associated with an ideal of fearlessness, and willingness to stand up against any form of oppression. A metaphor that came to be commonly used was that the creation of the Khalsa would turn sparrows into hawks.^[16:1] The significance and position of the Khalsa within the Sikh community has been a matter of continual debate from its inception, including its meaning, status, precise markers, and so on. Scholars of the Sikhs have participated in these debates, in ways that, as will be discussed later in the paper, are often at the center of issues of subalternity. In contemporary India, about three quarters of Sikhs keep uncut hair, but only 20-30 percent of this number have undergone the formal Khalsa initiation.^[17:1]

As the 18th century progressed, the Khalsa became a force of resistance to the Mughal authorities in Punjab, as well as to invaders from the northwest, as the empire began to collapse. At first, a confederacy of small Khalsa-ruled principalities emerged, and by the end of the 18th century, most of these had been absorbed into a kingdom led by one of the Khalsa chiefs, Ranjit Singh. By this time, most of South Asia was already under the control of the East India Company, and they completed their conquest by military victories and annexation of Punjab in 1849 CE. The latter half of the 19th century saw the Sikh community becoming entangled in the British colonial project, and they followed Hindus and Muslims in negotiating this new situation, in terms of legal and political structures, language, jobs and new technologies. All three communities worked to define themselves to fit the colonial legal and political framework, as well as pursuing educational and other projects to position their members more favorably. For Sikhs, as a relatively small community with a short history and no national level presence, defining themselves as distinct was particularly important. This need was heightened by claims of inclusion in a larger “Hindu” tent,^[18:1] and explicit efforts at conversion.^[19:1]

Defining the Sikhs

A very basic issue is that of antecedents of the Sikh tradition, and Nanak’s message in particular. A common scholarly position is that Nanak can be placed within a so-called Sant tradition, consisting of nirguna bhaktas such as Kabir, Namdev and Ravidas, whose writings are included in the GGS, and who were chronologically prior to Nanak. The most vigorous proponent of this view is Hew McLeod, but it can be found initially in the work of Pitamber Barthwal. ^[20:1] However, the category of Sants was created in the 19th century, whereas the concept of bhaktas/bhagats existed at the time of the early evolution of the Sikh tradition.^[21:1] Furthermore, Nanak does not mention or otherwise acknowledge the bhagats: their introduction into the Sikh tradition comes with Nanak’s second successor, and the structure of the GGS, as well as specific verses, indicate their conceptual subordination to the line of Nanak and his successors. None of Nanak’s successors label the bhagats as Sants. Claims that the language of the GGS was that of the “Sants” turn out to be circular.^[22:1]

Footnotes

Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, Edited and translated by Lynn Lawner (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1973); Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India.” In Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian Society and History, Vol. VII, edited by Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 37-44. ↩︎ ↩︎
Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” American Historical Review, 99 (5) (1994): 1477. ↩︎ ↩︎
Partha Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies: A Conversation with Partha Chatterjee,” Interview by Richard McGrail, 2012, <https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/subaltern-studies-partha-chatterjee, accessed March 7, 2023. ↩︎ ↩︎
Peter D. Thomas, “Refiguring the Subaltern,” Political Theory, 46 (6), 2018: 861-884. ↩︎ ↩︎
El Habib Louai, “Retracing the concept of the subaltern from Gramsci to Spivak: Historical developments and new applications,” African Journal of History and Culture, 4 (1), 2012: 5. ↩︎ ↩︎
Gayatri Spivak, quoted in Leon de Kock, “Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South Africa,” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. 23 (3), 1992: 45. ↩︎ ↩︎
Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies.” ↩︎ ↩︎
Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988: 271-313. ↩︎ ↩︎
Green, Marcus E., “Race, class, and religion: Gramsci’s conception of subalternity,” in The Political Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B. R. Ambedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns, ed. Cosimo Zene (New York: Routledge, 2013): 116-28. ↩︎ ↩︎
Spivak (“Can the Subaltern Speak?,”280) somewhat strongly terms this phenomenon “epistemic violence.” ↩︎ ↩︎
Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (New York: Verso, 2013) 5. ↩︎ ↩︎
Chibber’s critique prompted spirited discussion and fierce debate, e.g., Partha Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies and “Capital,”” Economic and Political Weekly, 2013: 48, 37, 69-75.; Vivek Chibber, “Subaltern Studies Revisited: A Response to Partha Chatterjee,” https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/faculty/documents/SubalternStudies-Revisited.pdf, February 21, 2014, accessed March 7, 2023; Ho-fung Hung, George Steinmetz, Bruce Cumings, Michael Schwartz, William H. Sewell, Jr., David Pedersen, and Vivek Chibber, “Review Symposium on Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and The Specter of Capital,” Journal of World-Systems Research, 20 (2), 2016: 281-317.; and Rosie Warren, ed., The Debate on Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (New York: Verso, 2016). Much of the debate concerns very broad questions around the nature and evolution of capitalism, the relative roles of individuals and communities, and the extent of the universal vs. the specific in the analysis of societal change. Some of these issues are pertinent in the case of the Sikhs, and will be addressed at the appropriate points. A useful brief summary assessment of Chibber and the debates that followed is Alex Sager, “Review of Vivek Chibber: Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/7946_postcolonial-theory-and-the-specter-of-capital-review-by-alex-sager/#comments, October 2014, accessed March 7, 2023 . Spivak (“Can the Subaltern Speak?”) has her own critique of the Subaltern Studies group: for an elementary exposition of Spivak’s various arguments, see Graham K Riach., An Analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? (London: Macat International, 2017). A collection of assessments of the impact of Spivak’s ideas is in Rosalind Morris, ed., Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). ↩︎ ↩︎
There are several Sikh Studies endowed chairs in US universities, but they have arguably perpetuated the post-colonial foreshortening of Sikh history. The approach to the subaltern in different contexts of knowledge production has led to explorations in a variety of directions, such as the work of Seana McGovern, Education, Modern Development, and Indigenous Knowledge: An Analysis of Academic Knowledge Production, (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013); and Antonia Darder, “Decolonizing Interpretive Research: Subaltern Sensibilities and the Politics of Voice,” Qualitative Research Journal, 18 (2018): 94-104. ↩︎ ↩︎
Arguably, the most neutral account of the Sikhs and their history is Jagtar Singh Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), but many earlier histories are also available, offering a range of interpretations. The account in this section is based on evidence that is used by these historians, avoiding interpretational questions. Other recent historical summaries include Wystan Hewat McLeod, The Sikhs: History, Religion, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); and Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). ↩︎ ↩︎
Christoper Shackle, An Introduction to the Sacred Language of the Sikhs (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1983). ↩︎ ↩︎
Purnima Dhavan, When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699-1799 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). ↩︎ ↩︎
Pew Research Center. Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2021). ↩︎ ↩︎
Most prominently, Mohandas Gandhi wrote, as late as 1936, that “Today I will only say that to me Sikhism is a part of Hinduism.” He was opposing Bhimrao Ambedkar’s plan to lead his Mahar community of outcastes in converting to Sikhism. See Mohandas K. Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volumes 1-100 (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, 1956-94), Vol. 63, p. 267. ↩︎ ↩︎
Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976). ↩︎ ↩︎
See Wystan Hewat McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); and Pitamber D. Barthwal, The Nirguna School of Hindi Poetry, Banaras: Indian Book Shop, republished with minor changes as Traditions of Indian Mysticism: based upon Nirguna School of Hindi Poetry (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1936). ↩︎ ↩︎
On the origin of the “Sant” category, see Mark Juergensmeyer, “The Radhasoami Revival,” in Karine Schomer and W.H. McLeod, eds., The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India (Delhi: Berkeley Religious Studies Series and Motilal Banarsidass, 1987): 329-355 ↩︎ ↩︎
These arguments are detailed in Nirvikar Singh, “Guru Nanak and the Sants: A Reappraisal,” International Journal of Punjab Studies 8 (1) (2001): 1-34. ↩︎ ↩︎

The Re-Enchantment Of Bodies – The Transformative Power Of Charismatic Healings, Part 2 (Anna Magnasco)

2023-12-12T16:56:00Z

The following is the first of a two-part series. The first installment can be found here. It was originally published in issue 22.1 of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Studies.

The offer of the Pentecostal churches

The growing expansion of Pentecostalism belies any prediction of progressive secularization,^[1] and certainly shows that something significant keeps happening in the world of disenchantment. In fact, this phenomenon does not only attract the curiosity of scholars in the religious field: the Pentecostal movement also occupies a considerable place in the social and political sphere.^[2] Today, investigating the aspects of a society, implies running into Pentecostalism: the religious dimension of a phenomenon is intrinsically linked to political, social, and economic dynamics.^[3]

Pentecostalism presents itself as a movement with a significant transformative force, capable of reconfiguring the “religious geography”^[4] of the world by challenging traditional religious and political institutions.

The transnational and dynamic nature of the Pentecostal movement in constant growth in every part of the globe can be explored starting from one of its determining features: charismatic healing. According to Brown, divine healings are not only concerned with the improvement of physical problems; they play a crucial role in the “relief of social maladies”.^[5] It is no coincidence, in fact, that Pentecostal communities establish themselves precisely in those spaces where there are institutional gaps – eroded by neoliberal forces^[6] and dangerous geopolitical processes – which exacerbate social uncertainty. Here, Pentecostalism emerges as a religion “closer to the people”:^[7] compared to the major historical churches, the charismatic movements make wise use of the “media space”.^[8] Through technology and digital means of communication, Pentecostals spread “transportable messages”:^[9] web pages, messages via radio or WhatsApp, projections on local televisions are easy to understand and elaborate.

In this way, Pentecostal theology breaks through private space and is embraced into everyday life, ceasing to be an experience reserved for a few days of the week.

Secondly, the Pentecostal communities build ‘prayer fields’^[10] different from the traditional and austere “church-buildings”,^[11] where it is possible not only to ‘renew’ the relationship with God by taking part in the characteristic religious functions and rituals but also to share with an attentive group the emotions and sufferings that afflict everyday life. Pentecostal communities make the Temple of the Lord the public space to tell, testify, and get rid of pain, the traumatic past, and one’s fears, letting the group – led by the pastor – welcome them. Tankink, referring to the Born-Again Churches of Southwest Uganda, reports the ability of the churches to configure themselves as the only space where it is allowed to bear witness to the “unbearable pain connected with the war memories”.^[12] In a society where there is no space to remember the collective and personal traumas linked to a past of genocides – churches become those ‘safe’ places where it is possible to bear the heavy burden of the traumatic past: to draw closer to God and to the religious community it is therapeutic.

In addition to painful memories, in Pentecostal communities, there is space to share and express daily difficulties, such as work and sentimental failures^[13] or chronic pains with which one is forced to live, for which the family or institutions have no answers. What is staged through the service of charismatic healings is first of all an atmosphere of festive participation and warm solidarity, which begins at the entrance of the church – as Canevari reports in his ethnography at a Pentecostal church and charismatic Italian^[14] – where there is always someone smiling ready to welcome those who arrive.

Often joining Pentecostal communities means finding and building a network of material and spiritual help: it is not just a question of sharing “intensely emotional and collective experiences”^[15] such as ritual healings, but of finding true and proper friends: “Brothers and Sisters in the Lord”^[16] connected to one another and ready to support each other even in everyday life. The emotional support provided by the community during therapeutic practices is a determining element in our discourse: the group welcomes the wounded person and recognizes him or her as a bearer of value throughout the therapeutic process.

Therapeutic rituals and existential transformations

Pedron-Colombani speaks of charismatic communities as “places of regeneration”:^[17] here, we intend them in the sense of Csordas, i.e., as places of phenomenological regeneration of the self. Compared to the medical-scientific tradition, which – as we have seen in the first part of the text – intends health as the simple restoration of previous biological functions, following an alteration of an organic malfunction, the Pentecostal therapeutic system goes further. By offering the service of ritual healing, the intent is not so much the relief of disease symptoms through the intercession of divine power and love, but to guide one towards the attainment of spiritual maturity – ‘renewed’. Healing and spiritual growth are therefore interconnected: there is no healing without spiritual redemption, and vice versa spiritual growth contributes to the maintenance of good health.^[18]

At the basis of ritual healing systems is the ‘holistic’ and tripartite conception of the human being, surpassing the Cartesian dualism of the biomedical paradigm. According to charismatic Pentecostals, the body is never separated from the spirit and from the processes of the mind: people are made up of the three interconnected dimensions. Consequently, the disease is never ‘only’ physical, but related to inner or spiritual problems, which prevent the spiritual maturation of believers.

In his ethnographies of the Catholic charismatic movements (CCR) in New England, Thomas Csordas reports numerous testimonies of the experience of illness, recounted here by a healing minister:

[There is one] person who walked, and is still walking, with a weight problem (my emphasis), but in the midst of that she had a real need for Deliverance …. Then finally she came to me and said, “I think I need Healing of Memories and Deliverance regarding food”. She had really fought the battle of food intake. As we began to pray it was pretty obvious that there was a real cluster there, of Gluttony, Lust (meaning lust for food, you know), there was Insecurity – well, the person felt insecure about herself, so she would eat to make herself more secure – the whole cycle of being overweight was there. But in addition to that there was a cluster of six or seven demons (my emphasis) that were feeding onto that… [including] Guilt….^[19]

In this description, the etiology of what conventional medicine would term ‘accumulation excessive body fat’ seeks the incarnate presence of demons, such as “Gluttony” or “Insecurity”. Milsev (2018)^[20] develops the same points: illness is a wound of life, including traumas, disappointments and pain. Consequently, the healing process will also have to contemplate a spiritual and inner treatment, as in the case cited, where the healing minister suggests the practice of deliverance. In fact, although a type of healing corresponds to each part of the person – physical, inner or delivering from spirits – most Charismatic healers combine the different practices: the human being is made up of three parts in constant “pneumopsychosomatic” interaction.^[21] [^91]

Here is another case:

Father P. asked that five people who had had pain or trouble (my emphasis) walking come forth for healing. A chair was placed in front of the altar [the service is in a church]. At this time, he beckoned me [the research assistant] to join him and his healing team, as four women came up to the altar [for prayer]. … Fr. P asked the congregation to pray for each person and to lift their arms in prayer toward the supplicant as the team performed its task. … The male healer prayed out loud in English. Fr. P asked the supplicant in a very low voice several rapid questions about troubles in primary relationships, particularly about husbands and fathers, kneeling before the person with his hands placed firmly on her (my emphasis) usually on the upper legs. Once the problem relationship (my emphasis) was identified, he firmly grasped the supplicant’s feet (shoes still on) and made a firm, determined tugging motion on the supplicant’s outstretched legs. … During prayer for one of the four supplicants, Fr. P asked the woman team member for a discernment (my emphasis), which she rapidly gave, and he agreed with her assessment.^[22]

Here we observe how the conception of the disease does not necessarily coincide with ‘biological’, but may be the result of an inner problem – e.g. problematic relationships in the family – or due to the presence of evil spirits, or even all things together. Furthermore, healing is built on a holistic process, aimed at treating every part of the person – and not just the empirically evident symptoms. Curing suffering means freeing the person from evil and welcoming the Spirit together in body, mind, and heart:

… All I can describe [of] it is a feeling (my emphasis) which I now know as the presence of God (my emphasis) came on my [pause], dropped on, I can’t really describe it, understand it. It was like if someone placed a sheet, a cotton sheet, it started on the top of my head, and it flopped down over my body (my emphasis). And I just broke into tears, I was just sat in the back, crying…^[23]

In this testimony reported by Williams, the subject perceives the “presence of God” as a visceral force – even in materially absent:^[24] it was like a cotton sheet, but it flopped down over the body. God’s ‘positive energy’^[25] enters people’s bodies, “connecting them with their heart and spirit”:^[26] it touches their emotions and soul, to the point that they burst into tears. It is God’s love in supplicants’ bodies that “brings up what needs healing”,^[27] as one healer confirms to Csordas, and “releases the negative energy”.

The Therapeutic Process: The Transformation of the Self

The feature issue of Pentecostal anthropology is not only the theoretical dimension of the tripartite conception of the person but rather the performative aspect. The human being as body-mind-soul is an illustrative figure of Pentecostal theology, but also a culturally performing discourse,^[28] offering alternative modes of perception and experience. Embodied by ‘renewed’ subjects, the tripartite image serves as a symbolic resource that structures existential orientation in the world, involving their sensory, perceptive modalities.

Within a ritual therapeutic performance, writes Csordas,^[29] participants must chiefly be disposed to the charismatic healing and the persuasive possibility of the experience of the sacred. Thirdly,they must know how to elaborate realistic alternatives to their suffering and actualize them. Ritual healing, therefore, implies a transformation in the semantic elaboration of oneself and one’s suffering, producing realistically possible alternatives in the world.

Consider the case of a man with chronic and often debilitating back pain getting religious healing: through rest in the Spirit and a “purely spiritual” experience, he ceased to get backaches with very rare exceptions (my emphasis), and even those [he] got have been unlike the others. Every once in a while [he] would feel a backache just barely starting, and [he] would thank God for having cured it, and usually it goes away. [He’ll] just feel the start of a tightness of the muscles, of a spasm, and all [he’ll] do is say to God, “Thank you for curing my backaches”. And then it will go away, and may do the same thing once or twice more during the day and so [he] say the same thing and it never develops into anything, with very few exceptions… On two occasions [he] could feel a burning nerve sensation in [his] back, [he] thought it was a nerve that was inflamed. [he] felt burning. That happened a couple of times, but [he] never felt any stiffness or soreness at all. [He] could just feel the inflamed nerve [not painful]. [He] was just keenly aware of it. … It was almost as if [he] could feel the origin of the problem but without the symptoms or the spasms

As we observe from this testimony, what has changed is the awareness that man has of his suffering. Back pain has not disappeared, but it has qualitatively reduced, because he developed on it an altered somatic form of attention,^[30] preventing debilitating symptoms. Therefore, healed people are not those who live ‘without disease’, but who manage to experiment and explore new ‘postural modalities’ and body patterns with which to actively inhabit the world, up to the margins of their own disability^[31] – like a supplicant who, convinced of the therapeutic power of the divine and supported by the assembly that listened to his testimony, hesitantly gets up from his wheelchair in response to the healer’s request:^[32] “the walk is as much a test of his physical capacity and of his willingness to improve as it is a proof of a divinely caused amelioration of his condition (my emphasis)”.^[33]
The therapeutic process is comparable to the gesture of “planting a seed”:^[34] it begins with charismatic healing, but continues beyond the ritual event itself, into everyday life. The healed people are ‘reborn’, and improve their life, not just their bodies, including more elements in the concept of health, such as the relationship with society, affections, faith as well as with themselves. From the therapeutic relationship with the sacred and supported by the group,^[35] empowered supplicants experience a real ‘transformation of the self’ producing a re-interpretation of their life in the “desacralized world”^[36] .

Conclusion

Through the lens of medical anthropology, we have observed both ‘what comes done to the body’ by medical science, and ‘what the body does and produces’ – if thought otherwise.

In the space of Pentecostal movements, the conventional meaning of the human body is transformed: it is no longer an organic entity investigated by the medical gaze, but an active resource involved in constant emotional, mental, and social processes, in line with what Scheper-Hughes and Lock call ‘mindful body’.^[37]

Charismatic healing experience returns the ‘mindful bodies’ to the complexity and agency that medicine, heir to Cartesian reductionism, too often ignores. In the course of the healing process, people see themselves recognized by the community as the carriers of subjective experience capable of producing other perceptions and other representations of themselves, thus modifying their actions in the world. The transformative power of charismatic movements lies here: involving subjects in a realistic reconfiguration of their existence[^92] .

Anna Magnasco is a graduate student in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Turin. Her areas of research are within the urgent framework of the Anthropocene, a concept that is capable of uniting the environment, humanity and politics in a nexus of entanglements and frictions. On the one hand, she aims to deconstruct many of our paradigms, those that have brought us this far — such as that of nature, politics, health, progress, suffering, future.

Footnotes

[^91]:For me it´s not exactly clear where the difference between pneumo and psyche is. Is the pneumo the space of mythlogical figures and thinking and the psyche, the psychological of actual feeling and secular sorrow?

A small passage that elaborates it would be nice I think

[^92]:I like the idea of religion enabling a well being in this world by opening a space for non-positivist or empirical/epistomological dimensions of being, that are also integrated in a praxis of healing

Cf. Thomas Luckmann, La Religione Invisible (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1969). ↩︎
Cf. Pietro Cingolani, Alessandro Gusman, “Il Pentecostalismo e le Sfide della Contemporaneità”, La Ricerca Folklorica 65 (2012): 3-18. ↩︎
The inescapable intertwining of religion and politics clearly embraces one of the theological perspectives of more recent Pentecostal and charismatic movements: through the concept of ‘spiritual struggle’, the world becomes a place of confrontation between God and Satan, between good and evil, between the sacred and the mundane. Cf. Birgit Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Globalisation“, in: Allan Anderson et. al. (ed.) Studying Global Pentecostalism. Theories and Methods. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010). ↩︎
Cingolani & Gusman, “Il Pentecostalismo e le Sfide della Contemporaneità”, 5. ↩︎
Brown, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, 14. ↩︎
Comaroff and Comaroff, “Second Comings: Neo-Protestant Ethics and Millennial Capitalism in Africa, and Elsewhere”. ↩︎
Cf. Pietro Cingolani, Alessandro Gusman, “Il Pentecostalismo e le Sfide della Contemporaneità”, La Ricerca Folklorica 65 (2012): 3-18. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Cf. Justine Howe, “Transnational Transcendence. Essays on religion and globalization”, in: J. Thomas Csordas (ed.) Social Anthropology 18/2 (2010), 228-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2010.00107_3.x. ↩︎
Cf. Alessandro Gusman, “La Deliverance Come Tecnica di Contrasto all‘ Insicurezza Spirituale. Il Caso della Mutundwe Christian Fellowship di Kampala’”, Antropologia 6/2 (2019): 117-133. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Cf. Marian Tankink, “‘The Moment I Became Born-Again the Pain Disappeared’: The Heading of Devastating War Memories in Born-Again Churches in Mbara District, Southwest Uganda”, Transcultural Psychiatry 44/2 (2007): 1-23. ↩︎
Cf. Alessandro Gusman, “La Deliverance Come Tecnica Di Contrasto all’‘Insicurezza Spirituale’. Il Caso Delle Chiese Pentecostali Di Kampala (Uganda)”, ANUAC 5/1 (2016): 107-128. ↩︎
Cf. Matteo Canevari, “‘È la prima volta che ho visto qualcosa’. Immagine, Guardigione e Retoriche della Rinascita nel Movimento Pentecostale”, Antropologia 7/2 (2020): 130-154. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14672/ada20201689129-154. ↩︎
Cf. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, “The Mindful Body”, Social Science & Medicine, 39/ 7 (1994): 991–1003. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(94)90210-0. ↩︎
Cf. Marian Tankink, “‘The Moment I Became Born-Again the Pain Disappeared’: The Heading of Devastating War Memories in Born-Again Churches in Mbara District, Southwest Uganda”, Transcultural Psychiatry 44/2 (2007): 1-23. ↩︎
Cf. Pedron-Colombani, “Le Pentecôtisme au Guatemala. Conversion et identité*“*, In Pietro Cingolani and Alessandro Gusman, “Il Pentecostalismo e le Sfide della Contemporaneità”, La Ricerca Folklorica 65 (2012): 3-18. ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, Body/Meaning/Healing (New York: Palgrava MacMillan, 2002). ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Cf. Magdalena Milsev, “Religious Narratives of Healing and Conversion in a Charismatic Catholic Church in Montevideo: a Brief Approach”, International Journal of Latin American Religions 2/2 (2019): 334-47. ↩︎
This concept is reported in The Sacred Self (40-43): it is a word by which Csordas’ religious healers define their therapeutic ability, that acts simultaneously on the body (‘somatic’), inner experience (‘psycho’) and spirit (‘pneumo’). ↩︎
Ivi., 58-59. ↩︎
Cf. Andrew Williams, *“*Spiritual Landscapes of Pentecostal Worship, Belief, and Embodiment in a Therapeutic Community: New Critical Perspectives”, Elsevier 28 (2023). ↩︎
Csordas, in describing the theology of charismatic Pentecostals, speaks of the Holy Spirit as a force that is “ineffable and empirical at the same time” (The Sacred Self, 39). ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Ivi., 53. ↩︎
Cf. Matteo Canevari, “‘È la Prima Volta che ho Visto Qualcosa’: Immagine, Guardigione e Retoriche della Rinascita nel Movimento Pentecostale”, Antropologia 7/2 (2020): 130-154. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14672/ada20201689129-154. ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, “Elements of Charismatic Persuasion and Healing”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2/2 (1988): 121-142. DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/649157. ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, “Somatic Modes of Attention”, Cultural Anthropology, 8/2 (1993): 135–56. DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656467. ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). ↩︎
Ivi., 70. ↩︎
Ivi., 164. ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, Body/Meaning/Healing (New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 2002). ↩︎
The collective dimension of Pentecostal rituals is a theme widely addressed in contemporary anthropological literature: collective participation, group support in prayer rituals produces, in the heterogeneous Pentecostal contexts of the world, profound effects on society. In addition to the material already mentioned, Cf. Stroeken, “Witchcraft Simplex: Experiences of Globalized Pentecostalism in Central and Northwestern Tanzania”; Kliueva, Vera and Ryazanova, Svetlana, “Praying practices in Pentecostal environment: a universal multicultural model”; Csordas, Thomas, “A global geography of the spirit: the case of the Catholic Charismatic communities”, ↩︎
Cf. Magdalena Milsev, “Religious Narratives of Healing and Conversion in a Charismatic Catholic Church in Montevideo: a Brief Approach”, International Journal of Latin American Religions, 2/2 (2019): 334-347. ↩︎
Cf. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, 1/ 1 (1987): 6-41. ↩︎

The Re-Enchantment Of Bodies – The Transformative Power Of Charismatic Healings, Part 1 (Anna Magnasco)

2023-11-28T16:40:43Z

The following is the first of a two-part series. It was originally published in issue 22.1 of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Studies.

Introduction

Facing the great diseases of our time – unemployment, traumatic experiences, unequal access to healthcare, racism, chronic diseases, social exclusion, alcoholism, violence, and everyday difficulties – conventional medicine often proves to be ineffective. Frequently, medical science takes the form of an ‘élite practice’,^[1] unable to guarantee therapeutic treatments to all those requiring them. Furthermore, biomedicine appears as a ‘soulless science’: the rational discourses inherited from scientific naturalism reduce the body to a mere object, depriving the patient – as a subject – of the possibility of actively participating in the construction and elaboration of the meaning of his own suffering.

In this scenario, the text reads the growing presence of Pentecostal churches, of new healing theologies: charismatic communities are configured today as alternative therapeutic spaces to the conventional ones – embracing the questions of care to which traditional medicine cannot answer.

In the first part of the text, we explore the theoretical assumptions of medical science in its relationship with the body, disease, and health, and then move to its reductionist habit. Subsequently, after a brief overview of the religious movement, we examine Pentecostalism’s welcome to the unanswered demands for care. Through ritual charismatic healings, sick bodies are re-enchanted, re-appropriating the semantic network^[2] that the biomedical gaze had ignored.

The ‘Medical gaze’ on the Disenchanted Body: Scientific Clinical Medicine: Knowledge, Practice and Limits

In contemporary and urbanized nations, biomedical science is the reigning knowledge titled to managing the body, disease and health issues. Recognized as a “most sophisticated, convenient and affordable”^[3] system, clinical medicine emerges as a hegemonic practice starting from the 19th century. In fact, the nineteenth century was crossed by the optimistic climate of the modern project: the spirit of positivism and Enlightenment reason disenchant the world,^[4] made of infallible laws and universal truths, with no room for magical or metaphysical explanations.

In this context, biomedicine is recognized as a natural science and, like the others, receives the primacy of the most valid tool for observing the ‘world of facts’ – clearly separated from the ‘world of values’.^[5] Indeed, “sciences of phenomena”^[6] follow the ancient paradigm which opposes what is from what is not, nature and culture, matter and spirit, res extensa and res cogitans – in Descartes’ vocabulary. Cartesian dualism establishes the premises of scientific investigation and clinical practice: “radically materialist”,^[7] interested only in ascertaining the facts and distrustful of all those “irrelevant” and “unreal”^[8] forms of knowledge that investigate the “experiences of the spirit”.^[9]

Modern ars medica definitively renounces any theurgic vocation and takes the form of a pure “experimental and quantitative science of the organism”,^[10] obtaining exclusive status in the investigation of functions and dysfunctions of the body. Accompanied by the theoretical assumptions of modern physiology and pathological anatomy,^[11] medical knowledge develops a mechanistic conception of the body: a naturally given set of cellular structures, organs, and molecules. The human organism works like a machine, whose normal^[12] functioning must be promptly restored every time it runs into some alteration of a biological nature, manifested through physical ‘signs’ – symptoms.

Thus, the main assignment of clinical medicine becomes the diagnosis^[13] of the disease: the physical dimension of suffering. Diseases are mere facts of nature – “biological [and] universal”^[14] – that emerge when regular vital mechanisms fail.^[15] This biomedical conception adheres to an “abstract, highly technical, impersonal”^[16] explanatory model, and provides the development of a specific analysis, etiology, and prognosis in order to re-establish the “proper functioning”^[17] of the organs involved. In addition to the diagnosis, biomedicine identifies the rational treatment of the disease: the patient will follow specific steps that will lead to the “regulation of the internal environment”^[18] and the re-stabilization of the regular parameters.

At this point in the argumentation, we are dealing with what a large part of medical anthropology that literature^[19] understands as a ‘dehumanizing’ turn of biomedicine: observing disease and health as empirical evidence of physical realities; the growing reductionism in medical approaches rejects all remaining dimensions of suffering experience itself. In this context, the human being is framed as a bare organic entity – not as a person, including the moral, existential, cultural, and political aspects of illness^[20] and health.

Without denying the enormous success in the identification, classification, and effective resolution of the empirical phenomena investigated,^[21] medicine has the defect of dwelling almost exclusively on the biological aspects, contributing to a process of disenchantment of the body, removing every symbol and subjective meaning:

The patient becomes the docile body to be manipulated and explored; robbed of autonomy so completely as almost to obliterate the meaning of being an actor.^[22]

Limited to the investigation of the physical symptoms of the disease, the ‘medical gaze’^[23] reduces the patient from a socially and historically constructed person^[24] to a mere ‘biological subject’; and it is one of the reasons that determine therapeutic ineffectiveness. In fact, patients often configure the nature of their problems through multiple narratives and representations,^[25] which do not necessarily belong to the explanatory models of biomedicine. Neglecting the “multidimensionality”^[26] of the disease produces iatrogenic effects^[27] on the healing process itself contemplated by biomedicine: more and more patients^[28] do not adhere to prescribed therapies and also turn elsewhere, e.g. Pentecostal rituals and charismatic healing processes.

Organic Bodies and Social Bodies

Medical non-compliance denounces the limits of the contemporary clinic: very effective in terms of classification and empirical identification of phenomena, it often leaves semantic and existential voids, offering ‘targeted’ and not holistic therapies. After deconstructing ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying biomedicine, the reflection continues by identifying exit strategies from this disenchantment. On a theoretical level, medical anthropology offers useful tools for rethinking the conceptions of biological reductionism: the body does not correspond to a natural fact; therefore, pain is not just a technical dysfunction and health does not merely coincide with its mechanical repair.

Overcoming such perspectives is challenging since they are deeply rooted in Western dualistic metaphysics, but it is also inevitable: the survival of human beings is not possible simply with the genetic equipment,^[29] but there is a need for forging – or humanizing – individuals according to the cultural lines of the social group where they grow up. The reflection of medical anthropology begins here: recognizing the body as a cultural product,^[30] socially and historically constructed, crossed or constrained^[31] by practices and discourses. Such analytical overviews certainly encourage the overcoming of the concept of the body as a bio-physical entity but force it to a ‘passive ground’^[32] on which to inscribe social values and meanings.

This is the equal point raised by feminist philosopher Judith Butler^[33] against contemporary philosophical literature. Even in the humanistic context, although separated from the natural world of determinism, the body remains passively subscribed to the “inevitably binary structure of the nature/culture distinction”.^[34] Instead, in the last decade of the twentieth century, a phenomenological perspective^[35] emerged and – without rejecting the historical-cultural approach – recognized the body as an active subject through which we live and resist the meanings imposed by the social order^[36] . With a ‘mindful body’,^[37] the subjects actively inhabit the world and contribute to shaping its meanings[^91] – in other words, bodies have performative^[38] capacity.

Divine healings’: the therapeutic functions of churches

Finding a specific definition of Pentecostalism is a challenging – and in some ways counterproductive – undertaking due to the considerable variety of congregations within the movement spread throughout the world. Despite these difficulties, Joel Robbins attempts a definition of the movement to include all those “forms of Christianity in which believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and have ecstatic experiences such as speaking in tongues, healing, and the prophecy”.^[39] For this reflection we will use the concept of “Pentecostalism” in this broad sense, including all different movements that emerged during the 20th century that experience the spiritual gifts, although in some cases it will be more appropriate to specify that we are talking about the Catholic Pentecostal movement (CCR).

For a clearer comprehension of the Pentecostal movement in the world, it is appropriate to refer to a rough classification proposed by Allan Anderson.^[40] According to this scholar Pentecostalism can be divided into its ‘classical’ form in the global context; the ‘charismatic’ one; and all those ‘nondenominational’ churches spread in most of the world.

This approximate arrangement follows a fairly linear historical chronology.^[41] Scholars agree that the birth of the Pentecostal movement dates back to the Asuza Street Revival in the early 1900s – when a group of Methodist believers in Kansas began speaking in tongues.

Always with the difficulty of finding points in common between the various congregations, it can be said that the ‘classical’ Pentecostal movement promotes an existential model of “ecstatic Christian life based on the experience of the Apostles”.^[42] In addition to ecstatic experiences, ‘classical’ Pentecostal theology follows the doctrine of the “Full gospel”, which insists on four aspects of the Gospel: ‘personal’^[43] salvation through Jesus, divine healing, baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the second coming of Jesus Christ.^[44]

Starting in the 1950s, many Pentecostals began to recognize themselves as ‘charismatic’, distinguishing themselves from ‘classical’ Pentecostalism for more flexible and inclusive doctrines. The entry of the ‘Charismatic renewal’ in the Catholic Church will be decisive: in the full cultural ferment of the sixties, the Second Vatican Council (1967), among other things, recognizes the doctrine of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, marking the “end of a regime of doctrine practice that lasted four hundred years”.^[45] From Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where two young students formed the first Catholic Charismatic prayer group after receiving the baptism of the Spirit, the movement rapidly spread throughout North America and then throughout the world. In 1977 a great ecumenical meeting took shape – the Kansas City Charismatic Conference – in which, for the first time, not only the classic Pentecostals but Protestants, Evangelicals, Anglicans, and Catholics took part.

Finally, the third wave of the Pentecostal movement spread as of the 1970s: numerous congregations took shape all over the world which detached themselves from the Churches to which they had always belonged and created “new Christian semantics”,^[46] liquidating the prospects of the first wave of Pentecostalism. These independent communities are characterized by giving less theoretical and practical relevance to the experience of glossolalia and by introducing the doctrine of the ‘spiritual struggle’ against the world and the devil and the theology of the “prosperity gospel”,^[47] which brings health closer to wealth.

Pentecostal and Charismatic Global Expansion

Although its origins can be traced back to the western continent, a century after its birth the Pentecostal movement has nine million^[48] faithful scattered throughout the globe, from Africa to Oceania. Pentecostalism in all its varieties is undoubtedly the fastest-growing religious force in the world. According to José Casanova,^[49] this exponential growth that began in the 20th century will lead Catholicism to cede the primacy of the “predominant global form of Christianity” to Pentecostal movements, which will become the heart of the Christian community.

However, as we noted in the earlier paragraph, Pentecostalism is not an ‘exclusive’ movement: Catholic theology is not threatened, but rather the traditional institution of Catholicism. The ever-expanding wave, therefore, includes independent churches especially on the African and Asian continents – and many Catholics, who also identify with charismatic movements. Specific data for a more accurate understanding: Ari Pedro Oro^[50] notes that in the contemporary era the percentage of religious movements has grown by 22%. In addition, 80% of these movements recognize themselves as Pentecostal.

Countless studies^[51] see the global success of Pentecostalism Christianity starting from its “cultural polyglotism”:^[52] the Pentecostal movement can adapt itself to different local contexts. From the congregations that arose almost spontaneously in the university campus,^[53] to the ‘multicultural’ Pentecostal churches^[54] that welcome the most marginalized subjects of society in the urban ghettos,^[55] up to all non-Western neo-Pentecostal communities^[56] built on the ruins of an unredeemed colonial past^[57] or in response to the institutional silence in the face of the violence of war.^[58]

Footnotes

[^91]:Good overview

Straight forward lines of thought

probably a little more on the de-naturalization and naturalising as a discoursive praxis (e.g. Butler)

Synthesis/Conclusion by author?

Cf. Gotthart Oblau, “Divine Healing and the Growth of Practical Christianity”, in Cathy Gunter Brown (ed.), Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (Oxford: Oxford Academic, 2011). ↩︎
Cf. Byron Good, “The Heart of What’s the Matter. The Semantics of Illness in Iran”, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 1(1977): 25–58. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00114809. ↩︎
Cf. Candy Gunther Brown, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (Oxford: Oxford Academic, 2011). ↩︎
Cf. Max Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf (München und Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1918). ↩︎
Cf. Richard A. Sheweder and Robrert Levine, Culture. Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Also Isabelle Stengers, “La Grande partizione”, I Fogli di ORISS 29(2008): 47-61. ↩︎
Cf. Eric Voegelin, “The Origins of Scientism”, Social Research 14/4 (1948): 462-494. ↩︎
Cf. Scheper-Hughes and Lock, “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1/1 (1987): 6-41. ↩︎
Ivi, 8. ↩︎
Cf. Eric Voegelin, “The Origins of Scientism”, Social Research 14/4 (1948): 462-494. ↩︎
Cf. Gabriele Vissio, “La Vita Preferisce l’Asimmetria”, Lessico di Etica Pubblica, 1 (2015). ↩︎
Cf. Michael Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963). ↩︎
Cf. Georges Canguilhelm, The Normal and the Pathological (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998). ↩︎
Cf. Byron Good, *Medicine, Rationality, and Experience. An Anthropological Perspective (*Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Cf. Arthur Kleinman, “Concepts and a Model for the Comparison of Medical Systems as Cultural Systems”, Social Science and Medicine 12/2B (1978): 85-93. ↩︎
Ibid*.* ↩︎
Cf. Gabriele Vissio, “La Vita Preferisce l’Asimmetria”, Lessico di Etica Pubblica, 1 (2015). ↩︎
Ibid*.* ↩︎
Cf. Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: the Expropriation of Health (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976); Cf. Jan Howard and Anselm Strauss (eds.) Humanizing Health Care (New York: Wiley, 1975); Cf. David Wheatherall, “The Inhumanity of Medicine”, British Medical Journal 39 (1994): 24-31. ↩︎
It is interesting to consider how medical anthropology introduces the useful conceptual distinction between “disease”, “illness” and “sickness”. The former, as we have already seen, has to do with the technical and professional definition of disorder; “illness” concerns the experience of the disease as it is perceived by the subject, while “sickness” denotes the social dimension of suffering, the way in which the community of the individual understands it. See: Arthur Kleinman et al. “Culture, illness, and care: clinical lessons from anthropologic and cross-cultural research”, Annals of Internal Medicine 88/2 (1978): 251-8; Cf. Allan Young, “The Anthropologies of Illness and Sickness”, Annual Review of Anthropology 11/1 (1982): 257-285. ↩︎
Cf. Alessandro Lupo, “Antropologia Medica e Umanizzazione delle Cure”, Rivisita delle Società Italiana di Antopologia Medica 37 (2014): 105-126. ↩︎
Cf. Gregory Pappas, “Some Implications for the Study of the Doctor-Patient Interaction: Power, Structure, and Agency in the Works of Howard Waitzkin and Arthur Kleinman”, Social Science and Medicine 30/2 (1990): 199-204. ↩︎
Cf. Michael Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963). ↩︎
Cf. Alessandro Lupo, “Antropologia Medica e Umanizzazione delle Cure”, Rivisita delle Società Italiana di Antopologia Medica 37 (2014): 105-126. ↩︎
Cf. Byron Good, Medicine, Rationality, and Experience. An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). ↩︎
Cf. Alessandro Lupo, “Antropologia Medica e Umanizzazione delle Cure”, Rivisita delle Società Italiana di Antopologia Medica 37 (2014): 105-126. ↩︎
Cf. Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: the Expropriation of Health (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976). ↩︎
Cf. William Scarlett and Steve Young, “Medical Noncompliance: The Most Ignored National Epidemic”, Journal of Ostheopathic Medicine 116/8 (2016): 554-555. ↩︎
Cf. Clifford Geertz, “The Transition to Humanity”, in Horizons of Anthropology (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965). ↩︎
Cf. Marcel Mauss, “Les Techniques du Corps”, Journal de Psychologie 32/3-4 (1936): 271-93; Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966). ↩︎
Cf. Michael Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963); Cf. MichaelFoucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Randomi House, 1991). ↩︎
Cf. Ivo Quaranta, Antropologia Medica. I Testi Fondamentali (Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2006). ↩︎
Cf. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1999). ↩︎
Ivi, 167. ↩︎
Cf. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “An Essay: ‘AIDS and the Social Body’”, Social Science and Medicine 39/7 (1994): 991-1003; Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1/1 (1987): 6-41. ↩︎
Cf. Judith Bulter, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Theater Journal 40/4 (1988): 519-531. ↩︎
Cf. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1/1 (1987): 6-41. ↩︎
The sense of the concept follows the interpretation offered by Butler (1993) as opposed to that of Bourdieu (1982), which is worth exploring further. The French sociologist understands the performative act as the embodied representation of social power acting on subjects. In doing so, however – and this is Butler’s criticism on him – he precludes the most marginalized subjects from the ability to act itself: a performative act not only reproduces power speech, but can resignify the context. With her theory of performativity, Butler restores agency to subjects: by sitting in the front rows of the bus, Rosa Parks – subordinate individual within the context in which she grew up – breaks the laws of power that she should inescapably have internalized and ‘produces another context’ where blacks can sit in white people’s seats (Butler, 1993: 148). ↩︎
Cf. Joel Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”, Annual Review of Anthropology 33/1 (2004): 117-133. ↩︎
Cf. Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). ↩︎
Allan Anderson (ivi, 2014) notes that there are difficulties not only in the classification of Pentecostalism but also in the historical reconstruction of its development. The main reason? Lack of documented sources and incomplete information. ↩︎
Cf. Joel Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity” ”, Annual Review of Anthropology 33/1 (2004): 117-133. ↩︎
Cf. Pietro Cingolani and Alessandro Gusman, “Il Pentecostalismo e le Sfide della Contemporaneità”, La Ricerca Folklorica 65 (2012): 3-18. ↩︎
Donald Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peadboy, MA: Hendrikson, 1987). ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, Language, Charisma and Creativity: The Ritual of Life of a Religious Movement (Berkeley, Calif, London: University of California Press). ↩︎
Cf. Enzo Pace, “The Catholic Charismatic Movement in Global Pentecostalism”, Religions 11/7 (2020). ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Cf. Joel Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”, Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 117-143. ↩︎
Cf. José Casanova, “Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization”, Sociology of Religion 62/4 (2001): 415-41. ↩︎
Cf. Ari Pedro Oro, “Impatto e Sfide del Pentecostalismo in Brasile.”, La Ricerca Folklorica 65 (2012): 65-75. DOI: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43854586 ↩︎
Cf. José Casanova, “Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization”, Sociology of Religion 62/4 (2001): 415-41; Cf. Simon Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Cf. Joel Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”, Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 117-143. ↩︎
Cf. André Droogers, “Globalisation and Pentecostal Success”, in: Corten, Andre and Marshall-Fratani, Ruth (eds.) Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism im Africa and Latin America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press): 41-61. ↩︎
Cf. J. Thomas Csordas, The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). ↩︎
Cf. Pietro Cingolani, Alessandro Gusman, “Il Pentecostalismo e le Sfide della Contemporaneità”, La Ricerca Folklorica 65 (2012): 3-18. ↩︎
Cf. Ileana Gomez and Manuel Vasquez, “Youth Gangs and Religion among Salvadorans in Washington and El Salvador” in Anna Peterson, Manuel Vasquez Manuel, and Philip Williams (eds.), Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001). ↩︎
Cf. Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism*: Global Charismatic Christianity* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). ↩︎
Cf. Alessandro Gusman 2016, “Strategie di Occupazione dello Spazio Urbano: il Caso delle Chiese Pentecostali di Kampala (Uganda)”, ANUAC 5/1 (2016): 107-128. ↩︎
Cf. Marian Tankink, “‘The Moment I Became Born-Again the Pain Disappeared’: The Healing of Devastating War Memories in Born-again Churches in Mbarara District, Southwest Uganda”, Transcultural Psychiatry 44/2 (2007): 1-23. ↩︎

The Sacred As Bordering Practice, Part 2 (Anna-Maria Edlinger)

2023-11-13T16:11:04Z

The following is the second of a two-part series. The first portion can be found here. It was originally published in issue 22.1 of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Studies.

On a national level, a phrase that is oftentimes used in the last years to describe the change of the political landscape in Europe and globally is “shift to the right.” In any case, right-wing parties in EUrope have been quite vocal about their views on immigration and how it has affected society since 2015. They represent just one part of the political spectrum of the EU, however they have gained electorates or even won important elections since 2015 (in Austria, Italy, Sweden or Hungary for example). For the question of the interaction between EU borders and religion, it is worth it to glance at some right-wing interpretations about the in- and the outgroup since they have been present in discourse about migration.

Parties on the extreme right in EUrope find themselves easily torn between a strong nationalism on the one side, and a necessary relation with the EU on the other side. In the case of the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), there is a clear ideological limitation in the party’s self-understanding.^[1] According to it, EUrope should be a union of free and sovereign countries that live together as good neighbours. If the aspired reforms of the party however cannot be realised within the framework of the EU, exiting the union is considered an option. Then again, the AfD ranges Germany as an “occidental, Christian culture”^[2] , which alludes to a bigger framework of a Christian occident.

While the party concedes the option for “moderated” Muslim individuals to belong to German society, it postulated that “Islam is not a part of Germany”. The party rejects any practice of Islam that directs itself against the liberal democratic order, laws or the “judeo-christian and humanitarian foundations of our culture. Here again, the reference to a shared “spiritual and moral heritage,” as it is cited in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is clearly visible.

In the Austrian case, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) embeds Austria into a “European space of culture” that is rooted in Christianity but has also been influenced by other religions. It proclaims the values that spring from this “European worldview”^[3] or “culture-Christianity”^[4] as well as the readiness to defend these against fanatism or extremism. Important to highlight is the emphasis that the FPÖ puts on the prevalence of Christianity in culture, but not necessarily in a spiritual sense: the party explicates that this cultural domination is founded in the separation between state and church.

These are just two examples for a far-right definition of the European ingroup that link their understanding of their own nation and its reasons for staying in the EU to cultural similarities based on a history of Christianity. Far right parties in other countries might root themselves less explicitly within Christianity (e.g., France’s *Rassemblement National^[5] *) or have a more ambiguous or conflicting relation with the EUropean context (e.g., Hungary’s Fidesz). However, these two examples raise the question: Is the EUropean union fundamentally a secular project? In order to answer this question, a short historical plunge into the interconnection between the EUropean Union and the current of Christian democratic politics will be undertaken.

The Traces of Christian Democracy in the European Union

A first important aspect is the idea of European integration that existed well before the Second World War, despite the Holocaust and the experiences of war and totalitarianism as important moral turning points for European politics: As a politically marginalized democratic centrist, Luigi Sturzo proclaimed the idea of a European federation already in the early 1920’s. The philosopher Jacques Maritain, who had influence on the Vatican and on leading post-war Christian democrats, wrote the program “Europe and the federalist idea” in 1940 to express his ideas for an after-war union. Both works conceive of Christianity as vital for the project. Maritain envisaged this political project as a third way in between liberalism and totalitarianism. Since 1929, Christian democrat parties started to network amongst each other within specifically established fora.^[6] Wolkenstein describes the post-war period in Europe as a “Christian democrat moment”.^[7]

Christian democratic parties won elections or got sufficient support for accessing important functions. He lists Germany’s Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU), Italy’s Democrazia Cristiana (DC) and France’s Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP)^[8] as the most influential parties in Europe at that time, whose leaders Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi and Robert Schuman actively promoted the idea of a European union (Wolkenstein 2022, 18). The project finally began in 1950 with the Schuman Plan that led to the 1951 established European Coal and Steel Community, whose six members (Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) all disposed of strong Christian democratic.^[9] As the dominant power in Europe, Christian democrats had the possibility to try out their political ideas straightaway.^[10] This political success is tied to ideological changes within the movement: While before the war they used to be parties for mostly Catholic Christians, they augmented their electorate in the post-war period to become “people’s parties” that aimed to represent all of society.

Following previous histories of political Christian authoritarianism, the parties tried to emphasize their (new) democratic orientation. This was possible because of a bigger distance in between the parties and the Catholic church.^[11] However, the church also modified its stances towards more democratic and humanist^[12] values, in line with Maritain’s philosophy.^[13] The postwar period Christian democrats coined their political movement with values such as peace and stability. Van Kersbergen defines the core features of the modern political ideology as follows: integration (of social groups, classes, nations in the EU), (class)compromise and accommodation to resolve conflicts in society, without changing its (socio-economic) pluralism.^[14]

Not only did the newly defined values of the Catholic church, as for example the concept of human dignity as indivisible value of the individual, get reflected in the writing of human rights and newly written constitutions, but Maritain himself was part of the promotion and drafting of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.^[15] This importance of Christian thinking for the foundation of fundamental rights implies a certain ambiguity: The moral influence of the church was possible because its contribution to authoritarianism in Europe had been forgotten, and personal continuity of former regimes’ functionaries within the parties was overshadowed.^[16]

Contrary to democratic affirmations, especially German and Austrian Christian democrats supported the regimes of Franco and Salazar in Spain and Portugal; French and Belgian Christian democrats justified the continuation of their colonial regimes with the very same Christian values.^[17] A final ambiguity resides in the constitution of the new democratic systems itself. The Christian democratic idea of protecting democracy by limiting it through juridical control has its origin in the idea that a state can only work well when it is restricted by the natural law of God.^[18] This mechanism that also prevails in the EU because of its supranational structure^[19] is furthermore connected to a mistrust in the decisions of the people and a preference for limited self-rule that gets tied to strong leaders.^[20] .

The already discussed myth of a “Christian occident” that is today rather connected to far-right agendas had been important for the post-war Christian democrats. First appearing in the Middle Ages as far back as the 15th century, the idea of Christian faith as a foundation for a shared European culture had already been used by intellectuals after the First World War in their plans to reshape Europe after Christian principles. Through the opposition with communism and the following Cold War, the term became a slogan amongst the Christian democratic parties. Alcide de Gasperi even formulated the vision of a European Union as an actualized version of a Carolingian *Res Publica Christiana.^[21] * In the 1950’s, the vision of a union as “Christian occident” based on a cultural or spiritual understanding of Christianity, competed with the conception of a Europe united through Christian culture, but primarily through economic dependencies.

The first idea was promoted mainly by Catholics as Adenauer, Schuman or Strauss, excluded the United Kingdom as well as the Scandinavian countries from the European project and aimed to make Europe an independent third world power in the Cold War. The latter was mainly represented by Protestant politicians as Ludwig Erhard intended to include Scandinavia and the United Kingdom and aspired towards a possible alliance with the United States against the Eastern Bloc.^[22] Evidently, the second idea was realized in the process of the EUropean integration which started with and still heavily relies on an economic union.

Despite ideological changes since the foundation of the EU, notably a liberalization of the former anti-liberalist Christian democrat parties,^[23] it is striking to see how the concept of a “Christian occident” and the influence of the Christian religion as such featured significantly in the construction of a political union that is now easily perceived as secular.^[24] Are its borders, debated from the beginning around the question of cultural and/or religious unity, constituted or at least affirmed also by belief?

Borders and Faith

Considering the heritage of Christian values of the EU, there are two ways of thinking about a faith that constitutes its inner unity and hence its borders, which suggest themselves. On the one hand, the secularity of the EUropean Union could be questioned and its relevant faith could be described as tied to Christianity. On the other hand, the union could be seen as secular with the twist that secularism can also serve as a foundation for faith establishing unity.

But what is meant here by secularism, and how should faith be understood? In the proposed opposition, secularism first needs to be defined as a doctrine ascribing its proper sphere to politics and is separated from religion.^[25] However, the distance between religion and self-claimed secular politics can be disputed in real circumstances up to the point where secularism is considered a religion on its own.^[26] In the present reflections, both understandings of secularism can be found. In the first step, its “ideal” definition serves as contrast to a politics informed by religion. In the second step, the factual ambiguities of the concept get explored.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11,1)

Faith is understood here in a broad sense, and more precisely, as every content of consciousness that establishes or contributes to the unity of a political community. For example, these can be values, imaginations, or utopias founding a certain basic identity of a political community, but also to the same effect these can be fears or general attitudes towards group outsiders. The latter are highly relevant for the question of borders, to find out for whom common utopias or identities stay inaccessible. In a democratic society defined by a plurality of opinions, there is certainly no consensus on these attitudes; the relevant claim however is, that even democratic communities need a minimal identity, an ideology may simply be an answer to the question: “Why should this regime be continued?”

And this cannot be exclusive only to a political elite or contained in “pure politics.” Especially in a democratic society, there exists the need for most people sharing this kind of faith in order to legitimize the system by votes.^[27] As the abovementioned question and the mention of hope in the quotation from Hebrews 11,1 suggest, faith is directed to the future. However, the past presents a ready source for common values and is not excluded of faith. This assumption is made because faith about the future seems more important concerning the stability of a political system than faith about the past. This political faith seems especially important in times of war, when the status quo is endangered. For instance, Raymond Aron insisted 1939 in pre-occupied France on the need for democracies to want their victory, to find their values again.^[28]

Another relevant detail of the quotation is the phrase “assurance about what we do not see.” It implies an inaccessibility to something, or a lack of vision, that is made up by faith. The separation between a faithful person and faith’s object produces a certain insecurity or risk that faith answers with assurance. A relevant question is whether this assurance needs to be given or suggested by someone else, as in the biblical context the origin of faith would be God. Another aspect of the biblical definition of faith is its relation to action: “… faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2,17)

Hence, faith is visible in actions by which it needs to actualize itself to persist. In order to describe the phenomenon of social imaginaries in politics, the term “faith” was here chosen intentionally in order to highlight the conceptual similarities with the biblical term: Political faith is incited by political elites and concerns oftentimes something that is not possibly visible, as for example a “migration wave” or intentions of immigrants to “Islamize Europe.” Ultimately, political faith also expresses itself in corresponding actions that are the origin of this reflection about the interaction between faith and borders.

Furthermore, the object of religious faith is usually something considered as sacred, as God or the afterlife for example, which can be translated into the sacred unity of a political community in the case of political faith. In this sense, faith demarcates what is sacred to a community and what needs to be protected as the source of meaning and values that it represents.

The first possible specification of faith in case of the EU is a faith rooted in the Christian religion. This ties smoothly into the originally Christian democrat conception of EUrope as a “Christian occident” and the presented examples of right-wing discourse in EUropean member states. Indicators about a continuation of reference to Christian belief could be seen in multiple factors. First, in the mentioned difference of treatment between refugees from Ukraine and the global south.

Together with the emphasis on Islam as a potential danger in multiple sources, this points to difference in religion or religiously informed culture as decisive borders in political faith. Second, ongoing political adherence can be interpreted into singular events, as for example Von der Leyen’s visit in Taizé, a Christian community that is visited by thousands of young people every.^[29] As president of the EUropean Commission, she referred to the young people she met there as a model for EUrope, as they have different backgrounds but share common values and ideals (“State of the Union” 2022, 20). She does not say it explicitly, but those values are most likely Christian.

Another model exists to think of the political faith of the EU as inspired by secularism. Continuing with the ideas the introduction, nationality can serve as a “secular” foundation for political faith. Benedict Anderson famously called these “imagined communities,” since the subjective antiquity of nations as well as their unity are imagined: Most nationals will never meet each other, but still imagine a communion that is in fact a relatively recent invention. According to Anderson, an inherent property of nations is their limitedness and exclusivity. ^[30] This implies that political faith, if it follows the rules of an “imagined community,” necessarily has borders. In terms of political faith, this translates into narratives of chosenness. But can a supranational structure incite the same kind of imagination? Can it coexist with national, political faith, or is it doomed to compete with it?

Régis Debray postulates the existence of what he calls “Europeanism,” a secular cult that proclaims humaneness, inclusivity, prosperity, and peacefulness as its values.^[31] These are at the core of a vision of future and progress, “Eurotopia” the idea of transcending the nation-state that caused wars^[32] and to unite over the idea of a better future, even if the differences between countries and political ideas are big.^[33] Today, however, Debray diagnoses that the faith into Europeanism is getting weaker and weaker: It satisfies people’s desire for agency in global challenges and provides hope, but it is “the spirit of a period without spirit” and makes people believe in a progress despite existential absurdity.^[34]

According to Debray, presenting oneself as EUropean today is the follow up of what it was once to call oneself a “good Christian:” It is the presentation of adherence to a certain set of moral values.^[35] The political faith however is prevalent mostly amongst political elites that cling to their “collective narcissism” even if collective solidarity and interest amongst member states are shrinking. Debray introduces a specific kind of secular, political faith that replaced religious beliefs and supposedly got weaker or even transformed into nihilism. Regarding the war in Ukraine and the interactions with refugees, it is questionable if political faith in EUrope is not rising and whether political nihilism is possible at all.

Anderson suggests distinguishing communities not by their genuineness, but rather by the style in which they have been imagined. In this sense, it could be that the EUropean political faith is in fact a combination of Christian and secular narratives.^[36]

Conclusion

More than one EUropean political faith is possible. What they have in common is an idea of progress and future. This ideal however is inaccessible in the first place for many people on the move. They experience the physical border that is hard to cross despite legal and humanitarian promises. They face the limits of political faith, of the sacred community through Xenophobia and Islamophobic discourse, even if they are in EUrope. It is them that live through pushbacks – they embody the limits of political faith. Considering the drafts for the “New Pact on Migration,” this situation will not change soon.^[37] How long can people be sacrificed (literally: “made holy”) for the integrity of an in-group before this group gets held responsible for this sacrilege?

The question remains: How can we create a better future? If it is true that political faith aligns or even interacts with border and asylum politics, as it has been argued in this paper, it is worth it to try to alter our beliefs about community. In order to do so, it is pertinent to question the use of the ascription “secular” to challenge the notion of progress and reflect upon who is allowed to join in on it. Alternative conceptions of progress are thinkable. For example, through Joseph R. Winter’s “Melancholic hope,” a proposal for a kind of progress including melancholia, grief, and loss; a progress made through vulnerability for other people’s situations.^[38]

Anna-Maria Edlinger is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at École Normale Supérieure, Paris. Her main interest is in political philosophy, where she is trying to combine social sciences methods with philosophical reflection. This publication allows her to further explore the philosophy of religion and embodiment and to draw attention to the situation of refugees at EUropean external borders.

Footnotes

<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/maritain/.

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), “Grundsatzprogramm für Deutschland.“ Written on the April 30th and May 1st, 2016. Accessed January 29th, 2023. . ↩︎
Originally: „ abendländische christliche Kultur“ (AfD, 2023). “Abendland“ can also be translated as “the land of the evening, the land that is closest to the sunset.” ↩︎
Originally: “Europäisches Weltbild” (FPÖ 2011). ↩︎
Originally: „Kultur-Christentum“ (FPÖ 2011). ↩︎
Potentially due to the French tradition of laïcité, a strict separation of state and church. ↩︎
Wolkenstein, Fabio, “Die dunkle Seite der Christdemokratie: Geschichte einer autoritären Versuchung“ (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2022), slide 10-12. ↩︎
Ibid., 18. ↩︎
DC and MRP do not exist anymore today. ↩︎
Wolkenstein, op. cit., slide 6. ↩︎
Op. cit., 104. ↩︎
Op. cit., 90-2. ↩︎
The novelty of these humanist values adopted by the church is that they reside in the individual (Wolkenstein 2022, 100). ↩︎
Wolkenstein, op. cit., 100. ↩︎
Op. cit., 36. ↩︎
William Sweet, Jacques Maritain”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Accessed January 29th, 2023. ↩︎
Wolkenstein, op. cit., 101-2. ↩︎
Op. cit., 127-9. ↩︎
Op. cit., 99. ↩︎
Op. cit., 121-2. ↩︎
Op. cit., 13. ↩︎
Op. cit. 123-4. ↩︎
Op. cit., slide 32. ↩︎
Op. cit., 32. ↩︎
Sarah Wolff for example describes EUropean identity and its’ foreign politics as strongly marked by a normative secularism (“Europe as a Secular Power: An interview with Sarah Wolff”, 2021). ↩︎
Cambridge Dictionary suggests the meaning “not having any connection with religion” for “secular” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2023). ↩︎
This is claimed for instance about laïcité in France (“Europe as a Secular Power: An interview with Sarah Wolff”, 2021). ↩︎
These claims are based on an “optimistic” conception of democracy, that understands it literally as rule of the people, where people’s votes and opinions matter. It is assumed that people actually have a choice and can influence rule. If democracy is understood as just another form of elite rule, a “pessimistic” understanding of democracy, these considerations are less important. A common cause or identity is however one way to stabilize a regime and avoid force in doing so. ↩︎
Aron, Raymond, Croire en la Démocratie, Vincent Duclert, ed. (Paris: Arthème Fayard/Pluriel, 2017), 79. ↩︎
Press Release, “Ursula von der Leyen in Taizé”, August 19th, 2022. Accessed February 15th, 2023. https://www.taize.fr/en_article34443.html. ↩︎
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), 5-7. ↩︎
Régis Debray, L’Europe Fantôme. Paris: Gallimard Tracts, 2019), 4. ↩︎
Ibid., 6. ↩︎
Ibid., 10. ↩︎
Ibid., 4. ↩︎
Ibid., 6. ↩︎
Anderson, op. cit. 6. ↩︎
An idea of the “Proposal for a Regulation introducing a screening of third country nationals” is to filter people that are unlikely to receive international protection at the earliest stage possible. “Unlikely” means that the usual recognition rate is below 25%. As the early recognition has the goal to ascribe as soon as possible the correct administrative process to a person – either an asylum procedure or a return – it seems that people with less than 25% of chance to get admitted asylum would be returned without any individual hearing. (European Commission 2022, “Proposal for a regulation introducing a screening of third country nationals”. ↩︎
Joseph R Winters, Hope Draped in Black. Race, Melancholy and the Agony of Progress (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 16. ↩︎

The Sacred As Bordering Practice, Part 1 (Anna-Maria Edlinger)

2023-10-25T15:51:14Z

The following is the first of a two-part series. It was originally published in issue 22.1 of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Studies.

Introduction

Today, nationality is still among the most important justifications of political rule. Many modern national states have been created through the application of the following two principles of international law, that take nationality as their decisive criterion: Since 1918 the “Principle of Nationality” became operational in dividing former multiracial states into national states. According to this principle, applied after the end of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires as well as for states created after decolonization, a nation-state should contain one to three ethnic groups

A more recent update of this principle is a person’s right to self-determination, anchored in the UN Charter of 1945, Article 1,2. A supranational union like the EUropean^[1] Union challenges this paradigm. Why do we consider a national government’s decisions to be normative for us, even if this government might be distant or not even represent us in terms of gender or ethnicity? Why do we feel bonds of nationality with some people, while we perceive others as strangers? If nationhood has replaced prior justifications of political rule based on religious belief, the legitimacy of claims to govern pronounced by supranational structures like the EUropean Union is not evident.

On the contrary, migration challenges nationhood and demarcates its limits. The latter becomes tangible through the perception of foreign people within the country, which can reinforce a feeling of national unity between an ingroup and at the borders. Borders are brought into existence by those who struggle to cross them. It is they who experience the border as such, at least for many EUropeans, which would otherwise just be a theoretical concept. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the actual physical border and the politics that constitute it interact with the theoretical concept understood as political faith.

In this view, borders are not only physical but get reinforced by faith in a sacred unity, protected from perceived dangers. In the case of the EU, the experience of seemingly unsurmountable borders is frequently created by people on the move^[2] trying to cross its external borders. In order to explore the dynamic between borders and belief in the case of the EUropean Union as it currently exists, asylum rights and their violation will first be given as important context. Then, religion will be discussed in the framework of EUropean border and asylum politics. Next, the importance of the Christian religion will be examined in the history of the union. Finally, the notion of political faith and its embodiment in the case of the EUropean Union will be discussed.

Rights Violations of Refugees by the EU

Different kinds of international law conventions bind countries in the European Union to respect refugees’ right to asylum. First, on the level of the international community there is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, that is as such not legally binding, but has a great moral value since it serves as foundation of modern human rights law.^[3] Article 14,1 states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution“ (UN 2022), whereupon Article 25,1 adds the “ right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.^[4]

A legally binding convention is the 1951 Refugee Convention that is ratified by all 27 EU member countries.^[5] Article 33,1 contains the principle of non-refoulement: “No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.^[6] Since 1995, the EUropean borders^[7] are administered according to the Schengen agreement that abolished checks at internal frontiers and homogenized external border controls.^[8]

The elimination of internal border control puts focus on the external borders, which are hence the crucial obstacle for refugees to cross that wish to enter a Member State. In Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the right to asylum is guaranteed in line with the 1951 Refugee Convention.^[9] It is mandatory to follow this charter for all EU organs, as well as for member states, insofar as they implement union law. As an answer to the specific challenges created by the Schengen zone, the Dublin III convention assigns the responsibility of examining the asylum application to the first country where the demand is lodged, whereby exceptions, e.g., family reunifications, are allowed for.

Member states shall examine any application for international protection by a third-country national or a stateless person who applies on the territory of any one of them, including at the border or in the transit zones. The application shall be examined by a single member state (…); Where it is impossible to transfer an applicant to the Member State primarily designated as responsible because there are substantial grounds for believing that there are systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and in the reception conditions for applicants in that Member State, resulting in a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the determining Member State shall continue to examine (…) whether another Member State can be designated as responsible. Where the transfer cannot be made (…), the determining Member State shall become the Member State responsible“.^[10]

These obligations, however, are broken on a regular basis. Thränhardt, for example, described the EUropean asylum regime^[11] in 2021 as “Lotteries,” even as countries that are not overwhelmed by refugees and have traditionally effective governance exhibit an “organized ambivalence towards the acceptance of refugees”^[12] According to the political scientist, this ambivalence is the result of legal principles on the one side and political impetus to constrain migrant inflows on the other side. The deciding asylum officers are left to deal with this tension, which can lead to long, uninformed procedures that have strongly diverging results in different countries or different parts of the same country about the same situation.^[13]

A more drastic violation of the seemingly binding obligations, especially against the principle of non-refoulement, is the ongoing practice of pushbacks. The Border Violence Monitoring Network defines pushbacks as “informal expulsion (without due process) of individuals or groups to another country”.^[14] Chain pushbacks” are pushbacks that happen inside the EU and transport people back outside of the external borders, often through multiple stops in different countries. Since both kinds of pushbacks are illegal, according to international law, and often include violence or humiliation their documentation is poor, and the number of unreported cases is likely high.

However, the Border Violence Monitoring Network tries to document pushbacks mostly along the Western Balkan’s Trail and published together with “The Left,” a group in the EUropean Parliament, the “Black Book of Pushbacks.”^[15] This report, that had been first publicized in December 2020 and updated on the 8th of December 2022, contains in its latest version 1635 testimonies that affected more than 24,990 people and 16 states, thereof 10 EU member states.

These numbers display pushbacks from 2017 to 2022. While mostly national border guards are operating the pushbacks, FRONTEX, the EUropean Border and Coast Guard Agency, has also been proven to be indirectly and directly involved in human rights violations against refugees. Despite multiple investigations, a change of the Agency’s executive director, and official rebranding that includes a tendency to call their operations “life-saving,” the BVMN exposes that more pushbacks and more violence against refugees in FRONTEX’ operational areas have been recorded in the last two years. At the same time, FRONTEX has doubled in size in between 2019 and 2021, augmented their operational area to non-European countries, and gained influence over the Union’s border security technologies, e.g., it oversees EUROSUR^[16] and the forthcoming EES (Entry-Exit System), that should automatically monitor border crossings of third-country nationals.^[17]

Religious Narrative in EU Asylum and Border Politics

Due to the specific political structure of the EU, it is not possible to speak of one coherent system of asylum and border politics. In fact, the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) serves in large part as a set of merely minimal standards that member states are free to interpret in their national law. However, in terms of border politics, the EU could agree on common standards as on the Dublin or the EURODAC Regulation, a fingerprint database of asylum seekers and people crossing the border irregularly. On the 23rd of September 2020, the commission proposed the “New Pact on Migration and Asylum”, a corpus of drafts to amend the existing laws and directives.^[18] On the homepage of the commission, this proposal is titled: “New Pact on Migration and Asylum, setting out a fairer, more European approach”.

The question is: What is a “more EUropean approach”? Which values or practices are being referred to here? This reform proposal seems to take distance from the current practices even if human rights violations are not explicitly mentioned as its motivation. Instead, the reconstruction of trust amongst the member states and in the “capacity of the European Union to manage migration”^[19] are its indicated goals. In order to realise this, efficiency, fair share of responsibility and solidarity, cooperation with countries of origin, and transit as well as successful integration and returns are aspired strategies. A main idea of the pact is the harmonisation of asylum procedures in all EU member states, that are as Thränhardt showed, currently vastly diverging.^[20]

Therefore, trying to answer the question of religious narratives in EU policies on multiple levels is necessary. In a first step, within the framework of aspired and factual EU jurisdiction. In a second step, in national discourse and measures. In a third and final step, on the level of intergovernmental conferences serving as preparation for EU summits. Due to the limited space of this essay, the aim is not to do an exhaustive analysis but rather to give an impression that can serve as a basis for the further discussion of the connection between EUropean border and asylum politics and religion.

Before starting the inquiry, the question of what exactly a religious narrative could be must be addressed. The most obvious understanding would be any explicit reference to either religion itself or to one of its forms, as Christianity or Islam. This however seems too superficial to grasp the whole realm of the adjective “religious.” In the early debate around the etymology of the word “religion,” two famous accounts have been presented: On the one hand, Cicero saw relegere as its origin, and on the other hand, Augustine traced it back to religare. Translated as “to review,” relegere differentiates the motivation of religious people to practise their religion in contrast to people performing the same acts out of superstition. While the latter do them out of fear that something bad could happen to them, the religious scrupulously rehearse their rituals in the worry of doing them correctly because of their choice to.^[21]

Augustine interprets the verb religare (to connect, to bind) as an etymological origin of religion in two ways: In his early work “De vera religione” Augustine speaks about binding the soul to,^[22] whereas in “De civitate Dei” he describes how the word “religion” has been (wrongly) used to refer to “human ties, (…) relationships, and affinities”. Despite Augustine’s worry that this last sense creates undesirable ambiguities within the meaning of the word “religion,” it is highly interesting to our project. If religion can create social groups, it must also be able to install differentiations between an in- and an outgroup. The erection of invisible borders is hence one of its inherent capacities.

Therefore, statements that refer to the identity of the ingroup (EU citizens; inside the external borders) and the outgroup (people on the move; outside the external borders) will be examined. Furthermore, the statements concerning the danger that is given as the reason for protection, as well as explicit references to religion will be presented. On the level of EU politics, only the introduction to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and two legal proposals of the “New Pact” will be reviewed. The declaration of the conference “Managing Migration Together” will be discussed to represent the intergovernmental sphere. Finally, in national discourse, two examples of right-wing positioning toward the EU and migration will be examined.

As required, legal documents of the EU that treat issues of asylum or migration always refer to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and guarantee that their proposal will respect these. Interestingly, this catalogue of human rights that was proclaimed in 2000 and entered into force from 2009, starts off by ascribing a common spiritual identity to EUrope:

The peoples of Europe, in creating an ever closer union among them, are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values. Conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage, the Union is founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; it is based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law. … The Union contributes to the preservation and to the development of these common values while respecting the diversity of the cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe as well as the national identities of the member states ……^[23]

On the one hand, the values of the EU are presented as rooted in a common “spiritual and moral heritage,” which reads as quite an explicit reference to Christianity. On the other hand, an undeniable diversity amongst cultures, traditions, and identities is mentioned. Overall, it seems like this tension should be overridden by the cited values that are founded in a common history of Christianity. But is this really the case? Can the centuries of war between religions in Europe and religious groups be harmonized as simply into one overarching “spiritual heritage”? In the 2020 “New Pact on Asylum and Migration” one striking aspect within the narratives of the legislative proposals is the technical language that is used to describe the migratory movements. For instance, common terminology to describe migration movements are “pressure”^[24] or “flows”^[25] .

This leads into another feature of the examined proposals. In the proposal introducing a screening for third country nationals at external borders, as well as in the Commission’s recommendation on cooperation among member states concerning search and rescue activities, the term “stakeholder” is used. On the one side, this gives the impression of migration as economical enterprise (along with the term “management”), and on the other side, it indicates that the perspectives of people on the move are not considered in the process.

For instance, the term “pressure” always addresses pressure on the member states or border regions, but not on the migratory pressures, the reasons that force people to leave their countries despite strategies of deterrence. An interesting contrast to this one-sidedness in discourse is the handling of the refugee movement from Ukraine. In the case of the launch of the EU Talent pool, not only is the perspective of refugees considered, but also their presence: two Ukrainian Women got invited and presented within the launch of the program (“Launch of the EU talent pool”, 2022).^[26] This shows a different sensibility to the refugees’ situation.^[27]

Also, the stated goals aim to give the EUropean organs more control over migration and to increase their legitimization by reestablishing trust in them, as well as amongst the member states (European Commission 2020, “New Pact”). This practice finds an expression in the proposal to do the screening “pre-entry,” to not authorize people on the move to enter the EUropean territory^[28] and therefore to potentially coerce them to stay in these zones as well as bordering countries that are not (yet) member states to provide their territory as a “buffer” (Fitzgerald 2020, 11-12).

On the level of conferences between member states that prepared consequent EU policy decisions on migration, the closure of the Balkan’s trail in 2016 is an interesting example. One conference that was held in its preparation, “Managing Migration Together,” happened on the 24th of February 2016 in Vienna between the ministers of Foreign and Inner Affairs of Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria as an observer. The wording of its declaration is in line with the technical vocabulary of the EU proposals mentioned before, e.g., migration in the western Balkan being described as “high pressure.”

These descriptions add to one of the claims of this declaration, which is that irregular migration is dangerous. One of the first lines of the preamble, “AWARE of the risks of crime, violent extremism and terrorism, which may spread as a consequence of irregular migration” ^[29] is directly followed by “RECALLING the Vienna Declaration ‘Tackling Jihadism Together’ of 20 March 2015 …: ”Irregular migration is hence not only linked to a risk of crime and extremism, but specifically to Islamist terrorism. Later in the declaration, this reading gets affirmed within the agreed approach of the declaration: “In view of the increasingly visible connections between illegal migration and extremism, relevant measures agreed in the Vienna Declaration ‘Tackling Jihadism Together’ of 20 March 2015 will be swiftly implemented.”^[30]

It is clear to observe that Islamist extremism is seen here as an inherent feature of “illegal”^[31] migration that is hence perceived as a criminal phenomenon that must be.^[32] This impression gets intensified by the technical language used in the declaration that speaks about the impact of migration on member states and countries that want to join the European union but does not consider the situation of people on the move.

The wish to stop people not in need of international protection in “misusing the route” makes it easy to assume bad motives of people on the move wanting to enter the EU. It leaves the challenge of a legal entry unmentioned. ^[33] A phrase as “It is not possible to process unlimited numbers of migrants and applicants for asylum, due to limited resources and reception capacities, potential consequences for internal security and social cohesion as well as challenges with regard to integration” introduces the prospect of an endless stream of people that want to enter the EU, while stating the evident fact that this impossible scenario would not be manageable.

Furthermore, a differentiation is made between the in- and the outgroup in speaking about “potential consequences for social cohesion.” It is assumed that the refugees/immigrants are sufficiently different from the populations inside the EU borders so that the existing unity within the EU would get disrupted. What constitutes this unity or difference is not explicitly stated, an interpretation in terms of religion or phenomena inspired by religion as moral values or culture, however, suggests itself considering the pronounced allusions to refugees/immigrants being Muslims.

Anna-Maria Edlinger is a doctoral candidate in in Philosophy at École Normale Supérieure, Paris. Her main interest is in political philosophy, where she is trying to combine social sciences methods with philosophical reflection. This publication allows her to further explore the philosophy of religion and embodiment and to draw attention to the situation of refugees at EUropean external borders.

Footnotes

In the following text, E and U are written in capital letters to highlight the difference between “european” as “relating to the continent Europe” and “EUropean” as “relating to the EU”. This practice is copied from Beznec and Kurnik 2020. ↩︎
„People on the move” does not differentiate between refugees and immigrants, that are oftentimes moving together in migration movements. In a wider sense, the term describes the situation that people are in, and does not comment on its legitimacy. The term is for example suggested by Pijnenburg and Rijken (Pijnenburg and Rijken, 2021). In the present text however, the term “refugee” will be used in order to talk about the legal situation, that is different for immigrants and refugees. ↩︎
United Nations. n.d. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights. ↩︎
The last information seems especially important considering the still missing criteria for flight because of climate change developments (Climate Refugees, 2022) and arguments against the legitimacy of migration based on economic aspirations. ↩︎
UNHCR. n.d. “States Parties to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol.” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b73b0d63.pdf. ↩︎
UNHCR. n.d. “Convention and Protocol relating to the status of refugees.” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10. ↩︎
Today, 26 countries participate in the agreement. Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria are not yet part of the Schengen zone, but in the process of joining. Ireland and Cyprus have not joined the agreement, whereas Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein as non-EU countries are members of the Schengen zone (“Schengen Area”, 2022). ↩︎
European Commission. n.d. “Home Affairs. irregular migrant.” Accessed January 29th, 2023. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/european-migration-network-emn/emn-asylum-and-migration-glossary/glossary/irregular-migrant_en. ↩︎
European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. n.d. “EU Charter of Fundamental Rights” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
The “EUropean Asylum Regime” consists to a big extent of the countries sovereign policies that are subject to EUropean decisions. Regarding the deviating asylum policies of e.g.,Hungary, the EUropean decisions seem more like guidelines. ↩︎
Thränhardt, Dietrich, “Lotteries. The Ambivalent European Asylum Regime and How to Fix It. Credibility and Effectiveness of Asylum Decisions in Europe.” Zeitschrift für Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung 5 (2021): 326. ↩︎
Ibid., 330-1. ↩︎
Border Violence Monitoring Network. n.d. “How does the database work?” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.borderviolence.eu/how-does-the-database-work/. ↩︎
The Black Book of Pushbacks, vol. 1, Hope Barker and Milena Zajović, eds. (Brussels: The Left in the European Parliament, 2022), 2-4. ↩︎
EUROSUR is in charge of surveilling EUropean borders and migration movements over these and of sharing this information with Schengen States and relevant agencies. It was already established in 2013 (“Eurosur”, 2023, which makes the unpreparedness of EUropean States in the “long summer of migration” 2015 seem surprising. ↩︎
Black Book, op. cit., 26-8. ↩︎
European Council. 2022. “EU asylum reform.” Last reviewed December 5th, 2022. Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-migration-policy/eu-asylum-reform/. ↩︎
European Commission 2020, “New Pact”, op. cit. ↩︎
European Council 2022, “EU asylum reform”, op. cit. ↩︎
Cicero, The Nature of the God, trans. P.G. Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 72. ↩︎
Saint Augustine., The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 1999), 111. ↩︎
EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, op. cit., preamble. ↩︎
“Make the system more efficient and resistant to migratory pressures” (European Council 2022, “EU asylum reform”). ↩︎
“… management of mixed migration flows” (European Commission 2022, “Proposal for a regulation introducing a screening of third country nationals”. ↩︎
This launch also mentions the first activation of the Temporary Protection Directive ever for hosting refugees of Ukraine. This program, aimed to provide immediate protection when a high number of refugees potentially overcharges the national capacities of member states, was created in 2001 and has not been activated in 2015 (“Temporary Protection”, 2023). ↩︎
In the scope of this paper, no account about why there is such a difference between Ukrainian refugees and those coming through the Mediterranean or the Balkans can be given. With what is developed in the section “Borders and faith”, it only can be said that the first get integrated into the political faith of the EU, while the latter get confronted with a border. Von der Leyen describes the war in Ukraine as “war against our values” (“State of the Union” 2022, 3) and Ukrainians as “European heroes” (“State of the Union” 2022, 4). ↩︎
European Commission 2022, “Proposal for a regulation introducing a screening of third country nationals”, 5. ↩︎
Republic of Austria, Federal Ministry of the Interior. 2016. “Managing Migration Together. 24February 2016. Declaration,” 1. Accessed 29th January 2023. https://www.bmeia.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Aussendungen/2016/Westbalkankonferenz_Draft_Declaration_Letztfassung.pdf. ↩︎
“Managing Migration together”, op. cit, 4. ↩︎
Earlier in this declaration, the word “irregular” was used instead of “illegal”. The EU Commission defines the difference as follows: “The term ‘irregular’ is preferable to ‘illegal’ migrant because the latter carries a criminal connotation, entering a country in an irregular manner, or staying with an irregular status, is not a criminal offence but an infraction of administrative regulations. Apart from this, juridically and ethically, an act can be legal or illegal but a person cannot“ (“irregular migrant”, 2023). ↩︎
“Managing Migration together”, op. cit, 4. ↩︎
Op. cit. ↩︎

What Exactly Is Postmodernism, And How Did It Change The Landscape Of Religious Studies?, Part 2 (Carl Raschke)

2023-10-11T17:33:44Z

This article is published in two installments. The first can be found here.

III.

Taylor’s typification of postmodernism as Flatland, however, as the quintessential Hegelian “bone”, did not sit well with the British participants in the Shadow of Spirit conference, who represented both the majority and in certain measure the intellectual heavy weights for the Church of England. Rowan Williams, who later would become Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of the contributors.

British philosopher Gillian Rose criticized Taylor for misappropriating Hegel, casting postmodernism as a kind of totalizing tour de force that results when one removes “diremption” (i.e., the act of splitting in two) from the dialectic. Postmodernism makes a “Christian new Jerusalem”, she wrote, out of “old Athens”. Postmodern theology, in particular, with its declaration that everything is text pretends to be a “prodigious, omniscient ‘western’ intellectuality that would crown [itself] or a/theology – ‘queen of the sciences’.” It is “comprehensive while decrying comprehension”.^[1]

John Milbank’s article “Problematizing the Secular: The Post-Postmodern Agenda”, however, sketched out a completely unprecedented and (for those now sated with Derrida, deconstruction, and God’s death) quirky new modus operandi for Christian reflection that later in the decade would be known as “radical orthodoxy”. The phrase, developed strategically by the editors at Routledge who had already published Shadow of Spirit, does not appear in the 1992 anthology.

But the crucial themes of the movement occur throughout Milbank’s essay. Discarding Derrida, Milbank turned instead to the tower and opaque French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who was not yet a household name in the Anglophone academy. ‘”Postmodern’ thought is the legatee of a version of critique founded on an assumption of immanence”, Milbank wrote. It begins with “a refusal of transcendence, and an affirmation of the self-sufficiency, not of God, nor of humanity, but of nature or nature-in-process.”^[2]

Like Deleuze, Milbank regarded the seventeenth century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose watchword was Deus sive natura (“God or nature”), as the paradigmatic philosopher of immanence. But Milbank sought to Christianize both Deleuze and Spinoza so that the playful semiotics of Derridean difference confined to a world that is nothing but the text can now be seen as “Literally and univocally, a part of God, a real advent of Being, and at the same time one is aware of its utterly non-hierarchical, non-teleological relation to everything else.”^[3]

The inaugural volume of essays, edited by Milbank and entitled Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, sought to put the American or “deconstructive” strain of postmodernism in its place. A host of later writers also sought to claim some kind of affiliation with “radical orthodoxy”, but the eclectic and extremely disparate assortment of theological authors who over time assumed the mantle makes the concept almost as difficult to nail down as the idea of postmodernism itself. Even the leading representatives of the movement – Milbank, Catherine Pitstock, and Graham Ward – worked with recognizably discrete agendas.

But the one claim all of those who represented what was almost exclusively an Anglican and Catholic pushback to the “a/theologians” was that postmodernism in its American instantiation is inherently “nihilistic” – a charge repeatedly leveled by conservative cultural commentators who had never opened a book in philosophy or theology – and that “the material and temporal realms of bodies, sex, art and sociality, which modernity claims to value, can truly be upheld only by acknowledgement of their participation in the transcendent.”^[4]

In essence, the cenacle of British religious thinkers who claimed the mantle of “radical orthodoxy” sought to leverage the skeptical or “critical” apparatus of French postmodernism to argue that Lyotard’s “incredulity” regarding metanarratives could only be addressed by revamping a primordial version of Medieval Christian neo-Platonism. As Milbank wrote in his “Introduction” to the volume, the theological perspective of participation actually saves the appearances by exceeding them. It recognises that materialism and spiritualism are false alternatives, since if there is only finite matter there is not even that, and that for phenomena really to be there they must be more than there.”

Taylor and Altizer’s take on postmodernism, the expontents of radical orthodoxy pronounced, is simply the old, “secularist” prototype of modernism in a fancy new guise. Real postmodernism (i.e., one that goes beyond modernism) returns to an ontology of the divine out of which the “representational” function of language and thought emerge. Behind the “density” of modern, secularist rationalism “resides an even greater density—beyond all contrasts of density and lightness (as beyond all contrasts of definition and limitlessness). This is to say that all there is only is because it is more than it is.”^[5]

Radical orthodoxy, however, already had a secret ally in the French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion, one of Jacques Derrida’s own students , who had made similar moves as early as 1982 with publication of his Dieu sans l’être: Hors- texte (“God without Being: Outside the Text”). The title of Marion’s work was a play on Derrida’s famous dictum of the early era of deconstruction – il n’y a pas de hors-texte, “there is nothing outside the text”.

In his foreword to the English translation of Marion’s book in 1991 American theologian David Tracy wrote that Marion had “forged a new and brilliant postmodern version of the other great alternative for theology: a revelation-centered, noncorrelational, postmetaphysical theology.” It was one embodying “a rigorous and coherent theological strategy focused on the reality of God’s revelation as pure gift, indeed as excess.”^[6] In God Without Being Marion aimed, as did radical orthodoxy, to bring the question of God as the most fundamental of all questions in light of the postmodern problematic. “Modernity is characterized first by the nullification of God as a question. Why does God no longer inhabit any process of questioning?”^[7]

But after Heidegger’s devastating critique (Destruktion) of metaphysics as “onto-theology”, the question must be posed in a radically different fashion, Marion insisted. It is to pose the question in order to “liberate ‘God’ from Being” in all senses – univocal, equivocal, or analogical. If “deconstruction” is all about the text, it is still about the Being of the text, and thus snared within the most rarefied flytrap of onto-theology. Although God Without Being is a complicated and torturous discussion of the fate of Scholastic theology in light of the postmodern “turn” in contemporary thought, Marion’s solution to the problem he raises is quite similar to that posed by radical orthodox writers – we can only talk about the divine as some kind of “real presence” that is neither conceptual nor metaphysical, but liturgical.

In both God Without Being and later writings Marion adapts both Heidegger’s and Derrida’s conceptual play on the German idiom es gibt (“there is”, but literally “it gives”). The “Being of God” has nothing to do with the verb “to be”. Rather, it is manifested through the love and grace of which Scripture speaks forcefully. That is, the divine presence is a “gift”. Contrary to “deconstructionist” theology, the Biblical text in which the Christian tradition has maintained harbors the revelation that is Christ Jesus is not what ultimately matters.

Even if there is nothing outside the text, it is the text that brings the real presence of God in Christ to light. According to Marion, the “hermeneutic” or interpretation of the text activates the donum gratiae, or gift of grace, that makes the divine present. The “proof text” of all texts is the Eucharist itself. “The Word intervenes in person in the Eucharist (in person, because only then does he manifest and perform his filiation) to accomplish in this way the hermeneutic. The Eucharist alone completes the hermeneutic; the hermeneutic culminates in the Eucharist; the one assures the other its condition of possibility: the intervention in person of the referent of the text as center of its meaning, of the Word, outside of the words, to reappropriate them to himself as “what concerns him.”^[8]

IV.

By the turn of the millennium postmodernism as an intellectual movement had reached its apex of influence and was trenching on a period of slow, but inexorable decline. The death of Derrida in 2004 signaled the beginning of the end. At the same time, the trauma of September 11, 2001 and the global financial crisis of 2008 also played an outsize role. It was no longer text and cultural “canons” that were “deconstructing”. The sense of security and cultural optimism that had held the Western democracies together since the end of World War II seemed to be unraveling at the seams.

The “postmodern moment” in Western letters had coincided with the political and economic ascendancy of the Baby Boom generation, and the movement had aged along with them. The precipitous collapse of world Communism around 1990 along with the conclusion of the Cold War had temporarily buoyed what Derrida himself had described as its “messianic” spirit, which in his 1993 tome Specters of Marx held out a vision of a “new international” that would somehow bring into being a global “democracy to come”.^[9] Specters of Marx was the high point of Derrida’s so-called “political phase”, which overshadowed the last fifteen years of his life.

It also marked his concurrent interest in religious questions, which he often framed in prophetic language. “Deconstruction”, Derrida wrote, is no longer simply about texts and textuality. On the contrary, it amounts to a “certain experience of the emancipatory promise; it is perhaps even the formality of a structural messianism, a messianism without religion, even a messianic without messianism, an idea of justice.”^[10]

The coterie of progressive religious thinkers and critics who had introduced postmodernism to the study of theology and the reading of religious texts, however, did not seem at all interested in, let alone responsive to, Derrida’s “messianism”. One exception was a former Catholic philosopher by the name of John D. (“Jack”) Caputo, who had introduced Derrida in the late 1980s to a more conventional and conservative academic audience steeped in Heidegger, Husserl, Gadamer, and the phenomenological tradition with his book Radical Hermeneutics.^[11]

In 1993 Caputo published The Prayers and Tears of Derrida: Religion Without Religion which caused an initial sensation in its own right, because for the first time it offered an affirmative and relatively simplistic take on religious postmodernism without the heavy and complex jargon that had dominated both the literary and philosophical strains of the kind of “theory” associated with early deconstructionism. It also popularized Derrida’s later ideas on faith and politics while downplaying his erstwhile associations with Taylor, Altizer, and death of God theology. In addition, Caputo had a playful and somewhat polemical style, aimed primarily at religious conservatives of both Catholic and Protestant persuasion, which endeared him to mainline religious liberal, who had long been suspicious of Derrida.

Caputo’s book sparked a particular interest for the first time in philosophical postmodernism among younger, more educated Christian evangelicals, who had begun to chafe under the regime of the religious right. Informal, experimental, and more hip kinds of ministry and worship led by GenX evangelicals had been trending throughout the 1990s and affixing the label “postmodern”, even if they had absolutely no clue what French philosophy was all about. The focus of the book on “justice”, even if it was still heavily sheathed within the strange and idiosyncratic discourse of the Derrideans, also intrigued them.

Very few evangelicals at the time attempted to read Prayers and Tears. Yet in evangelical seminaries second source works on “postmodernism” were beginning to pop up, most of which were friendly disposed, but quite crudely represented its philosophical import. Theologian Stanley Grenz, who acquired in the late 1990s a kind of celebrity status among progressive evangelicals, characterized the movement this way: “Postmodern philosophers applied the theories of the literary deconstructionists to the world as a whole. Just as a text will be read differently by each reader, they said, so reality will be ‘read’ differently by each knowing self that encounters it. This means that there is no one meaning of the world, no transcendent center to reality as a whole.”^[12]

This characterization, of course, was virtually indistinguishable from what conservative adversaries had been saying about “postmodernism” since the 1970s, namely, that it was simply “relativism” with a more fashionable nom de guerre. But Grenz, unlike the conservatives, did neither condemned postmodernism nor cautioned against it. He encouraged his readers to take it seriously since it is basically the intellectual oxygen, he suggested, that present day religious seekers breathed every hour of the day.

The task of actually explaining postmodern thought in detail to the evangelical world fell to myself when I was asked to address the Evangelical Theological Society in the fall of 2001, just two months after 9/11. I had expected a hostile audience, but the opposite turned out to be the case. I called it “the next reformation”, which became a book by the same title that appeared in 2004.^[13] The evangelical publisher Baker Academic thereafter launched an entire series The Church and Postmodern Culture, which did not include evangelical writer per se, but eminent academic philosophers and theologians such as Caputo^[14] , James K.A. Smith^[15] , Merold Westphal^[16] , myself^[17] , and even radical orthodox thinker Graham Ward^[18] . In many ways these books were as much about introducing academic philosophy to a more sophisticated and inquisitive evangelical establishment than spreading any “gospel” of postmodernism, which was on its way out anyway.

Today, the word “postmodernism” (or “pomo” as it was known in the vernacular) hardly comes up at all in cutting edge religious discourse. “Critical theory”, which has a similar academic pedigree and as vague and diffuse connotations as “postmodernism” ever did, is both all the rage and the new gravamen of controversy. The phrase “postmodern”, however, defines both a complex and a sequence of intellectual sea changes that span a half century of recent history that remain irreversible.

Carl Raschke is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Denver and Senior Editor of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. He is the author or co-author of over 20 books, including Postmodern Theology: A Biopic (Cascade Books, 2017). His book The End of Theology (originally published as The Alchemy of the Word: Language and the End of Theology) is generally considered to be the book that launched the postmodern revolution in religious studies.

Footnotes

Gillian Rose, “Diremption of Spirit,” in Shadow of Spirit, op. cit., 46. ↩︎
John Milbank, “Problematizing the Secular: The Post-Postmodern Agenda,” in Shadow of Spirit, op. cit., 34. ↩︎
Op. cit., 35. ↩︎
John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Wards (eds.), Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1999), book jacket. ↩︎
Ibid., 4. ↩︎
Ibid., 14. ↩︎
Ibid., 57. ↩︎
Ibid., 150-1. ↩︎
See Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994). ↩︎
Ibid., 74. ↩︎
John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). ↩︎
Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 6. ↩︎
See Carl Raschke, The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2004). ↩︎
John D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2007). ↩︎
James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2006). ↩︎
Merold Westphal, Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2009). ↩︎
Carl Raschke, GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2008). ↩︎
Graham Ward, The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2000 ↩︎

What Exactly Is Postmodernism, And How Did It Change The Landscape Of Religious Studies?, Part 1 (Carl Raschke)

2023-09-28T17:26:12Z

Almost a half century ago a change took place in the humanities, and by extension in the fledgling field of religious studies. By the 1990s that change had been a sea change. By the mid-1980s the change had come to be known as “postmodernism”. Today the expression, which is just as vague and polysemic as it was forty years, is still thrown around with abandon, especially in theological studies. Ex-evangelicals, for example, promiscuously and ignorantly misuse the term “deconstruction”, introduced by the doyen of the movement Jacques Derrida, in a way that is largely meaningless and unrelated to what postmodernism was all about. This essay is intended to provide some historical and insight and clarity.

This article is published in two installments.

“Postmodernism” is a slippery and evanescent concept that has been used in a mind-boggling number of different ways ever since it gained currency in the early 1980s with the publication and translation into English of a book by French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard entitled The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Although this article is for a reference work that focuses on the Bible, “postmodernism” as a conceptual project has had very little direct impact – if anything significant at all – on Biblical interpretation.

As Stephen Moore and Yvonne Sherwood write in their preface to a contemporary history of Biblical scholarship, even at the end of its noisy run within the academy postmodernist theory “was still widely perceived as a rather distant satellite orbiting the historical-critical core of the biblical studies discipline, and now that satellite seemed in danger of disintegrating without ever having come close enough to register on the hermeneutical horizons of most biblical scholars.”^[1] But recent Biblical scholarship could not have taken the methodological twists and turns it did in recent decades without having absorbed so much of the theoretical ambience that has overshadowed the field of theology and religious studies for the past half century.

Therefore, we will have examine how the notion of the “postmodern” evolved along so many different trajectories from so many varying angles, and how it colored the contemporary Christian imaginary as a whole, which by default shaped Biblical scholarship.

In the opening paragraph of The Postmodern Condition Lyotard wrote: “the object of this study is the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. I have decided to use the word postmodern to describe that condition.” Ironically, The Postmodern Condition was not intended as any kind of speculative manifesto, or precedent-busting philosophical treatise. As the subtitle suggests, it was contracted by the Council of Universities of the Provincial Government of Quebec as a rather prosaic analysis for the benefit of the educational bureaucracy on “the state of knowledge” around 1980.

In the introduction Lyotard notes that the word was already in use “among sociologists and critics,” indicating “the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts.” ^[2] Lyotard described the situation as an unprecedented tug of war between the sciences and the humanistic disciplines, which had begotten a “crisis of narratives” or – in what is perhaps the most quoted phrase from the entire volume – “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Lyotard went on to expand on what he meant by this phrase.

This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements—narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on.^[3]

To this day such an account strikes us akin to what a friend of mine who worked her whole professional life in a state educational bureaucracy has referred to as “pedagese”. In truth, Lyotard admits that is exactly what he is doing. In the introduction Lyotard thanks the government of Quebec for allowing him to play in the same sandbox as civil servants. “The author of the report,” he self-effacingly quips, “is a philosopher, not an expert.”^[4] But Lyotard was engaged in something much more than a technical scrutiny of how different pedagogical strategies and their pragmatic protocols for implementation function within the milieu of Francophone higher learning.

He sought for the most part to show how the discourses of contemporary French arts and letter that had come be to labelled “post-structuralist” (referencing its systemic critique of the dominant postwar methodology known as “structuralism”) profoundly informed in ways that heretofore had not be obvious the more diffuse social apparatus for the production of “knowledge”. Thus he sought to map out the new episteme, as the grey eminence of the French intellectual scene Michel Foucault had called it, for what social scientists and critics were then characterizing as the “postindustrial” age.

Foucault understood an episteme as a set assumptions and procedures in a given era for determining what is true and what is false, that is, what can be considered legitimate knowledge.^[5] The function of higher education in Lyotard’s eyes was to provide institutional “legitimation” for this knowledge.

Lyotard was responding obliquely to a series of conversations on the continent that has been launched with publication of 1973 of a book by the eminent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas entitled Legitimation Crisis. In his book Habermas explored the means by which “late capitalism” had undermined historic forms of social, religious, or political legitimation. Now it is the economic system alone with its productive and distributive capacity that confers legitimacy, leading to a “legitimation crisis”.

Habermas wrote that under the new post-industrial regime of late capitalism “the arrangement of formal democratic institutions and procedures permits administrative decisions to be made largely independently of specific motives of the citizens.” ^[6] Although he does not say so explicitly, Lyotard throughout The Postmodern Condition implies it is the role of the university, the postindustrial “knowledge factory”, to shore up once again the kinds of normative justifications that make late capitalism politically defensible.

However, Lyotard’s narrowly circumscribed motives in giving currency to the locution “postmodern” were soon scattered to the four winds. The idea of “post-industrial” knowledge systems – what Lyotard borrowing from Ludwig Wittgenstein constantly in his monography referred to as “language games” – was too abstruse, once his “report” to the Quebec educational commission had been translated into English, for the Anglophone reader. Likewise, the term “post-structuralism” seemed even more obscure, since it implied familiarity with the “structuralist” methodology that captivated French academia but remained with a few exceptions foreign for the most part to the sensibilities of researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Within a very short time after the translation of Lyotard’s monograph the locutions “postmodern” and “postmodernist” acquired a public life of their own. It came to connote not only something progressive and “alternative”, but also everything in the conservative mind that was wrong with contemporary culture from new attitudes about sex to the boom in New Age styles of spirituality. The word itself had become promiscuous in its application and diffuse in its usage. Broadly speaking, it became an all-purpose signifier for the American “cultural revolution” that began during the protests against the Vietnam War and were epitomized in the Summer of Love in the Bay Area in 1967 as well as in the hippie movement.

At the same time, it came to be pointedly associated with an intellectual fashion that was in that day taking the academic humanities by storm – what was known as “deconstruction.” As Gregory Jones-Katz notes, deconstruction and postmodernism were imported from Europe to American about the same time and were immediately conflated with each other, although Lyotard’s project diverged significantly from Derrida’s.^[7]

The popular perception was that Lyotard’s and Derrida’s approaches were bound up with “a more general fracturing of society and culture” that was not haphazard but the actual output of “domestic institutions, publications, classroom experiences, conferences, pedagogical programs, and philosophical and literary – critical practices that instituted— not merely adopted— deconstruction in the United States.”^[8]

Gayatri Spivak, a student of Derrida, coined the word “post-structuralism” in her introduction to Of Grammatology, what is perhaps a seminal and most influential of the latter’s early works.^[9] Derrida introduced the word “deconstruction”, however, to emphasize how post-structuralism works in practice. He adapted the expression from Martin Heidegger who in his later writings had talked about the “destruction” (German=Destruktion, or Abbau) of the history of metaphysics. In his “Letter to a Japanese Friend Derrida wrote:

At that time structuralism was dominant. ‘Deconstruction’ seemed to be going in the same direction since the word signified a certain attention to structures (which themselves were neither simply ideas, nor forms, nor syntheses, nor systems). To deconstruct was also a structuralist gesture or in any case a gesture that assumed a certain need for the structuralist problematic. But it was also an anti-structuralist gesture, and its fortune rests in part on this ambiguity. Structures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented…socio-institutional, political, cultural, and above all and from the start philosophical.^[10]

“Structuralism”, of course, as a philosophical method had been all the rage in France for decades, whereas it was virtually unknown in the United States. In fact, it was at a conference at Johns Hopkins University in the fall of 1966 designed to introduce structuralism to an American academic audience that the young Derrida made his first public appearance on that side of the pond. The outcome was thoroughly unexpected. Instead of persuading his audience to take structuralism seriously, he criticized and undermined it.^[11]

Yet, even though American academics were not at all conversant with the context in which Derrida employed such familiar post-structuralist idioms as “logocentrism” and the “metaphysics of presence”, they perceived in “deconstruction” a viable alternative to the regnant methodological paradigms of positivist science and the pervasive influence of Anglo-American linguistic philosophy.

Today it is difficult to conceive how what came to be known as “analytic philosophy” crowded out all other possible canons for argumentation and explanation. German and French schools of philosophical inquiry were generally regarded, except in certain quarters, as weird and muddle-headed. French structuralism, let alone post-structuralism, was viewed for the most part as the sort of dialect that might be spoken on Mars. But Americans historically have always been receptive to intellectual fads drifting across the Atlantic from Europe.

“Deconstructionism”, as it came to be called in the United States, made its landfall among American academics with the so-called Yale School of Literary Criticism, who adopted Derrida as one of their own. They included Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman, and Harold Bloom. Deconstruction brings to brings to the fore in literary theory, Bloom wrote in the preface, “the difficulty of locating meaning totally within one textual source.” In other words, one cannot simply derive what the text “means” by doing an internal analysis of its structural elements or even the original context in which was first created. One must consider the ways in which its different modes of signification have evolved over time with different reading publics, cultural sensibilities, and translations. “Each text is shown to imbed other texts

by a most cunning assimilation whose form is the subject both of psychoanalytic and of purely rhetorical criticism.”^[12] Derrida’s newfound eminence within the Yale School, however, swiftly typecast him as a literary theorist, obscuring his training and stature in France as an upcoming philosopher. The American philosophical establishment, which even in modest Continental enclaves knew nothing of structuralism, or post-structuralism, refused to take him seriously, dismissing him cavalierly as merely a “critic”, or a “writer”.

II.

That all changed in 1979 when American philosopher Richard Rorty published his acclaimed treaties entitled Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, which shook analytical philosophy to the core and elicited howls of outrage. Rorty’s controversial thesis was stated in the introduction. The commitment of analytic philosophy “to the construction of a permanent, neutral framework for inquiry”, he insisted was futile. Furthermore, the search for a viable theory of reference, which correlates the word as it is with the world as we think it, “is misguided.”^[13] Moreover, “there is no ‘normal” philosophical discourse which provides common commensurating ground for those who see science and edification as, respectively, ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’.”^[14] It was in the context of this observation that Rorty commended Derrida and “deconstruction” for the first time within the American philosophical academy.

The endorsement made the latter persona non grata among Rorty’s cronies, but it caught the attention of some academic theologians who took it as an invitation to leap headlong into the murky waters of the new enthusiasm over “postmodernism”. In 1982 the theological companion to Deconstruction and Literature was published by Crossroad. Sporting the similar title Deconstruction and Theology, it consisted of a collection of essays by younger and upcoming scholars, most of whom did not have the name recognition at the time of the Yale School, at lesser institutions scattered around the country. Derrida himself was notably absent from the roster.

The lone single celebrity author in the compendium, however, was Thomas J. J. Altizer, who had founded the movement known as “death of God theology” in the late 1960s. The editors at Crossroad had actually insisted on inviting Altizer at the last minute because they were afraid that without him Deconstruction and Theology would not have the scholarly gravitas required to sell books. Hesitant at first, Altizer agreed, but in comparison with the other contributors, he only cited Derrida in general ways that either shored up, or embellished, his own theological project. Much of the substance of his article “History as Apocalypse” did not really address either the issues or kinds of hermeneutical puzzles Derrida had posed, striking instead highly nuanced variations on the themes of his 1980 work Total Presence.

The other articles in the Deconstructing Theology volume focused principally on Derrida’s preoccupation at the time with the reading of texts – in this case theological texts – along with various riffs on Heidegger’s criticism of “ontotheology” and his demand for the “overcoming of metaphysics”. But my own introductory essay entitled “The Deconstruction of God” sounded particular notes that would be taken up in the decade that followed as leading motifs of what came to be called “postmodern theology”, which a rising generation of religious thinkers began to pair intimately with the “death of God” initiative. “Deconstruction is the death of God put into writing,” I declared succinctly.^[15]

It was Mark C. Taylor, however, who would broaden the horizons of such “deconstructionist theology” to assimilate much of the entire, writhing spectrum of “postmodernist” French thought into American theological discourse. In his essay “Text as Victim” as part of the Deconstructing Theology volume, Taylor had made tangible gestures beyond Heidegger, Derrida, and the ballooning “deconstructionist” enterprise that was now impacting so much of the humanities. “Postmodernism opens with the sense of irrevocable loss and incurable fault,” Taylor opined. “This wound is inflicted by the overwhelming awareness of death – a death that ‘begins’ with the death of God and ‘ends’ with the death of our selves. We are in a time between times and a place which is no place.

Here our reflection must ‘begin’.”^[16] Postmodern religious reflection begins at what might be called the “zero point” of a culture that suffers from a profound lack of metaphysical, or even theoretical grounding. “The failure (or refusal) to come to terms with the radical implications of the death of God has made it impossible for most Western theology to approach postmodernism.”^[17] The death of God is not just a problem for theology. It concerns the entire architecture of signification which all the scientific, social scientific, and humanistic disciplines conspire to hold together.

God, self, history, and book are…bound in an intricate relationship in which each mirrors the other. No single concept can be changed without altering all of the others. As a result of this thorough interdependence, the news of the death of God cannot really reach our ears until its reverberations are traced in the notions of self, history and book. The echoes of the death of God can be heard in the disappearance of the self, the end of history, and the closure of the book. We can begin to unravel this web of conceptual relations by plotting the coordinates of a new a/theological network.^[18]

The aim of a postmodern theology, according to Taylor, is to “trace the border and retrace the margin” of the entirety of Western theological discourse that all somehow revolves around the hole in the donut, the metaphysical vacuum, the empty signifier that for millennia has been inscribed as “God.” Taylor coined the word “erring,” that is, “roaming through the labyrinth of this word” through which “we catch an initial glimpse of the wiles and ways ofpostmodern a/theology.”^[19]

But Taylor’s “a/theology”, as articulated in Erring, was in many respects merely an expansion and embellishment of what Altizer had been saying all along, but making the case with a more sophisticated appreciation for French philosophy. Just as Altizer’s leitmotif from the very start had been the idea, first suggested by Luther and memorialized in Hegel’s declaration of the “Golgotha of Absolute Spirit”, that God had actually “died” on the Cross, so Taylor transposed this insight into a “postmodern” register with his observation that “the main contours of deconstructive a/theology begin to emerge with the realization of the necessary interrelation between the death of God and radical christology.” For Taylor, “radical christology is thoroughly incarnational- the divine ‘is’ the incarnate word”, whereas “this embodiment of the divine is the death of God.”^[20]

By the late 1980s, however the word “postmodern” had “erred”, or wandered, quite far from its original range of connotations and become a swank, but frothy tag word for just about anything anybody in the Christian theological world was doing that seemed new at the moment. An anthology of essays that came out in 1989 entitled Varieties of Postmodern Theology underscores this point.^[21] David Ray Griffin, the lead editor and well-known already in the field as a Whiteheadean, or process theologian, pronounced simply that postmodernism “refers to a diffuse sentiment rather than to any common set of doctrines – that humanity can and must go beyond the modern”.^[22]

Griffin claimed that the mantle of postmodern theology should be borne not just by the deconstructionists, but also the well-established category of “liberation theology” and even the then fashionable conservative Catholic theology associated with the papacy of John Paul II.^[23] Shortly thereafter Griffin co-authored with famed historian of religion Houston Smith under the title of Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology, in which the latter claimed postmodernism must somehow be associated the classic religious doctrine known as “perennialism”, which contends that all religious habor a single, essential, universal truths and, as the old saying goes, “all paths lead to God.”^[24]

In an article published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion in 1990 (at the invitation of the editor at the time) I challenged the effort of Griffin and others like him to co-opt the word “postmodern” for what were essentially familiar and well-worn projects. That included also the new confusion of the concept, which Taylor had initiated, with death of God theology. In the article I argued that “a serious postmodernism has not left its stamp on religious thought”.^[25] In the article I sought to explain to an audience of largely religious scholars how postmodernism indeed was rooted in literary theory and aesthetics, but I doubt it made any significant impression at the time on the field. The term continued to be deployed in even looser, preposterous, and even fanciful ways.

Just a short while thereafter a conference was held at Cambridge University in England. The conference included several select figures, the majority of whom had not previously been involved in the discussions over “postmodernism”. The proceedings of the conference were reworked into an anthology of seminal essays entitled Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion, which set the discussion of postmodernism and religion on several new footings. This volume, which never gained much scholarly traction when it first came out, can actually be considered the watershed from which later streams of postmodern religious thinking flowed. Mark C. Taylor in the initial essay, in effect, dismissed much of what he had written in Erring, identifying Altizer and “a/theology” as only one within a miscellany of “postmodernisms”.

Locating the center of gravity for these “postmodernisms” now orbit of modernist aesthetics and performance theory (as I had done in “Fire and Roses”, Taylor zeroed in on contemporary artists such as the New York School and Andy Warhol as well as electronic communications in general in what might be described as an au courant and intellectually sophisticated update of Marshal McLuhan’s dictum that the “medium” is the message.

Alluding to then popular French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality”, Taylor characterized the postmodern view of the world as one in which the “thing itself is absorbed in the sign system.” The postmodernist aesthetic in many respects is simply the academic sidebar to the ubiquity of media culture. “As electronic media invade every corner of consciousness and activity, ‘reality’ becomes image.”^[26] Taylor later elaborated this line of inquiry in his book Hiding, which profiled postmodernity as “the disappearance of depth”, or as the motto of the emerging digital media pioneers put it, leveraging an old folk saying, “what you see is what you get”.

However, Taylor at the same time fell back, as he was wont to do throughout his career, on a distinctive reading of the great philosopher German G.W.F. Hegel. For Hegel, and for the aesthetics of postmodernism, “surfaces harbor clues of depth that render seemingly senseless appearances surprisingly intelligible”. Discovery of this core postmodernist insight, therefore, lies with what is mistakenly labelled in the history of philosophy Hegel’s “idealism”. Taylor writes: “Consciousness and self-consciousness, Hegel argues, meet in a bone that is the Incarnation of Spirit.”^[27]

Footnotes

Stephen D. Moore and Yvonne Sherwood, The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto (Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 2011), ix. ↩︎
See Jean–François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Language, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiii. ↩︎
Ibid., xiv. ↩︎
Ibid., xxv. ↩︎
For Foucault, an “episteme” is an “epistemological field” which determines the “conditions” for all possible knowledge. See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: The Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1970),xxii. ↩︎
Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Oxford: Polity Press, 1988), 36. ↩︎
Gregory Jones-Katz*, Deconstruction: An American Institution* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), 4ff. ↩︎
Ibid., 5. ↩︎
See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1974). ↩︎
Derrida, “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” 2. ↩︎
See Imre Salusinsky, Criticism in Society (New York: Routledge, 1987), 9. ↩︎
Harold Bloom et. al., Deconstruction and Criticism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), xviii. ↩︎
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 6ff. ↩︎
Ibid., 364. ↩︎
Carl Raschke, “The Deconstruction of God”, in Thomas J. J. Altizer et. al., Deconstruction and Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 27. ↩︎
Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 6. ↩︎
Ibid., 7. ↩︎
Ibid., 7-8. ↩︎
Ibid., 11. ↩︎
Ibid., 103. ↩︎
David Ray Griffin, William A. Beardless, Joe Holland (eds.), Varieties of Postmodern Theology (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1989). ↩︎
Griffin, “Series Introduction”, ibid., xii. ↩︎
Ibid., “Introduction”, 5. ↩︎
See David Ray Griffin and Huston Smith, Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1989). ↩︎
Carl Raschke, “Fire and Roses: Toward an Authentic Post-modern Religious Thinking”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58 (Winter 1990): 677. ↩︎
Mark C. Taylor, “Reframing Postmodernisms”, in Philippa Berry and Andrew Wernick (eds.), Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), 19. ↩︎
Mark C. Taylor, Hiding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 15. ↩︎

JCRT

Conference on Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy (Announcement)

Program

Friday, Sept. 26

15:00 – 15:30 | **Break

Keynote speaker

Saturday, Sept. 27

17:00 – 17:15 | **Break

Footnotes

Conference on Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy – Call for Papers and Presentations (Conferences)

Themes and Topics

Submission Guidelines

Submission Process

Special Issue On Religion and Bioethics (Call for Papers)

Submission Guidelines

Religion and Bioethics (Conferencee)

When: Jan. 9-10, 2025

Where: Online

Register Now

Program

All times given are Mountain Standard Time (Denver)

8:00 am

Welcome and Introductory Remarks

8:30 am

The Sacred End: Ethics and Practice of Sallekhanā in Jainism

9:00 am

9:30 am

Bioengineering and Religious Mythmaking

10:00 am

A Multicultural Approach to Moral Diversity in Religious Bioethics

10:30 am

11:00 am

11:30 am

13:00** **pm

14:00 pm

14:30 pm

15:00** **pm

15:30 pm

16:00** **pm

Reconsidering the Significance of Biogenetic Ties

16:30 pm

Friday, Jan. 10

8:00 am

Collaborative session I

9:15 am

Break

9:30 am

Collaborative session II

10:45 am

Break

11:00 am

Wrap up

11:30 am

Healing As A Multimedia Practice – Contemporary Spirituality In Turkey, Part 1 (Duygu Sendag)

The following article is published in three installments.

Introduction

Culture, Mediation, and Therapeutic Media

Changing Meaning of Healing

Footnotes

Greening America’s Virtues (Nick Mather)

Footnotes

Conference on Religion and Bioethics – Call for Proposals

Themes and Topics

Submission Guidelines

Submission Process

Sikh Environmental Ethics-Theory and Praxis Part 2 (Harpreet Kaur)

Kinship with and Gratitude for Nature

Sustainable Living

Historical and Modern Praxis

Disjuncts and Gaps

Future Directions

Conclusion

Footnotes

Sikh Environmental Ethics-Theory and Praxis Part 1 (Harpreet Kaur)

The following is the first installment of a two-part series.

Historical Context of the Sikh Faith and Scriptures

Methodological Approach and Conceptual Framework

Ecological Inspiration in Sikh

Deep Ecology Characteristics

Panentheism

13:00 pm

15:00 pm

16:00 pm

The Good News for Black Disabled People.^[11]

Sikhs: A Summary^[14]

Sikhs: A Summary^[14:1]