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Rethinking Secularism (with Raimon Panikkar)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Fred Dallmayr
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Extract

More than a century after Nietzsche's proclamation of the “death of God,” some recent books speak alarmingly of “the revenge of God” and the prospect of a “new cold war”—a conflict pitting religious “fundamentalists” against agnostic secularists on a worldwide scale. Remembering the cultural struggles of nineteenthcentury Europe, one might say that today Kulturkampfhas been globalized. At this juncture it seems timely to reexamine the meaning of secularism and secularization and their relation to religious faith.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , Fall 1999 , pp. 715 - 735
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1999

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References

1. See Kepel, Gilles, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World, trans. Braley, Alan (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Juergensmeyer, Mark, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).Google Scholar

2. Lenski, Gerhard, The Religious Factor (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p.3.Google Scholar Extending this assessment beyond the confines of sociology, Stark, Rodney and Bainbridge, William S. reached a similar conclusion: “At least since the Enlightenment, most Western intellectuals have anticipated the death of religion The most illustrious figures in sociology, anthropology, and psychology have unanimously expressed confidence that their children, or surely their grandchildren, would live to see the dawn of a new era in which, to paraphrase Freud, the infantile illusions of religion would be outgrown.” See The Future of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p.1.Google ScholarCompare also Auguste Comte, Catechisme positiviste (Paris: Dalmont, 1852)Google Scholar; Durkheim, Emile, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912; New York: Collier Books, 1961);Google ScholarWeber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; New York: Sribner's, 1958)Google Scholar and Economy and Society (1922; New York: Bedminster Press, 1968).Google Scholar

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5. See Bellah, Robert N., Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper & Row, 1970);Google ScholarHammond, Phillip E., ed., The Sacred in a Secular Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Cox, Harvey, Religion in the Secular City (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984)Google Scholar; also Neuhaus, Richard J., The Naked Public Square (New York: Eerdmans, 1984).Google Scholar Regarding the sociological debate around the “secularization thesis” compare, e.g., Martin, David, A General Theory of Secularization (New York: Harper & Row, 1978)Google Scholar; Dobbelaere, Karel, “Secularization Theories and Sociological Paradigms,“ Social Compass, 31 (1984): 199–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hadden, Jeffrey K., “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory,“ Social Forces, 65 (1987): 587–611CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crippen, Timothy, “Old and New Gods in the Modern World: Toward a Theory of Religious Transformation,“ Social Forces, 67 (1988): 336CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lechner, Frank J., “A Case Against Secularization: A Rebuttal,“ Social Forces, 69 (1991): 1103–1119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yamane, David, “Secularization on Trial: In Defense of a Neosecularization Paradigm,“ journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, 36 (1997): 109–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7. Mayer, John, “Secularization and Cultural Diversity,” in Chandel and Kuçuradi, Cultural Traditions and the Idea of Secularization, pp. 33, 36.Google Scholar

8. For some of Panikkar's, prominent writings see, e.g., Die vielen Götter und der eine Herr (Weilheim, Germany: Barth, 1963)Google Scholar; Kerygma und Indien (Hamburg: Reich, 1967)Google Scholar; L'homme qui devient Dieu (Paris: Aubier, 1970)Google Scholar; The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics (New York: Paulist Press, 1979)Google Scholar; The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981)Google Scholar; The Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989)Google Scholar; and A Dwelling Place for Wisdom (Louisville, KY: Westminister, 1993).Google Scholar Compare also Prabhu, Joseph, ed., The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996).Google Scholar

9. Panikkar, , Worship and Secular Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 1.Google Scholar Throughout the text, the reader should sympathetically correct for gender–biased terminology.

10. Ibid., pp. 2, 7, 10–13.

11. Ibid., pp. 3–4,18, 20–22.

12. Ibid., pp. 28–30, 35–36. Regarding celebrations of heteronomous “exteriority,” the work of Emmanuel Levinas has exerted a particularly strong (and occasionally disorienting) influence. Compare, e.g., Levinas, , Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Lingis, Alphonso (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; also his “God in Philosophy,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. Lingis, Alphonso (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), pp. 150–65.Google Scholar

13. Panikkar, , Worship and Secular Man, pp. 42, 47, 49–52.Google Scholar Offering a personal reflection he adds (pp. 92–93): “For me secularization represents the regaining of the sacramental structure of reality, the new awareness that real full human life is worship, because it is the very expression of the mystery of existence. Man is priest of the world, of the cosmic sacrament and we are closer today to accepting this truth also: that he is the prophet of this universe of ours, the celebrant of the sacrament of life and the ambassador of the realm of the spirit.” Regarding the “cosmotheandric” perspective see also Panikkar, , The Cosmotheandric Experience, ed. Eastham, Scott (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993).Google Scholar As an aside, one may perhaps prefer to regard the three models of heteronomy, autonomy, and ontonomy more as ideal types than strictly as historical worldviews. Compare in this context also Pickstock, Catherine, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).Google Scholar

14. Panikkar, , “Religion or Politics: The Western Dilemma,“ in Religion and Politics in the Modern World, eds. Merkl, Peter H. and Smart, Ninian (New York: New York University Press, 1983), pp. 44–46.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., pp. 45–47, 49–50.

16. Ibid., pp. 51–53. As he adds (p. 54): “There is no personhood in isolation. To think that I can go to God or establish friendship with him, to think that I can reach nirvana, moksha or heaven by cutting all my ties with the rest of reality has certainly been a constant temptation for the religious soul, but this kind of world-negating attitude leads to the degradation of religion. … There is no moksha without dharma.”

17. Ibid., pp. 55, 57–59.

18. Panikkar, , Sacred SecularityGoogle Scholar (forthcoming; a Spanish version is near completion). Regarding the “middle voice” see Kemmer, Suzanne, The Middle Voice (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Llewelyn, John, The Middle Voice of Ecological Conscience (London: Macmillan, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. For some of these arguments see Heidegger, , Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, Joan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 49–58, 107–122, 304–306Google Scholar; “Letter on Humanism” and “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. Krell, David F. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 193–242, 287–317.Google Scholar

20. See Manfred Riedel, “Frömmigkeit des Denkens,” and Jean Greisch, “Das grosse Spiel des Lebens und das Übermächtige,” in “Herkunft aber bleibt stets Zukunft”: Martin Heidegger und die Gottesfrage, ed. Coriando, Paola–Ludovica (Frankfurt-Main: Klostermann, 1998), pp. 39,Google Scholar 55; also Heidegger, , “Philosophische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles” (1922),Google Scholar in Dilthey Jahrbuch 6 (1989): 197.Google Scholar Compare Kearney, Richard and Leary, J.O', eds., Heidegger et la question de Dieu (Paris: Grasset, 1980).Google Scholar

21. Panikkar, , “Religion or Politics,” pp. 56–58.Google Scholar

22. Panikkar, , “The Religion of the Future, Part I,” Interculture 23 (Spring 1990): 7–8,Google Scholar 11, 18–19. Resuming the theme of “cosmotheandric” experience, he adds (p. 21): “The religion of the future can no longer be a simple cry toward transcendence nor a merely immanent spirituality. Rather, it will have to recognize the irreducibility of these three poles of reality, thereby changing forever the unilateral sense of the concept of religion. Religion will still ‘religare’ certainly, but not exclusively the human person with God but also with the whole universe, and thus discovering it in its cohesion and meaning … Religion is again becoming central in human life, but without dominating anything, for its limited function is to secure linkage (religio) and the cohesion (dharma) between every sphere of reality.“ Part II of this text appeared in Interculture 23 (Summer 1990).Google Scholar