Testing Pluralism Religion and the Social Order

An O cial Publication of the Association for the Sociology of Religion

General Editor William H. Swatos, Jr.

VOLUME 23

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/reso Testing Pluralism

Globalizing Belief, Localizing Gods

Edited by Giuseppe Giordan and William H. Swatos, Jr.

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Testing pluralism : globalizing belief, localizing gods / edited by Giuseppe Giordan, William H. Swatos, Jr. pages cm. – (Religion and the social order, ISSN 1061-5210 ; VOLUME 23) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-25447-3 ((hardback) : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-25475-6 (e-book) 1. Religious pluralism–History–21st century. 2. Religions–History–21st century. I. Giordan, Giuseppe. II. Swatos, William H.

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This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS

Introduction: Testing Pluralism: Globalizing Belief, Localizing Gods . . . 1 William H. Swatos, Jr. and Giuseppe Giordan 1. Mixed Results for Orthodoxy: The Impact of Contemporary Cultural Change on the Acceptance of Key Catholic Beliefs and Moral Teachings by Australian Mass Attenders...... 11 Robert Dixon 2. Pluralism and Rituals in Italian Catholicism: The Spiritual Approach of Renewal in the Spirit...... 39 Emanuela Contiero 3. A World in Motion: The Plurality of Orthodox Churches in Italy . . . 57 Giuseppe Giordan 4. The Sikhs in Italy: A Growing Heterogeneous and Plural Presence 75 Barbara Bertolani 5. Religious Pluralism and the 2008 Obama Vote ...... 95 Anthony J. Blasi, Barbara Kilbourne and Oscar Miller 6. Evangelical Perspectives on Latino Immigration ...... 107 Barbara L. Loach 7. New Landscapes of Religious Diversity in Mexico ...... 125 Rene de la Torre and Christina Gutirrez Ziga 8. From Internal to External Pluralism: The Anglican Metamorphosis...... 149 William H. Swatos, Jr. 9. Pluralism and Implicit Religion ...... 161 Edward Bailey 10. The Field of Religions in Norwegian Pluralist Society ...... 175 Neils Reeh 11. Ethnic Religious Politics in Israel: The Case of the Shas Party ...... 193 Anat Feldman vi contents

12. Spiritual Pluralization and Scientists in Italy ...... 211 Stefano Sbalchiero

Contributors ...... 233 introduction

TESTING PLURALISM: GLOBALIZING BELIEFS, LOCALIZING GODS

William H. Swatos, Jr. and Giuseppe Giordan

It cannot be doubted that the last fty years have seen an enormous change in the nature of religious belief and practice on a global scale, largely facilitated by the relative ease of movement of persons throughout the world. Only a small number of countries still stringently restrict travel, which has itself become more and more afordable. Not only do people travel as either tourists or pilgrims, but large population segments see economic advantages to be obtained by leaving their countries of origin and going perhaps thousands of miles to achieve what they perceive as a “better life.” To a considerable extent these peoples also take with them various aspects of the culture of their countries of origin. Not least among these cultural assets are their religious traditions that give them a common bond among themselves, perhaps even of greater solidity than was the case in their country of origin. In the earliest years of this half-century, social scientists in the West tended to use Max Weber’s concept of secularization as an explanation for what was happening. Westerners seemed to be turning away from the idea of the world as an “enchanted garden” and toward what might be termed more direct, this-worldly cause-and-efect explanations. This approach dove- tailed nicely in some respects with the advance of science—medical break- throughs, atomic energy, and space exploration. Things that were the stuf of great ction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became even greater facts as they became part of what was more and more the life- world of Western civilization. As the century ended, however, the products of these advances also became more widely available throughout the world, such that peoples of the so called “second” and “third” worlds could also participate in some measure in the new world order. A greater exchange of many diferent kinds of ideas, not solely those of religion, was a part of this process. For example, quite apart from the speci cally religious aspects of healing, a variety of alternative medical or healing practices from outside the West have been introduced in western societies. Some of these are 2 william h. swatos, jr. and giuseppe giordan explicitly medical, such as acupuncture, while others involve more mind/ body associations, as for example yoga. Keeping the roughly half-century frame in mind, now, we can see a kind of dialectic between the global and the local, sometimes termed “glocal,” that has impacted religions and religious people around the world. The chapters in this volume illustrate in speci c cases the ways in which the changed environment of the postmodern both efects and is efected by the historic religions and the people who make them come alive. If we begin by looking at the chapters by Robert Dixon and Emanuela Contiero, we see two quite diferent kinds of processes of change in Roman Catholicism. A simplistic secularist might say that Catholicism is withering away in Australia, but a more careful analysis would suggest that while the practice of Catholic religious obligations among Anglo-Australians is declining, the practice of the Catholic faith by immigrants from India (including Sri Lanka) and the Philippines is relatively healthy. What’s more, these Catholics are younger Catholics than those participating who are of Aus- tralian birth, and this would suggest, then, that the Indian and Philippine Catholics who are participating at a higher rate will eventually occupy a more and more central place in the life of the parishes where they are located as the Australians age on the one hand and the younger immigrant Catholics add even further youth to their parishes by following Catholic norms regarding contraception. In this sense, one can perhaps more accurately talk about a “change process” in Australian Catholicism that is being efected as much by immigrant faith as it is by secularizing tendencies among that part of the Australian population whose immigration issued from Western Europe. Emanuela Contiero’s chapter casts further doubt on the secularizing tendencies that might be associated with Catholicism in Italy if all parishes as a whole are analyzed. She focuses instead on a movement within Italian Catholicism, Renewal in the Spirit. If we look simply at this movement, we see anything but secularization. Instead, we see worship that is infused by both the charismatic movement and a drive to involve laity in a life-style experience that seeks to restore the dynamism of the early Christians. On the one hand, it is possible to point out that the number of participants in Renewal in the Spirit is very small compared to the total number of people in Italy who would claim to be Catholic. On the other hand, however, the historical argument from the earliest years of Christianity would suggest that the church may well have been at its greatest spiritual strength when it was comparably smaller than larger; that is, the bureaucratizing tendencies of large organizations run counter to the enthusiasm of the elect. While testing pluralism: globalizing beliefs, localizing gods 3 there certainly does need to be a critical mass of persons to enable the enthusiasm of an event to grow, it is not necessarily the case that bigger is always better. Smaller religious communities of a few hundred may be far more efective in their spirituality than large parishes of thousands, where in some cases it is hard to tell the church from city hall except for architecture. Two other chapters also look at religious developments in Italy. We know that historically a division in the Christian Church took place between East and West, and Rome became the center of the Western Church. Across time, there have been greater or lesser eforts by the two churches to repair that breach, however these largely had a formalistic character. In other words, the Eastern and Western churches at their best agreed to let each other have a church building in major cities of each other’s nations somewhat like religious embassies. The various diplomatic corps and their entourages would form the core of these churches’ congregations, to which then visitors from the diferent nations could also come for worship and pastoral care. This all began to change in the last fty years, when many Orthodox Christians, especially from Romania, but not only so, began emigrating to Italy to nd work. Giuseppe Giordan documents that there are over 1,400,000 Ortho- dox presently in Italy. No longer is Orthodoxy in Italy a faith of diplomats and sailors. Whether the Orthodox population in Italy is in fact having an “Orthodox efect” on Italy may well be debated, but the presence and practice of Orthodoxy is clearly widespread. Orthodoxy also stands in a unique relationship to the Roman Catholic heritage of Italy, in the sense that the mutual bans of excommunication between the two churches have been lifted. This is quite diferent from the role played in Italy by various Protes- tant groups. The Eastern Orthodox, however, are not the only persons from the East who have come to Italy in recent years. Barbara Bertolani writes about Sikhs who have been coming to Italy from their native locales on the Indian subcontinent since the early 1970s and may now number as many as 100,000 people. Sikhism is, relatively speaking, a minority religion everywhere at the national level, though being concentrated primarily within the Punjab region of India. The faith in some respects combines elements from both the dominant Hindu culture of India and its own holy book, the Guru GranthSahib. Sikh worship consists primarily of readings from the holy book and then sharing in a common meal which, unlike the Christian eucharist as generally practiced, is actually a meal. If one wishes to think in terms of religious syncretism, then the faith combines elements that could be seen to come primarily from Hinduism and Islam. In other words, there is 4 william h. swatos, jr. and giuseppe giordan no particularly religious connection between Sikhism and Italy; rather, the Sikh presence is to be accounted for by employment opportunities. In some places both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe where they have tried to settle, Sikhs have encountered particular problems over the requirement that their men must carry a dagger. Since undertaking this obligation coincides with the attainment of puberty, the question of someone attending a public high school while carrying a dagger becomes controversial. In total numbers, the Sikh population is greatly dwarfed in Italy by Muslims, for example, but by their customs and ways of dress, including both the dagger and wearing a turban, the Sikhs are much more likely to stand out as “diferent” among the population. It is, hence, far easier to be a “secular Muslim” than it is to be a “secular Sikh.” These physical accoutrements notwithstanding, Sikhs do at present seem to t well into Italian society. Bertolani raises the question, however, of how comfortable this t will be as the rising generation of Sikh youth move into adulthood. The chapter by Anthony Blasi, Barbara Kilbourne and Oscar Miller addresses the question of how Barak Obama became President of the United States in the 2008 election and thereby also became the rst non-white president of the United States. It is well-known that Roman Catholics generally vote Democratic, the party of the President. Hence it could be assumed that Roman Catholics in general would vote for Obama. The principal question then was how would Protestants vote (and, at least implicitly, why)? They nd three signi cant factors: First, the greater the number of diferent Protestant denominations within a Census Bureau standard metropolitan area, the greater the likelihood that people would vote for Senator Obama. Second, the greater the number of non-Protestant religious expressions, the greater the likelihood that people would vote for Senator Obama. Third, the total number of diferent denominations of any sort of any religion, the greater the likelihood that people would vote for Senator Obama. Of these three, the nal one is the most powerful. There are many possible ways to interpret these data of course, but with respect to the nal, strongest predictor, one could make a rather straightforward statement: Diversity promotes tolerance. The greater the religious diversity present in a geographical area, the more likelihood that religion will not dominate decision making in what are primarily secular matters. Religious diversity, it follows, is most likely to occur in situations of religious pluralism. Barbara Loach’s contribution on Hispanic Evangelicals introduces an important pluralist variant that has afected political as well as religious perceptions of the rising Hispanic population in the United States. For generations a simple equation existed in regard to this ethnic group: Hispanic = testing pluralism: globalizing beliefs, localizing gods 5

Catholic. The truth of this was so axiomatic that is was not worth discussing. In addition, when that equation rst came to be tested, the disequilibration had nothing to do with Evangelicals (or even Protestants) but Marxists, especially with the successful Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro and later in Venezuela. Loash traces the process whereby Evangelicalism, particularly in the form of Charismatic Evangelicalism has become a potent force in both Hispanic communities and in national politics, inasmuch as in many communities the Hispanic vote can serve to tip an electoral balance in one direction or another. That is, although there are relatively few locales outside of the Southwest and parts of southern Florida in which there is a su ciently large Hispanic population to “control” an election by sheer percentage of the population, there are many communities where “the Hispanic vote” can decide a vote between two candidates, if a “Hispanic bloc” can be created whose loyalty is stronger than loyalty to any particular political party. Sim- ply by proportion, however, it is likely that Evangelicals, Hispanic or not, will favor a Republican candidate, inasmuch as there are joint socioeconomic interests between Evangelicals and the Republican Party in its current ves- ture. This represents a signi cant change that has been occurring between American ethnic blocs and the dominant two political parties. For years, well into the 1960s, the Democratic Party was also the party of choice for Roman Catholics, but a sea change took place as a result of the rise of the women’s movement within the ranks of the Democratic Party in the late 1960s. Those women were overwhelmingly “Pro-choice” women who advocated actively for abortion rights. While some Roman Catholic Democrats tried to soft-pedal the issue, it became di cult for them to stand against the tide of the Pro-choice advocates within their party. Hence, allegiances among Anti-Abortion leaders began to shift to Republican candidates. Republicans, on the other hand, gradually saw in the issues— rst of abortion, then of gay rights—a focus that resonated with many Americans. Some of these were Roman Catholics, but many more had a liated with the “New Evangelical” churches. Increasingly we now see these issues uniting Hispanic newcomers with young Protestant Evangelicals to advance a broad social agenda that bridges historic Democratic concerns with new issues that are raised by the growing Hispanic population in the United States. The increasing role of Protestantism in Hispanic life, however, is not limited to the United States. Renée de la Torre and Christina Gutiérrez Zúñiga report on signi cant Protestant developments in Mexico across the last half of the twentieth century and into the present one. The Catholic population in Mexico declined by over 15 percent between 1950 and 2010, while the Protestant population increased by just a hair over ten fold. The data also 6 william h. swatos, jr. and giuseppe giordan show, however, that the decline increased dramatically after the decade of the 1970s. Speci cally, through the 1970s over 95 percent of the population professed Roman Catholicism. Between 1980 and 2010, a signi cant change took place, with only 83 percent professing Catholic in the latter. One question, of course, is why after almost 100 years the Catholic quasi-monopoly position in Mexico has begun to change. Perhaps more signi cant, inasmuch as Catholicism still shows a very strong majority within the Mexi- can population, however, is who the Protestants are religiously. Their data show that more than half of the Mexican Protestant population worship in churches that they call “Other Evangelical,” and the second largest group is “Pentecostal/Neo-Pentecostal.” This is very consistent with the picture of Hispanic Protestantism in the United States that Loach paints. Hispanic Protestantism, whether in the United States or Mexico (and other South American countries, more often than not) particularly embodies within itself our subtitle of “globalizing beliefs and localizing gods.” The groups to which these two chapters point as core are more likely than any others within the Protestant fold to embody glocalization, and in so doing, they ofer a religious entré into postmodernity, not least for peoples who may have been least integrated into the core of the modern project. Bill Swatos’s chapter looks almost at the opposite end of religious life in historic Christianity by giving an overview of recent steps within the Angli- can fold to bring pressure to bear on a growing tide of what the proponents of this movement perceive as an abandonment of traditional Christianity by the leaders of Anglican churches in the West. The “Continuum Movement” as it tends to be termed, took its “baby steps,” so to speak, with what were initially the “illegal ordinations” of women in the Episcopal Church in the 1970s, but it did not really come fully into its own until the consecration of V. Eugene Robinson, an openly gay priest, who was already controversial, as Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003. In each of these cases what could be called “break away” groups formed and created new Anglican congregations, usually aided in their eforts by either sympathetic retired bishops in the American church or more recently by bishops from other parts of the Anglican communion, not least Africa. The last straw in the movement in the United States occurred with the election of a woman as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. In light of this step, a small number of Episcopal Church dioceses voted to remove themselves from the parent body on the grounds that technically “the Episcopal Church is a union of dioceses,” with the implicit caveat that any diocese that can a l- iate with the Episcopal Church by a voting procedure can disa liate by the same procedure. Three dioceses voted to remove themselves entirely, testing pluralism: globalizing beliefs, localizing gods 7 while a fourth diocese created a slightly diferent procedure where there would be two dioceses in the same geographical space: one a liated with the Episcopal Church and one not (subsequently becoming part of a larger movement of union known as the Anglican Church in North America, which gathered together a number, but not all, of those Continuum churches that had formed between the 1970s and 2010). Since that time a fourth diocese has removed itself, but it has not as of yet a liated with the ACNA dioceses. A further outcome of this movement has been the Anglican Ordinariate established by the Roman Catholic Church, whereby a priest and his congregation can petition the Vatican for corporate reunion with Rome, while continuing to use an only slightly modi ed Anglican liturgy. The Ordinariate radically simpli ed prior Roman Catholic procedures for corporate reunion and essentially functions in a way parallel to those Eastern Rite churches a liated with Rome (e.g., the Maronites). The nal four chapters of the book move us away from named religions in the usual sense and look in diferent respects at what might be called religiousness as an experience. The work of Edward Bailey on implicit religion has spanned over forty years, and in the present chapter he uses implicit religion as a tool to try to help us understand pluralism itself. That is, what pluralism is in itself, or what kinds of behaviors (including speech acts) do people display when they are trying to be inclusive while not at the same time abandoning their own convictions. In the implicit religious sense this is largely a matter of speaking and behaving in a way that encompasses the other without denying the self. After a general theoretical overview based upon extensive interview probing, Edward then presents, rst, a case study based upon his several years of research on customers at a “public house,” but then turns to consider the question of “pluralism” as itself an implicit religion. In other words, one might ask whether “pluralism” has not itself become the “implicit religion” of late- or post-modernity. To what extent is pluralism itself the “high god” of late modernity? Is it pluralism, rather than secularism, that actually succeeds the world of state religions? To be a creditable state in the modern world, for example, is it necessary that in some way or other pluralism is written into both a con- stitutional type of document and also employed in the actual conduct of everyday life, including not only private life, but also public, governmental life? Almost as a counterpoint to Edward’s chapter on implicit religion comes Neils Reeh’s chapter on “life stance communities” in Norway, which one might want to call “secular religions.” In Norway, all religions receive governmental support. The Church of Norway is Lutheran, and the majority 8 william h. swatos, jr. and giuseppe giordan of Norwegians are Lutheran. Beginning in 1981, the Norwegian government also extended support within this program to “life stance communities”— in a sense, secular religions, the largest of which is the Norwegian Humanist Association, with slightly over 80,000 members. The questions, then, that he explores is in what sense the Norwegian Humanist Association is or is not a “religion,” and more broadly, if so, what is a religion (or not?). One of the peculiarities of this, for example, is that “religion” is taught in Norwegian schools. As a result of challenges by the NHA, courts held that the Norwegian schools’ religion curriculum had to be changed. The tension here is obvious: on the one hand, life stance communities by being so-called (and accepting of being so-called) are not religions, but by recognizing life stance communities as deserving of the kinds of support the state supplies to religious communities, the state places itself in the position of having to integrate life stance communities within the rubrics of “religious” life, not merely by sup- plying funding, but also giving a kind of quasi-acceptance to their teachings as a part of the fabric of Norwegian life, even though 77% of Norwegians are members of the Norwegian state (Lutheran) church and NHA members constitute only 1.6% of the population. Basically the role of the NHA is to provide secular ceremonies for life-cycle events: marriage, childbirth, death. The NHA also has a printed form to assist persons to withdraw from the state church. Curiously, however, the NHA is also challenged by other life stance communities. For example, another life stance community, the Holistic Federation, challenges the NHA. The Holistic Federation de nes itself as a “spiritual” community and argues that in a sense the NHA really should not be a life stance community because it denies the reality of the spiritual. Reeh explores many of the potential theoretical trajectories within contemporary sociological thought to try to come to an understanding of these diferent groups, which is certainly helpful. Yet what one might see also running through this is much the same kind of bickering that has characterized American Protestant sectarianism, especially through the 1960s, and to some extent remains prevalent today. Expunging God from religion apparently doesn’t end religious argumentation. Nevertheless, in interfaces with the state, religious loyalties can work both ways. Anat Feldman’s account of the Shas Movement in Israel might stand in some respects as a counterpoint to Reeh’s. While the Holistic Fed- eration members may portray their “life stance” as an “advance” over traditional religion, the Shas Movement is a political party originating from a lower stratum of Israeli society: those Jewish immigrants from Arab countries and their children. In short, the Shas Movement’s power lies with the citizens who are culturally, religiously, politically, and economically inferior testing pluralism: globalizing beliefs, localizing gods 9 in Israeli society today. The Shas Movement challenges contemporary Israeli society inasmuch as it is a declared ethnic party in a society that does not consider expression of ethnicity to be politically correct. It is also an ultra- Orthodox party in a society that does not believe the religiosity of these immigrants to be Orthodox Judaism, but rather that of those ultra-Orthodox who emigrated from Europe. The irony here is that today’s ultra-Orthodox of European origin re-invented Orthodoxy in Europe, while the Shas lived Orthodoxy in the region of the Holy Land for far longer, though with less economic success in secular life. What then is “genuine” Orthodoxy? In the nal chapter, continuing this look at the interface of the religious and the secular in the context of pluralism, Stefano Sbalchiero examines the relationship of spiritual pluralism or “spiritual pluralisation” as he prefers to call it to look at the spirituality of “atheist” scientists, returning also to the use of the “implicit religion” concept. Based on questionnaire research with 160 Italian scientists and university researchers, evenly divided between biologists and physicists, he asks his subjects, the majority of whom profess no religion, about spirituality. (In that non-profession the atheist:agnostic ratio is 2:1. The professing religious are all Catholic.) There is clearly a diference between the atheists and agnostics on the one hand and Catholics on the other about how they think about spirituality. For example, combining the atheists and agnostics, about two-thirds agree that “Spirituality is largely independent from religious traditions,” while just a quarter of the Catholics do so. Going in the reverse direction, not one agnostic believes that “Spiritu- ality necessarily implies the existence of a God,” while 75% of the Catholics do. Clearly, then, religion does play a role for the religious, but that is not to say that the non-religious are without spiritual sensibilities, whatever they may be. Thus it seems that, even among persons who share a common professional orientation and who are all comparably well-educated, religion (or its absence) makes a considerable diference in how they perceive their own spiritual and religious natures as well as, then, what they might or might not accurately perceive about those of others—including others with whom they may work closely. In some respects we now end where we began. Pluralism matters, but it matters in diferent ways in diferent places, under diferent conditions. The adherents and the beliefs of the diferent world religions have made the pluralistic world of postmodernity something of a crazy quilt in design, yet the truth may be that the design does not matter nearly as much as whether or not the quilt keeps us warm and raises our spirits.

chapter one

MIXED RESULTS FOR ORTHODOXY: THE IMPACT OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL CHANGE ON THE ACCEPTANCE OF KEY CATHOLIC BELIEFS AND MORAL TEACHINGS BY AUSTRALIAN MASS ATTENDERS

Robert Dixon

What has been the efect, if any, of the cultural changes of the last fty years or so on the beliefs and moral attitudes of Catholic church attenders in Australia? This question arose for me when I read Gerald Rose’s (2013) ne study of how Churches of Christ ministers in Australia have adapted to cultural change in the way they lead their congregations. Have the same changes inuenced the way that the most active Catholics think about key Catholic beliefs and moral attitudes? In order to examine that question, I will look at responses from Mass-attending Catholics to selected items in the 2011 National Church Life Survey, noting especially the extent to which respondents’ demographic characteristics are related to the way they answer these questions and seeking other explanatory variables as well. I will also examine the extent to which the responses to these items have varied over successive surveys, at ve-year intervals, from 1996 to 2011. Among the prominent features of the cultural change that has taken place in Western societies such as Australia are the weakening of social hierarchy, a suspicion of institutional authority, and a focus on individual human ful lment rather than on the maintenance of institutional structures (Hughes 1994; see also Dixon and Powell 2012). These changes in worldview have been accompanied by changes in way of life, in particular: the decline of the importance of the local community, increased access to education, the rise of the women’s movement and the rapid pace of technological change, with the phenomenon of almost universal television ownership having a profound impact on the breadth and rapidity of the dissemination of ideas (Hughes 1994). Because of the pervasiveness of this cultural change, social theorists have called it by a variety of names, depending on their particular perspective. These include “the expressive revolution” (Martin 1981, Arbuckle 2010), “the subjective turn” (Heelas, Woodhead, Seel et al. 2005), “the postmodern turn” 12 robert dixon

(Harvey 1990), and the rise of the “Age of Authenticity” (Taylor 2007). Draw- ing on Weber (1968), Rose (2013) and Bouma (2006) argue that the key shift driving the change in the culture is the shift from rational and traditional authority to experiential authority. In their view, this “experiential shift” is foundational to all other changes in Western culture in the last fty years, leading to a situation where, in contemporary Western societies, “ultimate authority is to be found in the individual’s experiences, senses and feelings” (Bouma 2006: 90). Experience has replaced reason and tradition as the basis of authority. According to Taylor, the cultural shift has resulted in people understanding life to mean “that each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity, and that it is important to nd and live out one’s own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority” (2007: 475). This experiential shift in the culture has resulted in individuals empha- sising things like immediate experience, self exploration, and an urge for self-transformation and self-determination. Along with a reliance on the authority of personal experience and a suspicion of institutional authority has come an emphasis on personal responsibility, together with increased respect and tolerance for the choices and values of others (Taylor 2007: 484). One of Rose’s most important insights is that, because it involves a shift in the grounds of legitimate authority, the experiential shift in Western culture is discontinuous. It is not simply a trend or a development, but a rupture with the culture of the preceding several centuries. There is no going back: the culture has been inescapably transformed (2013: 140). The shift in the grounds of authority brought with it changes in a whole raft of social expectations, conventions and assumptions, as is evidenced by the many diferent approaches that scholars have taken to the study of the turn in the culture. One result was that by the late 1970s, the old patterns of “doing church” and practicing ministry were recognized by a number of ministers and congregants in the Churches of Christ as being no longer efective (Rose 2013: 92). This is not the place to go into a full exploration of the concept of culture, nor do I wish to suggest that the changes outlined here have afected all groups in Australian society to the same extent. Nevertheless, I agree with Arbuckle’s observation that “every culture is fragmented to some degree or other, internally contested, its borders permeable” (2010: xxi). My purpose here is to provide a su cient description of the changed environment in which Australian Catholics live out their faith at this early stage of the twenty- rst century. mixed results for orthodoxy 13

Like Australians in general, Australian Catholics were inuenced by all of these features of the experiential shift. But Catholics were also inuenced toward taking greater personal responsibility by factors arising from within the Church itself. At about the time that the experiential shift in Western culture was beginning, the Catholic Church was experiencing its own revolution (Greeley 2004) in the shape of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Some ways in which Vatican II created a climate for change were in its conception of the Church as the “People of God,” a new openness to the secular world, and in its rea rmation of the place of the priority of conscience. The interplay of all these factors helped to create a view among Catholics that they had an active part to play in the Church, that their role was no longer to act as passive recipients of the teachings and directives of their priests and bishops, and that they were responsible for the formation of their own conscience and for acting in accordance with it. In the pre-Vatican Church, ultimate authority was based on traditional grounds (Weber 1968) and was invested in, and universally recognized as belonging to, the hierarchy consisting of Pope, bishops and priests. Tradi- tional authority was supported by rational forms of authority in the shape of laws and regulations and, particularly in relation to sexual morality, by recourse to natural law (McCarthy 1998). Because the hierarchy and the structures that supported them were believed to be divinely inspired, the Catholic Church was con dent that it possessed the fullness of truth and so it “would not, could not ever change” (Greeley 2004: 74). All that was expected of the faithful was that they live their spiritual life according to an externally imposed code of conduct (Taylor 2007: 503). This worldview was repudiated by the Council. One particularly revolutionary aspect of Vatican II was the priority given to individual conscience in relation to freedom of religion. Before Vatican II, Catholics were expected to exercise an “informed” conscience. One knew that one’s conscience was correctly informed when it “conformed” to the teaching of the Church. But in Dignitatis Humanae, the “Declaration on Religious Liberty,” the Council recognized that “contemporary man [sic] is becoming increasingly conscious of the dignity of the human person; more and more people are demanding that men should exercise fully their own judgment and a responsible freedom in their actions and should not be subject to the pressure of coercion but be inspired by a sense of duty.” Furthermore, each person “is bound to follow this conscience faithfully in all his activity so that he may come to God, who is his last end. Therefore he must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious 14 robert dixon matters” (Flannery 1975: 799, 801). The commonality with the ethos of the Age of Authenticity articulated above by Taylor is unmistakeable. In highlighting freedom of conscience, the bishops at Vatican II were not advocating relativism. Their view was that the truth was still the truth, but that people should come to accept the Church’s doctrines because of the authority inherent in the truth, not because they are imposed by force or sanction. Furthermore, while conscience is the ultimate judge in decision-making, Christians belong to a faith community and must always decide in the context of the faith of that community. The bishops certainly did not intend that the primacy of conscience would lead Catholics to make decisions that were simply “pragmatic, utilitarian and individualistic” (McCarthy 1998: 132), or on the basis that “if you sense that it is OK, it is OK” (Bouma 2006: 91). In Dignitatis Humanae, the bishops were primarily concerned with the question of “the free practice of religion in society” (Flannery 1975: 799). But many Catholics took the teaching at its word and applied it to every aspect of their own lives. A test case soon arose in the form of the release in 1968 of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical prohibiting the use of arti cial means of birth control (Paul VI 1968). By the time the encyclical was issued, lay Catholics had already made up their minds about the morality of contraception. The change of climate introduced by the Council had helped prepare the ground for the hostile reception that greeted that document. Suddenly, just when Western societies were experiencing the “relativisa- tion of chastity and monogamy” (Taylor 2007: 485), the Catholic Church’s authority in sexual morality was facing a strenuous internal challenge. The result caused, and continues to cause, consternation in some circles. Cardi- nal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, has declared that “this misleading doctrine of the primacy of conscience should be publicly rejected” (Pell 2004). In general, the changes introduced by Vatican II in the lives of Australian Catholics were widely welcomed (Hally 1975, Mol 1985), but at the same time, they brought about a dramatic change in Catholic self-understanding. The combined efects of the theological and cultural changes brought about by the Council and the shift in Western culture are still being worked through today and underlie much of the current division and confusion in the Australian Church (Arbuckle 2010). Nor did change in the Church stop when the Council ended in 1965. One especially prominent though highly unwelcome factor afecting the way Australian Catholics see their Church today is the scandal of the sexual abuse of children by priests and religious. After rst coming to the knowledge of the Catholic community in the early mixed results for orthodoxy 15

1990s, by November 2012 the extent of the abuse and the perceived failure of Church authorities to deal with it appropriately had forced the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to agree to the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the issue. Although the Commission’s mandate covers child abuse in all religious organizations and also the abuse of children in state care, it was clearly the situation in the Catholic Church that gave rise to the demand for the investigation (“Julia Gillard announces royal commission will probe child sex abuse.” The Australian, 12 November 2012). The changes in the Church and society from Vatican II to the present day have created an environment in which Catholicism has been rst invited and then forced to reect upon itself. In England, Hornsby-Smith found that active Catholics were searching for “a less rule-bound, absolutist and deductive form of moral teaching” (1992: 130). Australian Catholics, too, “are re-assessing and re-de ning what it means to be Catholic,” and they are de ning it in their own terms, “not by reference to o cial positions” (Dixon 2005: 121). Can we nd evidence of this in the NCLS results? In the light of these observations about the shift in Western culture and the changes in the Catholic Church, let me formulate a number of hypotheses: 1. The shift in the culture away from traditional and rational forms of authority toward experiential authority, accentuated by Vatican II’s teaching on the primacy of conscience, will lead to a decline in levels of acceptance of the Church’s teachings among Mass attenders. 2. These efects will become greater over time. 3. Because moral issues are more closely related to everyday experience, Mass attenders’ acceptance of the Church’s position on moral issues will erode faster than their acceptance of religious doctrines. 4. Younger attenders will show greater divergence from orthodox beliefs than older attenders will. 5. Highly educated attenders will show greater divergence from orthodox beliefs than attenders with no post-school education. 6. Immigrants from non-Western countries will be less inuenced by the shift in the culture and will therefore display higher levels of orthodoxy. 7. Because immigrants from non-Western countries make up an increasingly large proportion of Mass attenders in Australia, Mass attenders will remain highly orthodox in belief. 16 robert dixon

Key Catholic Beliefs and Moral Teachings

I will investigate these hypotheses by examining Mass-attending Catholics’ beliefs about the Trinitarian nature of God, the Virgin Birth, Transubstantia- tion and the bodily Resurrection of Christ, and their attitudes to the morality of abortion and pre-marital sex. Hornsby-Smith reminds us that belief is “an extremely complex religious variable,” and he distinguishes carefully between “creedal beliefs” and “other doctrinal beliefs” (1992: 126). Three of the belief items (the Trinity, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection) are creedal beliefs, in that they are found in the Nicene Creed, and are thereby foundational to Catholic faith. The fourth, Transubstantiation, is distinc- tively Catholic, and others have used the response “certainly true” to the statement “at the consecration the bread and wine are really changed into the Body and Blood of Christ” as a measure of orthodoxy (Hornsby-Smith 1992: 128). The Trinitarian nature of God is fundamental to the Christian understanding of God (McBrien 1980). The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Mystery of the Trinity “the central mystery of Christian faith and life,” a mystery that has been made known to human beings by God “revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (1994: n. 234, 261). The Church has always taught that Jesus “was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary,” without sexual intercourse taking place. This virginal conception was a sign that Jesus “truly was the Son of God,” the second person of the Trinity (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994: n. 496). The Catholic Church teaches that “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity” of Jesus is “truly, really and substantially contained” in the bread and wine consecrated by the priest during Mass. This change of substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is “properly called transubstantiation” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994: n. 1376). After Jesus died on the cross, according to the New Testament, he was raised from the dead. The Catechism calls the Resurrection a “real event, with manifestations that were historically veri ed” (n. 639), principally through multiple appearances to the disciples and also by the sign of the empty tomb. The Church teaches, furthermore, that this was not a case of revivi cation, of coming back to “ordinary earthly life”: Jesus has entered “another life beyond time and space” (n. 645). Nor was the disciples’ experience merely “spiritual”: the Risen Christ spoke to them, ate with them and could be touched by them. mixed results for orthodoxy 17

I turn now to the two moral items. The Catholic Church teaches that “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994: n. 2270), and therefore, because of the “inalienable right to life of every innocent human being” (n. 2273), direct abortion is “gravely contrary to the moral law” (n. 2271). In the words of the United States Catholic Bishops, “abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 2009: n. 45). The Church teaches that there are no grounds whatsoever, including pregnancy caused by rape and a threat to the life of the mother, that justify a “directly intended termination.” However, “operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 2009: n. 47). Pre-marital sex (what the Catechism calls “fornication”) “is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality” (n. 2353). Hence, it is “always wrong” because choosing it involves “moral evil.” Sexual intercourse is legitimate only within marriage. Those “who are engaged to marry are called to live chastely in continence,” reserving for marriage “all expressions of afection that belong to married love” (n. 2350). It follows that living together before marriage is also wrong.

Data

In late 2011, more than a quarter of a million church-going Australians took part in the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) by completing a questionnaire on their faith, their involvement in church life, and a variety of other topics. These people came from over 3,000 parishes and congregations representing more than 20 Christian denominations and independent churches across the country. Catholic parishes have participated in the last three National Church Life Surveys, in 2001, 2006 and 2011. A parallel project, the Catholic Church Life Survey (CCLS), was conducted in 1996. This study is based on data from questionnaires completed by Mass attenders in a strati ed national random sample of 217 Catholic parishes, designed to be statistically representative of all Australian Catholic dioceses with the exception of one diocese which declined to take part. The data have been weighted to reect difering sampling rates for each diocese. 18 robert dixon

Altogether, there are 1,368 Catholic parishes in Australia. All people aged 15 and over at Mass (or, in a few places, communion services in the absence of a priest) on the day of the survey were invited to complete one of 25 diferent questionnaire variants during the time usually reserved for the homily. The total number of completed questionnaires received from the parishes in the national sample was 47,426. The variant which formed the basis of the report prepared for each parish was completed by 67 percent of respondents in each parish, while the remaining 33 percent of respondents completed one of the other variants, each dealing with a diferent topic. Most of these variants were distributed to attenders of all denominations but two, labeled S3 and X, were designed for use only in Catholic parishes. The questions used in this investigation came from those two variants. Questionnaire S3 contained the four items dealing with beliefs, while Ques- tionnaire X contained items concerning attenders’ views about the morality of abortion and pre-marital sex. Questionnaire S3 was completed by 5.9 percent of the whole sample and Questionnaire X by 3.7 percent. As well, both variants asked attenders about the way they make moral decisions. Cross-tabulations by age for all six items are shown in Table 2. The four belief items can be combined into an adequate scale (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.70), but the diferences between them means it is more interesting to treat them as separate items. I used logistic regression in order to nd predictors of orthodoxy, creating a binary variable with values “orthodox” and “not orthodox” for each of the items under investigation. For each item, only the rst response category is orthodox. In shortened form these are: “There is one God, three divine persons.” “Mary gave birth to Jesus without having had sexual intercourse.” The consecrated bread and wine “truly become the sacred Body and Blood of Christ.” “Christ was raised by God’s power from death to life.” Abortion and pre-marital sex are “always morally wrong.” Finally, using data from earlier surveys, I search for any trends in attender responses to the six items. Before we look at the results of these questions, I will briey describe the Catholic population and the Mass-attending population in Australia.

Catholics and Mass-Attending Catholics in Australia

Catholics are the largest religious group in Australia. According to the 2011 Australian Census, there were 5,439,268 Catholics in Australia, making up 25.3 percent of the Australian population. One of the most striking features of the Catholic population is its ethnic diversity. Nearly a quarter of mixed results for orthodoxy 19

Australia’s Catholics (23.6 percent) were born overseas, and about three- quarters of those (17.9 percent of all Catholics) were born in non-English speaking countries. A further 309,000 Australian Catholics were born overseas in English speaking countries. Non-English speaking countries sup- plying the largest numbers of overseas-born Catholics were, in diminishing order, Italy (168,800), the Philippines (134,660), India (48,200), Croa- tia (49,200), Vietnam (39,900) and Malta (37,800). Among these immigrant groups, the Italians and the Maltese have the oldest age pro les, and the Fil- ipinos and Indians the youngest. In 2011, the number of people at Mass in Australia on a typical weekend was about 680,000, or 12.5 percent of the total number of Catholics. The 2011 NCLS shows that about 87 percent of those who attend in any one week are there every weekend, but the individuals who make up the other 13 percent vary from week to week. Some are there two or three times a month, others only once a month, others less frequently still. NCLS results also show that 97.4 percent of the people at Mass in parishes on weekends are Catholics, and that a further 2.2 percent belong to other Christian denominations. The percentage of Catholics who attend Mass every week has been falling more or less steadily since it peaked in the mid-1950s, when two-thirds or perhaps even three-quarters of all Catholics went to Mass every Sunday (Dixon 2005, Dixon and Powell 2012, Mol 1985). The fall in attendances is a consequence of very low attendance rates among young adults, as low as ve or six percent among Catholics aged 15 to 34 (Dixon, Kunciunas and

Figure 1.1: Age pro le of Mass attenders aged 15 and over, 1996–2011. Source: 1996 Catholic Church Life Survey, and 2001, 2006 and 2011 National Church Life Surveys 20 robert dixon

Reid 2008), and the fact that many middle-aged and older formerly regular attenders have stopped going to Mass (Dixon et al. 2007). Figure 1 shows the age pro le of Mass attenders aged 15 and over in 2011 and in the three previous surveys in 1996, 2001 and 2006. In every successive survey, older teenagers make up an even smaller proportion of Mass attenders (down to 4 percent of all attenders aged 15 and over), while the percentage of people aged 80 or more has more than doubled, from below four percent of the total in 1996 to more than eight percent in 2011. Attenders aged between 60 and 74 made up about one-third of all attenders in 2011. In general, Mass attenders are older, better educated, more likely to be female and to be born overseas than the Catholic population as a whole, and these generalizations hold true for the two sub-samples under investigation here. Three- fths of respondents to Questionnaires S3 and X were female, and one-third had a university degree, compared to 18 percent of all Catholics aged 15 and over. While 75 percent of the Catholic population were born in Australia, less than 60 percent of respondents in this study were. One-third were born in non-English speaking countries. In particular, respondents born in India or Sri Lanka and the Philippines accounted for much larger proportions of attenders in the two sub-samples compared to their proportions in the Catholic population as a whole. Catholics from countries like the Philip- pines, India and Sri Lanka not only have better attendance rates than Austra- lian-born Catholics, but they are younger as well. Frequencies for the demographic variables used in this study are shown in Table 1. Re-codes for country of birth were based on geographical and cultural a nities and on similarity of correlations between particular countries and the belief and moral variables under investigation.

Results

Moral Issues Given that one of the hypotheses to be tested is that moral orthodoxy will decline earlier and faster than doctrinal orthodoxy, we can begin by examining how Mass attenders make moral decisions and their level of acceptance of certain moral teachings of the Church. mixed results for orthodoxy 21

Table 1.1: Frequencies for demographics and other variables used in the analysis

Variable Questionnaire S3 Questionnaire X (Belief items) (Moral attitude items) N = 2,545 (%) N = 1,674 (%) Age 15–34 14.6 14.7 35–59 37.4 37.3 60 + 48.0 48.0 Gender Female 61.4 61.9 Male 38.6 38.1 Level of education No post-school education 41.9 43.7 Diploma or trade certi cate 22.7 24.0 University degree 34.6 32.3 Birthplace Australia 58.8 58.0 Other English speaking countries 7.7 7.3 Europe 7.9 6.9 Philippines 8.4 7.9 India / Sri Lanka 6.2 7.9 Other non-English speaking countries 11.0 12.1 Frequency of Mass attendance Weekly or more often 87.1 89.2 Less than weekly 12.9 10.8 Approach to moral decision-making Always follow the teachings of the Church 27.1 26.6 Look to Church teaching for guidance, 68.3 68.2 but follow my own conscience Church teachings do not inuence my 4.7 5.2 decisions about moral issues Experience of Catholic moral teaching Negative and restrictive 5.6 5.3 A necessary guide to right and wrong 47.5 51.1 Important to my growth as a person 46.9 43.7

Note: Data (including N’s) have been weighted to reect difering levels of diocesan participation. Catholic respondents only. 22 robert dixon

The cross-tabulations in Table 2 show the variation by age group for Catholic Mass attenders1 for each of the dependent variables, where the age groups roughly correspond to young adult, middle adult and older adults. Although logistic regression will show that increasing age is strongly predictive of orthodox responses to most of these variables, I have shown these age categories in this table and elsewhere because the variation by age is not consistent across the variables of interest.

Table 1.2. Mass attenders’ views of key Catholic moral teachings and beliefs by age, 2011 All Mass 15–34 35–59 60 and over attenders (%) (%) (%) (%) Abortion Always morally wrong 41 48 55 51 Justi ed only in extreme circumstances 38 37 33 35 Justi ed widely but not always 18 14 11 13 Never wrong 2 2 1 1 N = 1,511. p < .01 Premarital sex Always morally wrong 33 34 50 42 Not wrong if in a committed 47 57 47 51 relationship Never wrong 20 9 3 8 N = 1,540. p < .001 Understanding of God There is one God, three divine persons: 76 83 87 84 Father, Son and Holy Spirit God exists, and is a divine person, but 3 1 3 3 not Father, Son and Holy Spirit God is the name we give to a higher 12 9 5 7 power in the universe, the mysterious and creative source of life We and the universe are in God, part of 5 3 3 3 God, identi ed with God God is not ‘out there’, but is found only 2 2 2 2 within each person We cannot know for sure if God exists 1 1 1 1 God does not exist 0 – – 0 N = 2,470. p < 0.001

1 All results discussed in this chapter are for Catholics only. About 2.6 percent of Mass attenders are not Catholic. mixed results for orthodoxy 23

All Mass 15–34 35–59 60 and over attenders (%) (%) (%) (%) Virginity of Mary Mary gave birth to Jesus without having 74 72 78 75 had sexual intercourse Mary’s virginity is not meant to be taken 26 28 22 25 literally N = 2,398. p < 0.05 Eucharist: the consecrated bread and wine … … truly become the sacred Body and 81 90 92 90 Blood of Christ … remain bread and wine 19 10 8 10 N = 2,410. p < 0.001 Resurrection Christ was raised by God’s power from 69 70 73 71 death to life—really, bodily, physically Christ’s rose from the dead, not literally, 23 26 23 24 but in the Christian community’s faith in God’s power to give life Christ did not rise in any sense 1 0 0 0 Don’t know 6 3 3 4 N = 2,464. p < 0.05

Note: Data (including N’s) have been weighted to reect difering levels of diocesan participation. Catholic respondents only.

Catholic Mass attenders place great importance on the Church’s moral teachings but this does not mean that they necessarily accept those teachings. In 2011, less than six percent of the respondents in the two sub-samples said that “the teachings of the Church do not inuence my decisions about moral issues.” Young adult attenders were somewhat more likely than older people to adopt this view. In contrast, 94 percent of attenders said that the Church’s moral teaching is either “a necessary guide to right and wrong” or “important to my growth as a person.” Despite this appreciation of the Church’s moral teaching, only 27 percent said they “always follow the teachings of the Church,” the percentage varying from 22 percent of young adults to 30 percent of attenders aged 60 or more. On the other hand, two-thirds of all attenders said that they “look to the teaching of the Church for guidance, but follow my own conscience.” 24 robert dixon

Table 2 strongly suggests that Mass-attending Catholics in Australia no longer uncritically accept the teaching of the Church on abortion and pre- marital sex (if they ever did). In the 2011 NCLS, only 51 percent said that abortion is always morally wrong, and only 42 percent that pre-marital sex is always wrong. The total opposed to abortion rises to 85 percent when one takes into account the 35 percent who said that abortion can be justi ed in extreme circumstances, such as rape and because of risk to the mother’s life. As noted earlier, however, the Church teaches that neither these nor any other factors constitute grounds for abortion. Nevertheless, it is clear that only a small proportion of respondents (13 percent) are prepared to consider that abortion can be widely justi ed, and almost none (1 percent) believe that abortion is never wrong. Acceptance of the Church’s teaching on abortion tends to be higher among older attenders: 55 percent of attenders aged 60 or over said that abortion is always wrong compared to 41 percent of young adult attenders. When it comes to pre-marital sex, there is a stark contrast between the Church’s teaching (pre-marital sex is always morally wrong) and the views of Mass attenders, with only 42 percent accepting the Church’s teaching. About half (51 percent) say that it is not wrong if the man and the woman “are committed to a long-term relationship,” and eight percent say that pre- marital sex is “not wrong in any circumstances.” Unsurprisingly, attenders aged 15–34 are the least likely to say that pre-marital sex is always wrong (33 percent), but what is perhaps surprising is that only half (50 percent) of attenders aged 60 or more hold that view. In addition to age, other demographic variables available for examination of their efect on these moral attitudes were sex, level of education and country of birth. All these variables were entered into a logistic regression equation, and the results are shown as Model 1 in Table 3. As the birthplace “Europe” was not signi cant in relation to any of the variables under discussion, it has been omitted from the table. Only two demographic variables are signi cant in relation to both moral teachings: age and having been born in the Philippines. The inuence of both variables is positive: increasing age and being born in the Philippines is associated with greater odds of being in agreement with these moral teachings. Sex has no bearing on the acceptance of either teaching. Level of education has a weak negative impact in relation to abortion, mainly because attenders with higher levels of education were less likely than other attenders to say that abortion is always wrong and more likely to say that it can be justi ed in extreme circumstances. With regard to pre- marital sex, being born in the Philippines, India or Sri Lanka or the other mixed results for orthodoxy 25

Table 1.3: Logistic regression: odds ratios for predictors of orthodoxy in relation to key catholic moral teachings, 2011

Abortion Pre-marital sex Predictor variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Age 15–34 years 1 1 1 1 35–59 years 1.24 1.24 1.13 1.00 60 years or more 1.61 ** 1.31 2.55 *** 1.95 *** Gender Female 1 1 1 1 Male 1.07 1.03 0.98 0.99 Level of education No post-school quali cations 1 1 1 1 Diploma or trade certi cate 0.85 0.97 1.00 1.21 University educated 0.73 * 0.82 0.89 1.08 Birthplace Australia 1 1 1 1 Other English speaking 0.97 0.84 0.77 0.77 countries The Philippines 2.94 *** 2.18 2.35 *** 2.15 ** India or Sri Lanka 1.31 0.60 * 2.66 *** 1.54 NESC countries not 1.30 0.84 2.42 *** 1.82 ** elsewhere classi ed Frequency of attendance Less than weekly 1 1 Weekly or more often 2.41 *** 3.87 *** Approach to moral decision making Always follow Church 1 1 teachings Guided by Church teachings, 0.13 *** 0.14 *** but follow my conscience Church teachings do not 0.07 *** 0.07 *** inuence me Model Chi-Square 41.56 *** 273.76 *** 88.37 *** 332.94 *** Nagelkerke R2 0.04 0.252 0.08 0.298 N 1,421 1,325 1,449 1,347

Note: The rst-named category for each variable is the reference category. NESC: Non-English speaking countries. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 26 robert dixon non-English speaking countries strongly increased the odds of being in agreement with the Church’s teaching. The logistic regression analysis also shows that demographic characteristics are capable of explaining only a very small amount of the variation in acceptance of the Church’s teachings on abortion and pre-marital sex. The Nagelkerke R-squared values are very low, 0.04 for abortion and 0.08 for pre- marital sex. There must be other, more important, factors that inuence how people form their attitudes to these two issues. Fortunately, one of them is available in the survey data: the way that people make their moral decisions. Model 2 shows how the odds ratios change once that variable is entered into the analysis. Frequency of attendance at Mass is also included in Model 2. Following one’s conscience in making moral decisions instead of always following the teachings of the Church strongly reduces the odds of being in agreement with the Church’s teaching on both issues. In fact, for both issues, this factor is by far the most powerful predictor, with odds ratios of 0.13 and 0.14 for abortion and pre-marital sex respectively. Not surprisingly, the odds of someone who says that the teachings of the Church do not inuence his or her decisions about moral issues are very much lower than the odds of someone who always follows the Church’s teaching being in agreement. Frequency of attendance is also strongly and positively related to orthodoxy of moral attitudes. Inclusion of these factors results in a substantial increase in Nagelkerke R-squared values, to 0.25 and 0.30 in relation to abortion and pre-marital sex respectively, but also weakens the inuence of the demographic variables.

Key Catholic Beliefs As Table 2 shows, the respondents in this study, like Mass-going Catholics in general, display a high level of orthodoxy in belief, as indicated by the high levels of acceptance of these four key Catholic doctrines. It can be argued that even respondents who did not select the “o cial teaching” demonstrated that they are grappling with the meaning of these teachings, sometimes seeing them more in symbolic than in literal terms. For example, almost a quarter of respondents in every age group said they understood the Resurrection not as a literal rising from the dead, but as “the Christian community’s faith in God’s power to give life.” Almost no respondents rejected belief in the Resurrection outright. Similarly, with respect to belief in God, very few respondents chose the agnostic position (“We cannot know for sure if God exists.”) and only one person, a 16-year-old, chose the atheist option (“God does not exist,”). This high level of orthodoxy is not unexpected mixed results for orthodoxy 27 among Mass-attending Catholics. What might be considered surprising is that the level of orthodoxy is not even higher. At rst sight, there is not a great deal of variation across age groups in responses to these items. Young adults were a little less likely than older attenders to select the Trinitarian response and were correspondingly a little more likely to choose one of the other beliefs about God. They were markedly more likely to say that the consecrated bread and wine at Mass remain bread and wine, and they were a little more likely to choose “Don’t know” with regard to the Resurrection. Otherwise, there appears to be little to distinguish the response of young adults from that of older attenders. Logistic regression analysis was carried out on the four doctrinal items in a parallel manner to that described above for the moral attitude items, and the results are shown in Table 4. In Model 1, the only demographic characteristic that was signi cant for all four key beliefs was having been born in India or Sri Lanka. Being born in India or Sri Lanka is associated with greater likelihood of accepting the Church’s teachings. Age was strongly and positively related to acceptance of the Trinity and of Transubstantia- tion, but was only weakly associated with acceptance of the Virgin Birth and not at all with the doctrine of the Resurrection. Sex had a rather weak inuence in relation to Transubstantiation only, with men a little less likely than women to accept the Church’s teaching on the consecrated bread and wine. There was a quite strong relationship between level of education and belief in Virgin Birth; well-educated Mass attenders were less likely than others to accept that Mary gave birth to Jesus without having had sexual intercourse. Intriguingly, the odds that respondents with some post-school education but without a university degree accept the physical Resurrec- tion of Christ were greater than those of respondents with both lower and higher levels of education. Attenders born in the Philippines were more likely than Australian-born attenders to accept the Church’s teachings about God and the Eucharist, but they were not signi cantly diferent in their responses to the questions about the virginity of Mary and the Resurrec- tion. As before, the logistic regression analysis shows that demographics can account for only a very small amount of the variation in levels of orthodoxy, as measured by these four key beliefs, with the largest Nagelkerke R-squared value being only 0.07 for the Transubstantiation item. High proportions of Mass attenders respond in a similar way to all four of these items, by selecting the orthodox teaching of the Church, regardless of their age, sex, level of education and country of birth. 28 robert dixon 1 1 1.81 *** 0.290.08 *** *** 1 1 2.89 *** 0.20 *** 0.06 *** Transubstantiation Resurrection 1 1 1.73 *** 0.28 *** 0.07 *** Virgin Birth 1 1 1.88 *** 0.18 *** 0.04 *** as Trinity God 11 11 1 11 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.06 0.18 0.03 0.13 0.07 0.18 0.02 0.12 1.712.47 *** *** 1.59 1.84 *1.10 *** 1.04 1.36 *1.06 1.060.81 1.16 1.02 1.37 1.140.95 1.02 3.31 2.343.193.09 *** *** ***3.67 0.91 *** 1.13 2.51 2.47 1.56 0.89 0.70 *** 2.21 *** *** ** 2.83 1.30 ** 1.11 1.03 *** 0.83 0.70 0.86 1.83 0.74 1.89 * * 1.05 *** 1.11 0.68 1.01 1.71 0.76 1.15 0.60 0.67 * * * * 1.23 1.38 1.29 3.56 0.88 4.32 0.89 * *** ** 1.19 2.43 1.29 3.6 1.32 0.98 0.80 * * * 1.05 1.48 1.82 1.08 1.01 0.77 ** ** 0.76 1.39 0.84 0.75 85.1 230.0 46.0 187.2 70.6 173.4 28.2 178.0 2,345 2,071 2,279 2,021 2,284 2,018 2.333 2,062 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 2 1.4: Logistic regression: odds ratios for predictors of orthodoxy in relation to key Catholic beliefs, 2011 e ote: The rst-named category for each variable is the reference category. able T Ag N Predictor variables NESC: Non-English speaking countries. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 15–34 years 35–59 years 60 years or more Gender Female Male Level of education No post-school quali cations Diploma or trade certi cate University educated Birthplace Australia Other English speaking countries The Philippines India or Sri Lanka NESC countries not elsewhere classi ed Frequency of attendance Less than weekly Weekly or more often Approach to moral decision making Always follow Church teachings Guided by Church teachings, but follow my conscience Church teachings do not inuence me Model Chi-Square Nagelkerke R N mixed results for orthodoxy 29

What else might explain the variation in responses? It turns out that the question about how people make moral decisions is also signi cant when it comes to the belief items. Just as Vatican II taught, people have chosen to exercise their judgment in matters of belief. The odds ratios for the option of being guided by Church teachings but ultimately making a decision in conscience about matters of belief compared to the option of always following the Church’s teaching are not quite as small as in the case of the moral teachings, but they are nevertheless very small (ranging from 0.18 to 0.29). In each case, the Nagelkerke R-squared and the Model Chi-Square values increase when approach to moral decision-making and frequency of attendance are controlled in the model, thereby resulting in a weakening of the inuence of the demographic variables. Although frequency of attendance appears as a highly signi cant variable in the logistic regression analysis, I am not sure that it adds a great deal to our understanding of orthodoxy, due to problems with the direction of cau- sation. Do people become more orthodox because they attend Mass every weekend or even every day? Or is the high frequency of attendance for highly orthodox people an outcome rather than a cause of their orthodoxy, since their orthodoxy necessitates that they will accept the Church’s teaching that Catholics have a serious obligation to attend Mass on Sunday? The best that can be said for frequency of attendance is that it acts as a visible indicator of an interior disposition. There is a similar problem with the item about how people make moral decisions. Although it is strongly related to orthodoxy, it merely shifts the question from why people hold orthodox beliefs to why people adopt a particular approach to moral decision-making. Demographic characteristics have been shown to have little predictive power in relation to orthodoxy, while frequency of attendance and approach to moral decision-making have problems of their own. A more complete explanation for variation in orthodoxy of belief and moral attitudes is likely to be found in aspects of life not measured by the NCLS questionnaires, things to do with family upbringing, personality, life experience, and the type of church-related groups to which one belongs. Investigation of these dimensions lies outside the scope of this study.

Change over Time Let me now turn briey to an examination of how levels of acceptance of the six key teachings have changed over time (see Table 5). In the period from 1996 to 2011, there was a de nite upward drift toward orthodox responses for three of the belief items, with only belief in the 30 robert dixon

Table 1.5: Mass attenders’ acceptance of key Catholic moral teachings and beliefs by age, 1996–2011

All Mass 15–34 35–59 60 + attenders (%) (%) (%) (%) Abortion always morally wrong, or justi ed only in extreme circumstances 1996 82 90 94 90 2001 83 88 95 90 2006 85 87 94 90 2011 78 84 88 85 Premarital sex always morally wrong 1996 28 46 74 52 2001 30 41 68 49 2006 32 38 58 46 2011 33 34 50 41 There is one God, three divine persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit 1996 63 73 84 75 2001 64 71 79 73 2006 83 84 88 86 2011 76 83 87 84 Mary gave birth to Jesus without having had sexual intercourse 1996 63 65 79 69 2001 75 74 82 77 2006 81 74 80 78 2011 74 72 78 75 Eucharist: the consecrated bread and wine truly become the sacred Body and Blood of Christ 1996 – – – – 2001 60 72 85 75 2006 84 90 94 91 2011 81 90 92 90 Christ was raised by God’s power from death to life—really, bodily, physically 1996 77 85 86 83 2001 81 86 90 87 2006 74 73 77 75 2011 69 70 73 71

Note: The 1996 question on the Eucharist is not directly comparable with later versions of the question. mixed results for orthodoxy 31 bodily Resurrection declining during that period. This happened for all age groups, the only exception being for belief in the Virgin Birth among older attenders, which was virtually unchanged after 15 years. None of the small falls in levels of orthodoxy for these items between 2006 and 2011 is statistically signi cant. The exception to this pattern is belief in the physical Resurrection of Christ, which has declined substantially across all three age groups since 2001. Why the response pattern of this item should difer so markedly from that of the other three belief items is not at all clear. Although in relation to all four belief items young adult attenders were less likely than attenders aged 60 or more to accept the orthodox teaching, the gap between their level of acceptance and that of the older attenders was smaller in 2011 than it was in 1996. For example, the 16 percentage point diference in 1996 between acceptance of the Virgin Birth by young adult attenders (63 percent) and older attenders (79 percent) had shrunk to a mere four percentage points by 2011. The only statistically signi cant changes (p < 0.001) that took place between 2006 and 2011 were the falls in the percentage opposing abortion and pre-marital sex, and then only among older attenders. After three surveys in which the overall percentage of Mass attenders saying that abortion is either always wrong or can be justi ed only in extreme circumstances remained locked on 90 percent, it is too early to say that the 2011 gures indicate an erosion of this attitude. Nevertheless, it is possible that the fall is the rst sign of the impact of Australian society’s widespread acceptance of abortion, where the Catholic Church’s refusal to condone abortion is por- trayed as oppressive and out of touch with community values. Even so, the results reect an ongoing very high level of opposition to abortion among Mass attenders, an opposition which is, in fact, shared with attenders of most Christian denominations (Kaldor, Dixon and Powell 1999). There is no doubt, however, about the reality of the decline in the percentage of attenders saying that pre-marital sex is always wrong. In 1996, three- quarters (74 percent) of older attenders said pre-marital sex was always wrong, but by 2011 the gure had dropped to half (50 percent). There was also a similar drift among Mass attenders aged 35 to 59, from almost half (46 percent) in 1996 to one-third (34 percent) in 2011. However, during this same period, agreement with the Church’s teaching edged upward among young adult attenders, from 28 percent in 1996 to 33 percent in 2011. 32 robert dixon

Discussion

Let me now return to my hypotheses. The results are certainly mixed. Only the evidence relating to attitude toward pre-marital sex ofers any support for the rst three hypotheses, namely, that acceptance of the Church’s teachings will erode over time, that the efect will become greater as time goes on, and that acceptance of the Church’s position on moral attitudes will erode faster than acceptance of religious doctrines. There is also the merest hint that this might be happening in relation to attitudes to abortion. Otherwise, the data indicate that, rather than eroding, acceptance of the Church’s doctrines among Mass attenders has generally increased. Decline in belief in the bodily Resurrection cannot be advanced as evidence in support of the rst hypothesis, which predicts that all belief items would follow a similar pattern. If belief in the Resurrection behaves so diferently from the other three belief items, it must be due to some other reason. While it is true that younger attenders report, on average, lower levels of orthodoxy than older attenders, the hypothesis that they will show greater divergence from orthodox beliefs has to be rejected, as the evidence shows young adults’ level of orthodoxy to be converging toward the level of older attenders. Similarly, the hypothesis that highly educated attenders will show greater divergence from orthodox beliefs must also be emphatically rejected. However, the data do support the nal two hypotheses, that immigrants from non-Western countries will display higher levels of orthodoxy and that, because such immigrants make up an increasingly large proportion of Mass attenders, overall levels of orthodoxy will remain high. How can these results be explained? There are three basic reasons why levels of acceptance of the Church’s teachings might increase. First, people might have changed their minds and come to accept the Church’s teachings when previously they did not. Second, average levels of orthodoxy can increase if people with less orthodox beliefs stop going to Mass. Third, levels of orthodoxy can increase due to an inux of new orthodox attenders, whether they are young adults who were too young to participate in earlier surveys or new arrivals from overseas. Do Mass attenders change their minds about key Catholic beliefs and move toward more orthodox positions? On the basis of National Church Life Survey data, we cannot be sure, because there is no way of identifying whether particular individuals took part in earlier surveys, and no way of comparing their responses even if they did. The only item for which we can be reasonably con dent that people have changed their minds is attitude to pre-marital sex, and there the change has been toward a less mixed results for orthodoxy 33 orthodox position. Nevertheless, it is certainly possible that people could become more orthodox in belief over time. However, the numbers doing so are likely to be small and to be balanced or outweighed by the number of attenders moving from orthodox to less orthodox positions, some of whom will eventually stop attending altogether. The more likely cause of change in levels of orthodoxy is change in the composition of Mass attenders, as less orthodox attenders depart and more orthodox people arrive. People of all ages stop being regular Mass attenders for a variety of reasons, but the phenomenon is particularly noticeable among the Baby Boomer generation. National attendance gures published by the Catholic Church show that in 1996 an estimated 185,000 people aged 35 to 49 years (roughly corresponding to Boomers) attended Mass each week. By 2006, when this cohort would have been aged 45 to 59 years, the number of weekly attenders in that age group had fallen to fewer than 158,000 (Dixon, Kunciunas and Reid 2008). Given that people who accept the Church’s position on each of the four key beliefs are highly likely to attend Mass at least once per week (92 percent did so in 2011, compared to 79 percent of those who chose at least one non-orthodox response to the belief items), and that ceasing to attend church tends to be a gradual move from frequent to occasional to non-attendance (Dixon et al 2007, Richter and Francis 1998), it is likely that among the net 27,000 Baby Boomers who stopped going to Mass, there would have been a relatively high proportion of people whose beliefs were not fully in accord with the teachings of the Church. A similar thing has happened with young adult attenders who, as we have seen, have been getting somewhat more orthodox over the last 15 years. But it has been at the expense of participation. In 1996, about 136,000 Catholics aged 15 to 34 attended Mass every weekend, but by 2011 the number had dropped to about 83,000. Between 1996 and 2011, the percentage of Mass attenders born in non- English-speaking countries rose from just over 18 percent to over 33 percent, resulting in an increase of attenders born in non-English-speaking countries of about 69,000. Many of these new arrivals were Filipinos and Indians. As we have seen, attenders from these countries are much more likely to hold orthodox beliefs than Australian-born attenders. These results highlight the importance of recent immigration for the Catholic Church in Australia. Not only do people from non-English speaking countries make up an ever-increasing proportion of Mass attenders, they are also far more likely than Australian-born attenders to hold orthodox beliefs. However, the impact of immigration is temporary. As an alternative to including country of birth in the logistic regression analysis, I tried 34 robert dixon comparing orthodoxy of belief of Australian-born children of overseas-born parents (“second generation Australians”) to Australian-born attenders with Australian-born parents. There was a weak positive efect on acceptance of the Virgin Birth and Transubstantiation (p < 0.05 in both cases) for second generation Australians with both parents born in non-English speaking countries, and no efect at all for other second-generation Australians. It cannot be assumed that the higher level of orthodoxy associated with immigrants from certain countries will be passed on to the next generation. One nal observation about the results: Why have so many older Cathol- ics stopped believing that pre-marital sex is always wrong? I suspect that this is because very many young Catholics in contemporary Australia are cohabiting with their partners before or instead of marrying. By and large, these young people are not attending Mass, but their parents and especially their grandparents are. What is happening is a variation on what Putnam and Campbell call “the Aunt Susan Principle” (2010: 526). In this case, the thinking is that “if my (grand-)children are living together before marriage, and I know they are very good people who are loved by God and who will go to heaven when they die, then it must be OK for them to do that, and what we used to regard as always wrong is not necessarily so.” We are left with the question of why the Resurrection variable behaves so diferently from the other three belief variables. The existing data do not seem to hold the answer, so this intriguing question is a subject for further research.

Conclusion

These are indeed mixed results for orthodoxy. Acceptance of the Church’s beliefs and moral teachings remains generally high among Mass attenders, although there are exceptions, notably with regard to pre-marital sex. I have argued, however, that the high level of orthodoxy has been maintained only because many less orthodox attenders have stopped going to Mass and because of the inux of highly orthodox Catholics from non-Western countries. It seems that the impact of the experiential shift in the culture in lessening acceptance of Catholic beliefs and moral attitudes has been principally con ned to Australian-born attenders and those born in other English speaking countries and Europe. These results have implications for the leadership given by and the training of priests. Older priests, even many of those trained after Vatican II, operate in a model that assumes that traditional forms of authority are the only mixed results for orthodoxy 35 valid forms and, furthermore, that there is no reason to question or mod- ify them. Anecdotal evidence is that the majority of today’s newly ordained young priests are even more strongly entrenched in the traditional model. The problem is even more acute when priests from India, the Philippines and Nigeria, for example, begin working in parishes shortly after arriving in Australia and before they have had time to come to an understanding of Aus- tralian Catholic life. The result is that many priests attempt to implement a model of parish leadership that does not work efectively among people whose worldview has been largely shaped by the experiential nature of contemporary culture.

Sources of Data

The National Church Life Survey (NCLS) is a joint project of Anglicare Sydney, Uniting Mission and Education (Synod of NSW and the ACT), the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Australian Catholic University. NLCS data used in this chapter come primarily from responses of Mass attenders in Catholic parishes who completed questionnaire variants S3 and X in the 2011 survey, and from similar questionnaires in previous surveys in 2006 and 2001. The 1996 survey data come from the Catholic Church Life Survey,a project of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is the source of the 2011 Census data. Counts of Mass attenders are derived from the Australian Catholic Bish- ops Conference National Count of Attendance 2001–2011.

References

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———,Audra Kunciunas and Stephen Reid. 2008. Mass Attendance in Australia: A Report Based on Results from the National Count of Attendance, the National Church Life Survey, and the Australian Census. Melbourne: Australian Catholic Bishops Conference Pastoral Research O ce. Retrieved from www.pro.catholic .org.au/researcharts#NatCount. ———and Ruth Powell. 2012. “Vatican II: A Data-based Analysis of Its Impact on Australian Catholic Life.” Pp. 292–320 in VaticanII:ReceptionandImplementation in the Australian Church, edited by N. Ormerod, N, O. Rush, D. Pascoe, C. Johnson and J. Hodge. Mulgrave, Victoria: Garratt Publishing. Flannery, Austin. 1975. Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post-conciliar Docu- ments. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Greeley, Andrew. 2004. The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins and the Second Vatican Council. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hally, Cyril. 1975. Report on a Survey of the Religious Attitudes of the People of the Diocese of Ballarat. Diocese of Ballarat. Harvey, David. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Heelas, Paul, Linda Woodhead, Benjamin Seel, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Karin Tusting. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell. Hornsby-Smith, Michael. 1992. “Believing without Belonging? The Case of Roman Catholics in England.” Pp. 125–134 in Religion: Contemporary Issues, edited by B. Wilson. London: Bellew Publishing. Hughes, Philip. 1994. A Maze or a System: Changes in the Worldview of Australian People. Kew, Victoria: Christian Research Association. “Julia Gillard Announces Royal Commission Will Probe Child Sex Abuse.” The Aus- tralian, 12 November 2012. Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ national-afairs/julia-gillard-announces-royal-commission-will-probe-child- sex-abuse/story-fn59niix-1226515336333. Kaldor, Peter, Robert Dixon and Ruth Powell. 1999. Taking Stock: A Prole of Aus- tralian Church Attenders. Adelaide: Openbook Publishers. Martin, Bernice. 1981. A Sociology of Contemporary Social Change. Oxford: Blackwell. McCarthy, Timothy. 1998. The Catholic Tradition: The Church in the Twentieth Cen- tury. 2nd edition. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Mol, Hans. 1985. The Faith of Australians. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Paul VI. 1968. Humanae Vitae (On Human Life). Retrieved from http://www .vaticanva/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_ humanae-vitae_en.html. Pell, George. 2003. “From Vatican II to Today.” Address to Catalyst for Renewal, Syd- ney, 30 May 2003. Retrieved from www.sydneycatholic.org/people/archbishop/ addresses/2003/2003530_62.shtml. 31 January 2013. Putnam, Robert and David Campbell. 2010. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon and Schuster. Richter, Philip, and Leslie Francis. 1998. Gone But Not Forgotten: Church Leaving and Returning. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Rose, Gerald. 2013. Re-imagining Church: Producing Sacred Spaces for the Experience of the Transcendent in an Evolving Experiential Culture. Ph.D. thesis, Monash University. mixed results for orthodoxy 37

Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. Fifth Edition. Retrieved from www.usccb.org/ about/doctrine/ethical-and-religious-directives, 31 January 2013. Weber, Max. 1968. Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building; Selected Papers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

chapter two

PLURALISM AND RITUALS IN ITALIAN CATHOLICISM: THE SPIRITUAL APPROACH OF RENEWAL IN THE SPIRIT

Emanuela Contiero

In the Gospel of John 14:2, Jesus says to his disciples: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” This statement of Jesus could be easily interpreted as a—metaphorical—representation of a situation which now more than ever seems evident and urgent: religious pluralism is such a complex and global phenomenon of the legitimization of diversity in the domain of faith (Giordan 2010), that in the wide range of possibilities it includes, everyone can nd his or her own way of establishing (or not establishing) a relationship with the sacred, with the transcendent and with God and of feeling “at home” with Him. The expression “now more than ever” has not been used by chance. Indeed, for some decades now a radical and unprecedented process of change has taken place in the relationship individuals have with the sacred. This process has led the individual from being subordinate to the authority of the traditional religious power to having more independence and freedom—not just of the choice of a religious “label,” but also of its expression. In other words, there has been a spiritual change, or revolution, which has afected the contemporary world of religious faith and practice in its entirety, leading both to the emergence of new ways of relating to the sacred and, in part, to the renewal of traditional religious forms. In this radical metamorphosis, the role of the body, of feelings and of personal wellbeing, also seems to have changed. These elements are indeed no longer seen as being in contradiction to or in competition with the search for a signi cant relationship with the sacred (Giordan 2010). On the contrary, their reinter- pretation in a transcendent perspective is one of the main factors that play a decisive role in shaping the outcomes of this search, leading to journeys of faith that are often on the fringe of or outside of traditional churches. The aim of this chapter is to assess the possibility of establishing a connection between these two thematic areas: religious pluralism on the one hand and the “new” concept or model of spirituality on the other. In particular, their concurrence (or lack thereof) will be empirically tested with 40 emanuela contiero regard to the ritual dimension of a speci c system of religious beliefs in Italian Catholicism. However, this study will not focus on the center of the Church, but rather on its periphery, where the search for a signi cant relationship with the sacred has more opportunities to achieve its aim— including through the production/creation of rituals that are parallel or alternative to the o cial model. More speci cally, this chapter will focus on the rituals of Renewal in the Spirit,1 a post-Conciliar religious renewal movement which is the largest charismatic movement in Italy recognized by the Catholic Church. Is it possible to interpret the approach adopted by the members of this movement in “their” rituals through the concept/model of spirituality? If so, what efects does it have on their way of relating to the sacred and to the transcendent and what are the diferences from “average” Catholics? Finally, how do these experiences (and their outcomes) help diferentiate religious approaches within Italian Catholicism and increase pluralism?

Old Terms for New Scenarios

The term “spirituality” has been used in the sociological eld for some decades now to indicate a “new” category used for the description, interpretation and understanding of the diferent relationship with the sacred that characterizes the contemporary religious world. However, as demonstrated by Giordan, the term is not “new” in itself. The term is indeed much older, and it was rst used in the theological eld, from which it was taken. Its adoption in a completely diferent period and eld of study has obviously changed its usage and meaning. What has remained unchanged is the tendency to use this term to indicate a “reserve” of independence and creativity which both individuals and groups or communities maintain faced with the o cial religious institutions (Giordan 2006). Although among sociologists of religion the debate on the use of this category is still open and rather heated (cf., Roof 1993, Heelas and Wood- head 2005, Flanagan and Jupp 2007), its usage highlights the presence of this reserve. Today, a central role in this reserve is also played by the freedom of choice of individuals, by their need for meaning and to ful l themselves:

1 The data used in this chapter were collected for a thesis written to complete the Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Padua (2011). This was a qualitative research project based on ethnographic analysis and in-depth interviews. The rst part of the results was already presented in a previous article (cf. Contiero 2012). pluralism and rituals in italian catholicism 41 these are all factors that further question the undisputed authority of traditional religious institutions. Contemporary culture is indeed profoundly marked by a process of individualization and by the difusion of a culture of the self: as a consequence, it gives more and more importance to the individual, so that his or her decisions in any eld of activity are increasingly legitimized by his or her freedom of choice rather than by the prescriptions of an institution. Since this approach has begun to spread also to the purely religious eld, a decisive shift has occurred: modern believers no longer try to give sense to their lives on the basis of the objective roles which are imposed on them from the exterior, but they now do so through the constant attempt to achieve harmony with their deepest self (Taylor 1991, 2002). In this dif- cult process of search and experimentation, the relationship with traditional religious authority has changed radically. When the relationship is not interrupted, in a lot of cases it is reconsidered and renegotiated on the basis of needs and expectations that come from below in the system of religious beliefs. As a consequence, the perspective is reversed: “the human is no longer de ned in relation to the religious, but it is the latter which is reinterpreted starting from the protection of the needs of the individual” (Giordan 2006: 82). This has inevitably led to a new way of seeing the sacred, which is no longer experienced and sought solely through the prescriptive approach of institutional religions. In the logic of “democratization of the sacred” which has begun to spread in the contemporary world, in the context of the general perspective of a more “democratic” management of power, the transcendent dimension is no longer under the exclusive control of religious institutions. On the contrary, it has become a resource which the individual can freely access to give sense to his or her life (Berger 1967, 1969, 1992). Given the shift in perspective in the way men and women try to establish a meaningful relationship with the sacred, their journeys of faith are no longer or not entirely in line with the indications and prescriptions of the classical doctrinal traditions. More and more often, the main point of reference becomes the perception of individuals and the level of harmony that they feel they can achieve with their deepest selves through these experiences. In comparison with the past, today the religious dimension has very speci c and particular characteristics which seem to be better described and interpreted through the model of “spirituality,” rather than through the other categories available so far. While “religion” is characterized by a prescriptive system to which the individual shall passively obey and adapt, “spirituality” 42 emanuela contiero is characterized by a system of sense which is free from these ties and which is centred on the individual, who is left free and autonomous in the creative discovery of the self (Heelas 2002, Heelas and Woodhead 2005). While in the rst case the relationship with the sacred is regulated by the religious institution, i.e. by the traditional churches, in the second case the relationship is shaped by the individual, exercising his or her independence and freedom of choice. This new model, which is strongly inuenced by the evolution of the contemporary world in a subjectivist direction, also leads persons to pay particular attention to their emotions, feelings, body, and wellbeing as they look for a religious experience that can reconcile mind, body and spirit. This new model also establishes the supremacy of experience over dogma and of subjective authenticity over objective truth. It guides and legitimizes processes of search and journeys of faith through which the individual establishes a relationship with the transcendent on the fringe or outside traditional religious institutions.

A Case Study: The Spiritual Approach of Renewal in the Spirit

The origin of this movement is closely linked to the spread of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) movement within the Italian Catholic Church. Renewal in the Spirit is indeed the only charismatic movement o cially recognized in Italy. Moreover, it is also the main channel through which the characteristic ritual forms of Pentecostalism—albeit adapted and purged of some more typically “Protestant” aspects—have become part of liturgies and rituals in Italy.2 Considering the speci c context of reference of this chapter, the spreading of these ritual forms (even if practiced by only a minority of Catholics) has been another major factor of innovation and diversi cation: this has made the ritual system, which had already been renewed with the reforms

2 In the beginning, the formation and spreading of Catholic Charismatic Renewal groups in Italy encountered some resistance and created tensions with the Church hierarchy, especially because these groups initially seemed to be too critical of the institution of the Church. However, in 1974–1975, the rst signs of rapprochement began to appear, especially thanks to some leaders of the movement who wanted to remain faithful to the Catholic Church. They decided to call the Italian Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement “Renewal in the Spirit,” also to eliminate any ambiguity linked to the adjective “charismatic,” and to shift the focus from the extraordinariness of the gifts and charisms to the greatness of their Donor. In this way, according to the national coordinator of the movement, “it is easier to bear in mind that no one can reasonably de ne himself as charismatic if not in connection with the Church, because the Church itself is charismatic.” pluralism and rituals in italian catholicism 43 introduced by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), more complex. Fol- lowing the spread of this movement, the usual and traditional rituals recognized by the Church hierarchy have been combined with ways of praying and of relating to the sacred that are very diferent, more fervent, active and engaging than the more classical and ordinary (and in a way more orderly) ones to which “average” Catholics are accustomed. In comparison to “average” Catholics, one of the most distinctive features of the rituals of the groups and communities belonging to Renewal in the Spirit is certainly the rediscovery of the anthropological and psycho- biological functions associated with human corporeality, as well as of the many languages and codes of expression characterizing it. Through the movement produced by spontaneous and enthralling dancing (always accompanied by musical instruments and lively choral songs), through physical proximity and through the collective excitement that the combination of these elements Durkheimianly generates, in charismatic rituals all the senses are individually and collectively involved. As explained by Roldan (2008: 420–421), in the charismatic approach to spirituality of members of Renewal in the Spirit, the body is a fundamental instrument to express one’s own faith. “In the charismatic experience [of the Renewal in the Spirit], the individual relates to the sacred as a member of the community and he does so with all his humanity, including his own body, without hiding it or keeping it away from others. […] This experience of spirituality based on physical communication gives voice to the intimate thoughts of the individual not as an end in itself, but in such a way to establish a closer and stronger relationship with the sacred and with the others.” Indeed, members of Renewal in the Spirit do not hesitate to say: “We have a direct—even physical—experience of God. It is as if we really touched God!” In these types of rituals the body thus becomes the main anthropological element of reference through which individuals relate to their own self, to the others and to the transcendent. In this way, the process of rediscovery of the sacred is rst and foremost a process of rediscovery of the body—which once was the rst bridge of communication between the divine and nature (Stella 1994). As can easily be imagined, from a symbolic and spiritual point of view, shifting so explicitly the focus of religious experience on the primary frame of the physical dimension—in a religious tradition that revolves around the Word, such as the Catholic one—can have a lot of consequences. For instance, this case study clearly shows that, stimulated by more intense and engaging rituals, this minority of Catholics has access to a system of sense and of senses which is very diferent from the one other Catholics 44 emanuela contiero are used to. It is a multi-dimensional system which is much broader, varied and multifaceted: it is made of experiences and feelings that go beyond the limits of the ordinary view of the world and of the way of interpreting the relationship with one’s own self and with the Other. The many interviews carried out for this research show that, for many members of Renewal in the Spirit, the clear and well-de ned borders of the indicative—i.e., what for us as Westerners is the world of fact, of reality, which can be described with the expression “it is really so”—become blurred, either gradually or suddenly, depending on the type of conversion. In this way, a new world and a new mood begin to appear on the horizon: it is the subjunctive, a world where everything becomes possible and which can best be described with the expression “as if …” (Turner 1982).3 It is no accident that, when members of Renewal in the Spirit try to describe their experiences—something which can hardly be done with words—they often tend to use the form “asif.” In the extract already mentioned above, a respon- dent states: “… it is asif we really touched God!” When trying to explain what she felt during the prayer for the Efusion of the Holy Spirit,4 a young woman said: “… I had a feeling as if it were almost an electricity … But I am sure that it was the Lord who was reviving me.” For instance, in this rite the power of the Holy Spirit, which is invoked by a group of older brothers and sisters with songs, prayers and the lay- ing on of hands, manifests itself to the assembly and to the person being initiated through extraordinary events. The person being initiated is often overwhelmed by this force and falls down, as if fainting—in the charismatic jargon, this state is called “being slain in the Spirit” (one of the most controversial and criticized aspects of the Pentecostal tradition). On these occa-

3 The distinction between “indicative mood” and “subjunctive mood,” taken from linguis- tics, was used by Victor Turner in his study on the rites of passage of Van Gennep. 4 This is the rite of initiation into the movement, which—in a way—resembles the experience of the Apostles on the occasion of the rst Pentecost. For a lot of people, this rite is also their very rst experience of physical and direct contact with the transcendent. But is it “Efusion of the Holy Spirit” or “Baptism in the Holy Spirit”? The latter expression is generally used by Protestant Pentecostals to describe the transformation generated in them by divine intervention. However, this expression is too ambiguous for the Catholic Church, because it may be suggestive of a sort of super-baptism, or of a baptism perfecting or completing the one with water, which would end up being only a preparatory rite to welcome the individual into the Church, or, at most, an initial conversion preceding the other and more efective baptism. It is for this reason that the original expression has been replaced by Catholics with the de nition “Efusion of the Holy Spirit”: the expression is meant to describe a “new” and “special” intervention of the Holy Spirit—“new” in comparison to the previous interventions and “special” for the way it occurs and for the fruits it bears to the individual receiving it (Favale 1982: 287–288). pluralism and rituals in italian catholicism 45 sions, the body of the person seems to be “thrown to the ground,” but those who have experienced this state say that they did not lose consciousness: on the contrary, they state that they remained conscious, but that they felt drained of all strength that kept them standing. And that is not all. In some cases, the fall may even look sharp to an external observer. Yet, it causes no physical harm to the individual and it is even perceived and described by him or her as a calm state of relaxation. One of the persons who experienced this state explained it as follows: “you physically hit the ground, but without getting hurt at all … you feel nothing at all, because it is as if your body were gently put down or supported ….” So, “as if” or “is it really so”? According to the external critics of the movement who judge these rites negatively, these cases are rather due to the manipulation of individuals, to mass hysteria or to hypnotic or parapsycho- logical efects. However, members of Renewal in the Spirit strongly reject these accusations, thus bringing our attention to the age-old problem of reality discussed by Alfred Schutz in his “Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality” (1995). In this essay, Sancho Panza is the representative par excel- lence of common sense: in his opinion, the fantastic things which Don Quixote sees as real and plausible are all fantasies, in the sense that—as for many others—reality is made only of what appears as normal in its contents and forms to ordinary perception. On the contrary, members of Renewal in the Spirit who “have an experience” (Jedlowski 1994) of the sacred which reveals itself in such a tangible and unusual way—like Don Quixote—no longer see things in the same way. The new data they acquire destructure the common sense of established knowledge, thus undermining—at least in part—its legitimacy and validating a new kind of knowledge. As a consequence, in their view reality can—and actually does—have other shades, rules and characteristics as well. To become aware of it, they suggest, it is enough to try and to “listen” to the feelings and messages received by one’s own body. Another typical characteristic of the charismatic rituals practiced by the movement is indeed the intensity of emotions and sensations participants feel during them. For instance, going back to the state of being slain in the Spirit, when the body collapses as if drained of the strength that kept it standing, many people say that their body seemed to ll with something else. It is a diferent kind of strength, which is perceived by their senses as being reinvigorated and lled with peace and wellbeing, a feeling that emanates from the individual toward the others and toward God. This is often accompanied by another recurring element in the charismatic experience, i.e. the “gift of tears”: tears of joy, of puri cation and of 46 emanuela contiero relief which the Lord puts into the hearts of people after they have met Him in person (Roldan 2008). As in the classical Pentecostal tradition, in Renewal in the Spirit the prayer for the efusion of the Holy Spirit also helps to renew the gifts and the charisms received in the other Sacraments, thus nally making them efective. According to the teachings of this movement, the charism is something that adds to the natural gifts of an individual, transforming them in such a way to serve the community. A clearer explanation was given by one of the interviewees: “If you have the gift of speech, you can speak well and con- vince others. The Lord simply gives you the charism of preaching, in that He takes something you have as a natural gift, which you were given by Him and He turns it into a charism.” Although the members of Renewal in the Spirit are keen on specifying that the charisms are only a secondary efect of the action of the Spirit and not the main one, for a lot of them having one or more charisms also implies the attainment of a higher social status recognized by the group. The simple manifestation of a charism is indeed not enough for a person to claim the charism of healing, of singing, of prophecy, of comfort, of discernment, etc. Another interviewee explained: “In part you realize it, in part they tell you, in part you see the results.” However, the community, represented by its leaders, must normally verify the actual presence and continuity over time of the charism—in other words, the community must check that the charism becomes “stable.” Nonetheless, there are also cases in which the manifestation of charismatic abilities is not always foreseeable and constant over time, because “the Lord uses you as and when He pleases and the charism appears when you are closely united with the Spirit … then He will make you do things ….” An example was given during the same interview: “A young man once came to the meeting of our group and in my heart I felt something inexplicable … I told him my life … even if I didn’t know him at all—unbelievable! The Lord gave me the charism of prophecy and discernment, but I had it only a couple of times, when He needed it.” These statements highlight another two important aspects that are worth reection. The rst one is that in a lay movement recognized by the Church such as Renewal in the Spirit, the democratization of charisms is something established. Charisms are not given exclusively to the clergy. According to Renewal in the Spirit, all those who have been efused by the Spirit can have charisms, both the religious and the laity, both men and women without distinction. Second, these statements also seem to indicate that, in this kind of approach to the sacred, people are strongly encouraged to be in harmony pluralism and rituals in italian catholicism 47 with their deepest selves. By being plunged into a new system of emotional and not only logical-cognitive meanings, people are encouraged to establish contact with parts of themselves that normally escape the rational control exercised by the left hemisphere of the brain on the entire human body. This leads to unleashing other qualities and characteristics which belong to the right hemisphere, the more creative, syncretic, passionate and emotional one. Gian Antonio Gilli argues these qualities may also be de ned as téchnai. Gilli explains that, even if the term téchne (singular) seems to refer to the technical world, to work and to the various professions, the Greeks actually used it to indicate a number of individual conditions that have nothing to do with the technical setting. The term was used rather to indicate the individual experiences and abilities that de ne the identity of an individual in a signi cant and profound way: “they are not produced or taught by society, but they are a sort of starting equipment, an innate specialization. The ancients spoke of a ‘divine gift’. With this expression, they wanted to underline that the appearance of these—perfect already—abilities in the absence of any system of socialization could not be explained” (Gilli 1994: 5). I have made reference to Gilli because, in many ways, the gifts and charisms that members of Renewal in the Spirit experience in their journey of faith seem to fall within his description of the téchnai. However, while in ancient times the téchnai were innate abilities that manifested themselves before the socialization process and thus did not need to be taught or learned, the experience of members of Renewal in the Spirit seems to go in the opposite direction. In order to discover the existence of these abilities and to learn their properties, men and women of today seem to need to go through a process of conversion/transformation (Berger and Luckmann 1966) that legitimates their existence, use and difusion. This is the kind of process that members of Renewal in the Spirit seem to go through. One of the interviewees said: “People do not know many aspects of Christian life and of the manifestations of the Spirit …. Instead, we have rediscovered them. We have discovered those weapons, those aptitudes that, when you see them, you ask yourself: but where were they until now?” Another person stated: “the charisms emerge little by little and when they appear, you see that that person was made for something, you see when the Lord is using him or her for that purpose!” However, for members of Renewal in the Spirit, the process of rediscovery seems to occur the other way around, i.e. they probably need not only to learn, but also to remember, recollect and recall, involving a multitude of parts of the human body. This process of recollection involves the feelings of the heart, it seems to echo a voice, a sound, a call, it brings something 48 emanuela contiero back to the mind and it even involves the limbs, which is probably where the experiences, memories and aptitudes of the past originated. Indeed, as argued by Ghelen (1990), nothing is more certain than the existence of a memory of our body, which gradually becomes part of our unconscious, or which is gradually “forgotten” during the process of socialization. For members of Renewal in the Spirit, the discovery of the transcendent dimension mainly occurs at a physical/experiential level. However, through catechesis, study and prayer, what the person has learned is examined and discussed more in depth, in such a way not to remain something extempo- raneous, not to be an end in itself and not to be necessarily linked to the meetings of the group. As they say, for them it is important to get used to or prepared for living in the “spiritual dimension” also in the various circumstances of daily life: “… you must learn this art of living in the spiritual dimension.” Or else: “We must practice living in the Spirit.” But what does it mean for them to live in the spiritual dimension, to live in the Spirit? The overall analysis of the ethnographic material collected through eld observation and interviews highlighted that in the development of the socio-religious self of these individuals a key role is played by what they call “awareness”: “Awareness is very important, because it really changes the way you approach life, which is completely diferent … You realize that everything that the Church has taught you so far is true, but it is true because you really feel it is true, you perceive it in an unbelievable way. So when you go to the Eucharist, you do not need to believe or to make an efort, because you can clearly perceive the presence of God in there—that’s it.” On the other hand, members of Renewal in the Spirit believe that the di culty the Church has delivering its message is due to the absence of this aspect in the life of average Catholics, together with the absence of a view of God as being closer to men and women: “What the Church teaches us is not assimilated because there is no experience, people do not experience this.” In other words, members of Renewal in the Spirit seem to say that average Catholics do not get to have an authentic relationship with the sacred, deeply rooted in conscience. This can be achieved by living and sharing the experience that comes from the adoption of a more complete, intense and direct approach. In this way, it is possible to get to know the dimension of the invisible in a more profound way, going beyond the merely intellectual or dogmatic/doctrinal level. pluralism and rituals in italian catholicism 49

Conclusions

As already stated in the introduction, the objective of this study is to try to establish a connection between the issue of religious pluralism and the concept/model of spirituality. To this purpose, I have examined the rituals of a post-conciliar religious renewal movement that was chosen as being particularly representative of a larger—albeit hidden—trend in Italian Catholi- cism. In conclusion, I will try to reply to all the questions that were raised at the beginning of this chapter.

1) Is it possible to interpret the approach adopted by the members of this movement in “their” rituals through the concept/model of spirituality? After my analysis, I would certainly give an a rmative answer to this question. This study has indeed shown that, both at a theoretical and at an empirical level, the main characteristics of the model of “spirituality” also apply—at least to some extent—to the way members of Renewal in the Spirit approach their rituals. As has already been discussed, these common aspects are linked to the body, to the senses, to the emotions and feelings associated with the body and to the state of psychological and physical wellbeing which these persons seem to experience. By establishing a direct contact with the sacred during their rituals and by sharing the experience in a community (which not infrequently ful ls the resocialization function of a new family), members of Renewal in the Spirit often manage to heal the inner wounds they had at the beginning of their journey and to renew themselves. In their journey of faith, the process of conversion/transformation (Berger and Luckmann 1969) thus ful ls important functions which may be de ned as “psycho-ritual”: in other words, this process leads to their spiritual, but also psychological healing5—which is in line with the focus on one’s own personal wellbeing promoted by the new model.

5 Is it suggestion? Fantasy? Or something else? Even without going into the details of scienti c elds other than the ones pertaining to this speci c study, it is interesting to make reference to the most recent theories elaborated by neuroscientists in this regard. Some scientists (Newber and D’Aquili 2002) observed that, when a person prays fervently or has some kind of profound religious experience, changes occur in the neuronal activity in the brain region that controls the sense of direction. In particular, their analysis showed that during the most intense moments of prayer and meditation there is a strong reduction in the activity level of this region: this leads to losing perception of the borders that separate one’s own self from the rest of the world. As shown in this analysis, what members of Renewal in the Spirit experience in their rituals is very similar and seems to fall under this category of phenomena. 50 emanuela contiero

This is combined with the—often successful—attempt to establish a closer relationship with the transcendent: through an authentic and direct experience. In a logic of democratization of the sacred, this often necessarily leads to establishing a more profound relationship with one’s own self. Furthermore, it must be underlined that, in the contemporary world, these individuals are free to choose Renewal in the Spirit among the various religious movements that coexist and compete both within the institution of the Catholic Church and outside of it. This freedom of choice is another distinctive characteristic of spirituality. However, the analysis carried out in this study has also shown that there are some aspects that diferentiate the approach adopted by the members of this religious movement from the model of spirituality described by the literature so far. Indeed, this study has highlighted at least two factors which, in my opinion, cast doubts on the precision of this model of spirituality and on the possibility to verify it empirically (Giordan 2006). The rst factor is the degree of freedom an individual has after joining a collective religious-spiritual movement or group (be it recognized by an institution or not) which has its own rules and hierarchy. While freedom of choice is no longer or not exclusively delegated to the central ecclesiastical authority, how much of it is still delegated to the leaders of the constellation of contemporary religious/spiritual groups, movements or associations? In other words, while the Spirit abandons a given form (or dwelling place), is he not taking another form (or entering another dwelling place) which is however—once again—the result of an unresolved compromise between freedom and obedience, between personal wellbeing and salvation of the soul, between other-directed man and self-directed man? There is another factor that is normally neither included nor mentioned among the characteristics that distinguish the model of spirituality from the one of religion, but which—at least in relation to this study case— seems to diferentiate it in a key way. It is the subjective experience of the self that establishes contact with the divine not only at a horizontal- material-mundane level, but also through multiple vertical dimensions that involve other transcendent levels of the subjective experience of faith. Mak- ing reference to Gofman’s very modern idea of multiplicity of selves, the following interpretation may be given. According to Gofman, in every individual there is a multiplicity of selves which is the result of the multiple interactions in which he or she is involved. These face-to-face (or hand-to- hand) interactions generate horizontal networks that connect the members of a society or of a group such as the one studied here. Since the distinctive characteristic of the group is participation in religious rituals during pluralism and rituals in italian catholicism 51 which members interact with the transcendent dimension and experience other worlds, it can be assumed that during these rituals participants are exploring and experiencing a multiplicity of the self. However, this multiplicity is no longer or not exclusively experienced at the horizontal level of worldliness, but also in the vertical (or upward) direction of transcendence.

2) Which efects does it have on their way of relating to the sacred and what are the diferences with “average” Catholics? Clearly, in the traditional Mass there is no room for the spectacular rituals that members of Renewal in the Spirit are used to (using also their bodies, gestures, voices, etc. to express themselves). However, the void this creates is perceived not only in the diferent ways people take part in these rituals, but also in the efects they have—in terms of collective enthusiasm, renewal and relief produced by the energy generated by the ritual and, above all, in terms of miracles and healings, which do not occur in the same way during the Sunday Mass. In this regard, it is interesting to quote an interview with a priest who sympathizes with the movement: “Some ten years ago an American Father came to visit … He had been one of the rst to bring the Catholic Carismatic Renewal to Italy and the parish priest asked him to celebrate Mass for his parishioners. Before beginning the celebration, he told me: “‘Watch these people carefully: today the Lord isn’t doing what He normally does!’ The atmosphere was indeed colder than usual and nothing special happened.” … It’s not like something special always has to occur: celebrating the Eucharist is already a miracle. However, if we believe in the Word of God and that after announcing good news there are signs which con rm it, why are these signs sometimes present and sometimes not? It’s that the expectations of the people participating in the celebration are diferent. There is almost a sort of predisposition. … The expectations are diferent and maybe the Lord perceives it! The warmth and the enthusiasm of members of Renewal in the Spirit are diferent. I can tell you from my experience that these persons throw themselves into what they have received, be it healing, consolation or comfort. … They really throw themselves more and more into it! And many times I have witnessed healings, things which do not normally take place when we celebrate Mass on Sunday morning—at least not in such a visible way. Sometimes I see people who hardly shake hands at the sign of peace …. It almost looks like they were punching their timecards! So on the one hand there are warmth, enthusiasm and people who “throw themselves more and more into” the rite to be healed, consoled and com- forted. On the other hand there are coldness and people who hardly get 52 emanuela contiero closer to each other, so that it almost looks like as if they were “punching their timecards.” These are two very diferent images of the renewed Catholic liturgy.6 This seems to be due to the diferent psycho-social conditions and expectations. Unlike the ordinary rites of the Catholic Church, the ones of the Renewal in the Spirit not only arm the existence of the super- natural, but they also challenge it to manifest itself and to show all its power by invoking the presence and intervention of the radically other through miracles and extra-ordinary facts (Severi 2004). The results of this observation show that, contrary to the critics’ argument that the renewed liturgy has made believers lose the sense of sacred and mystery, the faithful now have a better, more direct knowledge and understanding of rituals and that this does not necessarily lead to them being unable to open their souls to the invisible.7 The approach developed by Renewal in the Spirit to grasp the profound meaning of rituals and of the ultimate reality to which they refer seems to demonstrate—beyond its speci city—quite the opposite. Indeed, members of Renewal in the Spirit not only perceive in the liturgy the mystery of Christ who became man to set men free from sin, but their whole life is open to a sense of sacred and mystery. This sense of sacred seems to recall distant echoes of the “enchanted garden”—as articulated by Weber—that was gradually abandoned by human beings through the process of rationalization and modernization that led to the emergence of capitalism. The ritual—and what the individual experiences in it—seems to be the primary locus where the faithful can symbolically jump into a “diferent” world, a world lled with divine forces and powers, whose action and inuence are felt also in daily life. The symbolic system of beliefs of members of

6 The expression “renewed liturgy” indicates the liturgical reforms introduced by the Sec- ond Vatican Council. The main ones were the use of modern languages, the simpli cation and adaptation of rituals and texts in order for the people to understand them more easily, and the reorganization of churches and altars in order for priests to celebrate Mass facing the people. Furthermore, room was left for the adaptation of rituals to the characters and traditions of the various peoples, thus opening up the possibility for varieties of experimentation that developed with diferent degrees of freedom and acceptance. As a result, there is now a continuum going from the most traditionalist groups (close to the Society of St. Pius X), who defend the Tridentine liturgy, to the other extreme of movements—more di cult for the Church hierarchy to control—that have interpreted the reforms in a more innovative and creative way. 7 According to some scholars, also thanks to the use of a little known archaic language and to the distance existing between God, the clergy and the congregation, the pre-conciliar liturgy had an air of sacredness and mystery that the renewed liturgy, which has become synonym to revealing and getting closer, can no longer create among believers. pluralism and rituals in italian catholicism 53

Renewal in the Spirit thus appears as a world full of sense, where the presence of God, of the Spirit, of Saints, of angels and even of the devil is always visible. Indeed, this presence manifests itself through extraordinary events and through a series of facts and direct interventions of Divine Providence. One of the members of the movement stated: “When you begin to experience God, you begin to experience impossible things and to realize that two plus two does not always equal four!” Healings, coincidences, signs, miracles, unexpected help, and the like are all part of the many examples and anecdotes that characterize the lives of members of Renewal in the Spirit, as well as the way they describe to themselves and to others the porosity and communication between “ nite” (but not too much) provinces of meaning (Schutz 1975), such as the one of the ordinary world and the one of the extraordinary world. For all these reasons, I believe it is reasonable to say that movements such as the Renewal in the Spirit may be subject to some sort of re-enchantment of the world, of their world, in which the rite becomes an all-absorbing “dwelling place” for soul and body. In other words, the rite becomes the center of the process of renewal of their lives, where the need for sense and coherence that characterizes the spiritual search of contemporary men and women receives an apparent response.

3) How do these experiences help diferentiate religious approaches within Italian Catholicism and increase pluralism? Given its characteristics, the category of “spirituality” is usually associated with the one of “non-church religion” (Stark, Hamburg and Miller 2005) and, in general, to anything vaguely religious, provided that it remains outside traditional Christian doctrines and ecclesiastical organizations (Houtman and Aupers 2006). In fact, this study has shown that the spiritual search for a more authentic and direct relationship with the transcendent is present and “accepted” also in the institutional domain of a Church-controlled religion such as the Catholic one. On the one hand, the spiritual approach of the Renewal in the Spirit— in spite of the movement being on the fringe of the Church—does not completely disregard the prescriptive constraints of the dominant institution. Indeed, the Catholic Church legitimized this approach and recognized Renewal in the Spirit as an o cial ecclesiastical movement in 1996. There- fore, in this case, the relationship with the traditional religious authority has not been completely interrupted, but it has been in part renegotiated and rede ned on the basis of the aspirations expressed by Renewal in the Spirit. On the other hand, by responding to the need for sense, authenticity 54 emanuela contiero and coherence voiced by the “lower” levels of the hierarchic system, this movement has introduced signi cant elements of diferentiation into Ital- ian Catholicism. These elements have been integrated by the Church, which has transformed them from an external diferentiation into an internal dif- ferentiation.

References

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chapter three

A WORLD IN MOTION: THE PLURALITY OF ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN ITALY

Giuseppe Giordan

One of the most interesting efects of the migrations regarding the European territory today is that the Orthodox cultural and religious tradition, historically linked to Eastern Europe, is becoming more and more a phenomenon that afects the cultural and religious universe of Western Europe. This phenomenon, known as “Diaspora,” that is to say as the “dispersion” of Orthodox faithful settling outside the canonical territory of their Churches of origin, leads to the reorganization of the entire Orthodox cultural universe, forcing it to confront social, cultural, religious, and juridical contexts that are quite diferent from those that pertained in their home countries. Despite contending for second place among the most widespread religions in Italy, now side-by-side with Islam, the presence of Orthodox Chris- tianity in Italy is still rarely studied. From the socio-cultural point of view there is no global, current description of the Orthodox Churches present in the Italian territory, with the exception of few studies especially of particular reference to geographical areas or individual historical traditions.1 This shortcoming is undoubtedly due to some reasons that complicate the reconstruction of a map capable of illustrating such presence in a su ciently reliable way. There are two trends connected with the di culties that up to the recent past are likely to have discouraged scholars from undertaking

1 For a general introduction to the Orthodox, see Morozzo della Rocca (1997), Pacini (2000), Morini (2002), and Reati (2009). An accurate survey especially of the historical dimensions and the theological questions of the Orthodox presence in Italy has been edited by Battaglia (2011), while Introvigne and Zoccatelli (2006) have provided for many years accurate data concerning the religious pluralism that characterizes our country. We owe the rst empirical study existing in Italy on Orthodoxy, though restricted to the context of Piedmont, to Berzano and Cassinasco (1999). An edited volume by Christine Chaillot (2005) ofers an interesting historical reconstruction of the spread of the Orthodox Churches in Western Europe in the twentieth century. Enzo Pace (2011) has recently ofered an overview of the presence of the Orthodox in Italy, suggesting also some data about the diferent jurisdictions and the diferent parishes. 58 giuseppe giordan such an investigation. The rst of these lies within Orthodoxy itself: it seems to consist in a plurality of Churches, technically de ned as jurisdictions, which refer to the diferent patriarchates and to the diferent autocephalies. Therefore it is not easy to navigate within this complex world, where diversity is certainly an asset but, in the eyes of the researcher, it might even generate a sense of loss. As recently pointed out by Kallistos Ware (2005: 47), one of the greatest experts on Orthodoxy in the West, “the Orthodox form a unity in diversity, though too often diversity is more evident than unity.” As if that were not enough, to the complex reconstruction of the various jurisdictions forming the Orthodox universe, there must also be added a diferentiation of the various types of presence within the same jurisdictions. Indeed this last aspect makes it somewhat di cult even simply to compile a list of the individual parishes present in the territory. Just to give an example, and this immediately should warn the reader seeing the maps that will be presented in the following pages, other items must be added to the already established parishes, such as parishes in the process of formation, chapels in which celebrations take place only once or twice a month (or even less), cemetery chapels, and the diaconate in prisons and hospitals. It is also the case that some parishes or monasteries might shift from one jurisdiction to another for various reasons—a phenomenon not at all uncommon in the past and one that has not entirely disappeared even today. To this di culty, so to speak institutional and internal to Orthodoxy, another one is added of a more general character, which must be taken into account when reconstructing the presence of Orthodox Churches in Italy. This is the speed with which migration ows have reshaped the social and religious panorama of the peninsula since the early 1990s, with a remarkable acceleration at the beginning of the present century—a change so fast as to make any “photograph” that tried to present qualitatively and even better quantitatively the diferent religious “minorities” unreliable or incomplete. As we shall soon see, with the fall of Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the gates of Western Europe were opened to millions of women and men migrating from the East, bringing with them not only the hope of improving their living conditions, but also the free practice of their own cultural and religious traditions. In the great majority of cases, these refer back to the world of Orthodoxy. Su ce it to say that, from the data we have collected in the research that will be presented here, almost three out of four Orthodox parishes present in Italy were established since 2000. a world in motion 59

To these two reasons that make the study of Orthodoxy rather complex, we can probably add another one that afects the desirability of such study by researchers: it has to do with the visibility of this religion and its relevance in the public debate. This visibility appears evident if we compare it with Islam: the “newsworthiness” of some news items is conveyed with immediacy and efectiveness when referring to the protagonists as Muslim, and this label almost obscures their territorial origins. As to those Chris- tians who come from Eastern Europe, however, their nationality obscures their religious identity or puts it de nitely into the background. In other words, television and newspapers will speak of a Romanian, rather than of a Moldovan or Ukrainian, and never of an Orthodox individual; the exact opposite is true for those who come from Arab countries. When we hear about a Muslim it is not always clear whether this refers to a Moroccan rather than to a Syrian or an Egyptian individual. The reasons for such a situation are largely due to political issues, although there are also considerations of a more socio-religious and cultural character that afect the diferent ways of tying together daily life and one’s religious beliefs, depending on whether we are talking of Muslim or Orthodox people. How have we proceeded constructing the maps of the presence of Ortho- doxy in Italy? First, we made reference to the liturgical calendars that some jurisdictions update every year: In them we nd, beside information of liturgical character on the various festivities, also a directory of parishes and of the pastoral services ofered. These calendars, unfortunately, are available for only a few jurisdictions, therefore the data were integrated with research on the Web and then veri ed by personal and telephone contacts.2 The latter has not always been an easy job, both for the di culty in nding the relevant people as well as for the language barrier that in some cases made communication complicated. In some circumstances, we additionally had to deal, if not with some suspicion, at least with an understandable self-restraint in providing data that could be considered private and not to be publicly dis- closed. Included in the lists were the parishes, the communities, the monasteries, but not the diaconica in prisons or hospitals. We have included the cemetery chapels when they were explicitly recorded in the lists provided

2 I wish to thank Barbara Bertolani and Dimitris Argiropoulos for their painstaking reconstruction of the parishes’ lists and for having contacted the parish priests in order to implement our research using a questionnaire. Father Ambrogio Cassinasco assisted with particular patience and expertise throughout the research process. 60 giuseppe giordan by the jurisdictions themselves. More di cult was the choice as to the churches in which the priests go to celebrate only once or twice a month: in this case we have put them in our list only when they had speci c names and they were recorded as parishes in the documents of their respective jurisdictions. For these reasons, therefore, it is important to bear in mind that the maps we have developed do not claim in the least to be complete and comprehensive, even if they ambitiously ofer for the rst time a snap- shot of the constantly changing situation of the Orthodox Churches in Italy. The construction of a database including a kind of directory of the Ortho- dox parishes present in our country has been complemented with a questionnaire whose aim was to investigate some segments of the life of the parishes themselves. In this regard some aspects of the leadership have been explored, focusing then on both the organizational aspects and some pastoral activities that characterize the daily life of the diferent communities. The questionnaire has been completed for about one-third of the Orthodox parishes present in the national territory: if on one hand these data cannot be considered strictly representative of the whole universe of Orthodoxy in Italy, on the other hand they are su cient to outline some features of this religious confession that, as we will soon see, has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years.

The Orthodox Churches in Italy

From the data we have collected, we nd there are 16 Orthodox jurisdictions present in Italy today and 355 parishes. As represented by number of parishes, the largest jurisdictions are are the Patriarchate of Rumania (166), the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (84) and the Moscow Patriarchate (44). All the other jurisdictions, except the Coptic Church that reckons about twenty, have less than 10 parishes each. a world in motion 61

Table 3.1: Orthodox Churches in Italy

Parishes and Jurisdiction monasteries Romanian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Rumania), Diocese of 166 Italy Sacred Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Malta (Ecumenical 84 Patriarchate of Constantinople) Russian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Moscow), 44 Administration of the Churches in Italy Coptic Orthodox Church 21 Greek Orthodox Church of the Calendar of the Fathers—Synod of 9 the Resistant Archbishopric for the Russian Orthodox Churches in Western 7 Europe (Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate), Deanery of Italy Ethiopian Orthodox Church Tewahedo 5 Serbian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Serbia) 4 Romanian Orthodox Church of the Old Calendar 3 Autonomous Orthodox Church of Western Europe and the 3 Americas—Metropolis of Milan and Aquileia Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Bulgaria) 2 Eritrean Orthodox Church 2 Macedonian Orthodox Church 2 Armenian Apostolic Church 1 Russian Orthodox Church of the Ancient Rite (Metropolis of 1 Belokrinitsa) Orthodox Church in Italy3 1 Total 355

The distribution of the Orthodox parishes covers the whole national territory, and there is virtually no region without at least one Orthodox Church. Such distribution, however, is not homogeneous. Lazio, Lombardy and Pied- mont are the regions with the highest number of Orthodox parishes; followed by Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Calabria, Tuscany and Sicily. The reason for these distributions is not to be ascribed to items of a historical nature, but rather they respond to the migration ows related to the dynamics of the labor market.

3 We have chosen to keep the name of this jurisdiction even if it has joined the “Metropo- lis of Milan and Aquileia” which, in turn, seems to have become an Exarchate in association with the Patriarchate of Moscow. 62 giuseppe giordan

Table 3.2: Orthodox parishes and monasteries in Italy by region

Parishes and Regione Province monasteries Abruzzo Chieti, L’Aquila, Perugia, Teramo 8 Basilicata Matera, Potenza 2 Calabria Cosenza, Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro, 21 Crotone, Vibo Valentia, Campania Napoli, Salerno, Avellino, Caserta 12 Emilia-Romagna Bologna, Ravenna, Modena, Reggio 31 Emilia, Piacenza, Parma, Ferrara, Rimini, Forlì-Cesena Friuli-Venezia Giulia Udine, Trieste, Gorizia, Pordenone 10 Lazio Roma, Frosinone, Latina, Viterbo 57 Liguria Genova, Livorno, la Spezia, Imperia 9 Lombardia Bergamo, Milano, Varese, Brescia, Pavia, 48 Mantova, Como, Cremona, Lecco, Lodi, Monza e Brianza Marche Ancona, Ascoli Piceno, Macerata, Pesaro e 9 Urbino Molise Campobasso, Isernia 3 Piemonte Torino, Alessandria, Novara, 38 Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Vercelli, Cuneo, Asti, Biella Puglia Bari, Brindisi, Taranto, Lecce, Foggia, 14 Barletta-Andria-Trani Sardegna Oristano, Cagliari, Medio Campidano 8 (Villacidro e Sanluri), Sassari, Olbia-Tempio Sicilia Catania, Palermo, Messina, Caltanissetta, 19 Ragusa, Trapani, Agrigento, Enna, Siracusa Toscana Pistoia, Pisa, Firenze, Siena, Arezzo, Massa e 20 Carrara, Grosseto, Livorno, Lucca, Prato Trentino-Alto Adige Bolzano, Trento 4 Umbria Perugia, Terni 10 Valle d’Aosta Aosta 1 Veneto Venezia, Verona, Vicenza, Padova, Treviso, 29 Belluno, Rovigo Repubblica di San San Marino 2 Marino Total 355

To appreciate adequately the scope of such difusion of the Orthodox Churches in Italy, however, it is useful to take a step back and examine some data pertaining to the recent past. As rightly asserted by Ambrogio Cassinasco (2005), from the sociological point of view such widespread pres- a world in motion 63 ence is a “new phenomenon” since, going back to the end of the late nineteenth century, the jurisdictions that had places of worship in Italy were only three: the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Russian Ortho- dox Church, and the Serbian Orthodox Church.4 Historically, the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is mainly in Venice, where the church of Saint George of the Greeks, the most ancient Orthodox church in the Dias- pora, is located. It was built in the middle of the sixteenth century to assist the Greeks who were working in the service of the Venetian Republic and the sailors landing there. The Russian churches, by contrast, were built in the late 1800s following the Russian nobles who were on holiday in the sea- side resorts of the Mediterranean and then travelled to the Italian art cities, notably Rome and Florence. These are the rst churches to be built in the traditional Orthodox architectural style. In those years the Serbian Church had a single parish in Trieste, which became part of Italy only in the following century, at the end of World War I. Just over a century ago, the Orthodox presence in Italy was limited to a small number of “foreign chaplaincies” which ofered their pastoral services to the few Orthodox faithful who were in our country. The Russian revolution and the end of World War II mark the rst moment of difusion of Orthodoxy in many Western European countries, and the same applies to Italy. It was in these years that the arrival of Russian refugees took place, who settled not only in the coastal regions and in the art cities, but also in many other towns in the peninsula; they brought with them the jurisdic- tional breaches that developed within Russian Orthodoxy, and these have resulted in a long series of tensions and conicts over church properties. It would not be until the 1960s that the rst Italian Orthodox parishes appeared. These, nevertheless, were born and bred in a spontaneous and sometimes confused way, in the wake of itinerant bishops whose canonical incardination was doubtful in many cases. It was a period characterized by communities frequently changing their jurisdictions, with many of them led by an Italian Orthodox clergy. The great change in the Orthodox presence in Italy really came in the 1990s. It was a change that revolutionized such presence not only at a quantitative level, but it also initiated the articulate structure of a constellation of jurisdictions and parishes that resulted in unprecedented visibility, even

4 The Russian Orthodox Church would again become a Patriarchate in 1917, and the Serbian Church would become so in 1920. 64 giuseppe giordan if sometimes it should be seen somehow as a high watermark. It su ces to browse the various statistical dossiers on immigration by Caritas/Migrantes to realize that, since the last decade of the last century, the presence of the Orthodox in our country has been continually increasing, and this is both an absolute value and a percentage value when compared with other immigrants of other religious traditions. Such increase has accelerated further since 2003, and this is a consequence of regulations introduced the previous year. Since 2006 the Orthodox immigrants have exceeded the number of the Catholic ones, and in the following years they have come close to the number of Muslims. As we know, they are estimates, but they are the only data available to us to make comparisons over the years.5

Table 3.3: Religious adherence of immigrants in Italy: Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim

Catholics Orthodox Muslims 2001 362.066 198.824 488.300 2002 363.809 204.373 553.007 2003 496.051 446.099 723.188 2004 629.712 565.627 919.492 2005 668.048 659.162 1.009.023 2006 685.127 918.375 1.202.396 2007 775.626 1.129.630 1.253.704 2008 739.000 1.105.000 1.292.000 2009 700.777 1.221.915 1.354.901 2010 876.087 1.404.780 1.504.841

Source: Caritas/Migrantes, Immigration Statistical Dossier. Elaboration on data of the Ministry of the Interior

According to the estimate of the Caritas/Migrantes report of 2011, the Ortho- dox in Italy number 1,404,780 versus 1,504,841 Muslims. In the report of 2010 the Orthodox were 1,221,915, while the Muslims gure stood at 1,354,901. While commenting on these data of the 2010 report, which recorded an increase of the Orthodox over the previous year, Giancarlo Perego and Gian- romano Gnesotto (2010: 207) argued that “in the hypothesis that this trend remains constant, in three years the Orthodox are bound to overcome the

5 In its 2012 report, CESNUR of Turin suggests another criterion for counting according to which we arrive at an estimate of the Orthodox presence in Italy that is lower than that proposed by Caritas/Migrantes. In this chapter I have opted to use the estimates of the latter organization because they are the ones to which we normally refer in our debates on these issues. a world in motion 65

Muslims, while subsequently the expected decline of ows from Eastern Europe will cause a reversal of positions.” Again according to the last Car- itas/Migrantes statistical dossier of 2011, among the Orthodox, the most represented national groups are those coming from Romania (841,000), the Ukraine (168,000), Moldova (122,000), Macedonia (49,000). and Albania (42,000).

Orthodoxy in Italy: A Few Characteristics

As mentioned above, the compilation of the directories of the various Ortho- dox parishes present in our country was followed by structured questionnaire research.6 One hundred twelve (of 355 parishes contacted) returned the compiled questionnaires. Such response rate, although signi cant, does not allow us to universalize the outcomes we have collected, nor to disaggre- gate the data according to the various jurisdictions. It does give, however, a reliable springboard for some considerations about certain trends that may be tackled in further investigations in greater detail. A rst relevant datum that connects directly with what is indicated in the previous paragraph concerns the year of establishment of the parishes: 3 out of 4 are young, if not very young parishes. As can be seen from Figure 1, 72% were established after 2000, 13% in the 1990s, 4% in the 1980s, 2% in the 1970s. The churches that we call “historical” (established before 1970) constitute 8%.

Figure 3.1: Founding year of the parish (112 respondents, values in percent)

6 The data were collected in the year 2011. 66 giuseppe giordan

Another signi cant element is the ownership of the worship places: regarding the parishes that have responded, 73% are hosted in a site granted by Catholics (with the recursive formula “with gratuitous renewable bail- ment”), while 27% have churches or properties (even just rooms or garages) either given on loan by municipalities or by other boards (see Figure 2). Actually it is a fact that shows how close (and in many cases friendly) the relationship with the Catholic Church is, even if such assessment should be further speci ed according to the various jurisdictions and the local contexts. Again as regards worship places, it is to be noted that some buildings are already being planned and others are under construction: therefore in the coming years some Orthodox churches are very likely to arise that will make the presence of the Orthodox Christians visible in our country even from the architectural point of view, with their special golden domes.

Figure 3.2: Has the parish site been granted by Catholics? (110 respondents, values in percent)

Another section of the questionnaire examined the delicate question of leadership. Eighty percent of the priests are married, while twenty percent are monks (Figure 3). The latter are primarily in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Patriarchate of Moscow. a world in motion 67

Figure 3.3: Marital status of the pastors (107 respondents, values in percent)

Regarding the age of the parish priests, the fact that immediately catches the eye is the young age of the pastors, especially when compared to the Roman Catholic Church. Here, 7 out of 10 are less than 45 years old. Speci cally, 64 percent of the parish priests are aged between 31 and 45; 23 percent are between 46 and 60. Those younger than 30 and those who assert they are more than 60 years old each account for six percent.

Figure 3.4: Age of parish priests (109 respondents, values in percent)

The question about the nationality of the parish priests was one of the most controversial issues. Many interviewees answered reluctantly or chose not to answer, since it was regarded as a question touching personal, private matters. Among the interviewees who chose to respond, eighty percent of the pastors are not Italian citizens: They are mostly Romanian and 68 giuseppe giordan

Moldovan, although they are also Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Ethiopian and Georgian. The Orthodox pastors of Italian citizenship mostly belong to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and to the Patriarchate of Moscow. Among the pastors of foreign nationalities, eighty percent have resided in Italy for a relatively short time, as shown below.

Figure 3.5: Year of arrival in Italy (77 respondents, values in percent)

From the point of view of theological education, three out of four are grad- uates in theology. Of these, a signi cant number say they also have one or more post-graduate specialties (Ph.D. in theology, patristics, Master’s degree in canon law, liturgy and pastoral, post-graduate courses); about 15 percent have a level of theological training that is lower than a university degree. In conclusion, the data we have illustrated outline the pro le of a pastor more often married than single or monk, foreign citizen, young at the age between 31 and 45, although there are also Italians with a high average level of theological education. Another core theme of our research concerned the life of the parishes: we have investigated which are the most used languages in the liturgy, how many participants there are in the Sunday and the Easter rites, the composition of the faithful and their nationalities, the yearly number of baptisms and marriages, the parishes’ activities in terms of opening days during the week, catechesis and/or Sunday school, social and/or welfare activities, participation in ecumenical initiatives. The most widespread languages in the celebrations were Romanian (unsurprisingly), followed by Italian and then, with a much smaller spread, we a world in motion 69

nd Greek, Slavonic (ecclesiastic Slavonic) and Russian;7 less common, yet still used, are by frequency: Albanian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Arabic, Amharic, and Ge"ez. Summing up the data from the 109 parishes answering the question, the Sunday participants recorded by the parish priests were 11,200, equal to an average of 103 Sunday faithful per parish. But perhaps more interesting than the absolute numbers and the averages, is the analysis that shows that in 50% of the cases they are parishes of small size, with less than 50 participants in the Sunday services (Figure 6).

Figure 3.6: Participants in Sunday services (109 respondents, values in percent)

As expected, these parishes are very busy on Easter Days, during which the number of recorded participants multiplies practically by ten, passing from 11,200 to almost 110,000 units, and the average per parish increases from 103 Sunday faithful to more than a thousand. Projecting these data of the Sunday participation on the entire universe of the Italian Orthodox parishes, we can assume that the weekly participation in the divine liturgy is limited to 2.5 percent of the Orthodox present in Italy. In most parishes the faithful are more women than men, and this result is consistent with the dynamics of the labor market that, with regard to the countries of Eastern Europe, is characterized by the demand for housemaids (Figure 7):

7 In the Russian Orthodox tradition the most archaic language is used for the celebrations, that is ecclesiastic Slavonic, while modern Russian is used in preaching and in catechesis. 70 giuseppe giordan

Figure 3.7: Composition of the faithful by gender (110 respondents, values in percent)

The most common nationalities among the faithful, again according to the priests’ answers, are Romanian, followed at some distance by Ukrainians, Moldovans and Russians; then followed by Greeks, Montenegrins, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians and Georgians; a minority bit is composed of people from Byelorussia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Poland and Macedonia, Egypt, Cyprus, and even from Italy itself. As to the baptisms in 2010, they appear to number about 4,300, with an average of 47 baptisms per parish. (Only 92 parishes responded to the question, however. In some cases, we considered void answers could also possibly mean “zero baptisms”). Among the baptisms we also counted the conversions claimed by some priests just on the sidelines of this question. It is important to highlight the fact that 38% of the parishes claim to have celebrated less than 10 baptisms in 2010. Compared to some relatively few large metropolitan parishes, there are many small and medium sized parishes. In regard to marriages, the average percentage turns out to be 6.75 marriages per year per parish (the 104 interviewed pastors claim they celebrated 702 in total). Forty-two percent of the parishes remain open throughout the week, while in 37% of cases they are open only on Sundays and in 17% they ofer their services to the faithful few days a week. Perhaps this issue is to be related with the fact that many parish priests, as we will see farther on, earn their own living doing a secular job and, therefore, during the week they cannot look after the parish on an ongoing basis. a world in motion 71

Figure 3.8: Baptisms celebrated in 2010 (92 respondents, values in percent)

In 8 out of 10 parishes catechesis activities or Sunday schools take place; in 7 parishes out of 10 also social or welfare activities are carried on, often in collaboration with parish and diocesan Catholic associations (e.g. Caritas groups) or local organizations. Among the social or welfare activities carried out by the parishes, the most popular is the distribution of clothes, food, and nancial aid; the second is assistance to detainees in prisons and CPT and visits to the sick in hospital; the third is counters where people can apply for homes or jobs. With much lower frequency, the Orthodox Churches in Italy ofer their faithful listening centers, help in the administrative- bureaucratic-legal eld, teach the Italian language or translate documents, raise money for emergencies (intended for areas afected by natural disasters both in their countries and in Italy), assist students, organize national festivities and volunteering to help the elderly, provide free medical care. Almost 90% of the surveyed parishes are involved in initiatives and meetings of an ecumenical character in a more or less regular and constant way. A nal set of questions in the questionnaire aimed at investigating the organization of these parishes, within themselves as well as concerning the relations linking them to each other. With regard to the economic sustenance of the parish priests, we proposed four types of answer: oferings from the faithful, support from the Church, secular work, and “other.” Six out of ten parish priests say they earn their own living through only one of these modalities, while in 40% of cases the pastors live on mixed forms combining the proposed modalities with each other. Summing up all the answers (therefore both the answers of those 72 giuseppe giordan who have only one source of income and of those who put more than one together), we get the outcomes that emerge in Figure 9:

Figure 3.9: Economic sustenance of the parish priests (frequency responses)

The majority of Churches or parishes are unable to provide fully for their pastors, who support themselves and their families even through secular jobs. The types of work performed by these pastors are the most diverse: post o ce clerks or hospital stewards, managing directors in high schools, teach- ers, translators, personnel managers, persons in charge of family homes, accountants, drivers, gardeners, masons, engineering workers, carpenters, laborers, painters of icons. As to the item “other,” under this heading those priests are included who support themselves with Italian pensions, salaries granted by the Greek government, or with their wives’ salaries. More than 80 percent of parishes have pastoral councils that work with the pastors in the administration of the parishes. In most cases (49%) the council is made up of a number of councillors ranging from 6 to 10; in 27 percent of cases it is made up of less than 6 councillors; in 20 percent of cases it has more than ten councillors. The parishes that do not have a pastoral council base this decision on the claim that the multiethnic composition of the faithful would make decision-making within the council too complex. They prefer to debate and make decisions at assembly, after the Sunday service. With regard to the training of young people, there are more parishes that do not have a person in charge of the task, apart from the parish priest, than those that have such person. The activities that are ofered to the young pertain, rst of all and to a greater extent, to the area of religious education: catechism, Biblical readings and meditations, Sunday school, pilgrimages, retreats and trips to places of Orthodox interest in Italy. Sec- a world in motion 73 ond, in a less marked but still signi cant way, these activities concern cultural education (language lessons, geography and history of the countries of origin, twinnings and contacts with secular and religious questions of the countries of origin, choral groups, public holidays of the countries of origin). Finally, though less frequently, they take care of the recreational and sport activities and of the human formation of the young (“oratory” activities, according to the Catholic terminology used by one of the interviewees): races and games, a magazine for young people, after school-hours activities, volunteering, thematic meetings on youth problems. One last issue, curious but signi cant of the enterprise and the dynamism of some of these parish communities, is that one out of four parishes has a website.

Conclusions

This is a new fact from the sociological point of view: in coming years, the presence of Orthodox Christianity in Italy will have to face a process of stabilization and institutionalization that will have to come into contact with a few nodes of particular relevance for what concerns both the relationships with the Italian state, and the majority religion, Catholicism. From the legal point of view, last July a big step forward was taken concerning the relations between one jurisdiction and the Italian State: Law 126/2012 sanctioned the agreement with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Holy Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Exarchate of Southern Europe). It is an institutional step that will allow the ministers of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to celebrate marriages even with civil validity, to teach their religion in private schools, as well as to gain access to the distribution of the “8 per mille” income. These are all changes that will have an impact not only on the visibility of the Orthodox outside their boundaries, but also on the internal relations among the various jurisdictions. On the more strictly religious side, the relations with the Catholic world are another ground on which the Orthodox in Italy will have to measure swords. The fraternal relations at the ecumenical level are good, even if the collaboration with the Catholic Church varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. They are well aware of the possibility that the second generations may prefer Catholicism as a vehicle for integration into Italian culture and society: it is a phenomenon that will lead to competition at the organizational level for what concerns catechesis as well as for what concerns such other activities as recreation and welfare. 74 giuseppe giordan

The legal and the ecumenical dimensions do not encompass all the challenges that Orthodoxy will have to face in the near future. Perhaps the most interesting challenge is the more properly cultural aspect, one that shows the Orthodox in Diaspora committed to rethinking themselves in order to go beyond the never ending question of nationalisms, where the history of one nation utterly overlaps its religious tradition. It is a dynamic force that has worked in the countries of origin, but that can scarcely be efective in a foreign country, further shattering a reality that is already a minority reality. It is a challenge that takes place entirely within the Orthodox in Diaspora now, and on whose outcome the possibility of seeing the birth of a new, unique, properly Italian Orthodox experience will depend.

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Battaglia, Gino (ed). 2011. L’ortodossia in Italia. Le sde di un incontro. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna. Berzano, Luigi and Adrea Cassinasco. 1999. Cristiani d’Oriente in Piemonte. Torino: L’Harmattan Italia. Cassinasco, Ambrogio. 2005. “L’Église orthodoxe en Italie au 20e siècle.” Pp. 86– 92 in Histoire de l’Église orthodoxe en Europe occidentale au 20e siècle, edited by C. Chaillot. Bialystok, Poland: Orthdruk. Chaillot, Christine (ed). 2005. Histoire de l’Église orthodoxe en Europe occidentale au 20e siècle. Bialystok, Poland: Orthdruk. Introvigne, Massimo and Pier Luigi Zoccatelli (eds). 2006. Le religioni in Italia. Leumann: Elledici. Morini, Enrico. 2002. Gli ortodossi. Bologna: il Mulino. Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto. 1997. Le chiese ortodosse. Una storia contemporanea. Rome: Studium. Pace, Enzo. 2011. Vecchi e nuovi dei. La geograa religiosa dell’Italia che cambia. Milan: Paoline. Pacini, Andrea. 2000. Le chiese ortodosse. Leumann: Elledici. Perego, Giancarlo and Gianromano Gnesotto. 2010. Immigrati e religioni: premi- nenza degli ortodossi e dibattito sulle moschee. Pp. 204–211 in Dossier Statistico Immigrazione Caritas-Migrantes 2010. Rome: Edizioni Idos. Reati, Fiorenzo. 2009. La chiesa ortodossa: L’altro sole. Pisa: ETS. Ware, Kallistos. 2005. L’Église orthodoxe dans les Iles Britanniques. Pp. 37–56 in His- toire de l’Église orthodoxe en Europe occidentale au 20e siècle, edited by C. Chaillot. Bialystok, Poland: Orthdruk. chapter four

THE SIKHS IN ITALY: A GROWING HETEROGENEOUS AND PLURAL PRESENCE

Barbara Bertolani

The Sikh community in Italy is a consolidated and rapidly expanding reality. It is a shared opinion among the scholars studying this topic that Italian Sikhs are becoming the second largest Sikh community in Europe after those in Great Britain; hence it is the most numerous community in continental Europe.1 This reality contradicts o cial data about the Sikh presence in Italy, however, due to the fact that the o cial data treat all persons from a particular country as being a liated with the largest body in their home country.2 Despite the size of the actual Sikh presence, research on this

1 The numerical estimate of religious minorities, as a consequence of migratory processes, is always problematic. According to the ISTAT (the Italian institute for statistics), the Indians present in Italy by 31 December 2010 were 121,036 (http://www.demo.istat.it/). Uno cial estimates, however, mention as many 220,000, considering also the irregular ones. Of these presences, the majority are of Sikh religion, although there are difering opinions concerning the percentage. Consequently, the evaluations of the number of Sikhs are very diferent. Thandi (2012) speaks of very numerous communities in Germany (30,000) and Italy (25,000) and claims that the Italian one has grown more in the last period, hence today might amount to 40,000. According to Gallo (2013), by contrast, the Sikhs would number at least 100,000. My own data gathered within the Sikh community in Italy show Sikh people consti- tuting about 70% of all the Indians present, i.e., at least 84,000 residents, to which only thirty converted Italians should be added. Beyond numbers, it seems clear that Italy has become a country in which the Sikh presence is by now quite substantial and consolidated. 2 In the Caritas Migrantes report of 2010, Sikhs are not even mentioned among the religions present in Italy, while the estimated presence of Hindu people is reported. This gap derives from the fact that the estimates about migrants’ religious belonging are calculated on the basis of the number of the migrants of a given nationality (in our case the Indians) and on the percentage of o cial religious a liation of those citizens in their countries of origin. According to the o cial data of the latest Indian census, the percentage of the Sikhs at national level is equivalent to less than 2%, while that of the Hindus is around 80% of the population. However, in the case of Indian migrants in Italy and also in the other countries of the diaspora, the vast majority of them come from the Indian region of Punjab, where the rates of religious a liation are upside down, being 63.6% for the Sikhs and 34% for the Hindus. The reasons for the massive presence of Sikhs in Italy and elsewhere are historical, economic and political, hence we speak of a Sikh diaspora (Barrier and Dusenbery 1989, Van Der Veer 1995, Denti, Ferrari and Perocco 2005). 76 barbara bertolani religious minority remains scarce. The reasons for this fact are manifold: apart from the traditional di culty of Italy to consider itself as a multireligious country, as well as the di culty to grasp the inherent pluralism of religious minorities settled in its territory, there are also unique features that Sikhs’ migration and their presence in Italy have taken over time. First, the estimates of the Sikhs in Italy, however discordant, are still relatively limited as compared to those of other religious minorities. This is due to the fact that the Indian migration is a recent phenomenon. The rst arrivals date from the late 1970s, but their presence has grown especially from the mid-1980s, in conjunction with a number of factors: for example, the gradual closure of the borders of the English speaking countries, a traditional destination of Indian migration to the West, the civil war that has devastated the Punjab for many years since 1984, the absence of adequate legislation in Italy, and the consolidation of a regular speci c migratory channel, i.e. work in circuses (Bertolani 2013b). Second, their presence does not seem to arouse any alarm for the economic and social integration of the Indians, and this fact may have diverted the attention of both scholars and public opinion: generally a widespread attitude of relative benevolence prevails toward the Indians in general and the Sikhs in particular, since they are perceived as a silent and harmless presence, often identi ed as the “good” and the “hard-working” migrants, in contrast to the “dangerous” ones belonging to other religious groups (Bertolani, Ferraris and Perocco 2011). Third, only in recent years have the Sikhs begun to manifest their own religious identity openly in Italian public spaces, as a distinctive de ning feature with respect to both the other Punjabis and the rest of the population. It is a very diferentiated process in relation to the characteristics of the local settlements that is assuming special importance in the northern regions of the peninsula where the Sikh community is well integrated at the socioeconomic level (Gallo and Sai 2013). We can therefore speak of a process of a gradual institutionalization of the Sikh religious community that has become manifest starting from the beginning of the 1990s, through the opening of various gurdwaras, the birth of two national associations,3

3 In 2001 the Associazione Sikhismo Religione Italia was established and located in Castelgomberto. In 2007 also the “Italy Sikh Council” was founded, based in Cortenuova. Both are trying to play a role in representing Sikhs’ interests with regard to the Italian authorities (notably the interests of those who wear the external signs of their religion, such as the traditional dagger or the turban). the sikhs in italy 77 and the application for recognition of Sikhism—so far unsuccessful—by the Italian State. The primary intention of this chapter is to focus on some elements of heterogeneity and pluralism within the Italian Sikh community. The issue of pluralism among the Sikhs has been investigated by various authors, and the religious and social divisions within Sikh communities are frequently emphasized in scholarly literature (Ballard 1989, Restelli, 2005). For example, with reference to non-Punjabi American and European converted Sikhs, Verne Dusenbery has called into question the idea of a common Sikh identity, recalling the dilemma of recognition of Sikhism as a political or as a religious entity. He speaks about two diferent and powerful master narratives, “entailing diferent inclusions and exclusions and invoking quite diferent poetics and politics of recognition.” The rst one insists on the idea of the “Sikhs being a nation.” This narrative asserts the correspondence of one people, one speci c culture, one blood, one history and one place, emphasizing Sikh internal homogeneity. The other master narrative, instead, presents Sikhism as a world religion and focuses on the “transcendent appeal and relevance of Guru’s teachings” (Dusenbery 1999: 128, 134). Dusenbery’s analysis is signi cant because it emphasizes a constant tension between the dimensions of the ethos and of the etnos (Bertolani 2010), that is to say between diferent and often intertwined ways of understanding one’s religious identity and to live, even collectively, one’s belonging to one’s faith, emphasizing the universalistic tension of the religious message rather than some aspects of the cultural tradition. However it has the main handicap of featuring two groups that tend to be homogeneous, to which precisely two diferent master narratives would correspond, thus running the risk of underestimating the diferences and the pluralism within them. In our case, the Italians who have converted to Sikhism are an extreme minority, and even from the political point of view, they seem to have relatively little importance, being linked only to a few local contexts (Bertolani and Singh 2012). Almost all the Sikhs in Italy are of Punjabi origin, and this group appears to be rather diferentiated with respect to the way of conceiving Sikh identity and religion. Some issues in relation to which the internal pluralism is manifest concern the identity of caste and the fact of being/not being initiated and practising Sikhs (i.e. amritdhari). These issues intersect with the dynamics of intergenerational confrontation between the rst who came to Italy and the second generation of Punjabi Sikhs born or grown up in Italy, who cannot disregard a relationship with Italian society. 78 barbara bertolani

This analysis is based on the outcomes of an on-going research project concerning Sikh places of worship (gurdwaras) in Italy4 and the religious identity of the second generation Sikhs (Bertolani 2010).5 The analysis of the settlements and the characteristics of the gurdwaras permits a discussion of the controversial question of caste and diversity of the Sikh presences in Italy in relation to the migration dynamics and the processes of economic integration in the diferent Italian regions. The rst ndings coming out of our encounters with young Sikhs will enable us to highlight the dialectic within the community with regard to the issue of caste as well as that of Sikh identity.

The Presence of the Gurdwaras in Italy: Some Methodological Relections

According to McLeod (1997), technically a gurdwara is any place housing Guru Granth Sahib, i.e., the holy book of the Sikhs. Gurdwara literally means “by grace of the guru” or “the door of the guru.” Gurdwaras then may be very diferent places: from a room assigned to prayer in a private home to a large building specially designed to host thousands of devotees during the Sun- day worship, complemented with the rooms needed for the community’s ful lment of the liturgy. The analysis carried out on the gurdwaras in Italy has adopted a more restrictive identi cation policy, counting only those places of worship that had certain structural features, i.e. consisting of a building that could be divided into some main parts: the prayer room (prakash) which brings together the community of believers (sangat), the dining hall (langar), usually adjacent to a kitchen, where ritual meals are served on the occasion of religious functions, and the room in which Guru Granth Sahib is placed for the night’s rest (sukh asan). We have not considered the private homes of devout Sikhs possessing a copy of Guru Granth Sahib, where prayer usually involves exclusively the family members, since our main purpose is to give an account of the public gathering places of the Sikhs in Italy. In fact,

4 In a national research project “Religious Pluralism in Italy,” funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research in 1998, a mapping of Sikh places of worship in Italy was produced (Bertolani 2013a). 5 This material is drawn from ethnographic research in collaboration with with Annalisa Frisina and Stefano Collizzolli. The methodology used was that of the collaborative video, conceived as a “study” rather than as “project,” (Chalfen 2011) that involved a group of young Punjabi Sikhs in the province of Reggio Emilia (April 2011—November 2012). the sikhs in italy 79 however, the private homes keeping a copy of the holy text are very few, because the presence of the holy text imposes a series of well de ned procedures that are part of the rituality of the Sikh cult. As a result, even the most devout Sikh families prefer to keep a Pothi Saroop at home, that is to say the Guru Granth Sahib printed in two separate volumes, rather than the holy book in its entirety, just for the fear of not being able to grant all the respect due to their living master. As a matter of fact, the Guru Granth Sahib is considered by the Sikhs like a master (guru) who, however, compared to the previous ones, is no longer a human being of esh and blood (Pace 2005, Bertolani and Singh 2012). It follows that the Guru Granth Sahib is not seen just as a book containing God’s word, but more appropriately as something alive, to whom the greatest respect is granted. Such devotion is evident in all the gurdwaras through precise rituals, which are an integrating fundamental part of the religious liturgy. For example, every day at sunset the book is closed during a special ceremony and carried by devout Sikhs on their heads (in a raised position compared to the assembly), it is laid to rest in a room dedicated to it (sukh asan), possibly cooled by air conditioning in Summer or heated in Winter, and then it is covered with decorated drapes, more or less warm according to the season. Every morning at dawn, Guru Granth Sahib is again carried on the devout Sikhs’ heads from its night room to the prayer room (prakash) in which it is opened and placed on a special canopy. When its drapes are taken of to read it, the book is never left alone, but rather it is constantly assisted by one or more believers waving a yswatter. Some food is placed before it to obtain a blessing, while the devotees are expected to bow down in front of it, barefoot and with their heads covered. The respect due to the Guru Granth Sahib, then, is manifest through precise rituals consolidated over time (Myrvold 2010), which afect even the structural characteristics of the public places of worship, de ning their relative spaces. Our analysis of the gurdwaras in Italy, then, excluded the cultural and sport centers—often attended by Italians converted to Sikhism—where yoga and meditation are practiced but no proper religious practices take place, but we did include places of worship attended by the Ravidasias, quite similar to the gurdwaras under many aspects.6 In our de nition a gurdwara

6 A debate is going on within the Sikh community concerning the Ravidasias, who might be de ned as a sect of Sikhism, although there are discordant opinions on this point. The Ravidasias, beside acknowledging the ten gurus of the Sikhs and making use of Guru Granth Sahib, claim they have also another master, guru Ravidas, to whom they attribute the same respect. The writings of Ravidas are actually present in the Guru Granth Sahib, together with 80 barbara bertolani then presupposes the conjunction with some requisites connected to each other: the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib,7 speci c structural characteristics of the buildings used as places of worship, and the celebration of religious functions open to the community of believers (sangat) according to a consolidated liturgy. This had as a consequence excluding ethnically mixed places from our analysis. The gurdwaras in Italy were identi ed starting from an o cial list provided by the members of one of the two Sikh national associations. This rst roll was subsequently updated and cross-checked. A map of devout or reference people of the various gurdwaras was assembled through web browsing, reciprocal reports and informal communications in order to gather updated information concerning the actual existence of the temples, their precise location and characteristics.8 In ve cases we visited the places of worship directly.9

Characteristics of Local and Religious Rooting

The outcomes of our research show that there is a connection between the characteristics of the local settlement and those of the religious rooting. Such characteristics show a highly heterogeneous presence of the Sikhs in the Italian territory. Table 1 reports the growth of the Indian citizens resid-

the gurus’ and other sages’ writings. The debate concerns the importance and the status attributed to Ravidas who, according to the Sikhs, cannot be compared to their ten gurus. The question is very delicate, since—as we will see later—it intersects with the question of castes in Sikhism: Ravidas actually belonged to a low caste and, even today, the origin of caste of the Ravidasias is traditionally similar. Sikhism o cially abolishes castes and asserts the equality of men in front of God. However, these persisting diferences might demonstrate that from a social as well as religious point of view, the importance of castes is anything but diminished. 7 The gurdwara attended by the Ravidasias traditionally guard the Guru Granth Sahib as the other Sikh gurdwaras, together with such other texts as the Amrit Bani, attributed to Ravidas. 8 Four semistructured interviews have been carried out with gurdwara leaders in northern Italy (Castelgomberto, Cortenuova, Novellara), as well as about twenty telephone interviews and ten informal in-depth conversations, with devout Sikhs attending these gurdwaras. Such information has been accompanied by repeated participant observations in various gurdwaras, with a knowledge of the Sikh community gained across many years, along with additional research developed for various reasons, both for the Ph.D. thesis (1999–2003) as well as three research grants and a scholarship (2004–2011). 9 We have visited the gurdwaras of Novellara (RE), Castelgomberto (VI), Cortenuova (BG), Lavinio (RM) and Pessina Cremonese (CR). the sikhs in italy 81 ing in Italy. Table 2, instead, shows the percentage distribution of the Indians residing in the various Italian regions by December 31, 2010 and the numerical presence of gurdwaras in each region, according to the outcomes of the mapping carried out on December 31, 2011.10 The tables prove that the presence of Indian people in Italy has more than tripled in the last eight years. It is, however, far from uniform throughout the country, being mainly concentrated in four regions of the Center-North (Lombardy, which alone is home to almost 40% of the Indian residents, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, and Lazio). This is due to the combined efect of ethnic and kin networks and of the tendency in the Italian labor market, to attribute occupational predispositions according to the diferent ethnic origins of immigrant workers (Denti, Fer- rari and Perocco 2005, Bertolani, Ferraris and Perocco 2011).11 The religious rooting has followed a similar accelerated impulse, since the rst gurdwara that we know of opened by Indians dates back only to the early 1990s in a town in the province of Reggio Emilia (Rio Saliceto).12

Table 4.1: Indian residents in Italy from 2002 to 2010

Years Indian residents 2002 35.518 2003 44.791 2004 54.288 2005 61.847 2006 69.504 2007 77.432 2008 91.855 2009 105.863 2010 121.036

10 The data concerning residents were taken from the site of the ISTAT: www.demo.istat .it. 11 As we will say below, this tendency fosters the growth of “ethnic niches” in some occupational sectors and thereby causes the residential concentration of speci c immigrant groups on some territories. 12 The Rio Saliceto gurdwara was founded in 1991 by a group of local promoters who afterward fostered the purchase of land, the construction of a building and the opening of the gurdwara of Novellara in 2000. This temple was and still is a very important reference point for the Italian Sikh community. Over the years its activity has favored the institutionalization of various local communities, leading to inaugurating some forty more temples all over Italy, with a more than proportional growth in recent years. 82 barbara bertolani

Table 4.2. Regional distribution of Indian residents in Italy (31/12/2010) and regional distribution of Gurdwaras (31/12/2011)13

% distribution of Number of Region Indian residents gurdwaras Trentino Alto Adige 1.2 0 Valle d’Aosta 0.1 0 Friuli Venezia Giulia 1.9 2 Lombardy 38.3 7 Veneto 12.2 7 Piedmont 2.8 2 Liguria 1.1 0 Emilia-Romagna 13.3 3 Tuscany 4.3 1 Marche 3.1 2 Umbria 1.3 2 Lazio 12.1 8 Abruzzi 0.5 0 Molise 0.3 0 Campania 2.3 0 Puglia 1.6 2 Basilicata 0.5 0 Calabria 2.2 2 Sicily 1.0 0 Sardinia 0.3 0

The geographic distribution of the gurdwaras clearly reects the areas of greater residential concentration in Italy, however in a non-proportional mode. For example in Lombardy—a region that is home to 38% of the Indians residing in Italy—there are only seven gurdwaras (of which two are Ravidasia), whereas in Lazio and in Veneto—regions hosting about 12% of the residents—we nd eight and seven temples respectively.14 Emilia- Romagna, which has a slightly higher number of residents, equal to 13.3%, has only three gurdwaras. The reasons for this distribution reect the char-

13 At the time of writing this chapter, the data on Indian residents in Italy as of Decem- ber 31, 2011 are not yet available. However we have decided to compare the data in our pos- session in the same Table, although referring to diferent timelines, since the analysis of the percentage distribution of the Indian residents in the Italian regions over the past few years has maintained its characteristics intact, increasing proportionally in the diferent territories. It is therefore very likely that the data about residents in 2011 will con rm the current geographical distribution. 14 In Lazio, two of the eight gurdwara are Ravidasia, while in Veneto three are. the sikhs in italy 83 acteristics of the local settlements, as well as the speci city of the diferent territories in terms of available resources. Indian migration in Lazio, for example, presents characteristics of greater precariousness, both as to residence and employment. The provinces of Latina and Rome are transit territories, where Indians stop in the rst phase of their migration, often even before having settled their documents or reunited with their families. The economic inclusion of the Indian migrants is massive in agriculture (cultivation of vegetables and breeding of live- stock), where cases of exploitation and illegal work are widespread. Most of the Sikhs living in these territories are still unmarried and have no private means of transport to move around, apart from bicycles or scooters. The proliferation and fragmentation of the places of worship in the territory responds to the needs of the faithful, including the logistic ones, because in the absence of e cient systems of public transport at the local level and lacking private means of transport, they can cover only short distances to get to the gurdwara. Actually a good share of the temples in Lazio are small, especially those scattered in the provinces of Latina and Rome. Often they are located in rented warehouses, and are characterized by high mobility (which is to say that they are subject to frequent displacements). For example, the current gurdwara of Fiumicino was rst in Ladispoli and even before in Maccarese. The same assembly of believers moved its own place of worship several times in a few years, among three diferent municipalities within a few kilometres of each other. There are cases of progressive rooting and stabilization, however, such as when a religious community itself decides to transfer its own gurdwara from one place to another property, after purchasing it and obtaining the change of intended use: this is the case of the community of Aprilia that recently moved to Lavinio, where a property was purchased for the construction of a new building.15 The correspondence between the characteristics of the local and the religious settlement is also to be found in the case of Emilia-Romagna, where the Indian residents are more numerous than in Lazio, but there are only three gurdwaras. Indian migration in this region is much more stable than in the Lazio region, both from the social point of view (reunited families) and the economic point of view (integration in the service sector, in the metal working industry and especially in agriculture, in stable positions and

15 For many years in Lavinio a gurdwara had already existed in a rented space, serving the local community. In the summer of 2012 the two gurdwaras of Lavinio joined, carrying on together the project of building a single place of worship. In our mapping we counted only the current new gurdwara of Lavinio. 84 barbara bertolani usually well paid). In this case, the gurdwara of Novellara, inaugurated in 2000, is the rst in Italy owned by an association of Sikh Indians, and has had a crucial importance in catalyzing the Indian migration from the South to the North of the country, even toward Lombardy. This gurdwara continues even today to cover a very wide user base, mainly consisting in reunited family units moving into the territory by private means of transport. There- fore a process of centralization of the religious community is taking place: the two gurdwaras of Castelfranco Emilia and Fiorenzuola, in the nearby provinces of Modena and Piacenza, actually assume less importance being smaller, much more recent, and located in rented premises. Lombardy has a much greater number of gurdwaras (seven), but propor- tionate to the presences on its territory. Also in this region Indian migrants are well established, inserted in a stable way in industry and especially in the local agriculture, so that we can speak, as for the Emilia-Romagna region, of an example of an “ethnic niche” (Bertolani 2003). Frequently these gurdwaras are fully owned by their congregations, and some play important roles in the process of emplacement at local and national level of the Sikhs, serving as reference points for the local communities of believers. In Veneto the Indian presence has similar features to those in Emilia and Lombardy, however the seven gurdwaras are more than proportional to the numbers of the adjacent regions. Moreover, many of these temples are located in close quarters, in neighboring municipalities (for example the gurdwaras of Arzignano, Castelgomberto and San Bonifacio, are only a few tens of kilometres apart). We can assume that this is the result of possible divisions of the Sikh community, initially united, but this hypothesis needs further con rmation. A more conspicuous presence of the Ravida- sia gurdwaras is to be noted (three, actually, two of which are very close). This datum seems to con rm the existence of a correlation between the characteristics of the local, economic and religious settlements. As a matter of fact, in the Veneto region, Indians are included in good numbers in the manufacture of leather, in an industrial district that includes the neighboring municipalities of Arzignano (where there is a Ravidasia gurdwara), Chiampo, Valdagno, Lonigo and Sarego. In the Indian culture, this activity is traditionally reserved to low extraction castes. Therefore in this case we should see a revival in the migration context of a cultural practice that correlates caste identity with economic activity and religious a liation. From these data we can draw some general considerations concerning the characteristics of the Sikh communities in the various Italian territories. The religious communities residing in the northern regions have a lower the sikhs in italy 85 territorial decentralization if compared to the Center/South ones. In other words they are organized around a smaller number of places of worship. Consequently, the gurdwaras there tend to allow for a higher number of believers and have a higher territorial stability, being often located in owned premises. This requires the ability of the faithful to go to the temple either on their own resources or relying on an e cient network of local public transport. Owning a car is, in turn, an indicator of the degree of stabilization and economic success that often accompanies the presence of reunited family units, hence the presence of women and children. On the other hand, the fact that in the North there is a higher number of owned temples witnesses to improved economic well-being widespread among the Sikhs, which combines with greater capacity to contribute to nancing the places of worship through donations. It is in fact to be recalled that all the gurdwaras are funded by the local communities, sometimes even with the help of donations from other temples in the countries of the Sikh diaspora.

Elements of Heterogeneity and Common Aspects among the Italian Gurdwaras

Using the data collected during the research, we may speak of a certain degree of internal heterogeneity concerning the structural and organizational characteristics of the gurdwaras, to which, however, some recurring elements correspond. A common feature of all the temples concerns the management that is always based on the existence of a recorded association, with its formal bodies of operation. That is to say, all the gurdwaras are managed at their organizational and administrative levels by a committee that includes a series of management positions (president, vice president, secretary, etc.) periodically subject to regular checks and to possible replace- ments on the basis of elections. This committee deals with the organization of the place of worship and is accompanied by a group of believers who are directly involved in the choices of a religious nature (for example, which preachers to invite, issues relating to the care and the respect toward the Guru Granth Sahib, etc.). In some gurdwaras these functions are performed by the same people, while in others the separation is more marked, and the president of the association performs purely organizational and political functions (relations with the institutions and with the local and the transnational Sikh communities). Many of these associations are allowed to practice cultural activities, while only a few are truly “religious associations” entitled to manage the true places of worship. The issue is rather thorny, 86 barbara bertolani since it lends itself to possible local political exploitation (for example, in the case of changes of majority after administrative elections) and is one of the many reasons for the geographic mobility of the gurdwaras in certain areas of Italy. This organizational structure of the temples, partly imposed by Italian law, leads to the centralization of the internal leadership and a certain continuity in the organization of the religious and cultural activities, even in the face of the fact that the preachers and the “guardians” of the gurdwaras are sometimes temporary and itinerant. There are no clergy in Sikhism: each gurdwara requires the presence of a granthi who acts as a guardian responsible for the place of worship and who can perform the Sunday functions; however this gure cannot be compared to that of a minister of the church. He is rather an amritdhari devotee, i.e., a practising Sikh initiated to the Khalsa (the Brotherhood of the Pure, a group of warrior-saints established by the tenth guru, Gobind Singh, in 1699),16 who is able to read the Guru Granth Sahib, to take care of it and to perform the liturgies of the cult appropriately, in exchange of receiving hospitality in the gurdwara, food and sometimes monetary compensation (McLeod 1997). In the case of the gurdwaras of Italy, we have found a strong internal heterogeneity with respect to this point: some associations have called a granthi from India, signing a legal contract which involves certain tasks in exchange for a salary. Other gurdwaras, on the other hand, have adopted more informal management, preferring to engage granthis for shorter periods from India or from other countries of the Sikh diaspora, usually thanks to a tourist visa for a few months, ofering them hospitality and informal compensation in exchange for their work. In all cases, however, the granthis have recognized training, having attended special schools in India or having already exercised their role elsewhere. Their presence allows everyday opening to the faithful, especially for the largest temples.17

16 The main purpose of the Khalsa was to defend Sikhism, if necessary even through the use of force. Its establishment has a theological justi cation after the martyrdom of the fth and the ninth gurus by the Mogul emperors and, more generally, after the continuous persecutions and pressures to which the faithful were subject at that time (McLeod 1996, Pace 2005). The Sikh amritdharis are those who have joined this brotherhood through a special initiation ceremony. They are obliged to respect a speci c code of discipline (Sikh Rahit Maryada) and to wear ve religious symbols (the so called “5 K”: Kes—long hair and beard, Kara—a metal bracelet, Kacheera—shorts with drawstrings instead of normal underwear, Kanga—a wooden comb, and Kirpan—a curved dagger). 17 Apart from the Sunday worship, as we said before, every day the granthi performs a series of public ceremonies manifesting respect toward the Guru Granth Sahib. Moreover, in the sikhs in italy 87

As to the structural and architectural aspects, nearly the majority of the gurdwaras are adapted from industrial warehouses, even when they are owned, either readapting pre-existing buildings or conforming to the structural characteristics of the context.18 The presence of a gurdwara is usually signalled by a rectangular ag attached to a very high pole in front of the main entrance (nishan sahib). In the inner part usually gurdwaras present similar organization of spaces: in the prayer room there is a canopy under which there is a throne, and the Guru Granth Sahib is normally stored on it; at the book’s feet there are a money-box for oferings, a long carpet dividing the hall in two parts, (traditionally men sit on the right and women on the left, but this rule is not strict), some ornaments, and on one side there is a footboard on which the ragis sit—that is, those who sing parts of the holy book (kirtan) during the religious ceremony. The room where the Guru Granth Sahib is put to rest during the night is often next to the prayer room. Besides these, the dining hall (langar) and the kitchens are in adjacent rooms or below them. The liturgy is entirely in Punjabi. Recently, in some gurdwaras screens have been installed on which the texts of the Guru Granth Sahib that are sung during the religious ceremonies are shown in Punjabi and in English. This very innovative aspect allows for correct pronunciation and full understanding of the chants even by those who know little of their language of origin. The number of participants in the liturgy is very variable, according to the local contexts: from a few thousand each week in the larger temples, to less than a hundred believers in the smaller ones. However this number changes considerably during the religious festivals.19 In the more structured the temples readings of the holy text often are organized upon request of the devotees. These last three days and three nights uninterruptedly (Akand Path) to celebrate moments of transition in the lives of the faithful (wedding, births, etc.). Such readings involve more amritdharis alternating with the granthi. 18 Usually temples are located in industrial or handicraft areas. The temple of Pessina Cremonese, inaugurated in 2011 in the province of Cremona, is an exception; it is in fact located in a semi-rural area and has more speci c and typical architectural characteristics: external columns, a coating of white quartz recalling white marble, etc. 19 It is interesting to recall that on the occasion of the most important religious festivities, as, for example, the Baisakhi and the procession of the Nagar Kirtan, the various gurdwaras make agreements xing locally the celebration of the same festivities on diferent days, in order to favor the participation of the faithful in the celebrations organized in the diferent temples. For this purpose also bus trips are organized each time from various places in Italy, carrying the devotees to the diferent gurdwaras. This permits an optimization of resources (the preparation of the langar, the ritual meal) and the collection of oferings in the various places of worship. Moreover this activity witnesses to the existence of constant links among the temples. 88 barbara bertolani situations in the North, more reunited families and second generation people are present. By contrast, in certain situations in the Center/South the presence of unmarried men still prevails. The gurdwaras may promote a series of philanthropic activities, though even in this case they vary according to the degree of local stabilization. For example, many temples are home to the devotees, to pilgrims or fellow coun- trymen in temporary di culty and collect funds for charity initiatives.20 Besides, almost all the temples provide teaching of Punjabi to children and catechesis activity once a week. During the summer, the more structured gurdwaras organize real Sikh camps, i.e., summer camps open to the children, often run by missionaries and preachers coming from India or from other countries of the Sikh diaspora. Besides teaching Punjabi, the life history and the preaching of the ten masters of Sikhism, the kids are taught the everyday prayers and the regulations present in the code of behavior of the amritdharis (Sikh Rahit Maryada). In the summer camps, children are also taught the traditional martial arts (gatka) and, in a few cases, to play the musical instruments used during the religious ceremonies (tabla and har- monium).

Sikh Pluralism

This research has highlighted the organizational and structural “heterogeneity” of the Sikh places of worship. However, if we think of the diferent denominations of the gurdwaras in Italy, we can make some other considerations regarding the “pluralism” within the Italian Sikh community. Actu- ally, most temples adopt the general and traditional name of “Singh Sabha” (which could be translated as “gathering of the Sikhs”). Nevertheless, there are also denominations referring to caste belonging, for example the “Sikh Gurdwara Lubana Arzignano”21 and all the Ravidasia gurdwaras which are titled to Ravidas.

20 They collect funds to support poor Sikh families in India and in Italy, either to pay for the repatriation of corpses to India or to give donations after natural disasters. For example, after the earthquake that destroyed the city of Aquila in 2009, €15,000 were collected and donated to the Italian civil protection board. Many of the largest gurdwaras also take part in activities concerning multicultural items organized by local administrations. As regards this aspect, linked to the process of community institutionalization see Bertolani and Singh 2012 and Gallo and Sai 2013. 21 Lubana is a caste among the Punjabi population. the sikhs in italy 89

According to McLeod (1996: 88), the meaning that castes take in Sikhism is very diferent from what they are in Hinduism. In fact the Sikh religion a rms that salvation does not depend on caste. So, according to him, castes are rather a “harmless social convention.”22 Our research, however, has highlighted that, for example, castes and lineages are important identi cation criteria conditioning the relations and the social practices of the Sikhs. How- ever o cially rejected by doctrine, in the social and cultural habits they continue to be de ning elements of collective identity, in relation to which social bonds and obligations are de ned, networks of relationships are interwoven, exchanges and weddings are organized. The issue of castes might be far from resolved in Sikhism and could be the reason for possible clashes and divisions in the community, which could give rise to new gurdwaras. An example, as mentioned above, concerns the issue of the relationship between Sikh amritdharis and the Ravidasias. Some of the reasons for dis- cord concern the status of Ravidas and the respect that must be shown to the Guru Granth Sahib. These are not debates between theologians: in May 2009, six Sikhs armed with guns and daggers committed a massacre in the Shri Guru Ravidas gurdwara in Vienna, hitting the two religious leaders of the Ravidasia movement in Punjab, present in Vienna at that time. The result was one dead and 30 wounded (Lum 2011). Even in Italy this fact had a number of serious consequences as to the relationship between Sikhs and Ravidasias, which led some local communities of believers to decide to remove the Guru Granth Sahib from their Ravidasia gurdwaras. There- fore, as we may agree on the fact that castes have a very diferent meaning among the Sikhs rather than among the Hindus, it is a controversial topic that deserves to be investigated further. The young Sikhs born and grown up in Italy that we have interviewed are critical toward their parents for what concerns the issue of castes, although in some cases they express ambiguous positions, which show the belief that belonging to a caste may correspond to a greater or lesser dedication to religious life. There are … the castes. [When you arrange a marriage according to tradition], caste must be equal, religion [must be the same one] … and he must [be amritdhari] since many years. I am amritdhari. (…) Got [the lineage] must be diferent from mine, that’s it … In theory [we should not consider the caste], but … Because there are castes like Jat and Saini and Lubana: they devote more

22 According to McLeod (1996: 88), while the Sikh gurus “were vigorously opposed to the vertical distinctions of caste, they were content to accept it in terms of its horizontal linkages.” 90 barbara bertolani

their life to religion, and then there are castes like Chomar … and those are very low … [Religion] doesn’t interest them. If they are amritdharis, [there are some diferences in the way of conceiving Sikhism] … I don’t believe in castes in theory, but my parents do. I must respect what [my] parents say (…). (P.K., 24 years old girl, amritdhari, born in India, in Italy since she was 10 years old) In most cases, however, the young a rm the need to recover the original religious message contained in Sikhism—that all men are equal in front of God and have the same chances of salvation regardless of their social origins— distinguishing religion from traditional beliefs and cultural practices. The question of caste is indeed crucial, not only in itself, but also for the fact that it is connected with the traditional practice of arranging marriages.23 Our parents tell us that they are not interested in castes in the least, however, actually, when it is time to put into practice …. Then it turns out that 70% still have this thing (…). [They will say:] “No, that guy belongs to a caste inferior to ours, no marriage, we don’t want to have anything to do with them” … But it is di cult to make them understand that caste does not change the person … It turns out that, when you are in need, one of your caste does not help you while, on the contrary, you may be helped by one who belongs to a lower caste. To them it is di cult to understand … (…). Between us guys, we have friends of all castes, we have never cared about that, what matters the most are the friendly relations you have, whether they can help you. (B.S., 22 year old boy, amritdhari, born in India, in Italy since he was 9) For example, there is a girl of a caste diferent from that of a boy, the parents put it down saying that it is not possible because the caste is diferent, “What will people say if I marry my daughter or my son to one of diferent caste …” But in our religion they say that castes do not exist, that we are all equal. (S.K., 17 years old boy, born in Italy) So Sikhism, emphasized in its universal message, can become an instrument thanks to which the young try to negotiate some degree of autonomy, particularly as regards the choice of their partners. If the issue of caste is featured as an element of possible pluralism that has de nite consequences at both the social and religious level, even the establishment of the Khalsa at the time of guru Gobind Singh introduced a further element of diferentiation within the religious community (Pace

23 Among Sikhs in Italy, marriages are generally arranged according to Punjabi social customs of caste endogamy and lineage exogamy. The endogamy of caste means that spouses belong to the same caste whereas the exogamy of lineage means that their families of origin belong to diferent lineages. the sikhs in italy 91

2005). This is an important issue, since it is related to the de nition of Sikh identity, both within the community and in respect of Italian society. Many among our respondents have agreed on the fact that even those who are not part of the Khalsa, and who then do not wear the ve religious symbols of Sikhism, can identify themselves as Sikhs in every respect. The “true” Sikh is he or she who humbly implements the teachings of the gurus, and the external appearance does not always correspond to a guarantee of greater or lesser honesty and commitment to religion. However, even on this point there is some internal debate. Beyond the ways in which each one reinterprets the choice to join or not to join the Khalsa, the initiation has well de ned social consequences, because it seems to cause a division in the Sikh community between those who mean to put God’s words in practice thoroughly (the amritdharis) and all the others, setting the base for a possible internal hierarchy (Bertolani 2010). [Even those who are not initiated to Khalsa] believe in the Guru Granth Sahib, it isn’t that they don’t believe … But they do not do what God said … Our Guru Gobind Singh asks to cut neither beard nor hair, doesn’t he? … If one believes in God but doesn’t listen to his words … [They] believe, however … it isn’t that they believe everything … If you ask somebody he will say “[we are] Sikhs, we too …” however [they] do not listen to what God tells them [to do]. (H.S., 22 years old boy, amritdhari, born in India, in Italy for 10 years) The question of identity is shown in its ambiguity even in comparison with Italian society: although the majority of Sikhs in Italy are not initiated and do not wear the ve religious symbols of Sikhism, it is true that the requests made in public discourse and in political debate with the Italian institutions usually deal with the legitimacy of their religious symbols and the acknowledgment of the identity of practising Sikhs. In other words, the requests of those who are part of the Khalsa (such as the possibility of wearing the kirpan in public places, or permission not to wear a helmet while driving their motorcycles, since they already wear turbans, etc.) are often intended to corroborate the constitutive identity of the Sikhs, as needs shared by the whole community of believers (Bertolani and Singh 2012). What has been discussed here certainly needs further investigation in depth. However, our research has shown the existence of a high level of pluralism and heterogeneity within the Italian Sikh community. This general datum seems to be a characteristic trait of the Sikhs, since it has been highlighted even in other research carried out in English-speaking countries, the traditional destination of Sikh migration (Ballard 1989, Dusenbery 1999). For what concerns the Sikhs in Italy, however, in public opinion a unitary image prevails, homogeneous and tendentiously static, according to which 92 barbara bertolani the Sikhs would be a closely united, cohesive and solid community. This leads us to underestimate possible conicts and internal changes that may derive also from intergenerational confrontation.

References

Ballard, Roger. 1989. “Diferentiation and disjunction amongst the Sikhs in Britain.” Pp. 200–233 in The Sikh Diaspora. Migration and the Experience beyond Punjab, edited by G. Barrier and V. Dusenbery. Delhi: Chanakya Publications. Barrier, Gerald and Verne Dusenbery Verne (eds.). 1989. The Sikh Diaspora: Migra- tion and Experience Beyond Punjab. Delhi: Chanakya Publications. Bertolani, Barbara. 2003. “Capitale sociale e intermediazione etnica: il caso degli indiani punjabi inseriti in agricoltura in provincia di Reggio Emilia.” Sociologia del Lavoro 91: 92–102. ———.2010. “Il singolare pluralismo dei giovani sikh”. Mondi migranti 2: 101–115. ———.2013a (forthcoming). “I sikh.” Pp. xx-yy in Le religioni nell’Italia che cambia: Mappe e bussole, edited by E. Pace. Rome: Carocci. ———.2013b (forthcoming). “The Punjabis in Italy: The Role of Ethnic and Family Networks in Immigration and Social Integration Processes.” Pp. xx-yy in Migra- tions, Mobility and Multiple Aliations: Punjabis in a Transnational World, edited by I. Rajan. Delhi: Routledge India. ———,Frederica Ferraris, and Fabio Perocco. 2011. “Mirror Games: A Fresco of Sikh Settlements among Italian Local Societies.” Pp. 133–161 in Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations, edited by K. Jacobsen and K. Myrvold. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. ———and Iqbal Singh. 2012. “The Journey of Guru Granth Sahib to Italian Sikhs: De ning ‘National’ Leadership in Transnational Mass Media.” Pp. 211–231 in Sikhs Across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs, edited by K. Myrvold and K. Jacobsen. London: Continuum. Caritas Migrantes. 2010. Immigrazione. Dossier statistico 2010. XX Rapporto. Pomezia: Arti Gra che. Chalfen, Richard. 2011. “Diferentiating Practices of Participatory Visual Media Pro- duction.” Pp. 186–200 in The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods, edited by E. Margolis and L. Pauwels. London: Sage. Denti, Domenica, Mauro Ferrari and Fabio Perocco (eds). 2005. I Sikh, storia e immigrazione. Milan: Franco Angeli. Dusenbery, Verne. 1999. “‘Nation’ or ‘World Religion’? Master Narratives of Sikh Identity.” Pp. 127–144 in Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change, edited by P. Singh and G. Barrier. New Delhi: Manohar. Gallo, Ester. 2012. “Creating Gurdwaras, Narrating Histories: Perspectives on Sikh Diaspora in Italy.” Samaj 6 [http://samaj.revues.org]. Gallo, Ester and Silvia Sai. 2013. “Should We Talk about Religions? Migrant Associa- tions, Local Politics and Representations of Religious Diversity in Central Italy.” Pp. 279–308 in The Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe, edited by R. Blanes and J. Mapril. Leiden: Brill. the sikhs in italy 93

Istituto nazionale di statistica. “Cittadini stranieri: Bilancio demogra co e popo- lazione residente straniera al 31 dicembre per sesso e cittadinanza.” In http:// www.demo.istat.it [accessed January 2013]. Lum, Kathryn. 2011. “Caste, Religion, and Community Assertion: A Case Study of the Ravidasias in Spain”. Pp. 179–200 in Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations, edited by K. Jacobsen and K. Myrvold. Farnham: Ashgate. McLeod, Hew. 1996. The Evolution of the Sikh Community, Five Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———.1997. Sikhism. London: Penguin Books. Myrvold, Kristina. 2010. “Making the Scripture a Person: Reinventing Death Rituals of Guru Granth Sahib in Sikhism.” Pp. 125–146 in The Death of Sacred Texts: Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions, edited by K. Myrvold. Farnham: Ashgate. Pace, Enzo. 2005. “Il misticismo intramondano della via dei sikh.” Pp. 115–132 in I sikh: Storia e immigrazione, edited by D. Denti, M. Ferrari and F. Perocco. Milan: Franco Angeli. Restelli, Marco. 2005. “Il sikhismo nell’India di oggi.” Pp. 89–113 in I Sikh: Storia e Immigrazione, edited by D. Denti, M. Ferrari and F. Perocco. Milan: Franco Angeli. Thandi, Shinder. 2012. “Migration and Comparative Experiences of Sikhs in Europe: Reections on Issues of Cultural Transmission and Identity 30 Years On.” Pp. 11– 35 in Sikhs Across Borders. Transnational Practices of European Sikhs, edited by K. Myrvold and K. Jacobsen. London: Bloomsbury. Van der Veer, Peter. 1995. Nation and Migration. The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

chapter five

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AND THE 2008 OBAMA VOTE

Anthony J. Blasi, Barbara Kilbourne and Oscar Miller

The 2008 election and 2012 re-election of Barack Obama, an African Ameri- can, as President of the United States was not only an historical event but an indicator of social change. Eighty years before 2008, in 1928, the American electorate would not elect Al Smith, a Catholic, as president. Fifty-six years before the election of Barack Obama, the voters elected the rst non-WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant), Dwight Eisenhower, whose descent was German, as president (1952).1 The rst Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, was elected forty-eight years before Barack Obama. Religion was clearly a factor in the 1928 and 1960 elections, while the 2008 election obviously also reects a change in racial strati cation in the nation. This chapter focuses on a religious dimension to this latter social change, though it is the religious identity of the voters, rather than that of the candidate, that is relevant. In bracketing such traditional voting predictors as class identity, ethnicity and union membership to focus on religious polarization, we agree that these, especially social class (Van Der Waal 2007), manifested in class culture, have a major inuence on voting behavior. However, while education is the primary cultural attribute efecting voting behavior in Van Der Waal’s analysis, we argue that religion may be a more efective cultural predictor of voting behavior in the Obama era. While the Kennedy election and the fact that four years later the partially Jewish ancestry of Barry Goldwater was not an issue in the Lyndon Johnson election suggest that the religious identity of a candidate was declining in political salience, it can be argued that religion has become increasingly important in issue politics. Catholic Church leaders politicized abortion, to the bene t of the Republican Party, which under Ronald Reagan began to make inroads into the once solidly Democratic Catholics. The political

1 Technically, Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt were of Dutch ancestry, but by the time of the earliest of these, Van Buren, who was elected in 1836 as the hand-picked successor to Andrew Jackson, the New York Dutch families were well integrated into the dominant culture. 96 anthony j. blasi, barbara kilbourne and oscar miller genius of it all was that the presidency has little to do with that issue, hence President Reagan did not really have to deliver anything. Similarly, candidate Reagan expressed his opposition to the theory of evolution, gaining the backing of theologically conservative Protestant church leaders; again the presidency is not involved with the science curriculum in the schools, hence President Reagan did not have to deliver anything. Catholics did not mas- sively follow their bishops, who implicitly supported the Republican Party; one might speculate that the educational attainment of Catholics, spurred on by Catholic education, worked against their accepting the implausible economic theories of late twentieth and early twenty- rst century Republi- canism, as well as the rejection of the theory of evolution. However, Protes- tant Evangelicalism and an Evangelical minority in the Catholic Church became Republican activists. The upshot of these developments is that by 2008 religion was salient in American presidential politics. The change from 1928 was that issues rather than the religious identity of the candidates was the focus of religiously- inspired activism. However, the heightened salience of religion after 2008 has the potential of making the candidates’ religious identities important again; for example, Mitt Romney had trouble gaining the support of Evan- gelicals in the Republican primaries leading up to his eventual nomination because of his Mormon religious identity. With Evangelicalism becoming the Republican Party membership at Sun- day worship, what inuence did religion have on the 2008 presidential election?2 The issues in the election were war and economics. The public blamed the Republican establishment for seemingly going to war at the behest of the oil companies rather than focusing on terrorists who had used Afghanistan as a base of operations, and it blamed the Republican establishment for subverting the nancial regulatory system and thereby bringing about the great nancial collapse of 2007 and the consequent deep recession. Was there a relationship between Evangelicalism and attitudes toward race? Our present suggestion is that we must set aside questions of attitudes and deal with organization and activity. That what people say is not what they do is well established in sociology (see Deutscher, Pestello and Pestello 1993; Chaves 2010); what people say may well be what they truly believe, but such actions as voting may not be a direct function of attitudes and beliefs. Vot- ers experience multiple identities, their religious identities being but one among many (Read and Eagle 2011), and identities often serve as the basis

2 It is too early to analyze the recent 2012 national election. religious pluralism and the 2008 obama vote 97 for action (Foote 1951). Rhodes (2011) demonstrates the di culty of being an Evangelical Democrat. He nds that Evangelical Democrats are less liberal than non-Evangelical Democrats and attend church services less than other Evangelicals. He interprets this as a way to lessen the tension arising from cross pressures, though one could interpret the pattern the other way around—i.e., those attending less are more open to liberal policies and those with a moderate liberalism are open to Evangelicalism. Using survey data from a dozen years prior to the 2008 election, Chris- tian Smith (2000: 218) reported that members of conservative Protestant denominations are no more likely than others to say they would not vote for a presidential candidate who is Black. Apart from the denomination in which they held membership, Protestants who were conservative theologically said they were more likely not to vote for a Black presidential candidate, but it was by a diference of only 3% of them. Meanwhile, 55% of self-identi ed Evangelicals and 50% of self-identi ed Fundamentalists, compared to only 25% of other Americans, agreed with the statement, “Christian morality should be the law of the land even though not all Amer- icans are Christian” (Smith 2000: 200). So those of the religious right wing would not a rm racism but would politically impose their own religious morality. Why, twelve years later, would they not vote for an African Ameri- can presidential candidate when foreign policy and economics, not personal morality, was at issue? We think it is important to observe the nature of Evangelical morality. The emphasis is on not doing what is proscribed. It is a question of a morality of norms, not proactive altruism. Voluntary activity takes the form of involvement in religious organizations, not a general philanthropy. Judg- ing from the survey data cited above, white Evangelicals are not engaging in socially proscribed activity, such as expressing racist views or treating African Americans unfairly. However, there is not necessarily any carryover into activity that is not proscribed, such as the free exercise of the vote. Most politically liberal policies, aimed at reducing war, ignorance and poverty, fall outside the morality of proscription. A morality that goes beyond norms and is based on strong but vague interior values requires a rare, highly intense religiosity; that may be what is behind the phenomenon of the seemingly most religious people, those who attend religious services more than weekly, more often supporting Obama than those attending weekly and even more often than non-attenders (Roof 2011). Participation frequency may reach a point of diminishing returns for the kind of religiosity that correlates with acceptance of the Republican Party’s use of social traditionalism in partisan campaigns. 98 anthony j. blasi, barbara kilbourne and oscar miller

Religious Plurality and Politics

Conservative Protestantism correlates with a neglect of the potential moral appeal of liberal policies that one might associate with candidate Barack Obama, and the proscription-oriented nature of its morality may leave room for a racial pattern of voting if not, at least in the contemporary era, for overt racism. Conservative Protestantism also correlates with a willingness to impose its morality politically. But are not conservative Protestants members of a pluralist society? Can they not appreciate a diferent morality if it does not contradict their own? Are they not as open to political innovations, such as presidents from minority sectors of the population, as others are? It becomes necessary to consider constraints on pluralism. Olson and Perl (2011) nd that the denominational population-share of one’s own religion in a geographical area afects the religious composition of the social ties that are established outside of congregational set- tings. Similarly, Blum (1985), using northern California data, found that the overall religious heterogeneity of localities (urban and small town census tracts) encourages social interactions with people of diferent religious backgrounds, despite preferences for interaction with people of one’s own background. Hence we have an interest in the role religious pluralism played in the 2008 presidential election. Pluralism here is to be taken in a weak sense, meaning plural religions rather than an ideology appreciating plurality as a value in itself, though the two will likely correlate with one another. Speci cally, our interest is in pluralism in the American South. Evangel- ical Christianity is dominant in that part of the United States. The degree of exposure to non-Evangelical religions would be an indicator of pluralism. More pluralism would potentially occasion an appreciation of the impracti- cality and even injustice of imposing one’s own religious morality on others and of the limits of one’s own morality (e.g., as proscription centered). Pluralism is complicated in the South by the phenomenon of many denominations within the conservative Protestant category, including local entities organized by entrepreneurial clergy. Thus it is perhaps useful to distinguish between the plurality of non-Protestant denominations and that of denominations within the Protestant category. Exposure to non-Christian traditions and to Christian traditions that difer in signi cant ways from the Reformation tradition represents a potentially liberating experience in the South. On the other hand, exposure to many Protestant denominations, many of them splitting of from one another over minor diferences in practice, clergy training and organization, may well reect a degree of intolerance of diference. The former exposure to plurality would represent a lib- religious pluralism and the 2008 obama vote 99 erating experience, the latter an outcome of an illiberal ethos. Consequently, as applied to the 2008 presidential election, we have two hypotheses: 1. The greater the number of non-Protestant denominations within a geographical unit, the higher will be the percentage voting for Barack Obama. 2. The greater the number of Protestant denominations within a geographical unit, the lower will be the percentage voting for Barack Obama.

Methods

In general, the literature in American political sociology focuses on the micro level. After all, voting is an individual action performed in relative isolation with a secret paper, mechanical or electronic ballot. Whether and how respondents vote is a standard questionnaire item in the General Social Survey and other nationwide surveys. Contextual variables can be pitched as environmental factors to which individual respondents are exposed. Cer- tainly there is nothing erroneous about all this for the simple reason that contextual variables relate even to one other through the actions of individuals, which makes a principle of methodological individualism pertinent. Nevertheless, supra-individual patterns are realities; it is useful to observe such patterns in order to identify what features of the social world would likely be relevant to individuals as contextual factors. Ecological analyses of voting results demonstrate the importance of demographic indicators such as social class and age cohort to understanding and predicting results of national elections. Brooks (1999) documented a stable association between income and voting behavior since 1956, with Republican candidates tending more than Democratic candidates to ben- e t from higher income. Kosmin and Lachman (1993) use states in their ecological analysis of American religion. Thus they provide maps and tables showing the geographical distribution of various denominations and categories among the fty states. Compared to using such smaller jurisdictions as counties, this has the advantage of allowing metropolitan majorities to outweigh rural areas so that the results from rural counties, often having relatively few inhabitants, do not obscure what is going on with the greater part of the state populations. However, using whole states obscures more local diferences, such as diferences between the Appalachian regions of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee versus such other areas in each of 100 anthony j. blasi, barbara kilbourne and oscar miller those three states as the Washington, DC suburbs, the research triangle area of North Carolina, and Memphis and Nashville. For purposes of this study, we opt to use counties, but only those that help comprise the Standard Metropolitan Areas of the 2000 U.S. Census. Thus, variations that occur within a given state’s regions are not lost, while the domination of patterns by rural counties, which outnumber urban ones, is prevented. Moreover, because we are studying an election that featured an African American candidate, and because the political status of African Americans was long contested in the southeastern states (the northern borders of Tennessee and Virginia on the north, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico to the east and south, and the Mississippi River to the west, including the whole of the state of Louisiana), we use ecological data from SMA counties in those states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia). One could argue for the inclusion of further states, but they tend to blend into the West in the cases of Arkansas and Texas, or blend into the North Central regions, as with Kentucky; so our focus is on the Southeast U.S. as narrowly de ned (“Dixie”). The dependent variable (percentage voting for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election) for the counties included in the study was taken from the online election reports from the relevant state governments, the online source “David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections,” and Wikipedia. The Standard Metropolitan Areas are those listed for those states in the 2000 U.S. Census. The Census also lists the counties (parishes in Louisiana, and some cities not in counties in Virginia) in each SMA. The theoretical independent variables were generated by counting Protestant and other denominations in each county included in the study, as reported in Religious Congregations & Membership in the United States 2000 (Jones et al. 2002). Control variables came from the 2000 U.S. Census: percentage of the population that is African American, percentage of the total population 2005– 2009 having at least a Bachelor’s degree, and population size. In the 2000 edition Religious Congregations & Membership in the United States, the data do not include historically African American denominations because the latter did not participate in the data reporting. Since African American voters overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama on the basis of their loyalty to the Democratic Party and enthusiasm at the prospect of electing the rst African American president (not counting a presider under the Articles of Confederation in the eighteenth century), one would expect little statistical variance to be explained by the historically African American denominations. It was important, however, to use the percentage of the population that was African American as a control variable. religious pluralism and the 2008 obama vote 101

The Democratic Party has been stronger in urban areas in recent decades; hence we used population size as another control variable. This was more a precaution than anything else, since our sampling only counties that comprised Standard Metropolitan Areas already controlled for urbanism to a great extent. Age has a fairly consistent efect on national elections in that older voters tend to vote more conservatively. The age efect came to prominence in the wake of the 2008 election as political commentators championed the signi cance of the youth vote to the 2008 election results. During this election, the age efect was manifested in two ways: (1) the mobilization efect, in that the numbers of young voters (including rst time voters) was unprecedented, and (2) the young voters tended to vote for Obama (Fisher 2010). The rst manifestation cannot be reasonably expected to have an ecological efect; youth mobilization operated through electronic media, which transcend county boundaries. We believe education efectively includes the second manifestation insofar as younger voters tend to have more education than their elders or are in the course of attaining that higher level of education. Population data on residents’ ages do not appear to be directly salient to this study for two reasons: (1) Age characteristics of the residents difer from the age characteristics of the voters, and (2) measures of population central tendency are skewed downward by minors, who by law cannot vote. Barack Obama’s candidacy drew great support from the more educated sectors of the American population; that is why we included the percentage of county populations possessing Bachelor’s degrees as another control variable. Education is also an indicator of class status. In our preliminary analyses we did use the alternative class status indictor, 1999 median family incomes reported in the census, but that did not predict the percentage voting for Barack Obama when substituted for the percentage possessing Bachelor’s degrees.

Findings

The ndings are presented in the regression models given in Table 1. Model 1 discon rms the hypothesis that the number of Protestant denominations would inversely predict the Obama vote. Rather, the reverse occurs; the more there were diferent Protestant denominations in a county, the greater was the percentage of the vote favorable to Barack Obama. It may well be that the minor diferences among the numerous Protestant denominations, especially those in the Evangelical category, represent genuine 102 anthony j. blasi, barbara kilbourne and oscar miller cultural diferences of some signi cance. Even the fact that many southern- based denominations originally broke from the mainline denominations when the latter would not oppose and in some instances openly favored racial integration of the public schools no longer seems relevant; generational diferences appear to have obscured such historical origins.

Table 5.1: Regressions on percentage of the electorate voting for Barack Obama in Southern SMA counties in the 2008 presidential election

Model 1 2 3 Percent African American .623* .602* .606* Percent with Bachelor’s degree .207* .195* .201* Population size .110 .104 -.026 Protestant denominations .179* .124 Non-Protestant denominations .192* Total denominations .319* R2 .787 .786 .793

*p < 05

Model 2 supports the hypothesis that the number of non-Protestant denominations would positively predict the Obama vote. The more there were Catholic, Orthodox, Baha"i, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and other non-Protestant Christian or non-Christian religious organizations in a county, the higher was the percentage of the vote favorable to Barack Obama. Model 3 goes beyond the hypotheses and can be considered an extension of the one that the number of non-Protestant denominations would positively predict the Obama vote. The more denominations there were in a county—whether the total was comprised of Protestant, non-Protestant Christian, or others—the higher was the percentage of voters voting for Barack Obama. Of the three models, Model 3, which presents that nding, explains the most variance.

Discussion

The 2008 presidential election was truly historic, but it was so not only in the sense of being the election in which a “ rst” occurred—the election of the rst African American president. In terms of a “ rst,” the 1952 election was a “ rst”: it was the one in which a non-WASP was rst elected to the presidency. The 2008 election was historic in the sense that new cultural religious pluralism and the 2008 obama vote 103 dynamics were at work. The 1952 and 1960 elections indicated that the salience of a candidate’s membership in a nineteenth century out-group was no longer relevant in American politics. The 1964 and 2004 elections indicated that the salience of being a Christian or not was no longer salient, for the Lyndon Johnson campaign in 1964 and the George W.Bush campaign in 2004 made no issue of the Jewish ancestries of Barry Goldwater and John Kerry.3 But campaigns do not occur in cultural vacuums. The Muslim American population is a contemporary out-group in American politics, and the 2008 Republican candidate for vice-president, Sarah Palen, though helping to break the gender barrier as the second female candidate for vice president, claimed that Barack Obama was a Muslim and sought to make that a campaign issue.4 In general, one is struck by how much cognitive or cultural cosmopoli- tanism, or at least diversity, appears to be part of the Obama electoral phenomenon. The percentage of the population possessing a Bachelor’s degree and the religious plurality in the voters’ environment prove to be positive ecological predictors of that vote. The fact that the number of Protestant Christian denominations was almost as strong a predictor as the number of other denominations (beta = .179 in Model 1 and .192 in Model 2) suggests that it is knowledge of diference in itself, not knowledge of greater diference, that is at work. The dynamic appears to be that of cognitively breaking out of and going beyond the in-group. The educational attainment levels and the number of denominations in the counties may well afect vote per- centages favorable to out-group candidates in the future. Are such dynamics unique to the American South or can they be expected to be at work throughout the nation? Religion is thought to be more salient in the South than elsewhere, but it is not absent elsewhere and southerners have migrated to all parts of the nation. High educational attainment is becoming more common throughout the nation, though less so in parts of the South than elsewhere. To the extent that it becomes common it will

3 Senator Kerry’s paternal grandparents were Jewish Russian immigrants. To t into the social environment of Boston, which they understood to be heavily Irish Catholic, they selected a place on a map of Ireland for their name, “Kerry,” and reared their children as Catholics. 4 The rst female major party nominee for vice president was Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic nominee in 1984. By that point in time, no issue was made explicitly about her ethnic ancestry, though the organized crime stereotype was used to smear her husband. The Democratic presidential candidate against the re-election of Ronald Reagan in that election, Walter Mondale, was of Swedish ancestry, representing a nineteenth century out-group. 104 anthony j. blasi, barbara kilbourne and oscar miller cease to explain the variance in county-level voting patterns. To the extent that the massi cation or commodi cation of education denatures it, it may be necessary to begin measuring some feature that develops within the experience of some educated people rather than simply counting the years of educational attainment. What of denominational plurality? Robert Wuthnow (1988: 71f.) once wrote of the declining signi cance of denominationalism. He did not claim, however, that denominations would no longer matter (1988: 97). The question is for what denominations matter. Wuthnow noted that religious inter- marriage and switching from one denomination to another are more com- monplace than before. This holds the potential for denominations to serve as bases for the regrouping of church-a liated individuals on grounds having little to do with ritual or theological particularities. People can regroup by class sanding, for example—and political persuasion. Our ndings point to the signi cance of that latter possibility.

References

Blum, Terry C. 1985. “Structural Constraints on Interpersonal Relations: A Test of Blau’s Macrosociological Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 91: 511–521. Brooks, Clem. 1999. “Income, Economic Voting, and Long-Term Political Change in the U.S., 1952–1996.” Social Forces 77: 1339–1375. Chaves, Mark. 2010. “Rain Dances in the Dry Season: Overcoming the Religious Congruence Fallacy.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 49: 1–14. Deutscher, Irwin, Fred P. Pestello and H. Frances G. Pestello. 1993. Sentiments and Acts. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Fisher, Patrick. 2011. “The Gapology of the Obama Vote in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primaries.” Society 48: 502–509 Foote, Nelson N. 1951. “Identi cation as the Basis for a Theory of Motivation.” Amer- ican Sociological Review 16: 14–21. Jones, Dale et al. 2002. Religious Congregations & Membership in the United States 2000. Nashville, TN: Glenmary Research Center. Kosmin, Barry A., and Seymour P. Lachman. 1993. One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society. New York: Harmony. Olson, Daniel V.A., and Paul Perl. 2011. “A Friend in Creed: Does the Religious Com- position of Geographical Areas Afect the Religious Composition of a Person’s Close Friends?” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 50: 483–502. Read, Jen’nan G., and David Eagle. 2011. “Intersecting Identities as a Source of Religious Incongruence.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 50: 116–132. Rhodes, Jeremy. 2011. “Choosing Sides: An Exploration of Role Conict among Evan- gelical Democrats.” Sociology of Religion 72: 28–49. Roof, Wade Clark. 2011. “Obama and the Polls: The Contrarian Weekly+ Religious Attenders.” Review of Religious Research 52: 323–333. religious pluralism and the 2008 obama vote 105

Smith, Christian. 2000. Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want. Berkeley: University of California Press. Van Der Waal, Jeroen. 2007. “Class is Not Dead—It has been Buried Alive: Class Voting and Cultural Voting in Postwar Western Societies (1956–1990).” Politics and Society 35: 403–426. Wuthnow, Robert. 1988. The Restructuring of American Religion. Society and Faith since World War II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

chapter six

EVANGELICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LATINO IMMIGRATION

Barbara L. Loach

On July 1, 2010, four top evangelical Christian leaders were invited to the White House to hear a speech by President Barack Obama calling for immigration reform. Those leaders included the Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; and Pastor Bill Hybels of the 12,000 member Wil- low Creek Community Church of suburban Chicago. According to CNN editor Dan Gilgof (2010), that event was “a testament both to the importance the issue has come to assume in the evangelical world—including among leaders who have battled Democrats on social issues like abortion and gay marriage—and to the White House’s eagerness to enlist evangelicals to help to counter conservative opposition to the idea of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrations [sic] already in the U.S.” Since 2006, a number of evangelical Christian leaders and organizations have become outspoken allies for the comprehensive immigration reform movement in this country. In contrast to conservative Christian media spokespersons who present themselves as strident and inexible combat- ants on a limited number of family issues (primarily the “Pro-Life” and “Sanctity of Marriage” movements), the broader reality is that many evangelical Christians, especially those of the younger generation, have become involved in and advocates for a wide range of social issues, both domestic and international (Ryden 2011). Under the umbrella of the more than forty evangelical denominations in the U.S., there are sub-sets of believers who represent a continuum of views on immigration policy that can be categorized as relatively liberal, moderate, or conservative (G.A. Smith, 2006). In addition, the views of evangelicals on immigration vary along and within ethnic groups: African American, non-Hispanic white, and Latino evangelicals also represent a range of perspectives on the issue. This study will present an overview of recent Christian evangelical involvement in the immigration debate, starting with the historical context 108 barbara l. loach of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and examining points of contact and divergence among the positions and practices of white, black and Latino evangelicals regarding the issue of Latino immigration.1 Although this study will focus only on evangelical Christian views, it will be shown that rather than one monolithic belief regarding this issue, notable nuances exist among the various sub-groups of evangelical Christians and among each of the ethnic groups presented. Reasons for those nuances include theological and historical traditions, demographics, socioeconomic considerations, and lived experience. The conclusion will present some of the challenges evangelical Christians need to address in order to become more efective allies in the comprehensive immigration reform movement.

The Origins of the Evangelical Christian Denominations in the United States

As is commonly known, the presence of Protestantism in the United States can be traced to the rst Europeans who settled in New England in the 1600s. The segment of the Protestant religion known as evangelicals, however, did not emerge until much later, in the 1920s and 1930s, when a signi cant shift in Protestant theology occurred known then as “modernism,” most speci cally instanced in the view that the Bible was a humanly created, rather than a divinely inspired, text. The result was the split between what are now known as “mainline” Protestant denominations and “evangelical” Protestant denominations, the latter group holding fast to the belief that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. While some Protestants, known as fundamentalists, focused so completely on spiritual matters such as conversion of lost souls that they for the most part withdrew from having any reforming inuence on society, others tried to build a consensus among various denominations and present a more positive image to secular society. For example, the National Association of Evangelicals was founded in 1941 under the banner of “cooperation without compromise” (Roebuck 2006: 94). Identifying one all-encompassing de nition of “evangelical” presents a challenge because the identifying criteria can be extremely broad or narrow,

1 The history of Asian American evangelicals and their involvement in the immigration debate, while important, is beyond the scope of this current investigation (cf. Alumkal 2003). evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 109 depending on the group doing the de ning. Essentially, evangelical Chris- tians are those who believe the Bible is the divinely inspired and inerrant Word of God, that personal faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation, and that believers have a personal obligation to share their faith with others through evangelism (Ryden 2011). According to the Pew Forum on Reli- gion and Public Life, adult evangelicals today make up 26.3% of the U.S. population, or around 80 million people (A liations 2007). They comprise the largest religious grouping in the U.S., surpassing Roman Catholics at 23.9%, mainline Protestants at 18.1% and historically black churches at 6.9% (2007).2 Most fundamentalists as well as most members of the South- ern Baptist Convention would see themselves as distinct from evangelicals for their own particular reasons that have more to do with a liations rather than theology.3 But for the purposes of this chapter, both groups will be included as evangelical (not mainline Protestant) denominations, especially since they are key participants in the issue of Latino immigration. One other salient characteristic of U.S. evangelical denominations that cannot be ignored is the continued ethnic-racial segregation that, except for the recent growth of multi-ethnic churches, still manifests itself in separate black, white and Latino congregations. In their book Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, authors Michael Emerson and Christian Smith (2000) trace the origins of evangelicalism in America and the evolution of segregated churches. Before the War for Independence, blacks and whites attended church together, the case generally being that African American slaves accompanied their slave owners to church services. With the end of the American Revolution, a number of northern evangelicals were concerned by the inconsistency of gaining their own freedom but denying it to slaves, although at the same time they

2 The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life also indicates that the ethnic breakdown of U.S. evangelical churches is: 81% white non-Hispanic, 7% Hispanic, 6% black non-Hispanic, 2% Asian non-Hispanic and 4% other/mixed non-Hispanic. The income distribution of members of U.S. evangelical churches shows that over half of members (58%) have yearly incomes of less than $50,000 (2007). 3 Fundamentalists may not identify themselves as evangelicals because they reject any association with what they perceive as the “social gospel” that also tries to meet the physical needs of people in addition to spiritual needs, a ministry balance that evangelicals accept (Roebuck 2006). Southern Baptists tend not to self-identify as evangelicals because they de ne evangelical as an association of a variety of denominations that come together for mutual assistance. Since the Southern Baptist Convention has the resources within its organization to allow it to function independently of any other a liations, they don’t see themselves as part of the evangelical umbrella (Hankins 2002, Queen 1991). 110 barbara l. loach were reticent to make slavery an issue that might overshadow their primary focus on evangelism. Eventually, several denominations split along north and south lines over the issue of slavery, with southern clergy and parishioners insisting on the legal and biblical basis for slavery. After the Civil War, however, there was a mass exodus by African Americans from white churches because they were generally barred from equal participation in those churches. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya (1990) note that “the move toward racially separate churches was not a matter of doctrinal disagreement, but a protest against unequal and restrictive treatment” (cf. Emerson and Smith 2000: 39). In his book Religion in America Since 1945, Patrick Allitt states that “[r]eligion was one aspect of Southern life in which blacks rather than whites pioneered segregation” in order to create a space that ofered fellowship and encouragement in contrast to “a hostile white world” (2003: 44). Before the twentieth century, both the existence of Latino churches (either Catholic or Protestant) and participation by Latinos in churches in the United States were negligible due to anti-Catholic and anti-Mexican prejudices. For many individuals, the only option was “domestic piety in the form of home altars and prayer groups [which] maintained connections to the Catholic faith” (Lint-Sagarena 2006: 133). In addition, outreach eforts to Latinos (primarily Mexicans and Mexican Americans) by Catholic and Protestant churches during the nineteenth century were hampered by lack of resources and personnel as well as the great distances between the small communities in the Southwest where most Latinos lived. Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, those few Catholic and Protestant clergy who attempted to minister to Latinos and address the issues of worker exploitation and discrimination against them were met with apathy and even “downright hostility” on the part of the older, higher echelon o cials of their respective denominations (Meier 2000: 48). Some local Catholic and mainline Protestant clergymen, in spite of the lack of compassion expressed by their leaders, continued to reach out to Latinos in their communities and began to incorporate Mexican cultural aspects into their worship. Fun- damentalist preachers were also successful in attracting Latino converts because of the style of worship they ofered, including conducting services in Spanish, but their congregations were usually small, often operating out of storefronts. evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 111

Evangelical Churches and the Civil Rights Movement

During the period of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, history shows that the white evangelical church was noticeably silent (Ryden 2011). Most evangelicals up to and during that time embraced a view similar to the fundamentalists, choosing the privatization of religious faith rather than getting involved in political issues, especially in order to distinguish themselves from the mainline denominations’ emphasis on the “social gospel” (Allitt 2003). The Southern Baptists in particular were also silent because their very organization had been founded in 1845 when southern Baptists and northern Baptists split over the issue of slavery (Hankins 2002).4 Those southern white clergymen who were sympathetic to the Civil Rights cause had to risk antagonizing their congregations if they were too outspoken on desegregation (Allitt 2003). In contrast, a key group of African American Christians was centrally involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, under the direction of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister with a message of non-violent resistance, led the way, along with Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and others (Allitt 2003). Paradoxically, also during the Civil Rights movement “[a] majority of the black church … embrace[d] a social posture with an emphasis on self-preservation, often through assimilation of what was deemed socially acceptable and normative (read: ‘white norms’)” (Finley and Alexander 2006: 210). Repeating the strategy of using legal and biblical arguments to justify slavery, and in a strong parallel to today’s legal and biblical arguments to support immigration enforcement, a number of Christian leaders at that time claimed both biblical principles and legal precedents (“separate but equal”) for upholding segregation (Allitt 2003). Historically, each Latino sub-group (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, etc.) has had a diferent experience in the U.S. For example, while Cubans generally enjoyed political refugee status from the 1960s to the 1990s, Mexi- cans and Mexican Americans were objects of discrimination, especially in the Southwest (Armbruster-Sandoval 2008). Even though the 1848 Treaty of

4 It was not until 1995 that the Southern Baptist Convention issued an o cial apology for its tacit support of slavery (Hankins 2002). In the last twenty years the Southern Baptist Con- vention has become one of the most ethnically-diverse denominations in the United States (20% ethnic minorities) in part by promoting a stance of dual association for traditionally black National Baptist congregations and directing outreach eforts toward various ethnic groups (Hankins 2002, Hennessey-Fiske 2012). They also elected their rst African-American president, the Rev. Fred Luter of Louisiana, in June 2012 (Hennessey-Fiske 2012). 112 barbara l. loach

Guadalupe Hidalgo had guaranteed equal rights for Mexican citizens who decided to stay in the newly claimed territory of the United States, their lived experience was that of second-class citizens at best. It was not until after World War II that both Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations became more active in supporting civil rights for Latinos (Meier 2000). The Civil Rights movement for Latinos was much smaller in comparison to the Civil Rights movement for African Americans, since in 1960 there were only about seven million Hispanics in the U.S., comprising only about four percent of the population (DiConti 2000). But with the rise of the United Farm Workers Union and the coming of age of Mexican American leaders such as César Chávez, Dolores Huerta and Reies López Tijerina in the 1960s, younger Protestant and Catholic clergy in particular took up the cause of exploited agricultural workers and worked for social rights of U.S. Latinos (Meier 2000).

The Rise of White Evangelical Social Engagement

The emergence of white evangelical Christians as a political inuence in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s occurred in response to emerging social trends and speci c political events. President Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate elected in 1976, openly identi ed himself as a “born-again” believer and promised to direct foreign policy decisions based on Christian principles and respect for human rights (Allitt 2003). However, in spite of foreign policy achievements such as the Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, Carter’s track record in domestic policies left many evangelicals disillusioned. The New Christian Right, which included groups such as the Moral Majority, founded in 1979 by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and others, attempted to galvanize the faithful to counteract what they identi ed as the moral decline of America (Ingersoll 2006). Most rallied around “family issues” such as school prayer, creationism, the traditional family structure and the rights of the unborn and the defenseless (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2011). Evangelical allegiances with the Republican Party, in particular with President Ronald Reagan, also came into focus during this period (Roebuck 2006). Unfortunately, in many cases, evangelical participation in the political arena during this era was inefective or even counter-productive, primarily because many self-appointed evangelical leaders lacked a meaningful comprehension of the intricacies of the political process and/or the ability to articulate their views in ways that would be acceptable to the greater public at large (Sider 2008). evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 113

Current Evangelical Perspectives on Latino Immigration

On the issue of Latino immigration and illegal immigration, evangelicals appear to be split into two camps: one that endorses immigration enforcement primarily, and one that is more moderate, endorsing elements of both immigration enforcement and immigration reform. This division crosses racial and ethnic lines—in other words, adherents of each position can be found among white, black and Latino evangelicals. As an example of a Christian organization that endorses immigration enforcement, the Family Research Council is a right-wing conservative Christian policy lobbying group located in Washington, D.C. Although the Family Research Council website does not show any kind of position statement on the issue of immigration or illegal immigration, its president, Tony Perkins, has been outspoken on the negative economic impact of illegal immigrants in the U.S. (Wallace 2012). The Southern Poverty Law Center (which labels FRC a “hate group”) links Perkins with other conservative Christian leaders such as Gary Bauer of American Values and Phyllis Schlay of Eagle Forum in articulating a nativist stance that wants to put an end to immigration in order to protect the American Way and American families (Zaitchik 2006). The Family Research Council and its adherents represent those conservative Christians whose views tend to mirror the views of the Republican Party and conservative media outlets such as Fox News. In an interview on the topic of immigration, former Bush policy advisor Michael Gerson observed that, “among conservative Christians in America, probably the single most important formative institution on their views is Fox News. And Fox News [has been] deeply anti-immigrant in its coverage” (Melkonian-Hoover 2011: 100). In addition, according to the Pew Research Center, “The Republican Party has gained ground among white evangelical Christians in recent years. Currently [in 2012], 49% of non-Hispanic white evangelicals say they are Republicans, up from 43% in 2009” (“Partisan Polarization” 2012: 10). At the same time, the Republican Party itself has become more conservative, as disenchanted moderates and even some conservatives have left the party to become independents. However, in contrast to the more outspoken evangelical proponents of immigration enforcement, there have come forth a number of evangelical leaders and organizations that are calling for comprehensive immigration reform. At the forefront would be the Southern Baptist Convention, the Washington, D.C. policy institute Sojourners, Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR), and the National Association of Evangelicals 114 barbara l. loach and its ministry arm World Vision. In 2006, under the leadership of Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention approved a resolution calling for both immigration enforcement and reform (“On the Crisis of Illegal” 2006). Invoking biblical principles, the resolution encouraged Southern Baptists to reach out and minister to immigrants’ spiritual and material needs, and to encourage undocumented immigrants to seek a path to legalization. The resolution also criticized both Democratic and Republican administrations for the failure to enforce existing laws regarding immigration and employment and called for immediate action regarding the same (cf. Land and Duke 2011). Unfortunately, since the SBC’s governance structure grants complete autonomy to individual churches and renders convention resolutions as non-binding, the leadership has no power to enforce compliance with any resolutions it sets forth (Queen 1991).5 The Washington D.C. based inter-faith organization Sojourners, founded in the 1970s, has been outspoken on the immigration debate for a number of years. The CEO of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, is a nationally-recognized speaker on topics of social justice from a Christian perspective (“Jim Wallis” n.d.). His organization publishes a variety of educational resources on the topic of immigration targeted to pastors and congregations in an efort to counter what Wallis refers to as “the Gospel of Glen, Rush, Sean and Bill” with Scrip- tural principles (Melkonian-Hoover 2011: 100). Christians for Comprehen- sive Immigration Reform (CCIR), a coalition of mainline Protestant, non- evangelical, and evangelical organizations under the auspices of Sojourners, formed in 2007 in order to petition Congress for legislation that would push for border enforcement and also better guest worker programs as well as educate church congregations in key states about issues related to immigration (Banerjee 2007). In 2009 the National Association of Evangelicals issued a similar position statement on the issue of immigration, setting forth a biblical foundation for the compassionate and fair treatment of immigrants

5 For example, Gardendale First Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a liated with the Southern Baptist Convention, cooperates with the Central Alabama Hispanic Ministry Coalition. Gina Moran, one of the church’s members, is listed as an assistant director for the church’s 100 Oaks Hispanic Ministry. At the same time, another member of Gardendale First Baptist is state senator Scott Beason, one of the sponsors of HB56, recognized as the most oppressive anti-immigrant law in the U.S. In addition, the Alabama governor who signed the bill into law, Governor Robert J. Bentley, is a Sunday school teacher and deacon at Tuscaloosa’s First Baptist Church, also a Southern Baptist Convention a liate, which allows the Iglesia Latina (Spanish Mission Church) to hold regular weekly meetings in its basement (International ministry n.d.). According to the pastor of the Iglesia Latina at First Baptist of Tuscaloosa, both the Anglo and the Latino congregations get along well and even work together on community projects. evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 115 in the light of the “national realities” of a broken immigration system and economic exigencies afecting immigrants. That document, “An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility” included a charge to churches to treat immigrants with respect and mercy, as well as a call for the federal government to safeguard national borders while devising a more functional immigration system for workers and their families, fair labor and civil laws, and an equitable process through which immigrants could obtain legal status and/or citizenship (Pally 2011). In addition, in 2009, Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang, two representatives of the outreach ministry of the National Association of Evangelicals, World Vision, published the book Welcoming theStranger:Justice,CompassionandTruthintheImmigrationDebate, which has had a great impact in educating evangelicals on the issue of immigration and advocating for comprehensive immigration reform (Melkonian-Hoover 2011). Most recently, the newly organized Evangelical Immigration Table, an unprecedented coalition of more than 150 evangelical leaders and organizations, joined together in June 2012 to call on Congress to press for reform and to launch a project of church mobilization, education and advocacy (“Press Conference” 2012). For the rst time, some conservative Christian leaders such as pastor and author Max Lucado and organizations such Focus on the Family also lent their support to this coalition (Gryboski 2012). In their inau- gural press conference Carlos Moran (a member of the Board of Directors of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference) said the main obstacles to change were inactivity and passivity on the part of Christians and that they are committed to engaging the support of evangelical believers across the country, emphasizing in particular how current practices of immigration enforcement adversely afect immigrant families (“Press Con- ference” 2012). Jim Wallis (2012) said they are working to get special interest groups in Washington who want to protect cheap labor to embrace a more moral and ethical approach to the employment of immigrant laborers. Richard Land added that there is momentum for this kind of change because chambers of commerce across the country are concerned about the economic disruption that is occurring as a result of anti-immigration legislation at the state level (cited in Miller 2012). Having learned the lessons missed by the Moral Majority in the 1980s, the discourse presented by the Evangelical Immigration Table includes language that addresses both the economic concerns that would draw the attention of policy makers as well as the emphasis on the importance of family that evangelical church members would support, without aligning themselves with any one political party (Allitt 2003). 116 barbara l. loach

African American and Latino Collaborations

With the surge of Latino immigrants in the 1990s, the region of the U.S. most afected was the Southeast (Alvarado and Jaret, 2009).6 States such as Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, which previously had negligible foreign populations, suddenly found themselves experiencing a major inux of Latino immigrants, both from other areas of the United States (primarily the Southwest) and from Mexico and Central and South America (Odem and Lacey 2009). Researchers exploring the dynamics of African American attitudes toward the Latinos’ presence in various areas of the United States identify a number of points of tension that afect blacks’ acceptance of or resistance to the changing demographic reality (Doherty 2006, Alvarado and Jaret, 2009). In contrast to the negative attitudes among non-Hispanic whites that stem from issues of size and proximity of His- panic populations, among African Americans the critical factor centers more around relative socioeconomic conditions: “Where Latinos enjoy an economic advantage relative to blacks, African Americans are more likely to express racial prejudice toward the group and to engage in defensive political behavior” (Gay 2006: 995). In the southern states in particular, African Americans have recently been confronted with the perceived choice of either competing against Latinos for jobs and limited resources in a win- or-lose situation or collaborating with them on issues of common concern. The role of African American clergy, then, can have a signi cant inuence on shaping the political views of their congregants. In a study by Wayne State University sociology professor R. Khari Brown (2010), it was observed that, in years past, black clergy were largely silent on the issue of immigration, either because of a lack of information and direction from their national denominational o ces, or for fear of antagonizing congregants who have sufered economic hardships from being displaced by or passed over for immigrant workers. Clergy who have not put the issue of immigration into the larger context of globalization and exploitation by multinational companies may unintentionally cast the blame for individual economic hardship on the immigrants themselves. Those activist black churches that can tie the issue of immigration to social justice issues such as poverty, racism, urban education and the criminal justice system can shape a more positive attitude

6 According to the U.S. Census, the increase in Latino population between 1990 and 2000 in North Carolina was nearly 400%; in Arkansas, over 330%; in Georgia, 300%; and in Tennessee, South Carolina and Alabama, 200% (Alvarado and Jaret 2009). evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 117 toward immigrants among their congregants. Thus, the American Baptist Churches USA issued guidelines and talking points in 2010 to enable pastors to communicate clearly with their parishioners the need for comprehensive immigration reform (“Continuing Immigration Conversation” 2010). Also in recent years, other religious groups such as the African American Ministers in Action and African American Clergy for Comprehensive Immigration Reform have taken a more active role in the immigration debate. The Poverty and Race Research Action Council has identi ed three strategies for building African-American/Latino alliances: intercultural relationship building (activities in which the two groups come together for common goals), issue-based organizing (addressing speci c community needs shared by both groups), and workplace-based organizing (working together on speci c work-related issues) (Grant-Thomas et al. 2010). As a rmed in the Georgia State University report, Building Black-Brown Coalitions in the Southeast (Alvarado and Jaret 2009), church leaders of both ethnic groups who can emphasize the commonality of life experiences and shared strug- gles can begin to build a basis for coalitions and cooperation. This particular report identi es common roadblocks to coalition building such as the language barrier and a lack of perceived need to cooperate, but also step- ping stones such as identifying leader bridge-builders, building trust and common goals, and developing networks and resources in order to work together. That study features as two of its successful case studies the joint eforts of an African-American pastor and a Latino pastor and their respective congregations in Atkinson County, Georgia, and the outreach eforts of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, North Carolina. Ironically, the Beloved Community Center’s eforts to build bridges between African Americans and Latinos in their area have been so successful that the Cen- ter has received threats and hate-mail from more conservative groups in the state.

Latino Evangelical Perspectives

Studies indicate that Latino attitudes toward immigration vary according to a number of key demographic diferences. For example, older Latino citizens, as well as those who are more acculturated and more educated, tend to favor greater restrictions on legal immigration because of a perceived negative impact on competition for jobs and local tax burdens. In addition, Hispanics who live in areas with signi cant illegal immigrant populations also develop more conservative attitudes toward legal immigration (Hood 118 barbara l. loach et al. 1997). The Hispanic Churches in American Public Life (HCAPL) report shows a range of views among Hispanics who identify themselves as religious (Espinosa et al. 2003). According to the HCAPL report, in 2002 there were approximately 25 million Latino Catholics in the U.S. and some 10.6 million non-Catholic Latinos (Protestant, other Christian). Typically, Latinos tend to be social conservatives and political liberals, but in recent years, because of the inability of both political parties to resolve the immigration issue, many Latinos have become disenchanted with both parties and have doubts about actively supporting any candidate. In addition, in contrast to the white and African American churches in which the leaders are typically more progressive than the congregations regarding immigration reform, the HCAPL report found that 74% of Latinos want their churches to be actively involved in assisting immigrants, but only 22% of Latinos had been asked by their leaders to get involved. While Catholic church leaders have been public advocates on the behalf of immigrants for decades, evangelical Latino leaders have perhaps not had the same recognition on the issue at the national level. In the last decade, however, they have endeavored to come together in order to garner support for immigration reform from political leaders, white non-Hispanic evangelicals and among their own congregations (Martínez 2011). Perhaps the most high pro le of the evangelical Latino leaders is the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, founder and president of the National Hispanic Chris- tian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). According to its website, the NHCLC includes more than 40,000 member churches and 16 million constituents. Rodriguez actively works with both Hispanic and non-Hispanic evangelicals to advocate and educate on this issue. In addition, Rodriguez is the author of the “Just Integration” immigration policy which recommends a middle- of-the-road solution combining border enforcement with a reformed guest worker program and an earned path to citizenship (“Who we are” n.d.). In the past Rodriguez has clearly expressed his concern over the slowness of non-Hispanic white evangelicals to embrace the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. In an NPR News interview on July 6, 2012, he described his reaction to the creation of the Evangelical Immigration Table: I remember the early days when many of my brothers and sisters in the faith looked at me and said, Reverend Rodriguez, why don’t your people learn how to speak English? Why don’t your people obey the rule of law and go back to their countries? … In the 1960s, many wonderful conservative evangelical brothers and sisters—they saw political engagement as sinful. They did not engage in the ght and the struggle of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ’Til this day, there is a divide where African-Americans that adhere to a born again evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 119

theology will dare not call themselves evangelicals because evangelical— white evangelicals did not support them in the 1950s and ’60s. [But] [t]his is a moment where the white evangelical community is saying, we will not permit this narrative to repeat itself with the Latino community. We will stand with you as you ght for comprehensive immigration reform (“Evangelicals Preach Unity”).

Other evangelical Latino leaders include the Reverend Luis Cortés, Jr., the president and founder of Esperanza, an organization that has reached out to the underserved and marginalized in the Philadelphia area since 1987; Noel Castellanos, CEO of the Chicago-based Christian Community Development Association; Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition based in New YorkCity; and Carlos Moran of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (Martínez 2011). At the same time, however, there is another group of Latino evangelical leaders who do not have the same privilege of public inuence as the aforementioned leaders. Latino pastors who themselves are undocumented walk a ne line as they maintain their dedication to their congregations while faced with the reality of possible deportation. In the article “A Delicate Hospitality,” Christine Scheller (2006: 48) describes the “legal and spiritual dilemmas that arise around unauthorized migration” for Latino churches in southern California. The author interviewed a number of pastors, some of whom felt that the greater good they were doing outweighed their unauthorized entry into the U.S. and that ministering to all individuals regardless of their legal status, allowing them to survive and support their families, was the lesser of two evils. One pastor included in the article, Daniel DeLeon, explains his position this way: “I’m not a legal entity for the government. I tell people from the pulpit, ‘Get your papers in order,’ and encourage them to abide by the laws of the land.” But he reserves judgment for the “real illegals”—those who knowingly employ the undocumented (2006: 50). Some Hispanic pastors in Alabama are also reticent about publically chal- lenging the anti-immigrant sentiment in their state (Valdes 2011). But as anti-immigrant sentiment and legislation spreads from state to state, Latino congregations seem to be nding a new boldness to speak out against unlaw- ful discrimination and in favor of immigration reform. In both Arizona and Alabama, evangelical, mainline Protestant, and Catholic Latino churches have joined together to defend immigrants by providing assistance for them, ling civil law suits, and calling for repeal of the recent punitive laws enacted in their states (Beaty and Jethani 2012, Johnson and Biskupic 2010, Roach 2012, Faulk 2011). 120 barbara l. loach

Conclusion: Future Challenges for Hispanic Evangelicals

Based on the ndings presented in this study, the three “tracks” of evangelical involvement in the immigration reform movement that seem to be evolving are comprised of (1) the primarily black/Latino initiatives working for change at the local level on issues of practical, daily concern for their communities, (2) the primarily white evangelical initiatives to mobi- lize their congregations to express support for immigration reform policies and vote for political candidates who represent their views, and (3) the Latino evangelical initiatives to build consensus among all the groups and bring the issue of immigration reform to a new level of national concern. All of these eforts are essential and taken together may be the key to gaining momentum for change. In order for immigration reform to become a more prominent issue for law makers, evangelicals need to demonstrate national unity on this issue as they have for the Pro-Life movement and Sanctity of Marriage issues by crossing denominational lines to join forces with conservative Catholics and Jews (Cook 2006). In order to bridge the gap between the more progressive and committed leaders of immigration reform and their more conservative congregations, evangelical leaders— Latino, African American and white—will have to be more intentional about communicating from the pulpit to help their followers develop a greater social justice perspective and lose their fears regarding immigrants (which in most cases involves breaking down the language barrier as well [Alvarado and Jaret 2009]). Another challenge for evangelicals will be to acknowledge and renounce any ingrained political party loyalties and more fully commit to the biblical commands to “love thy neighbor” and care for “widows, orphans, and strangers” by supporting sympathetic political candidates regardless of their party a liations (Soerens and Hwang 2009). The Evangelical Immigration Table has begun eforts to work at the state level with representation in Col- orado and Florida with hopes to add more states in the future in order to develop the “critical mass” needed to motivate elected o cials to address immigration reform (Warren 2012). At the same time, just making speeches or writing resolution statements in support of comprehensive immigration reform are not enough: immigrants who on a daily basis confront the stresses related to discrimination, lack of resources and lack of community support have pressing needs that cannot wait if they are to improve their quality of life here in this country. As many evangelicals—black, Latino, and white—have already come to recognize, the immigration reform movement is the new Civil Rights movement of this century, and this time they evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 121 all need to get it right by not remaining silent, but rather by uniting for the sake of immigration reform for all.

References

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Faulk, Kent. 2011, August 1. “Alabama Church Leaders Filed Lawsuit to Stop State’s New Immigration Law.” Birmingham News. Retrieved from http://blog.al.com/ spotnews/2011/08/alabama_church_leaders_ led_l.html. Finley, Stephen C., and Torin D. Alexander. 2006. “In Search of the Promised Land: Post-Civil Rights Trends in African American Religion.” Pp. 207–226 in Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, New Directions, edited by C.H. Lippy. Westport, CT: Praeger. Gay, Claudine. 2006. “Seeing Diference: The Efect of Economic Disparity on Black Attitudes toward Latinos.” American Journal of Political Science 50: 982– 997. Gilgof, Dan. (2010). “Cheat Sheet on Obama’s Evangelical Cabinet on Immigration Reform.” CNN Belief Blog. Retrieved from http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/ 01/cheat-sheet-obamas-evangelical-cabinet-on-immigration-reform/?iref= allsearch. Grant-Thomas, Andrew, Yusuf Sarfati, and Cheryl Staats. 2010. “Natural Allies or Ir- reconcilable Foes? Reections on African-American/Immigrant Relations.” Pov- erty and Race Research Action Council. Retrieved from http://www.prrac.org/full _text.php?text_id=12367andnewsletter_id=110andheader=Immigrationandkc=1. Gryboski, Michael. 2012. “Liberal, Conservative Evangelicals Unite for Immigra- tion Reform.” The Christian Post. Retrieved from http://www.christianpost.com/ news/liberal-conservative-evangelicals-unite-for-immigration-reform-76530. Hankins, Barry. 2002. Uneasy in Babylon: Southern Baptist Conservatives and Ameri- can Culture. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Hennessey-Fiske, Molly. 2012. “Southern Baptists Elect 1st Black President: The Rev. Fred Luter.” Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2012/ jun/19/nation/la-na-nn-fred-luter-elected-20120619. Hood III, M.V., Irwin L. Morris, and Kurt A. Shirkey. 1997. “‘¡Quedate o Vente!’: Uncovering the Determinants of Hispanic Public Opinion toward Immigration.” Political Research Quarterly 50: 627–647. Ingersoll, Julie. 2006. “Religion and Politics: The Impact of the Religious Right.” Pp. 59–77 in Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, New Directions, edited by C.H. Lippy. Westport, CT: Praeger. International Ministry at First Baptist Church Tuscaloosa, n.d. First Baptist Church Tuscaloosa. Retrieved from www. rsttuscaloosa.org/international.html. “Jim Wallis” (n.d.). Sojourners. Retrieved from http://sojo.net/jim-wallis. Johnson, Kevin, and Joan Biskupic. (2010). “Arizona Immigration Crackdown Raises Flags.” USA Today, p. 01a. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete, Accession No. J0E203666045710. Land, Richard, and Barrett Duke. (2011). “Just Immigration Reform: Foundational Principles.” Regent Journal of Law and Public Policy 3: 67–94. Lint Sagarena, Roberto. (2006). “Porous Borders: Mexican Immigration and Amer- ican Civic Culture.” Pp. 129–140 in Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, New Directions, edited by C.H. Lippy. Westport, CT: Praeger. Martínez, Juan Francisco. 2011. Los Protestantes: An Introduction to Latino Protes- tantism in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger. Meier, Matt S., and Margo Gutiérrez (eds.). 2000. Encyclopedia of the Mexican- American Civil Rights Movement. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. evangelical perspectives on latino immigration 123

Melkonian-Hoover. Ruth. 2011 “Better Late than Never? Evangelicals and Compre- hensive Immigration Reform.” Pp. 95–111 in Daniel K. Ryden Is the Good Book Good Enough? Evangelical Perspectives on Public Policy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little eld. Miller, Lisa. 2012. “Why are Evangelicals Supporting Immigration Reform? The Washington Post Belief Watch. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ national/on-faith/why-are-evangelicals-supporting-immigrationreform/2012/ 06/22/gJQAn4JNvV_story.html. Odem, Mary E., and Elaine Lacy (eds.). 2009. Latino Immigrants and the Transfor- mation of the U.S. South. Athens: University of Georgia Press. On the Crisis of Illegal Immigration. 2006. Southern Baptist Convention Resolution. Retrieved from http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=1157 Pally, Marcia. 2011. The New Evangelicals: Expanding the Vision of the Common Good. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. “Partisan Polarization Surges in Bush, Obama Years.” 2012. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Retrieved from http://people-press.org/2012/06/04/ section-9-trends-in-party-a liation. Queen, Edward L. 1991. In the South the Baptists are the Center of Gravity: Southern Baptists and Social Change, 1930–1980. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing. Roach, David. (2012). “Hispanic Congregations Feel Efects of Alabama’s Im- migration Law.” The Alabama Baptist (28 January). Retrieved from http:// thealabamabaptist.org/print-edition-article-detail.php?id_art=21903. Rodriguez, Samuel. (n.d.) “A Just integration Solution: How Evangelicals and Im- migrants Can Partner in Healing our Nation.” National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Retrieved from http://www.nhclc.org/ les/nhclc/PS% 20Article.pdf. Roebuck, David G. 2006. “Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism: The Changing Face of Evangelicalism in America.” Pp. 85–106 in Faith in America: Changes, Chal- lenges, New Directions, edited by C.H. Lippy. Westport, CT: Praeger. Ryden, Daniel K. 2011. Is the Good Book Good Enough? Evangelical Perspectives on Public Policy. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Scheller, Christine. 2006. “A Delicate Hospitality.” Christianity Today 50(3): 48–50. Sider, Ron. 2008. The Scandal of Evangelical Politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. Smith, Gregory A. 2006. Attitudes toward Immigration: In the Pulpit and the Pew. Pew Research Center Publications. Retrieved from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/20/ attitudes-toward-immigration-in-the-pulpit-and-the-pew. Smith, Robert S. 2008. Civil Rights Movement. Pp. 328–339 in Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, edited by J.H. Moore. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA/Thomson Gale. Soerens, Matthew and Jenny Hwang. 2009. Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Com- passion and Truth in the Immigration Debate. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press. Valdes, Gustavo. 2011. “Latino Evangelicals Challenge Alabama Brethren on Immi- gration.” CNN Belief Blog. Retrieved from http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/ 13/latino-evangelicals-challenge-alabama-brethren-on-immigration. Wald, Kenneth D., and Allison Calhoun-Brown. 2011. Religion and Politics in the United States (6th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little eld. 124 barbara l. loach

Wallace, Jay. 2012. America Live with Megyn Kelly [Television broadcast]. New York: Fox News Channel. Retrieved from http://www.frc.org/frcinthenews/07mar2012/ tony-perkins-on-fox-news-america-live-with-megyn-kelly. Warren, Michelle. 2012. “Awareness to Advocacy.” Cedarville University Torch 33(1): 32. Who We Are. (n.d.). National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Retrieved from http://www.nhclc.org/en/who-we-are. Zaitchik, Alexander. 2006. “Family Research Council Poll Shows Many Conserva- tive Christians Hardlined against Illegal Immigration.” Southern Poverty Law Cen- ter Intelligence Report. Retrieved from http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/ intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2006/winter/christian-nativism. chapter seven

NEW LANDSCAPES OF RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN MEXICO

Rene De La Torre and Christina Gutirrez Ziga

Though it has been and mainly still is a Roman Catholic country, over the last decades Mexico has experienced a continual decline in the percentage of Catholic citizens coupled with an exponential growth of non- Catholic religions (especially of other Christian bodies: Historical Protes- tants, Evangelicals and Pentecostals). The country has also seen a corresponding increase in the number of those claiming to have no religion. While diversity has started to prevail quickly and without pause, pluralism, understood as a desirable political and cultural condition that allows a certain degree of acceptance and public recognition of the presence of other denominations (Beckford 2003: 743), is developing more slowly due to the historical hegemony of Catholicism and its continued majority status, which allows the hierarchy to keep its privileges. Although it is one of the secular states that contemplate a separation between State and Church in their constitutions, for historical reasons there is also in Mexico a strong link that is maintained between nationalism and Catholicism. Further, at local and regional levels of traditional and popular culture, linked to feast days, nationalism is deeply rooted in popular Catholicism, which sometimes provokes local conicts between dissident and traditionalist Catholics, as has happened in the territories of indigenous pueblos (Rivera Farfán et al. 2005). Berryman (1995) called religious diversity one of the transformations with the greatest impact that Latin America has been undergoing since the last decades of the twentieth century, referring as it does to the change from a Catholic society to a multi-religious society. Referring again to Beckford, pluralism as an ideology implies support for the moral and political value of amplifying public acceptance of religions. To achieve this goal, state and public information on the facts of religious diversi cation are indispensable. In this regard Mexico is one of the few countries on the American conti- nent that includes in its national census a question on religious a liation. It has done this since 1985, but it was only with the census for the year 2000 that the list of religions was redesigned so as to make the existing diversity 126 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga apparent. For 2010 this instrument was redesigned again, in consultation with academics and statisticians.1 In spite of negative reactions, including threats of a boycott by the Catholic hierarchy who saw in this instrument a policy to diminish their hegemony, the census is currently an important resource for making religious diversity apparent, and it is being taken into account more and more by leaders wishing to establish conditions of tolerance and peaceful co-existence—that is, of pluralism. In 1992 the state recognized the juridical existence of religious associations, and an o ce of religious afairs was set up for the associations to register and to create conditions for dialogue. Currently departments of religious afairs have been established in several states and municipalities, with the task of observing that the associations do not interfere in the political arena, to give permits for public activities, and if necessary, to intervene as mediators in conicts among diferent religious groups. In Mexico, although this transformation is still that of a minority at the national level, it is relevant all the same, because of the role that Catholicism has traditionally played in the articulation of the territory and the formation of the nation. At the national level, in 2010 we detected 70 municipalities where Catholicism occupies the position of a religious minority. Most of these are concentrated in the South-East of Mexico, mainly in the states of Chiapas (43) and Oaxaca (16). These gures tell us that the true signi cance and impact of this change can be appreciated only once we realize that the increase in religious diversity is not evenly spread over the territory of the nation, but reaches a much higher rate at regional, state, municipal and local levels. For example, in the state of Chiapas non-Catholics have come to represent a third of the population of the state, and it is in this part of the national territory that we nd several municipalities where Catholicism has ceased to be the majority religion. Our study aims to make the new tendencies of religious change in Mexico comprehensible, and to do this we made use of statistical analysis of information in the national censuses of INEGI, the National Institute of Statistics,

1 We have participated in proposals for the national classi cation of religions (cf. De la Torre and Gutiérrez 2007b). We consider that the information provided by the census is very important, and on those occasions when there was pressure to remove the question on religion from the census forms, we published open letters, signed by dozens of academics in the country, in which we argued that it was valuable for the formation of a plural culture and as an instrument of evaluation and for planning public policies. new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 127

Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía), from 1950 to 2010, and subsequently applied geo-referenced information systems (GIS) that allowed us to trace out spatially the distribution of religious diversity and the dynamics that explain religious change in Mexico.2 The questions directing the analysis were: Where does Catholicism still keep a hegemonic presence and where has it lost it? Which are the non- Catholic churches with the largest presence in our country? What are these religions like? What are the socio-demographic pro les of their congregations? What strategies for expansion have they implemented? What is the rate of growth of each? What are the routes of their expansion? Where are they located and where are they concentrated? What are the main social factors propitiating or slowing down the dynamics of the tendency in Mex- ico for a change toward religious pluralism? Are these religions capable of generating regional diferences? In what way are they re-shaping cultural territories and creatting new regional dynamics? Previous studies of religious diversity in Mexico concluded that this phenomenon does not have only one cause and would therefore require more than just one explanation. However, these studies also pointed out three conditioning factors: (1) the particular characteristics of each religion and of its proselytizing strategies; (2) the historical context of the region where it occurs; (3) the type of population of the faithful who practice it, appropriate it and transform it. Recent studies of non-Catholic religions in Mexico (Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Historical Protestants, Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, La Luz del Mundo, and others), suggest that these are very malleable, and that they have been refashioned by the particular conditions in which they have developed, and have been appropri- ated by the popular uses of their followers. After reviewing the sociological and anthropological studies of this subject, we found that the factors most often accompanying religious change are: poverty and marginality (Willaime 1996, Bastian 1997), ethnicity or speci cally indigenous identity

2 This chapter reassesses the tendencies of the analytical conclusions of the project Perles y tendencias del cambio religioso en México (1950–2000), bringing the statistical data up to date according to the 2010 Census results. The project was nanced by CONACYT, the National Council for Science and Technology, in which 14 prestigious researchers from ten Mexican research institutions took part (CIESAS, COLJAL, COLEF, COLMICH, UQROO, UAA, UdeG, UNAM, UAM-I and FLACSO). An account of the project was published in De la Torre and Odgers 2004, and the principal conclusions were published in: Atlas de la diversidad religiosa en México 1950–2000, coordinated by De la Torre and Gutiérrez Zúñiga 2007a. 128 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga

Figure 7.1: Catholic percentage of the population in Mexico, INEGI 1950–2010. Source: XIII Censo INEGI 2010

(Garret 1999, Garma 1987, Flores Vera 2000), urbanization (De la Torre 1995, Bowen 1996, Hernández 1996), and international emigration (Hernández 2000, Odgers 2002). With these we were able to formulate the main hypotheses to explain the factors that have an efect in religious change, and these were incorporated into the scheme of the research project.

The Decline of the Catholic Monopoly

In the religious eld in Mexico, Roman Catholicism continues to be a majority force. Since 1950 a decrease in the Catholic share of the population has been observed, caused primarily by an increase in both the Historical Protes- tant and Evangelical population, and of those professing no religion. The Catholic population in 1950 accounted for 98.21% of the whole, while by 2010 it had declined to 82.6%. By contrast, the dissident population of those converting to other denominations, accounted for 1.79% in 1950 but 17.4% by the year 2010, as shown in Figure 1. However, as shown by Rodolfo Casillas (2007), this growth is internally uneven at the state level. The same tendency has been shown in 2010 data, where Guanajuato (98% in 2000) now has a 94.3% Catholic population, while in Chiapas the number of Catholics has come down from 68% in 2000 data to 58% ten years later. A marked regional tendency can also be observed, whereby the southern states are the most inclined to a reduction new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 129 in the preponderance of a Catholic population, although, as can be appreciated from Map 1 (on page 132), their place has not been taken by another church but by various denominations, and even by the answer “No religion.” This region is followed by the northern border states, while the center and center-west regions have become the core of rm Catholicism. Since the 1980s the decline in the number of Catholics has accelerated especially in the states of southern Mexico, in the border areas, in regions with higher rates of marginality, and on the outskirts of the big cities. Cathol- icism continues to lose members, either because members of the population have decided to stop being a liated with a religion or because they have decided to take up some other religious option, which for the most part would come from the world of Christian churches on ofer, of an Evangelical or Pentecostal type, though including non-evangelical biblical congregations (commonly known as Paraprotestants or Parachristians) and Histor- ical Protestants.3

New Religious Protagonists

Catholic dissidents form a diverse, dynamic group with many varieties, which is made up of several religious minorities, internally very disparate, where we nd both strongly consolidated religions and small sects or domestic churches who have started to expand the supply side of religious options. We shall proceed to present the main features of the various protagonists, on the basis of the categories supplied by our source in the 2010 census (XIII Censo General de Población y Vivienda).4 Among the consolidated religions we can mention the churches that come under the census category “Non-evangelical Biblical” (also known as Paraprotestants) which refers to churches having another holy book as well

3 The category of Historical Protestants covers those churches that have come down from the Reformation of the sixteenth century, headed principally by Calvin and Luther, who recognize no authority above that of the Bible. The Protestant churches came to Mexico at the end of the nineteenth century. As a category in the 2000 census, this group includes: Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Nazarene, Methodist, Mennonite and other smaller groups (Gutiérrez Zúñiga 2007a). 4 As an integral part of this project, a critical analysis was made of the possibilities and the limitations of using the census as a source of data, which may be consulted in the rst chapter of the Atlas itself, as well as in De la Torre and Gutiérrez Zúñiga 2007a: 377– 396. 130 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga as the Bible; these include: Jehovah’s Witnesses,5 Seventh-day Adventists6 and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.7

Table 7.1: Comparison of census data on religious preference, Mexico 2000 and 2010 2000 2010 RELIGION Religious groups Total Percentage Total Percentage Catholic 83,305,454 88% 92,924,489 82.65% Protestant Historical Protestants 599,875 0.71% 820,744 0.73% and Pentecostal and 1,373,383 1.62% 1,782,021 1.58% Evangelical Neo-pentecostal La Luz del Mundo 69,254 0.08% 188,326 0.17% Other Evangelicals 2,365,647 2.79% 5,595,116 4.98% Total 4,408,159 5.20% 8,386,207 7.46%

Non- Seventh-day Adventist 488,945 0.58% 661,878 0.59% evangelical Latter-day Saints/Mormon 205,229 0.24% 314,932 0.28% Biblical Jehovah’s Witnesses 1,057,736 1.25% 1,561,086 1.39% Total 1,751,910 2.07% 2,537,896 2.26%

Oriental religions 5,346 0.00% 18,160 0.02% Jewish 45,260 0.05% 67,476 0.06% Islam 1,421 0.00% 3,760 0.00% Ethnic religions 1,487 0.00% 27,830 0.02% Spiritualism 60,657 0.06% 43,902 0.04% Other religions 197,628 0.31% 105,415 0.09% No religion 2,982,929 3.52% 5,262,546 4.68% Not speci ed 732,630 0.86% 3,052,509 2.72% Total population 93,753,396 100% 112,430,190 100%

5 Jehovah’s Witnesses originated from the Adventists, and were founded by Charles Taze Rusell, in Pennsylvania, in 1870. This church is based on preaching the imminent end of the world. In 1884, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society was established, as the international headquarters from which the sect is organized. It came to Mexico in 1929. It has proselytized widely in Mexico, and thanks to its strategy of house-to-house visits and the difusion of its printed organ Atalaya (The Watchtower), it has managed to make Mexico the country with the second largest number of members in the world, exceeded only by the United States (De la Torre 2007a). 6 The church of the Seventh-day Adventists started in Michigan in 1863, with the procla- mation of the Second Coming of Christ. It was founded by Ellen G. Harmon White and James White who propagated among their followers the belief that the Last Judgment has already begun, and proclaimed the imminent resurrection of Christ. This church started its mission in Mexico in 1894, and in addition to holding religious services, it maintains educational and health centers in various places in the country (De la Torre and Castañeda 2007). 7 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días) is considered to form part of the Great Awakening in the United States in new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 131

These three denominations share a common origin. They come from the wave of adventism at the beginning of the nineteenth century which started in the United States. However, as studies have shown, each one has evolved in a very diferent way in Mexican territory: for example, the Jehovah’s Wit- nesses, the religious association among these three with the most members (1,561,086), has gained more widespread acceptance in Mexico than in any other country of Latin America, and has members in most municipalities in the country (90% in 2000, increasing to 95% of all municipalities in 2010), showing difusion at the national level and among a large variety of socioeconomic groups, as it presents heterogeneous population pro les. The Adventist Church (in Chiapas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Chetumal and Quin- tana Roo) is the only one of the religious minorities to show a propensity for creating regions, through the concentration of believers in a single geographical area, which allows it to be able to become a hegemonic religion in a speci c territory. Its members (661,878 in 2010) share the same features: marginality, ethnicity and rurality. By contrast, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as Mormons) concentrates its faithful in medium and large cities. Its members (314,932) are mostly near the border with the United States, and the Mormon congregation enjoys a better economic position and has higher levels of education than the other Christian minorities. Several sociologists and anthropologists of religion have said that the principal protagonist of religious change in Mexico has been the group of churches of an Evangelical or Pentecostal type.8 This is con rmed by data from the census. Figures prove that these two groups between them have the strongest presence among religious minorities. As pointed out by Garma (2007), the Pentecostal denominations alone accounts for the largest number of believers (1,782,021) after the Roman Catholic Church. Pentecostalism the rst years of the nineteenth century. Its members are also known as Mormons because it follows the teachings of the Book of Mormon, revealed to its founder Joseph Smith in 1830. The rst Mormon missionaries arrived in Mexico in 1876, and they have established themselves especially in the major urban areas of the country, where a quarter of the members of this church reside (Gutiérrez Zúñiga 2007b). 8 Pentecostalism refers to Protestant churches that experience the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” which are demonstrated in powers of healing and speaking in tongues. The name comes from the word Pentecost in the Bible, described in the Acts of the Apostles as the day on which the disciples received the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This current started in the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and came to Mexico with the return of migrants in the 1920s. The most outstanding of the principal denominations are the rst Mexican Pentecostal church: La Iglesia Apostólica en Cristo Jesús (The Apostolic Church in Christ Jesus) and the U.S. denomination, the Assemblies of God (Garma 2007). 132 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga

Map 7.1: Religious diversity in Mexico by state, 2010. Source: XIII Censo INEGI 2010. Cartographic design by Renée de la Torre and Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga, elaborated by Carlos González de Luna is a Christian current composed of various denominations, some of them widely institutionalized and others working with a sectarian dynamic, based on breakaways and refoundations, alliances and divisions that make them an object hard to grasp. But it is a religious movement that traverses other religions, such as the Catholic and the Protestant churches. In fact one of their most recent tendencies is to proclaim explicitly their will to be interdenominational. Pentecostalism is therefore not in itself a religion, but a religious modality that in some cases requires conversion from one religion to another, but does not always demand a change in formal allegiance to a church, as it allows cohabitation. Such crossovers present a methodological challenge for sociologists of religion, because to be able to study current transformations of religion one would have to, rst, redesign the variables restricted to religious adherence to ecclesiastical institutions and, secondly, widen the methods of observation and measurement that would be able to take into account the new frames of religious identity beyond that of church membership (Campiche 1991, De la Torre and Gutiérrez 2011a, 2011b). new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 133

Even without going outside the logic of analysis by religious a liation, it is necessary to re ne the categories, such as “Other Evangelicals” which covers the largest number of people (over six million) and “Pentecostals” (just over two million), because there are institutions with a long history in Mexico and denominations with consolidated institutional structures that are invisible due to the vagueness of the classi cations and thus cannot be studied, such as the Assemblies of God (of great importance in Brazil), the Apostolic Church of Faith in Christ Jesus (La Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús, the oldest Mexican Pentecostal church in the country), the Interdenominational Church (la Iglesia Interdenominacional), the Centres of Faith, Hope and Love (los Centros de Fe, Esperanza y Amor), among others, that have a long history and have had a considerable impact in the region. The same can be said for the category “Other Evangelicals,” where various organizations with a de nite institutional pro le are clearly important in this sub- eld lie hidden, such as the evangelical network Confraternice.9 It is evident from the list of denominations in this group that they are in a very wide category and di cult to classify because we nd churches with diferent orientations mixed together in the broad eld of Evangelical and Pentecostal. The numbers of those in these groups overow the capacity of this residual classi cation and become the most important non-Catholic subgroup in the census, with 5,595,116 members, and they show the signs of a speci c statistical character, both with regard to territorial and socioeconomic distribution (Garma 2007). With regard to the Historical Protestant churches, we have seen that, contrary to what some scholars have said, these churches do indeed show signs of vigor and growth (with 820,744 members). For example in Chiapas, Mónica Aguilar (2007) details the experience of the Reformed Presbyterians, and in Guadalajara this phenomenon is experienced by the Baptist churches (Gutiérrez, De la Torre and Castro 2011). While it is not true that all Christian minorities are directed toward the poor and marginalized groups, neither can it be said that the Historical Protestants correspond exactly with the urban middle classes. We also nd them in indigenous populations and in

9 Other Evangelicals refers to those denominations who base their doctrine on reading the Bible, but do not conceive of themselves either Pentecostals or Historical Protes- tants. Outstanding in this group are: Alianza Cristiana y Misionera (Christian and Mission- ary Alliance), Apostólica no Pentecostal (Non Pentecostal Apostolic), evangelical and biblical societies, Co-fraternities, Iglesia de Cristo (Church of Christ), Iglesia de Gracias, Paz y Mis- ericordia (Church of Grace, Peace and Mercy), Iglesia Evangélica Salem (Salem Evangelical Church), Iglesia Mexicana (Church of Mexico) and Nueva Jerusalén (New Jerusalem) (see Gutiérrez Zúñiga and De la Torre 2007a). 134 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga very marginal conditions. So this is a Protestantism that is not “cold,” like liberal Protestantism, but a “hot” emotive version—that is to say, one that has been pentecostalized. La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World) is the most important Mexican Evangelical church, both due to its age and because of its current capacity for international expansion. However, it does not appear as the strongest in the national territory (with only 188,326 members).10 Where it has its strongest presence is in the city of Guadalajara (the site of its international headquarters) and in the state of Veracruz. As distinct from the situation in Brazil, where the phenomenon of religious change is strongly dominated by the national megachurches that grow under the model of powerful companies that have learned how to channel their proselytism through the mass media (such as The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), in Mexico legal restriction of access to ownership of telecommunications media by religious associations, does not favor the growth of electronic churches. Such churches have recently arrived in Mex- ico and are buying transmission time on cable pay channels, so this is a development for future research. The category “No Religion” also serves as an umbrella to cover multiple identities that go beyond religious a liation (over 5,262,546 people). It may be inferred that once analyzed in its local contexts and with its population pro les, this category does not refer only or principally to those who would declare themselves atheist. Rather, an important part of Mexican religious reality is present under this rubric, because this category also and primarily includes indigenous populations who practice “the custom”—those groups of people who have never been really evangelized by Catholicism and those individuals (commonly known as New Age believers) who have decided to develop and engage in religious practices on the margin of religious institutions. As “No Religion” is especially strong in municipalities where Catholicism is in the minority, we should ask ourselves whether it does not also cover changes to other denominations, conicts between religions, and second or third generation apostates who have abandoned the faith adopted by their progenitors (Bowen 1996).

10 La Luz del Mundo is a church with Pentecostal roots, that was founded in Mexico by the Maestro Aarón Joaquín González in 1926. It is a distinctly nationalist church, which has its headquarters in the community of Hermosa Provincia (beautiful province) located on the east side of the city of Guadalajara, where they have built a temple of an enormous size, making it the biggest in Latin America. Currently under the leadership of Samuel Joaquín Flores (son of the founder), this church has succeded in setting up missions in more than 22 countries in the world (De la Torre 2007b). new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 135

Finally, although Mexico is a predominantly Christian country, the 2000 Census included categories for Oriental Religions. (The category Jewish, not one of the newly popular faiths, has been included since 1910). Thanks to this change we nd that other religions, originally from the East, are present (e.g. Buddhists, 18,160), as well as Muslims (3,760) and Jews (67,476) who, as we can see from the total numbers of members, are at the rearguard of the dissident minorities, with most of their a liates in well to-do-urban sectors and few among the popular sectors. On the whole, as shown by Juárez and Ávila (2007), believers in these creeds are young, single, with a good income and a high level of education. For 2010, categories were included that had been made invisible because they were transversal to Catholicism or had been pushed into the reply No Religion. In spite of the fact that Mexico is characterized by a syncretic culture, in which indigenous cosmo-visions have remained linked to popular Catholicism, this distinction was not previously considered. Neither were the new spiritualities that are practiced more and more in Mexico. The answers showed that 17,585 persons are a l- iated to indigenous religions. 7,024 to Afro religions, 2,379 said they were attached to the “custom,” and a smaller number registered as practitioners of Mexicanism, which is gaining more adepts all the time in our country. It is still a challenge to record the transversal and multireligious tendencies, which we know are practiced more and more but do not necessarily change the answer to the question on religious adherence. There are other minorities within the minorities, that are hard to classify as they contain both Christian and non-Christian components, such as the Nativists (27,830),11 and Spiritualists (43,902). Similarly, the challenge remains of distinguishing that which does not let itself be classi ed, either because of the uctuating and inde nite nature of religious identity or due to the constant creation of new options, which is seen in the fact that the reply “Not Speci ed” went up instead of going down, from 1% in 2000 to 2.7% in 2010, representing 3,052,509 persons.

11 This is a new category that for rst time considers the ethnic religions. This often has been named as “la costumbre,” and in the 2000 data census it was made to disappear into the category of No Religion. Most of the population who answered to being Nativist belong to either the “Huicholes” (wixárica) or “Tarahumaras” (rarámuris), indigenous communities. 136 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga

How Do Socioeconomic Factors Afect Religious Change? A Review of Initial Hypotheses

The analytical stage of this project was concentrated on factors having an incidence in religious diversity, among which the most outstanding proved to be those of age, gender, economic status, ethnicity, migration, and urbanization. According to particular analyses, each of these promotes a higher probability of religious change. As has also been documented in other countries, women in Mexico are more exposed than men to opting for a non-Catholic Christian religion.12 The graphic representation of the structures of the non-Catholic population (through pyramids of age and sex) made by Juárez and Avila (2007) and INEGI (2011) provides us with empirical bases for stating that there is a greater female presence in these groups, though not to the degree claimed by certain ethnographic studies based on particular contexts (where it was a rmed occasionally that the rate was two women for every man). At the level of national statistics we can state that while the total number of non-Catholic men in Mexico in the year 2000 is nearly three million, the female population in this category is just over three and a half million, amounting to 20% more. The diference between men and women is even greater in Evangelical groups and most of all among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Interpreting these gures calls for prudence, both because the proportion of men to women in the population overall also inclines toward women and because there is an undercounting of men due to migration. Even taking that into account, according to Juárez and Ávila (2007) it can be seen in the pyramids that the diference between men and women is more pronounced in the groups covering the ages 15 to 44, which coincides with the reproductive age. The Evangelical population is young and is commonly made up of people at the start of the domestic cycle (single individuals or recently married with few ofspring). This is also a socially recognized stage of life and accepted as one where important decisions are taken that may have a life-long inuence on the individuals (leaving the family home, joining the labor market, marriage and procreation, etc.). These facts suggest a recognition of the demographic potential for growth of these groups, added to their proselytising activities.

12 A logistic regression shows that women have 25% more probability than men of belonging to a non-Catholic Christian religion (see Gutiérrez Zúñiga, Janssen, de la Torre, and Aceves 2007: 47). new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 137

The importance of the female presence in the expansion of the churches is due to the fact that women have frequently been observed to be the ones taking the decision to convert to some current of Protestantism, and later managing to persuade the rest of those at home. Nevertheless, as the information on household composition shows, only La Luz del Mundo manages to achieve monoreligious homes at a similar rate to that of Catholic households, although these gures vary enormously depending on the type of household (nuclear, composed, extended family, and composed but non- family). Non-Catholic Christian minorities in Mexico have a markedly feminine face, and women are the means by which the gospel gets to reach the family group. We know from the ndings of interviews with those in charge of chapels in the city of Guadalajara (Gutiérrez Zúñiga, De la Torre and Castro 2011: 154) that an important factor in the activism of the Protes- tant denominations, which turns out to be crucial in religious change, has been not only the ofer of spiritual health but also access to and the provision of: medical attention, legal aid for the mistreatment of women, community services, and help with addictions. Illnesses and addictions (especially the alcoholism of heads of households) perceived as incurable, have been among the most frequently recurring topics in accounts of conversions. In these accounts it is explained that the decision to change from one religion to another is due to having found a cure for their ills. There is no doubt that this is one of the main factors in changing religion, and though it is not detectable by means of the variables in the census, it can be appreciated as a constant in the descriptions given of the services provided by the most representative congregations of the various groups in Mexico. This tendency for principally female conversion is part and parcel of the missionary practices of the Evangelical currents because, as Carlos Garma has pointed out, the establishment of Pentecostalism in Mexico was due to the work of female missionaries (1998). Furthermore, to interpret these facts it is necessary to take certain considerations into account: Because of the division of roles in the home, which is generically still very marked in Mexico (with the data showing that over half of the non-Catholic Christian women dedicate themselves to keeping their house), women have a exi- bility with respect to time and organization superior to that of their male spouses. While it is true that occasionally the a liation of one or another member of the household to a diferent religion causes tensions and even break-ups in the family, it is also true that the religious communities ofer to rebuild 138 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga new social networks of support and solidarity, and even provide the idea of belonging to a spiritual family. On the other hand we should also interpret this nding in the frame of the women’s own strategies, where conversion to one of these groups gives them sundry advantages, among which David Martín (1990) and Carlos Garma (1998 and 2004) have mentioned the possibility of conducting rituals in some cases, the prohibition of alcohol and of bigamy, a revaluation of the role of the husband as breadwinner, and access to services, goods and help networks that are fundamental for the survival of the family. With respect to the category “No Religion” there are more men than women (57.4% men vs. 42.6% women), and this applies even to the group of young people (aged between 20 and 24), which marks an increasing tendency toward religious indiference (INEGI 2011). Contrary to the thesis that converts to the new Protestant churches create a culture of exible labor, as it is claimed that they are not part of the manufacturing proletariat but of the informal economy linked to services (Cf. Martin 2002: 79), the data provide us with a diferent perspective on their reality: “Of those at an economically active age who work, at least half (sometimes two thirds), whatever their religion, are unskilled labourers, except among the Historical Protestants, of whom a high proportion are self- employed” (Juárez and Ávila 2007). As expected, the ethnic variable turns out to be of great signi cance. A person de ned as indigenous has a greater chance of belonging to a non- Catholic Christian current: “Of every 10 Pentecostals, 2 speak an indigenous language.” According to Garma and Hernández, this is due to the fact that “all indigenous groups in the country without exception show a tendency to change religion over the last two decades” (2007: 216). If we look at the gures for indigenous people, we nd 5,249,343 answered that they were Catholics; while 975,975 speakers of an indigenous language identi ed themselves as Protestants, Pentecostals, Evangelicals or simply “Christians.” Additionally, 113,979 were Adventists; 6,845 Mormons; 87,212 Jehovah’s Wit- nesses; 2,336 were Jewish and those with No Religion accounted for 366,483 (7% of the total responding). Of these speakers of an indigenous language, 68,007 did not speak Spanish (equivalent to 1.2% of the total indigenous people answering). The view that this tendency to change is true is further reinforced by taking into account the fact that 22.8% of those with No Reli- gion live in rural populations of less than 2,500 inhabitants (INEGI 2011). This is a very revealing gure because it shows that the category No Religion, far from referring to Atheists, covers a large number of the ethnic populations who practice their own religiosity but refuse to acknowledge any formal religion. new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 139

Some explanations may be advanced. First there is an organizational reason: these evolutions of Protestantism have been characterized by their dynamism and activism, which came in originally with the Instituto Lingüís- tico de Verano (Summer Language School) in the 1940s, when its missionary work took the message of the gospel to the daily lives of the faithful— though, as mentioned above, it was the indigenous missionaries who really efected the spread of Protestantism. In the 2000 INEGI survey, the Pente- costal churches are those with the largest number of indigenous believers (274,000, with a stronger presence among populations speaking Nahuatl and Maya). Among indigenous populations the greatest religious presence is that of Pentecostalism: 19% of the indigenous population declare themselves to be Pentecostals, tripling the national average. In second place for the number of indigenous believers we nd the group of “Other Evangeli- cals” (190,000, prominently among Nahuatl and Mayan populations). These are then followed by the Historical Protestant churches (182,000), a category that includes the Presbyterian church (see Aguilar 2007), which has a strong presence among the Tzeltal population (62,440). In fourth place is the Adventist Church (with 90,210), one that as shown in a case study by Castañeda (2007) has had a big impact on the Tztotzil (29,562), the Chol (11,790) and the Mayans (7,986). Another signi cant presence would be that of Jehovah’s Witnesses (54,936), with a notable lead among Mayan, Nahuatl and Zapoteca populations (Garma and Hernández, 2007). Among the indigenous groups it is necessary to highlight those with a high percentage of non-Christian members, these being ethnic groups most of whom live in Chiapas, Oaxaca and on the Mayan Peninsula (but not the Yaqui [21%] or the Huave [22%]). These groups are: Kanjobal (54%), Tzeltal (41%), Chol (36%), Tzotzil (28%), Mame (21%), Tojolobalmaya, and Maya (15% each). The data also show there are two indigenous groups where Catholicism has become a minority religion: the Tzeltal and the Kanojobal. Not only tendencies to change religion are observed. There is also resistance to the invitation of religions to join them, which is seen in the high indices for “No Religion” (especially among the Huichol, Tepehaun, Popoluca, Tarahumara, and Kanjobal, where this category accounts for a quarter of the total population). Garma and Hernández (2007) also point out the existence of indigenous populations with a large Catholic majority, that have a minimal presence of religious minorities (13% in contrast to 80% Catholic), as well as populations where Catholicism is still in the lead and have no growth of non-Catholic Christian groups, but are outstanding for the high numbers of “No Religion” and of Nativist religion: the Tarahumara, Tepehuan, Kora and Huichol. 140 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga

Some decades ago the prevalent fear was that the presence of religious options of a Protestant faith would have efects on the loss of identity of the indigenous peoples, their cultural traditions and ethnic customs (as converts to Protestant churches give up positions of authority). Instead, over the years the wealth of indigenous memory has been kept safe behind the religious feasts with a myriad of forms that are syncretic with Catholicism, and now, with these new religious inuences, the behavior of the ethnic groups has once again shown its capacity for cultural resistance, through which they have gained autonomy for their Evangelical churches, achieved a new semantics for them, and have given them a popular and syncretic usage. As we have insisted, the category “No Religion” still holds the practice of nativist religion known as “the custom,” which has been the result of a rejection by the indigenous communities of the institutional controls of the churches, rst the Catholic and then the Protestant. To be able to de ne the current phenomenon of religious diversity among the indigenous populations of our country, it turns out to be necessary to recognize that, strictly speaking, it is not correct to talk of religious change. This is true for several reasons: First, many communities never were evangelized by Catholic missionaries. Indigenous peoples live in areas that were of little strategic value during the colonization and Catholic evangelization. In many settlements and regions, the dominion of the Catholic Church was never achieved There are many villages in the South of Mexico, for example, where one can see, next to a basketball net, two Evangelical chapels but no Catholic church. Second, the hypothesis may also be drawn that as the indigenous communities were the rst and the greatest victims of the conquest, the act of passively or actively rejecting the dominant religion appears to be a long- standing form of resistance,13 as syncretic religion or “the custom” has been, appearing in the census as “No Religion.” Adopting a new religion becomes part of a way of promoting and vindicating one’s identity, like keeping the language alive. Third, there is an economic reason: indigenous peoples tend to be afected by marginality and the scarcity of resources, so their religious a liations may be seen as a strategic resource in view of the possibility of receiving bene ts from the social programs promoted by the various

13 Hernández Castillo (1994, 2000) demonstrated the complex linkage between ethnic and religious identity in the historical process of building a mestizo Spanish speaking Mexico, in which belonging to a church like the Presbyterian or the Jehovah’s Witnesses has been a form of human relations and also of resistance to a national project from which the people in these communities feel excluded. new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 141 churches. And fourth, there are the efects of migratory mobility, as a result of which, it has been suggested: “Many of the indigenous immigrants who converted to Protestantism picked up the Evangelical teachings when they had left their communities to work in agricultural elds or in big cities” Garma and Hernández 2007: 218. Finally, it should be noted that the indigenous populations of Mexico are from the sector that is most receptive to religious diversity, whether through the adoption of new creeds (especially in Pentecostal forms) or through the persistence of the systems of Custom. Another of the factors accompanying a change toward religious plurality is the economic factor, which according to Gutiérrez, Janssen, De la Torre and Aceves (2007) is most strongly and most convincingly seen in the indicators for marginality. As already stated by Jean-Pierre Bastian (2004), in Mexico the growth of Evangelical and Protestant churches occurs at the margins of economic and urban development. It is on the national borders (North and South) and on the peripheries (both of cities and of rural towns) that the growth of non-Catholic populations is concentrated. Janssen, de la Torre and Gutiérrez Zúñiga (2006) and Gutiérrez, Janssen, de la Torre and Aceves (2007) reviewed the part played by levels of income, quality of housing, levels of schooling and degrees of margination (at the municipal level) which nally led to a generalized concentration of the non-Christian minorities in the lowest strata of socioeconomic wellbeing. However, not all the religions respond to the same pattern: for example, the Adventists, His- torical Protestants and Pentecostals (in that order) have a presence in the lower economic ranges; at income levels comparable to the national and Catholic average we can nd members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses; while Mormons and “Other Evangelicals” have a greater presence among populations with income levels above the national average but below that of the upper classes. This correlation also holds at municipal level. In the year 2000, there were 66 municipalities with a high rate of marginality that also had a high rate of non-Catholic religious a liation. Ten years later, this correlation was stronger, applying now to 156 municipalities (see Map 2). Urbanization has been a central factor for explaining the religious changes. Especially in Latin America, urbanization is synonymous with entering into the conditions of modern life, which follows an unequal pattern of extension characterized by the formation of poles of development in the cities. For this reason, urbanization cannot be disassociated from the phenomenon of migration from the country to the city and, later, from one city to another, which is so large as to overow the very installations and forms of incorporation of the residents. Thus the urban peripheries have become a place of irregularity and informality not only in the sense of 142 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga

Map 7.2: Correlation between the presence of non-Catholic Christians and degree of marginalization at municipality level, 2010. Source: XIII Censo INEGI 2010. Car- tographic design by Renée de la Torre and Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga; elaborated by Carlos González de Luna planning for growth, but also in a sociocultural sense. Studies of the growth of Protestantism and Pentecostalism in Latin America have drawn the physiognomy of these urban and suburban environments in the image and like- ness of Guatemala, Santiago, or Sao Paulo, and have marked the close relation between these particularities of urban modernity in Latin America and the explosive growth of Protestant, Pentecostal and Paraprotestant congregations. Using the census to explore this relation between urbanization and religious change made it necessary in the rst instance to change the scale of analysis from that of municipality which is the principal focus in this work, and enquire into the data for Mexican urban areas. The ndings provided by Alberto Hernández (2007) call for caution about generalizations on the scale of Latin America: because even though the big Mexican cities like Monterrey, Tijuana, Guadalajara, Ciudad Juárez and above all Mexico City have become a synthesis of the various religious organizations—principally new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 143

Christian, but also of other types—they have not managed to change the structure of religious distribution in the country, which remains mainly Catholic. The phenomenon of unbridled urban growth has favored the development of Evangelical, Pentecostal and Paraprotestant churches especially on their peripheries and in their conurbated municipalities, but it has not reached the scale seen in the large Latin American cities that exemplify the religious transformation of the subcontinent. The cities where an impact on the structure of religious distribution are observed, are rst, the border and tourist towns of the South-East, such as Cancún or Chetumal—which is also explored at greater depth in the work of Antonio Higueras on the Jehovah’s Witnesses (2007)—or in towns like Tapachula, all of which are exposed to intense migration ows, for reasons of tourism, as the economy is radically transformed so as to provide the specialized services implied, or else due to the displacement that is caused by war and the precariousness of the economy, conditions that have applied on the southern border for several decades now. A similar impact can be observed in the border towns of the North, and especially the North-East, such as Matamoros, Piedras Negras and Ciu- dad Acuña, though also in the North-West, in places like Juárez, Nogales, Mexicali and Tijuana. The situation of these cities on the border with the United States immersed them early on in an extremely dynamic transnational economy distinguished by the polarized working and living conditions of their inhabitants. While in the cities in the South-East concentrate a signi cant number of non-believers, among other options, in the North the preference for a non- Catholic religion also has a large component of “Other Evangelicals.” Other tourist towns like Puerto Vallarta, Tampico, Veracruz or Acapulco come next, for non-Catholic religions—in third place, but below the national average of 12%. These considerations show how important it is for the model relating urbanization to religious change to be more complex, as they prove the signi cance in Mexico of geographical location, understood as the distance from centers of political and religious power that have provided the back- bone to the nation from the center since its formation. The close relation between the strength of Catholic institutions and a small presence of new religious actors becomes much brighter in light of a comparative study of how the structures of religious preferences are distributed among the dif- ferent cities of the center and on the border. The relation between urbanization and religious change should move on from a linear model and take 144 rene de la torre and christina gutirrez ziga into account the synergy between distinct factors whose weight seems to be determined by each historical-regional context. Furthermore, the study by Hernández (2007) invites us—on diferent scales—both to approach the new scenarios of religious diversity that are being created in Mexican cities in line with the continuous process of internal migration to new and old poles of development, and to consider the role that the churches may be playing in the communities of origin and of destination, including the very processes of the construction of urban space.

Landscapes of Religious Diversity in Mexico

Some Christian minorities transcend the local levels and achieve new regional con gurations. Some are transforming the identities of the persisting ethnic groups that maintain the autochthonous roots of our indigenous past and present. Others are recon guring the frontiers and the peripheries where the most acute imbalances in the provision of goods and welfare services are experienced. Others again recon gure themselves in mobility, in the coming and going from one place to another, through being in provi- sional places or townships and farms left empty, or dwelling in the inhabit- able spaces, those that have been populated ahead of any planning, and yet where people try to make a place for themselves. The big cities of our country are the scene of the most ample religious diversity, but not on a large enough scale to transform their physiognomy. Nevertheless, urbanization has afected both the abandonment of rural areas and the accelerated creation of urban concentrations. A country peasant or an inhabitant of the city can share the multiple efects of urbanization and even of migration. For this reason at both poles there are greater prob- abilities of religious change. The diversi cation of religion is not only directed at those lacking things necessary to life but also provides them with the means for getting them. In some cases religious diversity has generated reactions of intolerance, pro- voking expulsions and migrations; but it is through these that projects of colonizing new territories have been put in motion. So also in the urban context, religious minorities have become actors in the construction of new enclaves where there was nothing, and their identity no longer responds to criteria of social class, place of origin or ethnicity, but to religious preference. Indigenous people do not just lose the identity that was anchored in the practices of popular Catholicism, they reconquer and transform the Evangelical products on ofer with new ethnic modalities. new landscapes of religious diversity in mexico 145

Religious minorities may have a distinctly female face, and it is the women who are the intermediaries in getting the message to the rest of the family. We know that in addition to being ofered spiritual health, a vital factor in religious change has been the provision of medical attention and gaining access to it. Diseases and addictions perceived as incurable have been one of the most commonly repeated themes in accounts of conversion. In these it is revealed that the decision to change from one religion to another is due to having found a cure for one’s ills. This is undoubtedly one of the main factors explaining religious change, which, though not detectable in the variables of the census, can be appreciated as a constant in the descriptions given of the services provided by each of the various churches that are most popular in Mexico. None of the factors of religious change on its own is able to explain this phenomenon. Although they do have a signi cant degree of incidence, which it is possible relatively speaking to isolate, taken as a whole they form a part of a complex system of interactions or synergies from a model that contradicts progress and modernity. Neither is it possible to explain it on the basis of the various missionary strategies for expansion of the religious groups, as their impact on the population does not take place irrespective of the historical and regional conditions of the national territory. Religious change really is creating new territorial articulations, but these acquire pro les and population tendencies from the regional contexts and cultures. Religious change is a present day reality in Mexico, and we consider that it will tend to produce more religious diversity in the coming decades. On the question of religious pluralism, we consider that in spite of the weight of Catholicism, the Mexican State has two institutional conditions that guarantee a transition to a pluralist culture: the Constitution, which guarantees a secular State, combined with the recognition of the juridical existence in conditions of equality of religious associations in the territory; and the political will to make the religious question transparent in national statistics, as it is public knowledge and public information that help to break with prejudices and that can prepare a culture for accepting diversity.

References

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FROM INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL PLURALISM: THE ANGLICAN METAMORPHOSIS

William H. Swatos, Jr.

In my doctoral dissertation and earliest publications in the sociology of religion (1975, 1976, 1979), I focused on the process whereby the episcopate in the Church of England, which constituted a religious monopoly that united church and state, was transferred to the denominational world of the United States, a polity that Seymour Martin Lipset (1963) would name “The First New Nation.” A crucial player in that process was the Episcopal Church in Scotland, where a Presbyterian religious monopoly was somewhat inconsistently transgressed by Church of England chapels, including a Scottish Anglican episcopate. When the rst American candidate for consecration, Samuel Seabury, was selected he had the advantage of having already studied medicine in Scotland; thus, when the English establishment balked at the question of ordaining bishops for service in the United States after the Revolutionary War, Seabury went to Scotland and received consecration there. That was su cient precedent for English bishops to ordain two other men, and the Scottish and English lines then met in subsequent consecrations in the United States, giving full creditability to both the Amer- ican episcopate and the Episcopal Church in the United States of Amer- ica.1 From that time until the late twentieth century, the Episcopal Church maintained a notable “unity in diversity.” There is no question that there were always some tensions underlying it, but these tended to be connected principally to speci c bishops in speci c dioceses at speci c times. A relative point of pride among Episcopalians in discussing the organizational life of the Episcopal Church during the U.S. Civil War, for example, has been that those dioceses located in the Confederate States of America were allowed to

1 Formally “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America,” though the word “Protestant” was not used in general discourse; rather it was intended originally to make a formal distinction between the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church. 150 william h. swatos, jr. leave the main body at the start of the Civil War and were allowed to reunite with the main body again at the time of the Union victory. No bishops or priests were deposed because they were on one side or the other. At the parish level, diferent congregations adopted relatively diferent styles of worship, generally united by the texts of the Book of Common Prayer. A good barometer of the nature of the congregation would simply be the number of times Holy Communion was celebrated in the parish in a given year. The more celebrations, the more “high church” the parish would be considered; the less celebrations, the more “low church” the parish would be considered. Across time something approximating a “golden mean” appeared to jell in most dioceses where the majority of parishes ofered an early celebration of the Eucharist every Sunday, with some alternation between the Eucharist and Morning Prayer and Sermon at the later liturgy. Midweek celebrations of the Eucharist became more and more common, though in most cases only on one or two days a week, rather than daily. The greater the number of weekdays on which there was a Eucharistic celebration, the more one could consider the parish “high church” or Anglo- Catholic. A change began to set into this pattern toward the start of the twentieth century, when a third pattern of churchmanship generally called “broad church” began also to appear. Broad churches were particularly inuenced by the wider Social Gospel movement, and while the issues of “high” and “low” churchmanship continued to be relevant, greater emphasis was placed on social or community involvement. The efect of this was speci cally to bring “social issues” to the fore—including immigrant resettlement, poverty, racism and gender relations. Broad church parishes were less easy to characterize as “low” or “high” because they combined some elements of each, while at the same time rejecting some aspects of the distinctive theological positions of each. For example, Biblical texts were relativized to speci c times and cultures, while sacraments were increasingly demysti ed and interpreted in current contexts of “meaningfulness” to the recipient. The- ology was comparably downgraded in favor of social outreach. If Catholic ceremonial would reach out to some immigrants and bring them into a worshipping community, then Catholic ceremonial it was—not necessarily accompanied by Catholic theology. The same was true for the evangelical wing. If so-called “old fashioned” hymns brought in new people, then old fashioned hymns would be the order of the day, without too much worry about whether or not their theological content was consistent with that of the Book of Common Prayer. The broad church movement also was afected by larger societal population movements. As Americans became from internal to external pluralism 151 more mobile following World War II, the regionalisms that once characterized the Episcopal Church in one part of the country versus another increasingly disappeared. Ever-increasing mobility back and forth across the country decreasingly meant that people who grew up in, for example, the Diocese of Upper South Carolina were going to be buried in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina—or, in fact, in the South at all. They could as likely be buried in the Diocese of Olympia, Washington, or Albany, New York.

How Broad?

The 1960s saw turmoil and social change on several fronts. Probably the most signi cant element of ’60s life was the War in Vietnam—or, we might say, the degree of opposition to and protests against that war combined with the efects of the American civil rights movement, including therein the women’s movement. These two on-going movements, occasionally intersecting directly, more often simply running on parallel tracks, were particularly susceptible to a broad-church embrace. By this I mean that they were national movements of broad social signi cance that both crosscut and intertwined dynamics of race, class and gender. The impact of these movements was embodied in the Episcopal Church through the General Convention Special Program of 1967 and the subsequent 1969 Special Gen- eral Convention. These programs, aimed at eliminating or drastically reducing poverty, racism and sexism not only within the denomination itself, but even more so at a national level, radically altered the character of the denomination in the majority of its dioceses. It also served, more than any other structural innovation, to create social and cultural boundaries between dioceses that were never so explicitly drawn in the denomination’s prior history. The crisis that the GCSP and the Special Convention precipitated, however, was not directly related to these two programs, but rather was spawned from what might be called the “spirit” of these programs, particularly inasmuch as sexism was among the areas to be addressed in the program. This crisis was termed, at the time it occurred, the “illegal” ordination of 11 women as “priests” in the Episcopal Church in 1974.This act had been preceded by an “illegal” ordination of a woman as a “deacon” in the church in 1965, by Bishop James Pike. Women as deacons were accepted by the Episcopal Church in 1970. Illegal ordinations of women to the priesthood took place in the United States in both 1974 and 1975, and these were subsequently accepted as valid in 1976, when the Episcopal Church’s General Convention allowed the 152 william h. swatos, jr. ordination of women to the priesthood.2 The acceptance of women as priests within the Episcopal Church and other Anglican jurisdictions began a process that increasingly drove wedges between jurisdictions such as never had occurred previously in the denomination’s history. This was only exacerbated by the decision to allow women to be consecrated bishops, the rst being Barbara Harris, an African American, as Sufragan Bishop in the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1989.3 The primary pattern that this took centered on a combination of the position of the bishop of any diocese (at a time when only men were bishops) and the people of his diocese with respect to the ordination of women. Quite simply, the bishop is both the rst actor and the last actor in the ordination process. It is in every case the diocesan bishop who accepts or rejects a person for postulancy (the rst of several steps in the sequence that leads to ordination), and it is the diocesan bishop who does or does not perform the ordination rite of that person (or who does or does not allow another bishop to perform the ordination in the diocesan’s stead). Since diocesan bishops are elected by a combination of the clergy and elected lay representatives in the diocese of which they are to be bishop, it is most likely the case that the bishop, the clergy and the laity of a diocese will share common viewpoints with respect to doctrine and practice within any particular diocese. Hence. across time the ordination of women question galvanized the position of those opposed to this innovation. Although the majority of Episcopalian diocesan leaders supported the ordination of women (to the point of a female presently occupying the o ce of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church), a minority did not, and that minority coalesced into several diferent oppositional strategies to which were added individual congregations who may have accepted a woman acting as a priest at some point, but who had come to see a larger, more threatening trend growing within the Episcopal Church that caused them grave concern, and as a result initiated a re-thinking of the place of gender roles within the church.

2 Prior ordinations of women to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion had taken place in Hong Kong/China both at the time of the Communist take-over in 1944 and again in 1971. 3 A sufragan bishop is an assistant bishop who has the full sacramental powers of a bishop, but not the temporal powers associated with a diocesan bishop in such areas as clergy placement or nancial management. Harris retired from her position in 2003 and was succeeded by another black woman. The Harris consecration was not an illegal consecration within the Episcopal Church’s structure at that time. Harris was also the rst woman bishop in the Anglican Communion as a whole. The claim is often made that at one point in speaking Harris publicly bid conservatives in the Episcopal Church “good riddance,” but evidence for this remains anecdotal. from internal to external pluralism 153

This threat was the acceptance of actively homosexual persons as clergy, including bishops themselves—the case of the Rt. Revd. V.Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire, consecrated in 2003, being the rst (cf. Adams 2006).4 The acceptance of the Robinson election by the national Episcopal leadership became for many in the conservative camp a blatant repudiation by the leadership of any delity to essential Christian moral teaching, hence a basis for organizing new denominational structures outside the Episcopal Church and other structures of the formal Anglican Communion notably in Canada, the United Kingdom itself, and Australia or to nd ways to enter other geographic provinces of the Anglican Communion either by a transla- tion to another province or by another province founding a “mission” church in these other countries—for example, the Provinces of Uganda, Nigeria, and Rwanda each either founded or accepted churches in the United States or the UK as constituent parts of its own structure. In short, the idyllic image of a solidly united Anglican Communion has melted into air, but at the same time, new structures are being built such that the life-worlds of Anglicans have become comparably strengthened, and global Anglicanism has been enriched by active partnerships in ministry and service at grassroots levels, with at least the possibility in England itself that movements toward further rede nition of orthodox faith and practice may be harder to achieve than their proponents had anticipated—most recently in the rejection by the Church of England’s governing body of the consecration of women to the episcopate.5

The New Anglican Churchscape

At one level, the Anglican world today is anything but easy to describe, and indeed, the one thing of which I am most sure as I write this chapter is that by the time it is nally published, something of what I have written will no longer be true. There can be no question, however, that steam had been building up within the American church since the ordinations of the 1970s, and was explicitly articulated through a 1977 meeting in St. Louis, Mis-

4 That both the Harris and Robinson consecrations were not merely events of “symbolic” signi cance may be evidenced by the fact that both wore bullet-proof vests under their vestments at their consecrations as part of the security protocols established by the law enforcement agencies ofering security (see Adams 2006: 188). 5 The Church of England has a tri-cameral voting system for taking major decisions such as this: bishops, lower clergy, and laity, whereby all three have to concur in a decision of this magnitude. The vote was lost among the laity. 154 william h. swatos, jr. souri which produced The A rmation of St. Louis, repudiating the actions taken by the 1976 General Convention of the Episcopal Church. The rst explicit implementation of these concerns was the “illegal” consecration of four Episcopal/Anglican bishops in a Lutheran church in Denver, Colorado, on 28 January 1978.6 Three of these bishops would serve in a newly founded body, the Anglican Catholic Church, while a fourth would serve independently in a California diocese known originally as the Diocese of Christ the King, now the Province of Christ the King. This original movement, however, remained relatively small and quiescent until the Robinson consecration, but the fact that it had occurred at all and that there were American Anglican bishops already working in the United States shepherding Angli- can congregations that were not part of the Episcopal Church meant that a groundwork existed for realignment both within the United States and glob- ally. These realignments took several forms, some of which have already been mentioned. They were dramatically afected, however, in 2008/9, when three constituent dioceses of the Episcopal Church left the Episcopal Church and “realigned” with the Anglican Communion’s Province of the Southern Cone, which is basically the southern half of South America, not including Brazil. These dioceses were San Joaquin, California, Quincy, Illi- nois, and Fort Worth, Texas. To them was subsequently added as a fourth diocese a portion of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where there was what at the time appeared to be an amicable division within Pittsburgh between those who wished to stay with the Episcopal Church USA and those who wanted to part from it (including their diocesan bishop).7 Since that time twelve other jurisdictions that had grown up in various circumstances in the United States also a liated with this movement to form the Anglican Church in North America at the end of 2008, and dioceses of the Reformed Episcopal Church (a body that separated from the Episcopal Church in the

6 These consecrations were not only illegal but also technically “irregular,” because three bishops acting at the same time in the same place are normally required to consecrate a new bishop. While four bishops were originally scheduled to o ciate, in fact only two did so, Albert Chambers (retired bishop of Spring eld, Illinois) and Francisco Pagtakhan (Mission- ary Bishop of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church). Two other bishops originally scheduled to participate did not attend but gave written consent to the consecrations. Writ- ten consent is not the same as participating in a consecration. 7 Subsequently the national o ce of the Episcopal Church has become involved in the Pittsburgh case and has taken it to court with the result that individual churches that wish to remain with the Anglican Church in North America must “buy back” their properties from the Episcopal Church (at their current value)—or nd new worship space. from internal to external pluralism 155 nineteenth century) have since been reconciled with the movement to yield a total of 21 dioceses, with 45 bishops, as of this writing. The Anglican Church in North America has not, however, received full acceptance into the formal bodies of the Anglican Communion, a process that is itself not entirely clearly speci ed. The Anglican Communion is relatively unique among “worldwide” churches, in the sense that its structure is primarily informal. In the strictest sense, those national church bodies in the Anglican Communion are those bodies whose bishops the Archbishop of Canterbury invites to a decennial Lambeth Conference in the United Kingdom. This conference is named by the fact that Lambeth Palace is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London residence. So, strictly speaking, those churches whose diocesan bishops the Archbishop of Canterbury invites to his house en masse once every ten years are “the churches of the Anglican Communion” as a result of this fact. At this point it remains to be seen how a newly-named Archbishop of Canterbury will handle the present situation— i.e., whether he will or will not invite the diocesan bishops of the Anglican Church in North America to his house and, if he does, how the Episcopal Church leadership will react. All of the bishops of the Anglican Church in North America who were diocesan bishops in the Episcopal Church prior to the formation of the Anglican Church in North America were invited to the last Lambeth Conference (i.e., when they were bishops in the Episcopal Church).8 In addition, all of the dioceses that were originally part of the Episcopal Church remain in litigation with the Episcopal Church over their properties. When the Episcopal Church has gone to court to recover properties (normally parish churches), it has done so on the basis of seeking a summary judgment against parishes or other institutions that attempt to sever their relationship with the national body.The Epsiscopal Church has claimed that it is a hierarchical church, hence has a prima facie right to property ownership, and it has won on this tactic in many cases across several decades, though these were generally cases of single parishes seeking to leave both the national body and the diocese of the national body where the church

8 At present, only Alberto Morales, the current Bishop of Quincy, was not invited to the last Lambeth Conference, as he was an Assisting Bishop (of Quincy) at that time. The next Lambeth Conference should be held in 2018. It may afect the other current ACNA bishops who were bishops in the Episcopal Church at the time of the last Lambeth Conference, depending on their chronological age. To qualify such a bishop would have to be currently under age 67 and still actively serving as a diocesan bishop in 2018. 156 william h. swatos, jr. was located.9 This tactic was basically successful in the Pittsburgh diocese currently. Churches who wish to withdraw from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh must “buy back” their properties from the Episcopal Church. In both San Joaquin and Fort Worth, an original court nding for summary judgment has been appealed to a higher court. In San Joaquin the case was reviewed and sent back to Superior Court. The Fort Worth decision is on appeal to the Texas State Supreme Court. Both of these are unresolved as of this writing. Most recently, the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, under the leadership of its sitting bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence, has separated itself from the national body, including in its number approximately two-thirds of the congregations that composed the Episcopal Diocese. As of this writing, this diocese and its bishop remain a part of the Anglican Com- munion.10 A dramatic turn in these eforts by the Episcopal Church to seize such properties, however, began with the Quincy Decision in 2011, wherein the Diocese of Quincy won a legal dispute on property ownership over the Episcopal Church from the Eight Judicial Court, in Adams County, Illinois. In this case, the Episcopal Church attempted to have the assets of the Quincy diocese frozen. The Adams County (Quincy, Illinois) court, presided over by a judge of Roman Catholic a liation, ruled that “even if the church is hierarchical, that would not end the matter because a ‘neutral principles of law’ approach should be applied to resolving the property ownership dispute.” The Episcopal Church is appealing this ruling. If sustained on appeal, however, this verdict could create a precedent against further similar actions by the Episcopal Church and possibly provide a basis for appeals of prior cases.11 In spite of its appeal, however, the Episcopal Church has also transferred those churches of the Diocese of Quincy that did not choose to enter the Anglican diocese to the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, rather than attempting to maintain a counter-diocese. More recently, in South Carolina a restraining order was issued on 23 January 2013 by the Hon. Diane Goodstein, prohibiting national Episcopal Church o cers from using

9 A summary judgment is a ruling to the efect that the party against whom it is directed has no legal standing in court. 10 Details of the statuses of these various cases are based on both personal knowledge of the cases, including interviews with key participants, and material provided on the site accurmudgeon.blogspot.com. They are current as of this writing. Readers should check this blogspot itself for updates subsequent to the time this volume went to press. 11 It should be noted, however, that property law is a state-by-state matter, hence even if the Illinois verdict is sustained on appeal, it would not automatically be extended to the United States as a whole. It could be referenced only in individual cases in individual states. from internal to external pluralism 157 the name “Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina” to identify those churches formerly a part of the removed diocese who still wish to remain a part of the national body—i.e., those who did not separate from the national body—hence implicitly recognizing the right of those congregations who constituted the majority of the churches of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina to continue to use the legal corporate name of the diocese. There are, in addition, other jurisdictions with bishops who hold Angli- can orders that are not part of the Anglican Church in North America. The Anglican Catholic Church, previously mentioned, remains an entity unto itself, though on occasion ACC bishops or clergy will take limited roles at special liturgies sponsored by other Anglican jurisdictions. The Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA [formerly the Anglican Mission in North America]) is a project of the Province of Rwanda along with other African constituencies. It claims at least 109 churches and is decidedly more evangelical in character than either the ACC or ACNA and has come through a di cult period of relationships within its leadership, especially the Rt Rev. Chuck Murphy, one of its earliest bishops in the United States, who also pastors a large congregation at Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. The AMiA claims a particular interest in reaching the unchurched and young people. The Province of Christ the King consists of between 40 and 50 congregations, principally located on the west coast of the United States, with others scattered across the country without clear pattern. The founding bishop, later archbishop, Robert Morse has retired and has been succeeded by James V. Provence. The Province also has one additional bishop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Province stresses traditional liturgy and doctrine and, generally speaking, does not engage with other juristictions of the continuum.

The Ordinariate

Eforts within the Anglican Communion have not been the only vehicles for those of Episcopalian/Anglican persuasions to come to terms with the issues raised by women’s ordination and the acceptance of homosexual unions by the denomination’s leadership. Beginning with a Pastoral Provi- sion issued by Pope John Paul II in 1980, married Anglican priests serving Anglican congregations could, with their congregations, enter the Roman Catholic Church, with the priest eventually ordained as a Roman Catholic priest after a period of study. Initially a relatively small number of Episco- palian/Anglican priests availed themselves of this option. 158 william h. swatos, jr.

Separately from this Provision, an international organization, the Tra- ditional Anglican Communion was formed by a variety of “continuing” groups throughout the world to coordinate responses to various concerns among their constituents. American Archbishop Louis Falk of the Anglican Catholic Church, which eventually merged with the American Episcopal Church to form the Anglican Church in America, became the rst Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion. In 2007 this body petitioned the Roman Catholic Church for full corporate union. The result of this was the Personal Ordinariate, a new structure speci cally designed to accommodate the entry of priests of the Anglican Communion and their congregations into the Roman Catholic Church, and this was codi ed in the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus issued by Pope Benedict XVI in Novem- ber 2009. Beginning in March 2010, the American, Canadian, British, and Australian branches of the TAC all petitioned for ordinariates within their respective countries, and these were granted. The efect of Anglicanorum Coetibus was to allow a much smoother transition for those clergy and laity who wished to move into the Roman Catholic fold to do so. The Pastoral Provisions, in efect, left every Anglican priest and congregation who wished to enter the Roman Catholic Church on its own. It was not entirely clear what would happen if, for example, a priest and only a portion of his congregation wanted to leave the Anglican fold for Rome. What would be, so to speak, the “Golden Number” that would be required from among the congregation? Each Roman Catholic diocesan bishop was also on his own to make determination of any case that came before him. There was no clear structure or set of procedures that could be commonly applied across cases. In the Personal Ordinariate, by contrast, there is a coordinated series of steps whereby any married priest and those laypersons who wish to do so with him have the opportunity to enter the Roman Catholic Church and worship according to a rite that is essentially familiar to them. The system is still not without di culties. For example, if a priest leaves the Episcopal Church along with a half-dozen families from his prior congregation, how will he be paid? Is his wife to be the main breadwinner? Will he be allowed to function generally in the parish to which he is assigned, or is his ministry restricted to former Anglicans? What about an Anglican priest who is unmarried at the time he chooses to enter the Roman Church under the Pas- toral Provisions? Will he be allowed to marry later if he desires, or will he be expected to remain celibate for the remainder of his life? from internal to external pluralism 159

References

Swatos, William H., Jr. 1975. “Monopolism, Pluralism, Acceptance, and Rejection: An Integrated Model for Church-Sect Theory.” Review of Religious Research 16: 174– 185. ———.1976. “Weber or Troeltsch?: Methodology, Syndrome, and the Development of Church-Sect Theory.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 16: 129–142. ———.1979. Into Denominationalism: The Anglican Metamorphosis. Storrs, CT: Soci- ety for the Scienti c Study of Religion. ———.1981. “Beyond Denominationalism? Community and Culture in American Religion.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 20: 217–227. ———.2005. “A Primacy of Systems: Confederation, Corporation, and Communion,” pp. 198–226 in David A. Roozen and James R. Nieman (eds.), Church, Identity, and Change: Theology and Denominational Structures in Unsettled Times. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

chapter nine

PLURALISM AND IMPLICIT RELIGION

Edward Bailey

Something of the moral foundation of the Pluralism that is practiced in everyday life is captured in the following series of interview responses and commentary (Bailey 1997: 51–76, 77–128). Thus, the stimulus (F6) that asked: Is there anything you feel really serious about? received the following trio of representative responses: X: Yes, human relationships. The problem is communication […] It’s the root of all manner of problems […] It gets me very angry. It’s so di cult for the individual to really achieve anything—someone who’s really got ideas, but nds it hard to put them across—the individual is submerged. I saw it in America. Students have to resort to demonstrations in order to make the authorities even begin to listen to them. Y: Every situation in which I nd people who do not treat other people as individual persons, but only as a category, of things. Z: Yes, I feel seriously about discrimination, over race, for instance. I always nd I tend to be on the blacks’ side, every time there’s a fuss over it. And I suppose you’d say I feel seriously about people’s attitudes—I don’t mean their opinions, they’re entitled to those, but their attitudes. Like people saying “they don’t like coloureds,” without being able to say why, […] when you ask them […]. The succeeding Stimulus (A7), and the three Responses that were selected as most representative of them all, were not dissimilar.

Does anything ever “get” you, or move you, or “send” you, whether (a) angry, annoyed, indignant, fed up or (b) pleased, happy, excited, interested? X(a): People being “snobby” […] and people talking loudly. People being ill-man- nered—barging you in the street, or drivers not waiting for you at pedestrian crossings, and so on. X(b): […] Also in everyday life, when suddenly something clicks and a person emergesandsayssomethingtoyouthathemeans,asanequalperson [emphasis added]. Y: Little things please me very much, like someone coming to see me here at home, out of their interest. [emphasis added]. Z: It’s mostly things that happen to the children now—watching their development. And friends. [emphasis added.] 162 edward bailey

Comparable responses were prompted by another, comparable, stimulus (A9):

What do you dislike most about people—when you nd it in them? X: It’s an absence of humility, arrogance, and insensitivity to the opinions of others, […] the refusal to recognise that there’s a grain of truth in other people’s views. [emphasis added.] Y: I hate people to be unnatural—to be bombastic, or have snobbish ideas—that does strain my tolerance. […] [emphasis added.] Z: I dislike […] bad manners, however much thesameistrueofme. […] [emphasis added.] That additional point (which was not infrequently made), had its converse in a reported generational contrast, which could be seen as describing the very essence of pluralism (Response Z to Stimulus A11):

Do you ever feel there’s anything lacking in your life? Z: I wish there was more contact between my parents and myself. I know it’s a common complaint of people of my age. I want to be able to sit down and talk with them, but within two minutes it always becomes an argument between my father and myself. Our views are diferent on everything we discuss— religion, politics, everything—and he can’t stand it. [Emphasis added.] In similar vein: “… I always say, when people criticize other people, ‘We’re only human, there’s got to be something the matter with us’” (C6:X); “They [the children] must be themselves” (C7:Y), “I would not like them to have the tycoon mentality of grasping and pushing” (C7:X); and, “There are so many [useful jobs in the world], and every one hangs upon another—the dustman has one of the most useful” (C8:X). However, perhaps the most revealing sets of Responses, so far as Pluralism is concerned, were in answer to Stimuli E3 and F10 (with which the schedule of stimuli concluded). Thus, in particular:

Is there anything that other people seem to believe in and you wish that they didn’t? X: No, let them believe in what they like—who am I to run their beliefs? You can still put your point of view, though—I often do […].

And nally: Who are you? X: What do you mean by that? I’m just another human being. I get the feeling my own family might miss me. But I’ve lived too quiet a life for anyone else to miss me. Y: Yahweh’s answer: I am that I am. [Cf. C7:Y, “They must be themselves.”] pluralism and implicit religion 163

Z: Will my name do? I’m the wife of so-and-so, the housewife of so-and-so …. I’m a person. But what nationality, even, am I, at the moment? I don’t even know that at the moment. The commentary on these reported interviews speaks of the Self as “the primary, given, reality in the interviewees’ worldview,” and of its evaluation as “both human [i.e. fallible] and sacred,” and describes it as “the basis of a solidarity” (Bailey 1997: 79, 80, 82). This “solidarity” paraphrases, it may be suggested, what current commentators, such as sociologists and politicians (optimistically, perhaps), call “communities,” what Durkheim described as the consequence of “efervescence,” what the Hebrew scrip- tures saw as Spirit (that which joins), and which we are labelling “pluralism.” Thus a paragraph although at that time it was more likely to have been seen as linked to the concept and ideal of “democracy,” which was itself seen as an attempt to institutionalize the virtues of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” may now be ofered as the empirical (albeit subjective) and existential (phenomenological, even) essence of Pluralism: Thus as the Self overcomes its inefability and becomes available for discussion, in a relatively relaxed or “profane” (better, secular) way, through the concept of “human” (i.e. imperfect) “nature,” so it becomes available in a manner more demanding of respect, through the concept of beliefs. The sacredness that is attributed to them is wholly unrelated to any abstract quality of objective truth. It derives entirely from their closeness to the self. They are its property (almost in an Aristotelian sense), chosen and possessed by the individual, and yet obligatory and possessive of him, revelatory of his inner being (and of his judgement upon himself). The negative dimension that unavoidably accompanies such a positive as the sacred, is vividly illustrated in the opening passion of response E3:X: “Is there anything other people seem to believe in, and you wish they didn’t?”: “No, let them believe in what they like—who am I to run their beliefs?” (Bailey 1997: 83 [emphases added].) The close connection between this Implicit (or secular) Religion, and the practice (and now, ideology) of Pluralism, may be illustrated (if only, “for the avoidance of doubt”) by some further reections upon the same interviews. For instance: The conviction of the Self’s existence, and the conceptual space it occupies, in terms of its own sacredness and ideal humanity, and its necessary “gifts,” [have already been] described […] in static and self-contained terms. Into this outline picture must now […] be woven the temporality of the Self, and […] its relationship with other Selves. Respondents were highly conscious of both dimensions, not only because of their theoretical signi cance, but because of the extent of their observed inuence upon them … [emphasis added] 164 edward bailey

Respondents frequently spoke of relationships (that relatively lengthy and abstract word itself was frequently used), and of the pleasure they derived from them. Indeed, their view is [that] “the self comes to life in relationship”—a “life” that … is qualitative in character (cf. John 10:10). Thus, however super cial the public psychology, popular wisdom in the private mode [of introspection and of these interviews] would seem to be close to much traditional thought. This is neatly illustrated by K. Gragg: “Solipsism, for the African view, contradicts what it states. There is no ipse, no man himself, that is solus. One cannot be, without inter-being” [1965: 150]. (Bailey 1997: 85, 88) Pluralism, then, may be seen as one stage in the “re-”discovery (by an insular and cerebral world) of this ancient assumption. However, to continue: The kind of social psychology present in the interviews goes well beyond Hobbes’s struggle of all against all, or Locke’s marriage of mutual convenience. It is, however, social, rather than corporate: each [individual] depends upon others, and each may become “party to” (a limited number of) others; but neither the whole, nor any of its parts, is dependent upon either the individual or the totality, for its existence and identity. The order of the day, according to this widespread [yet] private wisdom, is neither corporatism nor individualism (each of the poles being an imaginary abstraction), but (to coin a word) “societism.” Thus, sociology has come into its own, because it studies, neither society tout simple, nor any particular society as a whole, but an entity of indeterminate boundary, which is yet large enough to comprehend all these particular experienced relationships […]. The heart of the ethical insight which is apparent in the interviews may be expressed as, “An ethic of acknowledging self-hood.” [Emphasis added.] Gorer likewise speaks (1955: 286) of the importance given to “consideration and delicacy for the feelings of other people.” Its seriousness as an ethic can be seen in its use as a criterion for self-judgement (A7: Y and Z). Indeed, the passion and the uency of the evidence for this […] may be seen as evidence of its close connection with the very sacredness of the self …. Closely linked with such an ethic, is an epistemology that underlies it, and therefore much else [also]. This can be expressed, […], as “A working principle of from I to the other.” The principle expresses, and is based on, the belief in the common humanity of every self. Similarly, the ethic of acknowledging self-hood expresses, and is based on, the sense of the self’s sacredness. … Here we have [the] religious companion [to Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum]. It extends the Cartesian cogito beyond the cerebral, and adds to the concern with the individual’s self, an equal concern with the existence of other selves. Thus, cogito, ergo sum becomes Cogito […] ergo omnes sunt (therefore they all are). (Bailey 1997: 89–90) The relevance of the Interview Responses, Report and Commentary is en- hanced, rather than diminished, by the total absence of Pluralism as a pluralism and implicit religion 165 term: it had not yet generally become a part of either academic or public discourse.

Pluralism in a Public House

A second research exercise, as it happens, likewise conducted without ben- e t of this particular expression, indicates the presence of the same kinds of practices and ideals. The context was the life of a public house [pub], in Bris- tol, England. An anecdotal occurrence, and the lessons drawn by a particular “regular” from another anecdotal occurrence, together speak volumes about Pluralism in practice, certainly in Britain, at the time (1970): One of the rst conversations of depth, between the observer and this customer, arose from the behavior of a certain visitor [to the pub]. This [new] customer hailed from Lancashire, but was working temporarily in Bristol, came to the pub daily for a fortnight, and ofended against the mores by both drinking and talking too much. [The regular] found this behaviour so irritating that he transferred himself, complete with his glass and book, round to the other [the “public”] side, until such time as the visitor ceased to visit the lounge [side]. When the visitor (whose anti-Bristolian comments also failed to endear him) transferred himself to the public side (whence the Manager [virtually uniquely, in 400 hours of observation] soon expelled him) the [regular] returned to his accustomed place by the lounge bar. He described to the [research student] barman, by means of an auto- biographical parable, the usual and proper way of introducing yourself to a pub (and possibly any other small community [whether residential, or an interest-group] in England, certainly [but not only] in the recent past). One winter, he said, he had been staying in a Butlin’s chalet [holiday camp] near Maidenhead, and used to go each evening to a pub in the nearest village, which he said was some miles away. He always greeted the locals, who were farmers and labourers, as he entered, but, after ordering his drink, talked only with his wife or the landlord. Eventually there came an evening when the “locals” (i.e. the regulars of the “locale”), being short of a player, asked if he could play “Spoof” (sic): the point being, that “they had seen I could hold my own” [without seeking to dominate others]. By way of contrast, the man from Bury in Lancashire had been constantly buying drinks for other people in this pub, and glibly introducing himself all round [putting them in his “debt,” and so “down”]. It was not hard to envisage the self-efacing reply [probably, that, Yes, he did know the rules] that he would have given the locals near Maidenhead. Indeed, as he claimed he won the game that evening, it is even more certain that he would have disclaimed any skill, beyond the barest familiarity with the rules. But as a consequence, of course, he and the players had become the best of 166 edward bailey

friends, with invitations to him to shoot where he liked, and to call at their farmhouse for lunch any day he was in their vicinity. Again, by way of contrast, he said other visitors “walked into the pub, bought them all drinks [it is di cult to credit this as happening frequently, especially at that time, despite some possible degree of inuence from the nearby capital city], and then were ignored.” The moral lay in the need to “prove yourself,” “to stand your ground,” without trying to open up conversations that were not wanted. (Bailey 1997: 157–158 [emphasis added]) The report on the period of observation in the public house nds that the customers can be typologized by age, or by the type of beer-glass preferred (“handles” or “sleevers”). However, while each of those two “ideal types” relate to more characteristics, and suggests more unity between them, than such stand-by’s as gender, education, income, self-assigned class, and so on, neither is nearly as revealing as a pair that were invented for this context, the second of which might be seen as a precursor of Pluralism. These are the Mono-man, and the poly-people: The diferences in punctuation, and in category, are intended to convey, at the expense of symmetry, the essence of the meaning of each. Thus, the Mono-man is capitalized because it sees itself as normative. It is restricted to a single gender because it regards the whole as included within that part. The description of the Mono-man indicates what the poly-people (the precursors of pluralism) react against: The Mono-man type assumed a single, and therefore normative culture; which can therefore be initially capitalized, as (a High, or indeed the only true) Culture […] This culture should be assimilated by the young; otherwise, “What will the world (as we know it) come to?” It is so assimilated by “the up-and-coming” (meaning, those who are “coming-up”), who “know what’s what” (from the point of view both of reality and of value). “Bringing-up” can therefore take only one form; to be “badly brought-up” is not to be “brought-up badly,” but rather to be not “brought-up” at all. Such training [the image is of fairly straight, and exactly parallel, railway lines] consists of internalising […] manners, dress-sense, language, spelling. (Indeed, “everyone needs disciplin- ing until they’re thirty,” as the visitor [to the pub near Maidenhead], already quoted, said.) As it happens, each one of these four aspects of life was uni-form (the word is itself typical) in this country at least, between (say) the introduction of compulsory elementary education in 1890, and the (highly up-setting) award of the MBE to the Beatles in 1965. Private interviews and public examinations [combined] were, therefore, highly appropriate methods of assessing such assimilation. By way of contrast: pluralism and implicit religion 167

Poly-people, on the other hand, see culture, like personality, as an inevitably variegated phenomenon, in a world that includes more than one nation-state- society, or religion-culture-race. No single culture can therefore be capitalized, for none is normative; with the paradoxical consequence (as in Hin- duism or the Roman Empire) that tolerance becomes de rigeur. Following (signi cantly) the academic anthropological example […], culture becomes a non-normative, generic category, with a plural reference: everybody has their own culture(s), music(s), etc. (Bailey 1997: 164) And, a theorist of implicit religion might add, their own religion(s), implicit and explicit, but to that we will return.

Pluralism as Concept: Contextual Factors

“Placing” an item (of any sort), in some degree in a context, is a useful reminder that nothing drops ab initio and ready-made, out of heaven, so to speak. Conversely, and equally, to “explain,” in some degree, is not to be confused with any sort of explaining away. Weber seems to capture the desired combination, both of the ability to sense a connection and also of an accompanying ability to retain the reality and/or value of that which was thus connected, in his expression “elective a nity”: the coincidence of the items could be utterly contingent, but a degree of causality seems probable—while declining to pronounce whether chicken or egg came rst. So, about the turn of the twentieth century into the twenty- rst century, an “observant participant” in (particularly, sociological) conferences, on each side of the north Atlantic, noticing an increasing number of references to the concept of Pluralism, pondered both the signi cance of this frequency, and the content of the concept. For, while his experience had its undoubted limitations, he was not aware at that time of its attribution to any particular source, or of any commanding analysis of the intended meaning(s). The concept seemed as though it might have been a substitute for, or a successor to, “secularization,” which no longer enjoyed the status it had held in those circles for most of the twentieth century. On the one hand, there was an obvious “return to religion,” at least in the public sphere; or, to be more precise, there was a renewed recognition, in the public sphere in the “West,” of the place of religion in both public and private life around the globe. On the other hand there was a blurring of the division then assumed by academics to exist in most areas of thought and life between the religious and the secular. While students of religion had not yet quite reached the stage of asking themselves what on earth religion could possibly be about, 168 edward bailey if it was not about the secular, at least the boundary was increasingly being seen as permeable, and hence “fuzzy.” Third, this increasing prominence of religion, combined with the increasing recognition of its practical relevance (at least in the lives of others), may well have been two of the many factors behind the gradual, and it would appear virtually invincible, rise to the surface of “spirituality,” as concept, value and practice. “Pluralism” was not only more accurate, but also less value-laden, than “secularity” (or “secularism”) as a term for referring to a world in which religion was still both relatively conspicuous and important, and in which spirituality was everywhere invoked, not least where previously it had been unexpected: in sales, sport and sex, for instance (receiving even Dawkins’s imprimatur!). Sometimes, though, it carried its own hint of a value system—and one that was positive, to boot. For there seemed to be some kind of assumption, not only that the societies in which these conferences were being held, in North America and in Europe, were unusually or even uniquely pluralistic, but also that this was somehow to their credit. One was put in mind of Ninian Smart’s (1968) enquiry: now that the West had lost its Empires, did it see its secularism as another way of claiming a new hegemony, based on historical priority? However, if those were the underlying assumptions, might it not be the case that the nation-state-societies bordering the North Atlantic might not themselves be the laggards—or be in danger of imitating the man who discovered he been speaking in prose all his life? So far as history was concerned, could any of them match the diversity of the Silk Road, or eighth-century Baghdad, or any major medieval city with its “quarters”? So far as the contemporary world was concerned, could they equal the sight of a Jain monk (wearing a face-mask, to avoid harming a germ or a y), walking past a Muslim butcher’s stall, in the bazaar in Bangalore, the IT capital of a Hindu society? Or (as in a 1961 photograph, taken at Srinagar airport), porters from (Buddhist) Ladakh, loading a (secular) Indian Airlines plane, with the luggage of Muslims going on Hajj to Mecca? Or, applying un peu d’ethnographie to (probably) any of the sixteen thousand Church of England parishes into which the country is divided, the daily experience of any Anglican minister, during an afternoon’s traditional home visiting, of millionaires and paupers? Indeed it is noteworthy to have so many foreign-born citizens in Toronto or London or Sydney, to have more Jews in New York than in Jerusalem, or to have 59 mother-tongues at a school in Oxford—as it was to have more scientists alive in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries pluralism and implicit religion 169 combined. But such claims to excessively “exceptional” status also need to bear in mind the contemporary rural immigration into Chinese cities (and Stalin’s all-too-numerous, total ethnic removals), or the size of New York’s population compared to Israel’s, or that 59 rst-languages is relatively un- remarkable (some UK schools have a hundred), or that there were also more martyrs, as well as scientists, in the twentieth century (however either “martyrs” or “scientists” is de ned). More signi cant perhaps than these numbers games (with their compet- itive moral edge: “We are more varied than thou”), is the existential content of this, apparently prized, Pluralism. The term could legitimately be applied to a contiguous collection of “silos” (in management jargon), while “diversity” could be used to describe a bird’s eye view of a gaggle of ghettoes. In this sense, the Hindu caste system, the former South African system of racial Apartheid, the English class system, old-style segregation in the US, the continuing grudging “tolerance” of “gypsies” throughout Europe, “reserves” for First Nations throughout the Americas, Australasia, India and elsewhere, all occur in societies that are “pluralistic,” in that they are composed of diverse components. But, as an ideal (and it is an ideal, as the consideration of its motivation has demonstrated), Pluralism proper strives for Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity, for a Democracy of the spirit as well as the letter, for communication, and hence a sense of comm-unity. This, however, involves emotions, and is an emotive issue, which has made it a political issue—not only in all the countries just mentioned, but also in many more (perhaps all). If all, not just the underdog, venture out of their ghettos and enter into relationship with the Other(s), change follows: Do we seek assimilation (in whatever direction), resulting in homogeniza- tion, or reciprocity of inuence and inspiration—whether or not that also results in homogeneity? Politically, the question pits the poly-people against the Mono-man (which gives the observer, however dedicated to “objectiv- ity,” a certain frisson: sociology morphs into advocacy). No doubt this political dimension is also one of the reasons for the growing popularity of Pluralism in our supermarket trolley of sociological concepts. It is, however, more efect than cause. The driving force is the previously mentioned moral imperative, universalized now through modern media of communication, as well as ever (as Weber pointed out) through trade. For trade and (what is now usually called) religion, were “glocal” (both local and global), hence already plural, in the days of “the beaker people” (1800bce). 170 edward bailey

Pluralism as Implicit Religion

Two experiences lay behind the conceptualization of “implicit religion” at the end of the 1960s. The rst was the realization that the “religious” was not necessarily epiphenomonal, through engagement with the actual congregation of an ordinary local church: some of its members could not have been understood, especially as they operated below the level of consciousness, unless their religion was taken into account (regardless either of its own truth or of its efect[s] upon them or more generally). The second cause was the realization, through engagement with the staf at a boarding school, that neither could they be properly understood (from the inside, so to speak) if their beliefs, practices and solidarities (both conscious and unconscious) were not likewise taken into account. To suggest otherwise (as some did, in those days) was to dismiss them, in efect, as “nonpersons.” Academic propriety in the 1970s still insisted upon the absolute necessity of a de nition for key terms (although the application of the rule appeared somewhat arbitrary). In this case, however, the student, confessing that he was unable to select a single one of his three candidates, included three de nitions (and even listed a possible fourth), which, in the event, was not questioned. Still unable to select one and jettison the others, the status quo has since been defended (Bailey 2010) on the grounds that, while pure concepts can and should be de ned (“4,” as twice “2,” for instance), other realities can only be described. Thus, while the concept of a room may (perhaps) be de ned, the room in which I sit at this moment can only be described—and requires describing in multiple ways (geometrically, arith- metically, historically, architecturally, environmentally, socially, economically, aesthetically, and so on, even before we start to examine the physics and chemistry involved in its physical structure, paintwork, furnishing, heat- ing, etc.). In hindsight, therefore, the di culty in selecting a single form of words might be attributed to the very reality of that to which the concept pointed, rather than to any degree of uncertainty as to what it “meant.” The three de nitions that were ofered then, have remained (it has to be confessed, a little disturbingly) unchanged. They are: commitment(s), or integrating foci, or intensive concerns with extensive efects. (This third one was based upon F.B. Welbourn’s de nition [1960] of religion per se.) Brevity being a virtue in a de nition (so the reader/listener can easily insert it into the text in lieu of that which it de nes), a little elaboration becomes all the more useful. Commitment(s) describes (in the singular form) the sine qua non of any phenomenon, for it to be legitimately described as “religious,” as distin- pluralism and implicit religion 171 guished from the aesthetic, social, moral, and so on. The inclusion of its plural, however, allows that, empirically, commitment, in intention and in practice, is usually multiple. It is, indeed, this multiplicity of commitments (to the public good or private gain, to nation or family, etc.) that is the stuf of history, drama, ethics and so on. This “de nition” also has the merit, however, of spanning all the levels of consciousness: in particular, both the student’s self-conscious “decision for Christ” (or the martyr’s confession of faith, under torture), and the elderly peasant who, having imbibed his religion with his mother’s milk, upon being asked what he “does” when he prays, responds, somewhat puzzled, “Well, He looks at me, and I look at Him.” Hopefully, indeed, it spans the whole gamut from Pettazzoni’s and Jung’s “palaeolithic” “archetypes,” to Otto’s and Hardy’s “numinous,” and (to coin a word) “surconscious” transcendent experiences. Integrating foci likewise posits a multiplicity of points of commitment, but in this case the picture is horizontal rather than vertical. It is of the varying social breadth of human life, rather than the various levels of (sub-, un-, self-, or “sur-”) consciousness. Thus the foci or “nodal points” (Robertson and Campbell 1971) may integrate the inner life of the individual, or the lives of two individuals or team, or of a larger group, such as a profession or class or nation, or indeed of the species, universe or cosmos. Intensive concerns with extensive efects gives equal balance to both the focal points and to the hinterland being integrated. Thus it declines to call “religious” the occasional acclamation of a football team (or of a preacher), however passionate it may be, unless it epitomizes and/or afects personal or social life outside that hour of exposure. In this it is in keeping with at least the canonical Jewish and Christian understanding of worship, devotion, delity, etc., and with the Vatican criteria for canonization, and of course the popular (if not yet academic) understanding of “religion” (in Britain certainly, but probably also elsewhere). It also echoes the medieval understanding of the Latin religio (which is far more likely to be reected in contemporary English than the classical usage beloved of the Enlightenment). For in the Middle Ages “the religious” were monastics: initially mostly Bendedictine, but later extended to Cister- cian, for instance, and then to Franciscan, and so. It meant those whose “rule of life” (regula) was to make their “profession” (professio) “habitual” (habi- tus). Hence such common (British) English sayings as, “I read the papers religiously,” or “She goes to Church every Sunday, but it’s her family that’s her real religion.” In other words, what goes on in local churches is like religion, insofar as it is symptomatic of a commitment akin to that of a monas- tic. The application of the ideal-type has been thus further extended (in 172 edward bailey keeping with the historical development of new expressions of it), because of the intuition of similarity in their (all important) inner meaning. This usage of the term is obviously very close to Luckmann’s (1967) “invisible religion,” which replaces the tongue with the eye. It is also close to Bellah’s (1967) “civil religion” (although his great essay was actually con ned to the consideration of “civic theology” [cf. Bailey 1983]), but without the restriction to the social/societal. (Phillip Hammond found the wider meaning extremely attractive.) Conversely, however, experience suggests that a caveat, or two or three, should also be included in this elaboration. The rst caveat must be the clari cation that Implicit Religion is not intended to refer to any implicit Christianity, Hinduism etc. It is seen as standing, if not “alone,” then in its own “right” (as people do, not least in pluralism). Inspection may, of course, suggest parallels with a recognized religious system, or even the inuence of a canonical tradition, but such conclusions are dependent upon the facts of the case, not assumed in the conceptualization; and the inuence may be in either direction, so that people’s implicit religion (inherent convictions) may (and usually do) determine the selection made from a Great Tradition. Second, there is no assumption that any implicit religion(s) found, are necessarily “a good (or bad) thing”–any more than explicit religion(s) may be, simply by dint of their description as religion(s). Religion is seen, puta- tively, as simply one of the dimensions of human life, akin to physicality (and spirituality), or gender (and sexuality). Of course the “uses” of, or expression given to, these dimensions are available for critique; but the dimensions’ existence, as Thomas Carlyle said of the lady who claimed to accept the universe–“Gad! She’d better!”–were already there, before being worked upon. Third, while the concept of Implicit Religion indicates that “any thing may become a vehicle of (what we call) religion” (an anthropological com- monplace), this is a million miles away from saying that “every thing is religious” (which might be compared with the equally odd suggestion that everything is secular). How such slippage can occur may itself be a subject for further study (by a psychiatrically-oriented sociologist, perhaps, and may itself beg for interpretation as some sort of implicit cosmology, anthropology, morality, or religion). pluralism and implicit religion 173

Advantages of an “Implicit Religious” Understanding of Pluralism

Once upon a time, some seem to have interpreted the decrees of the Early Church’s ecumenical councils simply as the fruit of the work of the Divine Spirit. (In fairness, they probably saw the Holy Spirit as having worked upon and therefore through the Councils’ episcopal members.) Any who took that peculiarly detached (and un-Incarnational) view were no doubt surprised when it was suggested that the Decrees also owed something to political motives and psychological processes. Most have long since accepted that neither the religious-theological-divine, nor the secular-scienti c-human, necessarily excludes the other: both-and is at least as likely to be the case, as either/or. The “Implicit Religion” hypothesis can be seen as taking a similar (not identical: the spiritual-divine-theological are, strictly speaking, adjectival, and lack the initial capital letter) approach to the empirical, in this case to the facts and theories that are labelled as Pluralism. The “religious” (in this case, “secular-religious”) does not replace the simply “secular” understanding of psychology, politics, etc: It is simply another string in the violin, waiting to be played upon, to produce a more rounded and mature sym- phony of understanding. One advantage of using this “religious” string is the considerable number of further issues and lines of inquiry that it encourages. For instance (and they have not been followed up in this piece, but could be, in sustained research): To what extent is Pluralism a creed, an ontology, and/or an ethic? Are rituals involved in its practice, or espousal? What are the characteristics—and what is the actual character—of its solidary base? Is it an alliance or party or communion? Is there a canon, whether literary or oral? Does it ever excommunicate any individual, group or practice? What does it stand for? Hope for? Look for? What can it not speak about? Is that because it is too sacred, or too abominable, to be mentioned? And so on. The secular (or so the implicit religion hypothesis wishes to suggest) is far too signi cant, worthy and venerable to be interpreted simply as a secular phenomenon or through secular approaches, alone. Whether or not it has divine implications, it does have religious import. On those grounds, it should be appraised by every method available. 174 edward bailey

References

Bailey, Edward I. 1983. “Civil Religion in Britain.” In Religion des Burgers: Zivilreligion in Amerika, and Europ, edited by H. Kleger and A. Müller-Herold. Munich: Kaiser. ———.1997. Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society. Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos. ———.2010. “Implicit Religion: Journal of the C.S.I.R.C.S.” Religion 40: 271–278. Cragg, Kenneth. 1965. Counsels in Contemporary Islam. London: European Universi- ties Press. Gorer, Geofrey. 1955. Exploring English Character. London: Crescent. Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The Invisible Religion. New York: Macmillan. Robertson, Roland and Colin Campbell. 1972. “Religion in Britain: The Need for New Research Categories.” Social Compass 19: 2. Smart, Ninian. 1968. Secular Language and the Logic of Religion. London: Macmillan. Welbourn, F.B. 1960. “Towards a De nition of Religion.” The Makerere Journal 4. chapter ten

THE FIELD OF RELIGIONS IN NORWEGIAN PLURALIST SOCIETY

Niels Reeh

In societies that have embraced religious pluralism and as a consequence have become religiously diverse, the state has opened a space in which religions can operate more freely than in countries exercising a religious monopoly.1 As a consequence of this liberalization of the religious space, religions in pluralist societies seem to have increased their potential for change and adaptation. In pluralist societies, religion is not only to be found in traditional religious bodies. As James Beckford (2003) has aptly put it, religions are free-oating phenomena, which are able to change. As a consequence of the mutability and adaptability of religion, the question of how to map the religious eld is not unimportant for the study of religion in pluralist and diverse societies. The freedom of religion, or the pluralist strategy of modern states, has given rise to a range of phenomena, as for instance some strands of spirituality and newly organized humanism and atheism, both of which in many ways “behave” and function like religions, while at the same time denying that they are a religion. Whereas spirituality has been discussed within the sociology of religion for some years (Giordan and Pace 2012), humanism has only recently become an area of sociological attention (Bullivant and Lee 2012, Lanman 2012, Lee 2012). The existence of these phenomena poses an interesting challenge to the sociology of religion, namely whether or not they should be counted as religions, and subsequently as part of the religious landscape. The suggestion put forward here is that these non-religious movements and organizations be regarded as what Jan Assmann (1997) has called “counter- religions.” The term counter-religions is thus proposed as a sub-type of non- religion (Lee 2012). The reason for this choice of terminology is that I wish to stress the fact that counter-religions de ne themselves as a negation of religion, are engaged in dynamic processes with religion, and serve as a

1 I thus use the term pluralism as an o cial regime policy and diversity as the outcome of this policy (see Beckford 2010). 176 niels reeh functional equivalent to traditional religious organization. Consequently the argument of this chapter is that counter-religions should be regarded as participants in the eld of religions and included in a mapping thereof. This chapter is thus primarily concerned with what Karel Dobbelaere (2002) called religion on the meso-level. The question of how to de ne and map religion as well as counter- religions remains, or perhaps the above-mentioned mutability of religion sharpens the question of how the academic study of religion is to deal with these phenomena that have arisen in religiously pluralist and diverse societies, including those that explicitly deny being a religion. In many ways, the simple question of what should count as a religion and a counter-religion is perhaps more pressing than ever. Borrowing the term survival unit from Norbert Elias, this chapter will make the basic suggestion that religions can be understood and analyzed as religious survival units that de ne and delimit themselves by reference to the signi cant other religions in their environment. Basically, then, religions can be regarded as part of a eld consisting of other religions. This eld is a relational eld (Bourdieu 1984, 1990). The actors in the eld of religions are not individual persons, as in the work of Bourdieu (1989), but collective entities. This is not to imply that religions are without an internal eld consisting of individual persons; here the important step, however, is to bring the eld, or the relations between the religions as collective units, into the analytical framework. Such an analysis requires an explicit notion of religion including a more or less rm boundary vis-à-vis other religions. The- oretically this is not an easy task, primarily because the academic study of religion, as well as other social and cultural studies, has witnessed a decon- struction of its analytical categories (Asad 1993, Stuckrad 2003). In order to establish a relational category of religion, including counter-religions, I have followed in the steps of the American philosopher John Searle and the German sociologist Norbert Elias. Searle (1995) argues that collective intentionality and collective consciousness are not reducible to the sum of the consciousness of the individuals. Elias (1978, 2008) also argues that an important aspect of his survival unit is that it carries with it what he calls an extended I-We consciousness. Further, I will suggest that the socially constructed We is conceived in a relation to signi cant others or in what Bourdieu calls a “ eld.” By doing so I posit that religions in pluralist societies can be treated as religious survival units in a eld of religions (Reeh 2012). These religious survival units may resemble Benedict Anderson’s Imag- ined Communities (2006), but unlike Anderson, I would argue that they are the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 177 not constructions that spring from the community itself. I suggest, rather, that the self-de nition of the collective construction is a negation of the signi cant other. The relation between diferent collective constructions or religious survival units should be an integral part of the analysis. Reli- gions should be regarded as religious survival units that relate to at least one signi cant other. Viewed in this light the world history of religions and counter-religions becomes an open-ended dialectical process in which the collective constructive religious and counter-religious units struggle for survival, hence to uphold their version of the truth as plausible vis-à-vis the other competing collective constructions. The claim made here, therefore, is that the sociology of religion should pay attention to the dynamic between religions and counter-religions. This is perhaps even more pressing in the case of a religiously pluralistic society, where the state has opened up a space in which religions can operate as long as they remain within the limits of the penal code. The establishment of religious freedom or religious pluralism has gradually led to greater religious diversity in such societies. Previ- ously religion could easily be located in the churches to which the state had given a monopoly. In the Norwegian case, the state has expanded the eld of o cially recognized and o cially supported religions to include what are called Life Stance organizations. This fact suggests further that the ability of religions to change is quite unrestrained in a pluralist religious society, or a society with religious freedom, because the state has opened up a wider space in which they may operate than, for instance, in societies with less religious freedom. In this sense, pluralism and diversity are the outcome of how the state regulates its society with regard to religion.

On the Interrelatedness of ‘Classic’ Religions

A key argument for the present approach is that if one takes a look at the world history of religions, it seems clear that each religion relates to at least one other (Reeh 2012). For instance, the texts of the Old Testament relate to the religions of the Canaanites, the Babylonians, the Egyptians and others, the texts of the New Testament relate to the Pharisaic Jews and the Heathen, the Qur"an relates to the Jews, Christians, Zarathustrians and In dels, the Book of Mormon relates to Christianity, and so on. The same interrelatedness seems to be found among Chinese religions, which are similarly engaged in interreligious exchanges (Chen 2012). I will also attempt to show that this interrelatedness is to be found in modern religiously pluralist and diverse societies. It should further be stressed that 178 niels reeh divisions and boundaries are constructed not only between religions, but also within what is often considered a single religion. In the history of Christianity one can thus observe that Christians have struggled over how to de ne the true creed. This has been attempted not only by stating what true Christianity is, but also by implicitly or explicitly stating what it is not. In the Confessio Augustana, which was to become one of the de ning documents of Lutheran Protestantism, the Protestant side of the conict thus related itself both to the external enemy (the Turk) and the Catholic. But the document mentions many more “signi cant others.” For instance, the rst article of faith reads: They [Our Churches] condemn all heresies which have sprung up against this article, as the Manichaeans, who assumed two principles, one Good and the other Evil—also the Valentinians, Arians, Eunomians, Mohammedans, and all such. They condemn also the Samostenes, old and new, who, contending that there is but one Person, sophistically and impiously argue that the Word and the Holy Ghost are not distinct Persons, but that “Word” signi es a spoken word, and “Spirit” signi es motion created in things. (Melanchthon 2011) The signi cant point in this context is the fact that the Protestant articles of faith end by condemning signi cant other theological positions from Manicheans to Mohammedans. This important religious text exempli es the fact that religious discourse relates to the religious positions of the religious signi cant other(s). These examples show that these religions have created an “us” versus a “them” through the so-called Mosaic Distinction (Assmann 1997). The process can be observed within religions as well, as can be seen by the fact that the Shi"ite Shahada or confession of faith has added “And Ali is the Friend of God,” by which the Shia Muslims distinguish themselves from the Sunni (Campo 2009: 242). Such intertextuality as can be found in religious texts may of course be dismissed as secondary, but I would counter that it is a crucial, yet overlooked, aspect of religious life, and that it is also a crucial reason why states have sought to control and regulate religion throughout history. Even though modern states have sought to prevent religious strife by regulating the relations between them, for instance by the prohibition of blasphemy, this does not mean that religions and counter- religions in a pluralist society no longer relate to each other. Rather, it shows that modern states have been relatively successful in regulating and managing the eld of religions and the relations between them, as can be seen in the Norwegian example below. the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 179

The Humanist Association in the Field of Religions in Norway

In Norway 3,851,145 people or 77% of the population were members of the Norwegian Church in 2011. In 2012, 10.2% of the population were members of other o cially recognized and nancially supported religious and life stance communities. Norway is particularly interesting from the point of view set out here in that it has recognized and supported not only religious communities outside the Church of Norway, but since 1981 also the so-called life stance communities.2 The largest of these is The Norwegian Humanist Association, which had 83,100 members in January 2012 or 1.6% of the population.3 Even though the Humanists in Norway may be regarded as insigni cant in the larger picture, their existence and o cial recognition as part of the Norwegian religious landscape pose an interesting question, namely whether or not they should be included in a mapping of the religious landscape. Further, this question is not limited to the Humanists, but can be extended to atheist associations as well as other communities, in several pluralistic societies, that also refuse to be categorized as religions, while establishing organizations, “churches,” and rituals. The Norwegian Humanist Association was established in 1956 by Kristian Horn, who wanted to bring together adherents of the ethical worldview Horn called “Human-Etik.” One of the principal activities of the Norwegian Humanist Association is to provide its members with Humanist rituals for name giving, con rmation, weddings, and funerals. Other prominent issues have been to criticize the tie between the Norwegian state and the Norwegian Church, as well as the teaching of religion in public schools. A group of parents with children in the Norwegian public school system who were members of the Humanist Association complained to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In both cases the Norwegian state lost the case and as a consequence changed the curriculum of its teaching of religion in 2008. In 1976, the movement had 1,500 members, but after the former Pentecostalist Levi Fragell joined the leadership, the organization has been streamlined and experienced substantial growth, so that it has now increased to around 83,000 members over 15 years.

2 http://www.lovdata.no/all/nl-19810612-064.html (available on 21.02.2013). The present day legislation can be seen at: http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/kud/dok/nouer/2013/nou -2013-1/31.html?id=711573. 3 http://www.ssb.no/trosamf/ (available on 21.02.2013). 180 niels reeh

That the Norwegian Humanist Association is engaged in the Norwegian eld of religions can be supported, rst, by the fact that they are recognized by the state alongside other religious communities. In a sense one can say that the Norwegian state treats religions and life stance communities as de facto entities of the same order, to be supported nancially on equal terms. A second argument for regarding the Norwegian Humanist Association as part of the eld of religions is that it participates in that eld by negation. For instance the Association has an explicit purpose which on the one hand is “To ensure that everyone will be able to choose humanist ceremonies” and on the other hand is to distinguish itself explicitly from identi cation as a religion: “Humanism is devoid of religious conceptions.”4 Third, the Humanist Association of Norway provides rituals and ceremonies for the major events of life that mirror the rituals of the dominant religion in Norway, namely the Norwegian Church. It is thus not a mirror- ing of, for instance, Muslim or Buddhist ritual. In the light of this, I suggest that these rituals can only be construed as directed against the “signi cant other” of the Humanist Association, namely the Norwegian Church. The same conclusion is also supported by the fact that the website of the Norwe- gian Humanist Association has a printable withdrawal form to enable users to leave the Norwegian Church.5

The Dynamic in the Field of Religions

In March 2011, the Norwegian Humanist Association initiated a Facebook and Twitter campaign Noonelikestobecheated.6 This campaign was directed against what they saw as fraud and quackery. The campaign, however, also provoked a response from another life stance organization, namely the Holistic Federation of Norway, which has organized itself into an association that relates itself to a religious expression that it de nes as non-dogmatic. This seems to hint at a self-de nition in which the (dogmatic) Norwegian Church is one of the signi cant others.

4 http://www.human.no/Servicemeny/English/ available on 27.04.2012. 5 http://www.human.no/Om-oss/Medlemskap/Utmelding-av-Den-norske-kirke/ available on 29.01.2013. 6 http://www.human.no/Aktuelt/Kampanjen-Ingen-liker-a-bli-lurt/ available on 21.02. 2013. the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 181

The Holistic Federation of Norway diferentiates between spirituality and religion and represents a non-dogmatic approach to spirituality. The Holistic Federation of Norway promotes cooperation between alternative and ordinary healthcare, sustainable commerce and economics and ecological and global awareness. The Holistic Federation of Norway promotes the creation of new ceremonies and rituals.7 The Holistic Federation of Norway seeks to avoid being labeled a religion because religion for them is a polemical concept against which they de ne themselves. Religion can therefore be regarded as the signi cant other of holistic spirituality. A similar claim of being spiritual without being religious can be found in the evolution of so-called Dark Green Religion or Nature Spirituality to which Bron Taylor (2010) has called attention. The academic problem of de ning spirituality may thus lie precisely in the fact that the attempts at a consistent de nition have not taken the distinction between spirituality and traditional religion as a point of departure, but have attempted to de ne it as a self-consistent entity (Heelas 2005, Aupers and Houtman 2006). The Humanists de ne themselves as “a life stance in which the understanding of reality and ethics is based on reason and experience, rational and critical thinking, feelings and human compassion.”8 Whereas the Humanists claim not to believe in anything, the Holistic Federation may be said to have turned this claim on its head by seemingly believing in anything so long as it has a perspective that includes the whole. To return to the campaign No one likes to be cheated: the Holistic Federa- tion, in October 2011, published three reactions in their magazine TheHolist.9 They have replaced their former main opponent, the church, which believed that healing was possible 2000 years ago, to attack people who believe that healing is possible in our time. The Humanist Association now appears almost as sectarian in their eagerness to save the so-called ignorant people for the true faith. The Holistic Association is puzzled as to why our Belief is perceived as so threatening that it is necessary to mount a campaign against those who believe in alternative therapies …10

7 http://www.holisme.no/node/61/ available on 27.04.2012. 8 http://www.human.no/Servicemeny/English/ available on 27.04.2012. 9 http://holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%202%20oktober%202011%20redusert %20 lstørrelse.pdf. 10 http://holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%202%20oktober%202011%20redusert %20 lstørrelse.pdf. 182 niels reeh

The Holistic Federation here perceive themselves as the opponents of the Humanists, who further are regarded as sectarian true believers. In addition, the Humanists were labelled as fundamentalists, dogmatists and fanatics who attack all other positions except their own.11 Following the initial reactions in 2011, the Holistic Federation wrote in 2012 to the Ministry of Health and Care Services, the Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church Afairs and the Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion. The letter began in the following way: “This letter is motivated by this, that we in the Holistic Federation would like have the right to use an alternative medicine protected as a part of our life stance and our freedom of belief, because the Humanist Association has for a long time campaigned against many of our members and central parts of our life stance.”12 The letter goes on to complain about the Humanists’ campaign, calling it a life stance assault and claiming that it is directed not only against spirituality as such but also against a central pillar in modern democracy, namely the freedom of belief.13 The letter asks for protection from the Humanists’ campaign, and concludes by stating that hopefully it would be “equal worth, dialogue, human rights, personal freedom (which is not at the expense of others), mutual respect, and cooperation that would be the common goal and would lead into a more harmonious future.”14 A signi cant point is also the mention of the word Human Rights. This was underlined by the fact that the preamble to the letter in The Holist claimed that the practice of a Holistic life stance was a human right, indicating that the Humanist campaign should be disallowed because the “freedom of life stance” was violated.15 What is also noteworthy is the social construction of the “we” of the Holistic Federation that is posited here against the Humanist Association. In their turn, the Humanists (as well as the Ministry of Health and Care Services) regarded the letter from the Holistic Federa- tion as an attempt to silence the Humanists and deny them their freedom

11 http://holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%202%20oktober%202011%20redusert %20 lstørrelse.pdf. 12 http://www.holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%201%202012%20redusert%20 lstørrelse.pdf. 13 http://www.holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%201%202012%20redusert%20 lstørrelse.pdf. 14 http://www.holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%201%202012%20redusert%20 lstørrelse.pdf. 15 http://www.holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%201%202012%20redusert%20 lstørrelse.pdf. the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 183 of speech.16 The Holistic Federation countered that their intent was not to deny the Humanists their freedom of speech and regretted that they had not raised the issue directly with them in The Council for Religious and Life Stance Communities.17 According to Humanist Even Gren, the campaign was a success from the point of view of the Humanists, in that they received support not only from their own members but also from non-members, including members of the Norwegian spiritualistic milieu.18 It should also be noted that this construction of the Holistic “we” in opposition to the Humanist “them” is structurally similar to the Evangelical-Lutheran “we” in the ConfessioAugustana quoted above, which was constructed in opposition to their signi cant others named in the extract.

Religious Survival Units

As mentioned in the introduction, a basic proposition of this chapter is that religions as well as counter-religions should be looked upon as collective units in a eld, or as religious and counter-religious survival units. The term survival unit has been borrowed from the German sociologist Norbert Elias, who used it as an analytical framework for the state. According to him [T]he primary function of such an alliance (the state/survival unit) is either physically to wipe out other people or to protect its own members from being physically wiped out. Since the potential of such units for attack is inseparable from their potential for defence, they may be called “attack-and- defence units” or “survival units.” At the present stage of social development they take the form of nation-states. In the future they may be amalgamations of several former nation-states. In the past they were represented by city- states or the inhabitants of a stronghold. Size and structure vary: the function remains the same. (1978: 138–139) Formulated thus, the survival unit is an endogenous entity. It does not exist in isolation from its signi cant others. It should thus be thought of as an entity that is deeply dependent on or conditioned by its relations to the other signi cant units, and should therefore always be analyzed as a unit in a relation to other units. A further notable point in Elias’ thinking is that the survival unit creates, or attempts to create, a bond between its members

16 Even Gran in the Norwegian Humanist Associations magazine. http://fritanke.no/index .php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=8866. 17 http://fritanke.no/index.php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=8869. 18 http://fritanke.no/index.php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=8866. 184 niels reeh through what he calls the “I-and-We” consciousness: a bond between the individual and the unit through a social construction of a collective “We” that is not reducible to the sum of the individual “I’s” (Elias 1991: 155f.). This “We” consciousness can be seen as a return to Emile Durkheim’s notion of collective consciousness, which Durkheim himself (1933), and the sociological tradition after him, abandoned. In the following, it will be suggested that such construction of a collective “We” is not con ned to states, but can also be found in religions as well as counter-religions. In support of this claim, it should be mentioned that the American philosopher John Searle, independently of Elias, argued in favor of bringing the notion of collective consciousness back into the study of Man’s social life. According to Searle, the collective intentionality or consciousness is not reducible to the consciousness or intentionality of two or more individuals: What is the relation between singular and collective intentionality, for example, the facts described by “I intend” and “We intend”? Most eforts I have seen to answer this question try to reduce “We intentionality” to “I intentionality” plus something else, usually mutually held beliefs. The idea is that if we intend to do something together, then that consists in the fact that I intend to do it in the belief that you also intend to do it; and you intend to do it in the belief that I also intend to do it .… (1995: 24–26) Although Norbert Elias developed his theory of the survival unit as an analytical framework with which to study the state and not religions, I would suggest that religions can also be regarded as survival units that exist in a eld of other religious survival units. Indeed, the construction of such a “We” is a critical element in religious life. Religions inevitably bring with them distinctions between an Us and a Them.

The Construction of Diference

On the webpage of the Holistic Society there are many statements which de ne what the Holistic Society stands for: the “We” of the Holistic Society. Here only a few examples will be mentioned: We see religion as a system of beliefs con ned by the frames of dogmas and doctrines, while spirituality is unconstrained by these .… Our key message is that there exists a spiritual dimension that can be experienced by human consciousness, and that we can improve our understanding of this spiritual reality .… We believe that political and economic structures should be based on holistic thinking with love and respect for all life .… We therefore believe that conicts should be solved through dialogue and peaceful means, and that respect for all life supersedes desire for pro t, greed, and hunger for power .… the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 185

We promote complete acceptance for alternative treatments and medicine, and a holistic focus on the human as a whole.19 The website thus de nes the Holistic “We.” In addition it also sets up explicit distinctions between the Holists and, for instance, Humanists and the Nor- wegian Church. In an interview with Tor Aleksandersen, who was instru- mental in the Holists’ obtaining authority to marry and was responsible for the rst Holistic funeral and wedding, the interviewer asked the following question: “What distinguishes holistic rituals from the rituals of the Church and of the Humanists?”20 He replied that The most important diference is that The Holistic Society’s rituals are created in collaboration with those who want the ritual. A premise for the ritual work in The Holistic Society is that everybody knows their needs and how they want them expressed at life’s transitions.21 The fact that The Holist’s interviewer mentions the Church and the Human- ists aligns the Holistic rituals against the practices of those two movements and strongly suggests that they are considered as signi cant competitors. In addition, it can be seen that The Holist considers its approach superior to these others in that members collaborate in the design of their own rituals. With regard to these three contestants in the Norwegian eld of religions and life stances, one can say that the Church believes in Christ, God, etc., the Humanists believe in nothing, and the Holists believe in everything. The important point here is that these systems of belief construct diferences vis-à-vis the signi cant other, and that this construction of diference takes place with regard to truth as well as rituals and other areas. It follows that the set of relations between the religions and life stances comprise a eld, because it seems undeniable that religions and life stances relate to each other. Following this premise, the eld of religions can be viewed as a eld in Bourdieu’s sense of the word (1989: 7f.). But in contrast to his analysis, this eld consists of collective agents (religions) and not individuals. As we have seen the struggle can be observed in the Norwegian case where the Humanistic Association and the Holistic Federation crossed swords. In line with Bourdieu, I will suggest that the religious survival units struggle over “something.” In the case of religions, this something is,

19 http://www.holisme.no/node/61. 20 http://holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%202%20oktober%202011%20redusert %20 lstørrelse.pdf. 21 http://holisme.no/sites/default/ les/Holisten%202%20oktober%202011%20redusert %20 lstørrelse.pdf. 186 niels reeh however, not a kind capital as in the works of Bourdieu. The notion of capital is misleading in the case of the eld of religious survival units, since it would attribute an objective value to what they are contesting (Bourdieu 1990). Instead, I would suggest that religious survival units struggle to uphold their subjective truth claims vis-à-vis the others. These truth claims are subjective and not an objective category in Bourdieu’s sense of subjective and objective. There is thus no way of counting the score as in a game between religions. In addition to the eld of religions, there is an internal eld within each religion. It is this internal eld that corresponds to what Bourdieu called the religious eld: but it is a eld that will not concern us at this point, since the principal task at hand is to establish a theory that can handle the relations among the collective constructions that we call religions. The reason for departing from the collective religious eld is that if a collective group participates in a eld they are part of it, and should be studied as such. I simply suggest that we observe which collective agents do in fact participate in the struggle in the eld of religions. In so doing, our notion of religion will not be delimited by the cultural consensus as to what a religion is and what it is not (Reeh 2012). Instead our notion of religion should embrace those collective agents that relate to other religions, some of which we already know as religions and some of which we may not regard as religion. If we follow this procedure, our academic notion of religion will retain a link to the common sense and culturally accepted notion of religion, but at the same time will enable us to establish a notion of religion that is subject to the discursive processes of the dominant religious discourse.

A Relational Approach to the Study of Religions and Counter-Religions

It is however not enough to say that religions, including counter-religions, relate to other religions. In what follows I will attempt a de nition that should cover the religious eld in which all the religions play out their struggle for survival.22 Since Humanists as well as other life-stance groupings do not believe in God, the sacred or anything transcendent, the notions of God, the sacred and the transcendent cannot be used to describe the religious eld. Their presence would exclude the counter-religions. Instead, I would

22 For a more expanded theoretical treatment, see Reeh 2012. the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 187 suggest that the struggle is over truth and speci cally the truth regarding humanity’s ultimate origin, present and future. I think this formulation is an accurate description of what the participants in the religious eld are disputing. If not, it should be modi ed in future studies. Following this formulation, I will suggest a praxis-orientated de nition, namely that religions as well as counter-religions are regarded as practices concerned with ultimate origin, the present and the future. From this it then follows that religions and counter-religions could be analyzed as religious as well as counter-religious survival units that are centred around discourses and practices dealing with truth, and in particular truth regarding origin, present and future, while they at the same time relate to and most often deny competing discourses and practices. In other words religions and counter-religions are organized around narratives dealing with ultimate past, present and future. This de nition of the eld of religion is chosen because it is not centred on a Western cultural construct dependent on God, the transcendent, the holy, the forbidden, and so on. It will further be seen that this narrative can be constructed with the notion of God or without it, as it is in Humanism and Atheism, and that it is precisely on the issues of the origin of Man, the universe, and all things that religion conicts with Atheism, Humanism, Spirituality, some versions of Darwinism, and other systems. Further, I would like to suggest that The eld of religions should be mapped and analyzed as a relational eld consisting of religious survival units that are centred around discourses and practices dealing with truth, and in particular truth regarding origin, present and future, while they at the same time relate to and most often deny competing discourses and practices. A consequence of this perspective on religions as religious survival units is that the history of religions is played out in the eld, and becomes an open-ended dialectical process in which distinctions between religions are made, and in which they act, react and adapt to the presence of each other. The analysis of religious and counter-religious survival units should bear this eld, or the environment of the religious survival unit, in mind. My main point here is that religions or religious survival units should be studied as entities that are constituted relationally, and are not formed out of the intrinsic properties of the group in question. Religion could in other words be analyzed as embedded in dynamic relations with other religious survival units. The religious survival units may be seen as constituted through 188 niels reeh speech-acts, which may or may not be successful. But while they are constructed, they undoubtedly at the same time have a historical and social reality. It should perhaps also be noted that the suggestion that religious survival units struggle over truth concerning ultimate origin, present and future is in many cases quite close to Peter Beyer’s suggestion in his admirable reformulation of Niklas Luhmann’s religious code as being concerned with damnation and salvation, as well as Martin Riesebrodt’s equally important de nition (Beyer 1998, 2006; Riesebrodt 2010). Salvation and damnation will thus almost inevitably be interwoven with discourses on ultimate origin, present and future. I do however contend that ultimate origin, present and future ofer a less culturally speci c yardstick than salvation and damnation, which exclude such phenomena as Atheism and Humanism that clearly relates themselves to Christianity, which suggests that these phenomena are engaged in the same eld as Christianity. On the basis of Searle’s notion of collective subjectivity and Elias’s survival unit and its consequential collective “we” or the construction of a collective identity, I suggest that when a group encounters another group, a result of the encounter is that the group becomes conscious of itself as a group and that it must come to terms with its own identity. In other words, out of the distinction that arises when a group faces another, a group must be able to answer such questions as: Why are we diferent from them? Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why do we do things diferently? The explanation of this distinction or diference can further be said to be the same as a diference in origin that reaches into the future. It seems to me that a necessary part of being a group is to have some notion as to what separates this group from the other(s), why it exists as a group, and why it may act diferently from the signi cant other groups. In other words, I would argue that the existence of diference between “us” and “them” necessitates a legitimate explanation of the diference. Further, I suggest that this applies to Elias’s fundamental social unit, the sovereign survival unit, as well as other social entities whether they be soccer clubs, businesses or religions. Soccer clubs are however situated in a eld of other soccer clubs, whereas religious survival units are situated in a religious eld. The truth claim in the narration of ultimate origin, present and future can thus be seen as an attempt to describe the struggle in the religious eld by acknowledging what it is that the participants in the eld are in fact strug- gling over. the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 189

Concluding Remarks

In a parallel to the works of Pierre Bourdieu, this chapter proposes to depart from struggle in the eld. The diference vis-à-vis Bourdieu (1990) is, however, that the eld of religions is not a eld consisting of individual persons but rather consisting of constructed collective units, namely religious survival units. The notion of the religious survival unit has been used because on the one hand it is exible enough to treat counter-religions as a functional equivalent of traditional religions. On the other hand the concept is not so wide as to include soccer fan clubs within the eld of religion (Reeh 2012). This concept thus has the ability of (1) describing the dynamic between the socially constructed units that struggle in the eld of religions that have been allowed by the pluralist Norwegian state and (2) being a point of departure for mapping religion and counter-religions in pluralistic societies. On the basis of the fact especially that the Norwegian Humanist Society as well as other Atheist or Humanist organizations in many ways act like a religion, in for instance establishing rituals, appointing chaplains, and engaging in inter-religious polemic, the question arises as to whether or not we should de ne all participants in the religious eld as religions. In my experience any such attempt has been met with signi cant opposition from the Church, the Humanists and Atheists. I have therefore suggested that Jan Assmann’s notion of counter-religions might be used as a sub-type of non-religion (Assmann 1997, Lee 2012). The term could also be applied to organized Atheism, Humanism, Spirituality and indeed some versions of Communism, Nazism and other creeds, which also have developed rituals or rites of passage for the important events in life through which they have tried to compete with traditional organized religion (see, e.g., NSDAP 1941, Lane 1981). Another implication of such an approach is with regard to the once dominant theories of secularization. If it is accepted that counter-religions are indeed a part of the eld of religions, it follows that counter-religious organizations should be included in the discussion. The existence of counter- religions thus raises the question: How do we know what a religion is? The standard answer to this question can be said to rely on a common-sense cultural consensus. However, I will argue that this cultural common sense should at least be questioned. The reason for this is that religious agents have a vested interest in the delimitation of religion. An example of such a vested interest might be the distinction between Dianetics and Scien- tology, which is not without consequence with regard to taxation in the 190 niels reeh

United States (Kent 1999). A diferent historical argument can be derived from the fact that Justin Martyr, in his rst apology dated to around 150, defends the Christians against allegations of atheism and superstition (Mar- tyr 1997). With this charge, the opponents of the Christians had tried to bar them from the eld of legally and socially acceptable religions. Later, the tables may be said to have been turned as the eld of religions in Europe came to be completely dominated by Christianity, which was made manda- tory until after the advent of democracy. In the period until the establishment of religious freedom, atheism was still used as delimiting the eld of religion. However, in the present pluralist societies, it seems that the tables have to some extent been turned again, as is indicated by the fact that several participants in the eld of religions actively de ne themselves speci cally as non-religions. Here the case of Norway is especially interesting. The Norwegian state, since the law of June 13, 1969 concerning support for life-stance societies, has acknowledged those societies and determined that they should receive proportionately the same support per member as the Norwegian Church.23 With this law the Norwegian state facilitated the expansion of counter-religions in Norway. Although it is not possible to prove the case, it seems likely enough that pluralistic legislation in Norway (e.g., by extending the economic support for other religions to include life-stance societies on more or less the same terms as the Norwegian Church) has facilitated the expansion of organized counter-religions or life-stance societies and led to a more diverse religious landscape.

References

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23 http://www.lovdata.no/all/hl-19810612-064.html. the field of religions in norwegian pluralist society 191

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ETHNIC RELIGIOUS POLITICS IN ISRAEL: THE CASE OF THE SHAS PARTY

Anat Feldman

The Shas Movement emerged on the Israeli political scene with the 1984 Israeli parliamentary elections. The party was founded by ultra-Orthodox rabbis, second generation Jewish immigrants from the Arab countries. Its goal was to rehabilitate the population in the Israeli periphery, the majority of whom are Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. They were characterized by poor education, low income, a rejected culture, a religious lifestyle, negligible integration within the political system, and an external and stereotypical resemblance to Arabs. This occurred despite the eforts of governments from the early days of the State of Israel to blur the ethnic identity of the Jewish immigrants and aggressively oppose a religious lifestyle. This chapter will explain the reasons for the founding and success of the only ultra-Orthodox ethnic party in the Israeli political system. The State of Israel was established in 1948 by Jewish leaders from Eastern Europe, who chose to abandon their parents’ culture and create a modern secular society in a new land. However, this ideology did not suit the Jewish immigrants who arrived from the Islamic countries during the 1950s and 1960s. This was because most of them were religiously devout and had personal and cultural characteristics that identi ed them as Arab. This reality divided them for many years from the group that had established the State and the other immigrants who had come from Christian countries. The Israeli establishment’s socialization attempts to secularize these immigrants and change their personal characteristics failed. Many experienced frustration, despair and the inability to escape their culturally, religiously, politically, and economically inferior status. After around forty years, the rst positive changes in their status began to take shape, as a result of an ethnic party entering the Israeli political arena—the Shas Movement, which began in 1984. The Shas Movement is a political party originating from the lower stratum of Israeli society: those Jewish immigrants from Arab countries and their children. In short, the Shas Movement’s power lies with the citizens who are culturally, religiously, politically, and economically 194 anat feldman inferior. The Shas Movement challenges contemporary Israeli society inasmuch as it is a declared ethnic party in a society that does not consider expression of ethnicity to be politically correct. It is also an ultra-Orthodox party in a society that does not believe the religiosity of these immigrants to be correct, but rather that of the ultra-Orthodox who originated in Europe. This study will explain the reasons for the founding and success of Israel’s only successful ethnic ultra-Orthodox party. It will describe the reasons for the political organization of second-generation immigrants from Arab countries, the great importance played by religion and the religious establishment in the party’s success, and the results of its political achievement in the rehabilitation of the lowest echelon of Israeli society.

Political Ethnicity

Political ethnicity has been considered a permanent and signi cant issue in state domestic politics in Europe since the Second World War (Said and Simmons, 1976: 10–16). However, in the State of Israel, which wished to create a new Israeli nation, ethnic parties were considered unacceptable. Israeli society related negatively to social and political phenomena emanating from the Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. Public opinion identi ed ethnic traits only with easily delegitimized disadvantaged groups. Despite this, signi cant political use is made in Israel of the ethnic motif. The veteran Israeli parties were founded by immigrants, mostly of Eastern European origin—meaning, ethnicity did actually play a part, but not as an overt ideology. Since none of the parties represented the immigrants from the Arab countries, they initially voted for the veteran parties in which they nevertheless experienced open discrimination against themselves. The State of Israel was established as a home for Jews from all over the world. However, up until this day, with the third or fourth generation, most of the immigrants still identify with their country of origin. Jews whose grandparents came from Germany are called “German.” Jews whose families originated from Iraq are known as “Iraqis,” and so on. Israeli society as a whole, however, also divides its Jews into only two ethnic groups: those who emigrated from Christian European countries and those who came from Moslem Arab countries.1 Therefore, in Israel the concept of “ethnic

1 The non-Jewish minority in Israel is excluded from this ethnic division. This minority is divided into religious groups: Christians, Muslims, Druze, and Bedouins. These groups are not directly related to this chapter. ethnic religious politics in israel 195 origin” does not signify a diferent nation, but Jews who came from dif- ferent countries (Ben-Rafael and Sharot 1991). The concept of ethnicity in Israeli politics is identi ed with Jews who emigrated from Arab countries. They are considered culturally, economically and politically inferior, and of lower status than the Jews who arrived from Christian countries (Peled 1990, Ben-Zadok 1993). Shmuel Eisenstadt (1967), one of Israel’s leading sociologists, explained the solution to the ethnic problem in Israel using “modernity theory.” This theory determined that social mechanisms and ethnic communities move from being religious and traditional toward modern characteristics, for which ethnic communities are of no value. This theory suited the desire of Israeli leaders to create a New Jew: modern, secular and Hebrew- speaking = the Israeli Zionist. The hope of the State of Israel’s founders was that the ethnic characteristics of the Jews from Arab countries would vanish over time, since they were considered to be less modern. Therefore, interest in them was not considered politically correct. The national ideology was concerned with blurring the diferences between ethnic groups and reshaping the population according to secular patterns and Eastern Euro- pean culture, which was considered Israeli. Jewish immigrants from the Arab countries were incorporated into the veteran Israeli parties, as a political electoral resource. One from Iraq, another from Morocco, a third from Yemen, and so on. The parties did not do this out of respect for the culture of those immigrants or due to the public importance of representation for weaker groups in Israeli society, but for political reasons—to attract the voters who had immigrated to Israel from those countries. While the representatives of Eastern European origin were the clear majority, there was no quota for those of, for example, Rumanian, Russian or Polish origin. However, despite the strong state ideological coercion, those immigrants remained with noticeable peripheral characteristics in line with the model proposed by Edward Shils (1975) for the center and periphery: they lived in the periphery and were not included in Israeli politics as equals or in the decision-making processes for the State’s economic and educational policies. Their culture was considered inferior since it was similar to the Arab culture. They had less education and therefore earned less (Cohen and Haberfeld 2004), therefore the majority them lived in nancial distress. Their religiosity was seen as anachronistic within the majority secular society and as incorrect among the religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors. During the 1970s public attention was focused for the rst time on the inferior situation of those immigrants. A protest group was formed, stemming from the economic distress, with members who were second-generation 196 anat feldman immigrants from Arab countries. They called themselves the Black Pan- thers, after the American protest group of African Americans against the white establishment. The Black Panthers cracked the ideology of equality promoted by the State leaders. They demanded equal opportunities in education and work. Their activities were violent and illegal. The police arrested their leaders and did not allow them to demonstrate, and the government delegitimized them. Their lack of organization, being devoid of an agreed- upon leadership, and their public deligitimization caused their political organization to fail. After two years of violent protest, their inferior state had not changed, and they did not succeed in rehabilitating their ethnic community (Cohen 1972, Etzion-Halevi 1975, Bernstein 1976). The violent behavior of the Black Panthers in Israel did not undermine democratic stability, but it corresponds with the fear of those theorists who claim that ethnic groups undermine the stability of democratic countries (Horowitz 1994, 2000; Sisk, 1995, 1996; Reilly 2001). However, Kanchan Chan- dra (2005), in her study on ethnicity in India, does not view the ethnic component as a threat to democracy. She believes that a democracy can exist even with several ethnic groups in the country. The Israeli case shows that despite the Shas party already having worked for thirty years to advance ethnicity through religion, the party has neither harmed nor tried to harm democracy in Israel. It has never worked in an extreme manner—violently, illegally, or outside the political system—in the way that, for example, the ethnic parties in Ireland initially operated (Mitchell, Evans and O’Leary 2009). The Shas movement wishes to be part of the political democratic establishment and operates in accordance with the accepted rules of the game. A decade passed after the violent outburst by the Black Panthers before the ethnic party “Movement for the Heritage of Israel” was founded in 1981. This party was considered ethnic since its leaders and members were immigrants from Arab countries. Nevertheless, they did not speak about their ethnic origin and even tried to cover it up. Like the Black Panthers, they also were not involved with religious issues. The Shas Movement began in Jerusalem in 1983, before the municipal elections of that year. Its founders were rabbis in their thirties, second generation Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Arab countries. The Jerusalem experiment succeeded beyond all expectations, and the new party defeated a veteran ultra-Orthodox party with representation only of Jews who had emigrated from Europe, for whom many ultra-Orthodox Jews originating from Arab countries also voted in previous elections, because of the absence of a party on the part of Arab Jews. The Shas Movement ethnic religious politics in israel 197 entered the municipal coalition and began to divert municipal resources to its supporters. This had never happened before, since the funds for the ultra-Orthodox sector had been unequally allocated, principally to those of European origin. Even today many immigrants from Arab countries do not vote for the Shas Movement, which explicitly represents their culture and religious tradition, but for other parties. This is diferent from ethnic nationalist groups worldwide, where those of one ethnic nationalist origin will not vote for a party representing a diferent group (Horowitz 2000: 324). As a result of the victory in the Jerusalem municipality, the founders continued on to stage two of their plan: entering the Israeli parliament. In 1984, less than a year after the municipal elections, Israeli parliamentary elections were held. The Shas Movement won four seats out of 120. Its success was noteworthy, since this was the rst time since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, that a party representing the immigrants from Arab countries through religion had entered parliament.

Religious Politics and the Religiosity of Young People

With the end of the Cold War during the 1990s, Christian parties in Europe underwent a revival followed by a loss of power. They were forced to adapt themselves to the great political changes that brought about a large drop in their attractiveness, particularly for young people. However, at the beginning of the twenty- rst century, the Christian parties in Europe stabilized and even recovered (Gerard and Van Hecke 2004). Studies show that even those young people who de ne themselves as religious are less religious today than those a generation before. Young people prefer to de ne themselves as spiritual, rather than religious. They do not want to commit to a religious organization or to describe their religiosity in establishment terms (Niemela 2010). Their personal experiences guide them in choosing a religious framework, rather than existing religious institutions (Hervieu-Leger 2000: 123–140). The decline in people’s religiosity and young people distancing themselves from identi cation with or activity within a church framework also reduced the electoral strength of Christian parties (Fallend 2004, Giordan 2010, Leonardi and Albert 2004, Lucardie, 2004) and they are being forced to adapt themselves to the twenty- rst century in a political-democratic expanse ofering multiple possibilities. The situation in the State of Israel is similar to that of Europe. After the establishment of the state in 1948, the democratic government enforced a secular ideology by turning religion into an anachronistic issue, which 198 anat feldman was inappropriate for the young state. However, secularism did not suit most of the Jewish immigrants from the Arab countries. They continued to keep to their religious beliefs, which were considered anachronistic by the establishment, but not religious enough for the ultra-Orthodox society led by immigrants from Europe. The result was a reduction in the religiosity of the immigrants from Arab countries, particularly among young people who distanced themselves from their family traditions and the synagogues (Deshen and Shokeid 1974, Shokeid 1979, 1995). From the 1990s, with the rise in the Shas Movement’s political power, the status of the religious institutions identi ed with those originating from Arab countries was strengthened. Many new synagogues were built, which lled with young worshippers. City and neighborhood rabbis were appointed from among those from Arab countries (Leon 2006,). The party opened religious schools and pre-schools throughout Israel (Feldman 2013). This met the demands of young parents and adolescents who wished to renew their parents’ traditions (Lehman and Siebzehner 2006, Yadgar 2010).

The Establishment of the Shas Movement

The Jewish immigrants who came from the Arab countries sufered from a lack of authentic community leadership. The immigrants’ economic leadership arrived in Israel without its possessions, which had been con scated by the Arab governments or plundered by the Arab citizens before their immigration. Therefore, many reached Israel penniless and did not recover economically for years. The political parties of those originating from Arab countries did not succeed in entering parliament, and the veteran parties did not deal with their problems. Even the ethnic party that entered parliament in 1981 with three seats failed in this respect. Ethnicity in Israel was considered not politically correct (Herzog 1984, 1985).

Ethnoreligious Aspects The origins of the Shas Movement lay in the disillusionment of second- generation Jerusalem rabbis in light of the di cult reality for the immigrants from Arab countries. They saw that most of the criminals in the jails were from their community. Most menial jobs belonged to members of their community. Only a small percentage successfully completed high school. The universities were not an option for them because of their low academic achievements. Israel’s compulsory army, which is considered a springboard ethnic religious politics in israel 199 to being Israeli, preferred not to enlist many of them or enlisted them for inferior positions without an o cers’ track. Most of them lived in poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of the cities. This means that they had remained behind and failed to succeed in integrating into the new Israeli ideology, even thirty years after their arrival in Israel. The Shas Movement founders were among those Jerusalem leaders. They had studied in the ultra-Orthodox independent education system established by the immigrants from European countries, and had experienced discrimination and injustice as children and teenagers. This was because there had not been an ultra-Orthodox or religious educational network run by immigrants from Arab countries until the establishment of the Shas Movement. Those that were in existence, both state-religious and independent ultra-Orthodox had a cultural-educational European orientation. Inas- much as there are great diferences in religious ceremonies and customs between diferent ethnic communities in Judaism, an ethnic-religious education system is of great signi cance in rehabilitating an ethnic community. The party founders involved themselves in educational activity with adolescents who had dropped out of school and criminals from the second generation. They brought them into the empty synagogues in the underprivileged neighborhoods, provided them with a model for religious identication, organized religiously oriented social activity, and most important, distanced them from jails and a life of crime. During the rst stage of political organization, the founders decided to enlist the support of illustrious rabbis originating from Arab countries. They understood that only a prominent religious leadership would be able to advance a party based on Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. Jews originating from Arab countries, including those who do not practice a strict religious lifestyle, greatly respect the rabbis. The rabbis were not expected to enter parliament or government. However, these rabbis did not have a tradition of political involvement in the State of Israel, and they were afraid their standing would be harmed should the party fail. The political founders continued their eforts to persuade them for close to three years, until they succeeded in forming a Council of Sages comprised of eminent rabbis from Arab countries. The role of this Council of Sages was to outline the political path for the representatives in parliament and the municipalities. The founders appointed Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who had served as the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel from 1973–1983, to head the Council of Sages.2

2 In Israel, Jews originating from Arab countries are also known as Sephardi(m). 200 anat feldman

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was a well-known and revered gure for many due to his public state positions over many years. As such, his role was to attract the Jews originating from Arab countries to the party. He has continued to head the Council of Sages to the present day. Most of all, however, the Council would be a political resource that would attract a large number of rst- and second-generation immigrants to the party. Thereby, the rabbis who established the Shas Movement possessed an advantage over the irreligious social workers or neighborhood activists in rehabilitating these youth. This efect persisted in recruiting them to the party later in life. Today, these rabbis all head yeshivas and educational institutions serving their communities. This was the starting point of the Shas Movement: peripheriality, political exclusion, poor education, and a lack of cultural, religious and economic equality. The party founders took all these facts into account and decided to go against the trend. They spoke openly about ethnic discrimination in all areas of public life as well as in religious ultra-Orthodox society. This was innovative, since the religious ultra-Orthodox expanse lay outside public discourse in Israel, due to the State’s secular ideology. The new party’s target audience was not accustomed to political action, recruitment, or independence. The media ignored the party before the elections. Most of the public had never heard of it, were not familiar with its members of parliament, and did not understand why such a party was needed thirty-six years after the State’s establishment, when the ethnic diferences between the immigrants had supposedly vanished.

Organizational Aspects Michael Hannan (1979: 254) introduces an approach to ethnic political recruitment which states that: (1) the prevalence of economic and political institutions reduces ethnic tension, and (2) modern economic and political institutions can, under certain conditions, contribute to the revival of ethnicity. The two components are not contradictory, but rather comple- mentary. The rst component ensures that people are enabled to join modern institutions on a personal professional basis and identify with the State. In this way, the geographic social isolation of ethnic groups is weakened, decreasing ethnic identity. The second component says that it is precisely this same modernity that can under certain conditions aid ethnic organization through political or other mechanisms. This approach is compatible with the nature of the Shas Movement’s activity. The State of Israel tried for many years to weaken ethnic identity through absorbing immigrants into such institutions as the education sys- ethnic religious politics in israel 201 tem, the IDF, and politics—with little success. At the same time, the Shas Movement is aided by State institutions and modern means to revive its suppressed ethnic-religious identity and amass political power. Israeli law provides a state budget for political parties, according to the number of seats they have. Therefore a new party must raise funds or take out loans to pay for its election campaign. Should a party fail to enter parliament, it must return the loans from the pockets of its founders. The Shas Movement did not have party members who had paid membership dues. It did not have a foothold in government ministries or in parliament, with which it could give bene ts to its supporters and work without monetary costs. It was established without political, communal or local infrastruc- tures (aside from the Jerusalem municipality) and with a minimal budget. However, it overcame the budgetary limitations with the genuine enthusiasm of a large number of immigrants from the Arab countries. Thousands of supporters across Israel volunteered to help with the elections. They uti- lized their large families to market the party by word of mouth. They organized publicity events in synagogues and at mass rallies. They published few advertisements in the written media. The electronic media did not yet exist. This hidden organizational method went virtually unnoticed among the general public and was what led to the political surprise of four seats in the election results. The Shas Movement is still the only party that holds mass gatherings in stadiums. A large proportion of the party’s supporters do not watch television for religious reasons, therefore the mass rallies give them the opportunity to see their leaders. Other parties by contrast, fear that they will be unable to ll a hall, and content themselves with parlor meetings and activity on online networks.

Sociocultural Aspects During its rst parliamentary term, the party founded its most important project: an ultra-Orthodox elementary education system for the third generation. The founders’ goal was to revive their parents’ culture and religious tradition, and prevent their children being subjected to the discrimination and injustice they had experienced. The party’s education system currently includes hundreds of schools and pre-schools throughout Israel. It employs thousands of teaching staf, most of whom are women. This educational network also operates as uno cial party branches. Parents who bring their children to the schools and pre-schools know it is a political education system. The pedagogic staf are Jews originating from Arab countries. Pictures 202 anat feldman of rabbis from Arab countries decorate the classrooms. The children learn Jewish law as practiced by them, rather than in the way that it is decided by rabbis of European origin. Another important project is the rehabilitation of the status of the immigrants’ spiritual-religious leadership. Rabbis who had headed large yeshivas and Jewish courts, led communities, and occupied themselves with Jewish scholarship in Arab countries had their standing reduced when they arrived in Israel. The local communities they had led outside Israel were scattered across the country, in line with the government policy that provided immigrants with housing and a livelihood. Most of the rabbis were unsuccessful in integrating into the religious establishment and were left without an income. This situation made it di cult for them to lead their communities, and their followers saw them humiliated. Rabbis in Israel are appointed to public positions through a committee whose members are drawn from the political system. Therefore, once the Shas Movement became stronger, it could begin appointing its rabbis to public positions. In many towns and cities, rabbis originating from Arab countries replaced those from Europe who had held these positions up until that time. The party, using government funds, established synagogues in neighborhoods and small communities. These also serve as community centers and memorial libraries for the ethnic traditions that were left behind in the Diaspora and abandoned by the rst generation of immigrants. European culture dominated the State of Israel for decades. This was the culture brought to Israel by the state leaders, most of who had come from Eastern Europe. It became dominant through the educational system. State and public ceremonies, as well as the media were enlisted to promote the new Jewish Israeli ideology. Cinema, literature and commer- cials provided positive stereotypical gures of European origin, but negative, ridiculous ones of those originating from Arab countries. The storm of Zionist innovation left no room for noticing that European culture required only minor changes to be accepted as Israeli culture, while the culture of the Jews from Arab countries was utterly rejected as unworthy. Until the founding of the Shas Movement, the culture of the Jews from Arab countries was barely incorporated or even acknowledged in Israeli culture. A side efect of the Shas Movement’s increased importance is the cultural change in the public arena and the image of the new Israeli. This was a gradual, slow change during the 1990s. Today, thirty years after the position of Jewish politicians from Arab countries has stabilized at the center ethnic religious politics in israel 203 of the Israeli political system, it is di cult to remember how their culture was excluded. The public originating from Arab countries now has musi- cians and singers, representatives in the media, theater and authors, who advance their culture and values at the heart of the Israeli arena. Popular belief in righteous men and pilgrimages to the graves of holy people has returned to center stage. Young people of the third generation are barely aware of the exclusion and contempt that existed for years regarding their parents’ culture. The music played on both state and commercial media stations includes their music too. Journalists and authors relate their experiences and opinions while respecting their family heritage, even though the majority do not belong to the Shas Movement’s religious and ultra-Orthodox society. I would argue that the second and third generation’s return to their parents’ cultural-religious heritage indicates the weakening of the Zionist narrative and the rise of a multicultural one.

Table 11.1: Religious and ethnic parties in Israel

Parliament Religion parties Ethnic parties No. of No. of No. of No. of No./Year parties mandates Shas parties mandates 1 (1949) 1 16 2 5 2 (1951) 4 15 2 3 3 (1955) 2 17 0 0 4 (1959) 2 18 0 0 5 (1961) 3 18 0 0 6 (1965) 3 17 0 0 7 (1969) 3 18 0 0 8 (1973) 3 15 0 0 9 (1977) 2 16 0 0 10 (1981) 2 10 1 3 11 (1984) 2 6 4 1 1 12 (1988) 2 10 6 0 0 13 (1992) 2 10 6 0 0 14 (1996) 2 13 10 0 0 15 (1999) 2 10 17 0 0 16 (2003) 2 11 11 0 0 17 (2006) 2 15 12 0 0 18 (2009) 3 12 11 0 0

Another of Shas’s projects is the “return to religion,” which brings young people back to living a religious lifestyle. Rabbis and organizations identifying with the party started organizations with the goal of “returning” Jews 204 anat feldman originating from Arab countries to a religious life. The party established schools for the children of these “returnees,” and a national network of Torah classes in the evenings and weekend seminars aimed at parents and young people who have returned to a religious lifestyle. The hundreds of thousands who have started living according to Jewish law as decided by the rabbis from Arab countries are the Shas Movement’s target audience.

Shas Party’s Election Career During the elections to the State of Israel’s rst parliament in 1949, religious Jews were concerned about the secular ideology of the country’s leaders and about legislation contrary to a religious lifestyle. That year election opinion polls were not yet conducted, and no one knew what to expect. Therefore, all the religious and ultra-Orthodox streams decided to unite into one list. This list won sixteen seats. In subsequent parliaments they separated into two groups on the basis of their beliefs: two ultra-Orthodox parties, which later united and then separated again, and one religious party. They conserved their power for thirty years, and became a permanent xture in parliament and the coalitions. The ethnic parties succeeded in entering only the rst two parliaments, despite their unceasing eforts over the years, and in spite of the fact that around half the immigrants to Israel had arrived from Arab countries. The Zionist state ideology, which espoused the creation of a New Jew, delegitimized ethnicity and diminished people’s desire to vote for parties with individual issues. The Movement for the Heritage of Israel Party was the rst ethnic party to enter parliament in 1981, after thirty years without ethnic parties. It was comprised of people who had been in the political system and decided individually to leverage themselves. They were all second-generation immigrants from Arab countries. Rather than devote themselves to particular ethnic issues, they turned to the disadvantaged in Israeli society, knowing that the disadvantaged originated from Arab countries. In the following elections in 1984, the Movement for the Heritage of Israel Party was reduced to one seat, and subsequently disappeared. The Shas Movement entered the political arena. Shas’s singularity was that it bore two banners: ethnic and ultra-Orthodox. In the next elections, the Shas Movement grew steadily and stabilized at over 10 seats, out of 120. Its stabilization did not leave room for additional parties on the ethnicity map, despite attempts at doing so. The religious/ultra-Orthodox banner was raised alongside it by an ultra-Orthodox party and religious party with ethnic religious politics in israel 205

European representation. The gures in Table 1 demonstrate that the Shas Movement also reduced these parties’ power, meaning it attracted religious voters from Arab countries, and was the only party representing the ethnic religiosity of those immigrants.

Discussion

The Shas Movement was founded in reaction to the poor and weak status of second-generation Jewish immigrants from Arab countries in Israeli society. Their low standing was expressed in several parameters: they participated in the political parties to attract the votes of those from their countries of origin, rather than as equal members. Their culture was considered inferior and pushed to the margins of the public arena. They were unable to change their mentality, dark skin or Arab accent, and primarily, they refused to give up their beliefs and religious lifestyle, despite religion being considered an anachronism in the State of Israel. Within the small ultra-Orthodox society, the majority of whom were of European origin, the state of the immigrants from Arab countries was much worse than their status in general society. Their religious leaders were considered second- class. Their children were accepted to schools according to quotas, with the excuse that they were a bad inuence on the pupils of European origin. This situation still continues, particularly in the girls’ schools. The negative stereotypes people saw in them left them on the margins of Israeli society. Hence, even if they wanted to, they had di culty in adapting themselves to the model of the secular majority or the ultra-Orthodox minority. Despite their marginal status, it is important to note that the Jewish immigrants from Arab countries made up approximately half of the Jewish Israeli population. At the same time, the Shas Movement represents an underprivileged community that wishes to participate in Israeli society, not to organize a revolution. The party has never acted violently. Its supporters are not in a militant conict with the other ethnic and religious groups in Israeli society. The diferences between those originating from Arab countries and those from Europe are mostly cultural and ceremonial. This is not a diferent religion, nation, or language. Ethnicity in Israel is a unique case outside the framework of research and is tied unbreakably with religion (cf. Horowitz 2000: ch. 1). The Shas Movement is based on two dominant schisms within contemporary Israeli society: the secular-religious divide and the ethnic divide 206 anat feldman

(Benski 1993, Cohen and Susser 2000). These schisms should have disappeared over the years, in light of the government’s policy for integration and secular Zionist ideology. However, the Shas Movement’s retention of over ten parliamentary seats is proof that these schisms are still relevant. The party nurtures a unique religious ethnicity with Israeli ultra-Orthodox characteristics. This challenges Israeli society, which is used to dichotomous de nitions: secular vs. ultra-Orthodox; European vs. originating from Arab countries (Baum-Banai 2001, Chetrit 2001, Cohen 2001). With the party’s entry into the government coalition, it began to help peripheral groups through control of government ministries. Its rst actions were directed at rehabilitating the community’s internal religious outlook: creating a religious education system and synagogues for those originating from Arab countries and appointing rabbis and activists to positions in the state public service. This created thousands of employment opportunities for party supporters. Their followers see representatives of their community when they come to arrange their afairs at the local authorities and government ministries. Ministers from their ethnic group manage public afairs and are among the few select members of the government cabinet. The party leader was appointed to be a senior minister and deputy prime minister. None of this had occurred before the party’s establishment. After its consolidation in parliament and the governments, the Shas Movement began to enact laws to help the underprivileged in Israeli society. The party is involved with many issues that are not solely connected with its ethnic ultra-Orthodox society such as discounts and bene ts for young couples to purchase an apartment, funding for professional and academic education for single mothers, and legislation against the illegal entry of tens of thousands of migrant workers to Israel over the past decade. The Shas Movement currently has a weekly newspaper and website, through which the party reports on its political activity. The newspaper is exceptional in that it includes a religious rehabilitation project for the community. Rabbis and journalists write about the lives and Jewish legal rulings of important rabbis who were active in Arab countries over the past centuries, as well as in Israel today. The rulings of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of the Council of Sages, are regularly published in the party’s newspaper and on its website. In this way the party reinforces the ethnic ultra-Orthodox heritage of its followers, and the link between its spiritual- religious leadership and its communities throughout Israel. ethnic religious politics in israel 207

Conclusion

The Shas Movement is the most successful ethnic ultra-Orthodox party in Israel. It has been part of the political system for nearly thirty years, and its political power has been increasing annually. To understand the party’s political achievement, we need to remember that up until it was founded, its supporters were scattered among secular and religious parties who regarded them with scorn. Despite the Jews originating from Arab countries making up around half of the Israeli Jewish population, their inuence on the cultural, religious, economic and political arena was insigni cant. Its representatives did not participate in decision making processes in the parties to which they belonged or in governments. Thanks to the party’s strength and its inuence on the public from the 1990s onward, it has made further ethnic organizations redundant. It has become the largest ultra-Orthodox party since its second term in parliament as the community originating from Arab countries abandoned their previous parties, for which they had voted due to a lack of ethnic-religious alternative, which Shas now provides. The Shas Movement raised the banner of the State of Israel’s two dominant schisms since its establishment—the secular-religious divide and the ethnic divide. In short, the Shas Movement succeeded in translating religious ethnicity into signi cant electoral power for two reasons—the dis- appointment and frustration of second generation immigrants from Arab countries in not having succeeded in integrating into the general population and the erosion of the secular Zionist ideology with the rise of pluralistic values. The Shas Movement’s actions contributed greatly to the improved public status of those originating from Arab countries. Contemporary Israeli society is more pluralistic, tolerant and inclusive than it was during the rst thirty years of the State of Israel, although ethnic racism and negative stereotypes still exist.

References

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Yadgar, Yaacov. 2010. Masortim [Traditionalists] in Israel: Modernity Without Secu- larization. Jerusalem: Keter Books.* *Indicates works written in Hebrew. The titles and related details are translated by the present author. chapter twelve

SPIRITUALIZATION: SPIRITUAL PLURALIZATION AND SCIENTISTS IN ITALY

Stefano Sbalchiero

The story of diferent cultures and religions characterized by the porosity of their borders, which makes them uid rather than monolithic and homogeneous entities, confronts us with the complexity of the contexts within which they form. The notion of religious pluralism crosses that of spiritual pluralism, as well as the concept, partially diferent, of “spiritual pluralization.” As a matter of fact, “spirituality” can be de ned in two ways, either in terms of a connection with a religion or in terms of a free quest on the part of a subject who opens up to changeable experience going beyond religious boundaries. The distinction refers to what has been de ned as traditional spirituality as contrasted to quest spirituality (Wuthnow 1998). However, this second meaning, where the protagonists are the subject and its free quest is detached from adhering to speci c systems of meaning, raises questions that force us to develop new concepts and to recalibrate the instruments we have at our disposal in order to be able to grasp them. If we reason within the framework of religious pluralism, no doubt we can identify even a pluralist spiritual experience of the traditional type, organized and run by the various religions. By contrast, if spirituality is distinguished from religion (Heelas et al. 2005), rather than speaking of a spiritual pluralism, we may speak of spiritual pluralization to identify and de ne the diferent characteristics that experiences with the sacred and the quest for meaning assume, according to the social worlds that cross the boundaries of traditional religions. This classi cation efort is important for two main reasons. First, it highlights how, together with the “religious and spiritual” people, there are others who de ne themselves as “spiritual, not religious” who have been neglected because they cannot be de ned within the traditional indicators of religiosity. Second, and the case of the spirituality of atheist scientists is emblem- atic (Ecklund and Long 2011, Sbalchiero 2012), we observe how, outside the boundaries of religions, the nature of spirituality presents common traits, but at the same time also novel features, depending on the social groups 212 stefano sbalchiero and the contexts within which the diferent experiences take place. In this sense it seems appropriate to speak of a process of “spiritual pluralization.”

Secularization, Implicit Religion and Spirituality

The unstoppable secularization process, indicating the dissolution of the sacral-magic system of explaining the world, besides having never reached its accomplishment, has also not exhausted the human impetus toward quests and the experience of what is radically diferent and supernatu- ral (Acquaviva and Pace 1992). Recognition of this anthropological need emphasizes that individuals cannot refrain from questioning themselves about the meaning of their own existence, and to some extent it has marked a change of perspectives in the scholars of the religious phenomenon, fos- tering analytic proposals on the persistence of the religious dimension in “new forms” (Filoramo 1986, Beckford 1990). It is in this context that new approaches have developed: “invisible religion” (Luckmann 1963), “rumor of angels” (Berger 1969), “hidden Christianity” (Burgalassi 1970), “civil religion” (Bellah 1975), “religion of the scenario” (Garelli 1986), “scattered religiosity” (Cipriani 1988), “implicit religion” (Bailey 1997, Nesti 1985)—all of which are useful for indicating new directions to the sacred in the contemporary context. Far from disappearing, the “hunger for the supramundane” (Ferrarotti 1983) has participated in the process of rede ning traditional religious forms, especially through syncretism (Pace 1992, 1997, Lucà Trombetta 2004, Giordan 2006). In an attempt to resacralize the world and nd meaning, the individual can now resort to an authentic “Do It Yourself” religion, tapping into the new expressions of the religious phenomenon available in the “spiritual marketplace” (Roof 1999). In the panorama of the interpretative models of religions, the paradigm of “implicit religion” (Bailey 1997, Nesti 1985) and the more recent concept of “spirituality” (Wuthnow 1998, De Marco and Miniati 2006, Giordan 2006, Lanzetti 2006) appear to be central in an attempt to understand the traces of the sacred in border areas extending beyond the traditional forms of religion, without necessarily taking refuge in secularism. The fundamental thesis of implicit religion consists in the possibility, in contemporary society and culture, of tracing the religious experience in the most various ambits of individual and collective activity, enhancing those purely sacred tracks of the experience that have remained unnoticed because they were attributed to the framework of the profane and the ordinary (Bailey spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 213

1997).1 In this sense implicit religion is indeed very close to the concept of “civil religion” (Bellah 1975), to “common sense religion” (Giordan 2010), and to “invisible religion” (Luckmann 1963), allowing individuals to transcend their biological nature, giving a meaning to their own actions that extends beyond the limits of empirical evidence, without a necessary adherence to a religious or ecclesiastical confession. If implicit religion can be considered a general category, the concept of “spirituality” becomes central to the “process of re-composition of the religious after the de-composition occurred through the various dimensions of secularization” (Giordan 2006: 279).2 The di culty remains of clarifying what the relation is between religion and spirituality insofar as they may be simultaneously considered two dif- ferent phenomena as well as two interdependent ones. The religious dimension, in fact, leads to increased externalization, which nds its expression in traditional institutions; on the contrary, the spiritual dimension, focusing on the personal experience of the sacred, enhances the most intimate and inner levels of practice and does not necessarily involve institutions— as happens, for example, in mystical experiences or new age beliefs. Of course there are diferent approaches to the issue and diferent features of the concept of spirituality (Roof 1993, 1999, Zinnbauer et al. 1997, Wuth- now 1998, Heelas and Woodhead 2005). However, assuming the primacy of experience, “it is the subject who freely chooses what he believes, how to pray, and how to behave; the sacred is not limited to something speci c: [E]verything is sacred, the body as well as the spirit, nature and the world around us, with its lights and its shadows, but the truth is like a horizon that is never to be reached and that constantly changes its shape along the paths of life; there are many diferent paths to reach God: one may nd help in the teachings of traditional religions as well as in mythology, in psychology, in scienti c knowledge and in one’s personal experience. (Giordan 2006: 21)

1 “The de nition of ‘implicit religion’ may be thought to be dependent upon the def- inition of ‘religion.’ It could, for instance, emphasise interiority, and might also suggest a judgemental attitude towards religion itself. The expression does not, however, intend either of these. As already indicated, it was anticipated that (‘explicit’) religion could be a vehicle of ‘implicit religion.’ So, if there is a link between the two de nitions, it is rather in the other direction: ‘religion’ means whatever is ‘implicit religion.’ If the implicit is the more real, its description as ‘religion’ is inclusive, not exclusive; empirical, not evaluative” (Bailey 1997:7– 8). 2 Unless otherwise noted, quoted material from Italian sources has been translated by the present author. 214 stefano sbalchiero

Experience and the experience of the sacred, then, may be described as the signi er that conveys implicit and spiritual meaning: being free to choose and hence being able to draw on the most diferent concepts, even when they seem to contradict each other, man is capable of moving the boundaries of the religious phenomena (at least the implicit ones) and the spiritual ones to set them free or set himself free toward an authentic experience with the sacred, and then be ready to reshape and tame them within a system of meaning that is entirely personal and consistent with his own needs. The protagonist is the subject who freely chooses what best suits itself, practicing a “reexive spirituality” (Roof 1999).

Methods

It becomes relevant in this framework to ask ourselves what the point of view of the scientists is, and in particular that of atheist scientists, with respect to their activities related to the de-composition and re-composition processes of the sacred that characterize contemporary society. What we know is that the way of conceiving and developing science of positivist and scientistic derivation does not reect the reality of a much more varied and complex phenomenon (Garelli and Ardigò 1989:183–184). Is it plausible and topical to consider the scientist as a person who, under the aegis of science, is exempt from the search for answers to the great existential questions that have always accompanied man? However intriguing the relation may be between the possibility of cultivating the spirit and carrying on scienti c research, this relationship remains a largely unexplored subject of investigation; hence studies concerning the interpretation given by scientists to their professional roles in relation to the dimensions of spiritual experiences are scarce. Other studies have investigated the scientists’ religiosity mainly understood as adherence or non-adherence to particular religious traditions as measured according to the classic indicators of religiosity (Garelli and Ardigò 1989, Larson and Witham 1998). However there are two recent exploratory researches into the American (Ecklund and Long 2011) and Italian situations (Sbalchiero 2012) that bring to light the relation between science and spirituality, noting what the forms, contents and meanings are that spirituality has for the scientists. The delay of a sociological approach to science and spirituality may be mainly attributed to two issues. In the rst place, because the spiritual realm has been considered as the exclusive endowment of the traditional religions, the issue, in truth, is interwoven with elds and perspectives that spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 215 are by far much more complex and intricate. As a matter of fact, the goal is not so much to ask oneself whether the scientists are or are not believers facing the scienti c challenge, but if starting from the new frontiers of knowledge that they explore and cross with their research activities, they get to reecting about the meaning of life, as mysterious as it is; whether the scienti c activity leads them through the awareness of their limitations up to the acknowledgment of the existence of something greater and somewhat unfathomable; and whether or not such questions necessarily lead to the God of the religious traditions and, therefore, to adhering to precise systems of belief capable of providing answers. Putting the question in these terms, it is possible to overcome the rigid opposition between the person of faith and the person of science to capture the elements that such dichotomy tends to deny. In the second place, this ambiguity appears even more evident since scientists de ne themselves as nonbelievers or atheists because, not being religious, for a long time it has been considered that for this reason they could not conceive, let alone confront, any personal form of spirituality, without even empirically ascertaining the connection that may or may not exist between scientists and spirituality (Ecklund and Long 2011, Sbalchiero 2012). Suspending such judgment, investigations carried out on a carefully selected group of scientists have allowed us to bring out the perfect harmony between the American and the Italian cases, focusing the attention of the researchers on the unprecedented category of atheist but spiritual scientists. The present reconstruction, at a methodological level, is an empirical test of the exploratory research conducted in Italy about science and spirituality.3 The qualitative richness of the evidences gathered in that site has allowed us to continue the analysis through structuring the collected assessments in a questionnaire administered to 160 Italian scientists and university researchers, according to a distinction by gender, years of scienti c activity, and participation in two disciplines, as shown below.

3 The semi-structured questionnaire, built upon the structuring of the assessments present in the in-depth interviews discussed in Sbalchiero 2012, was administered February and June 2012. 216 stefano sbalchiero

Table 12.1: Sample Physics Biology How long have you carried out scienti c activities? M F M F For less than ten years 10 10 10 10 For more than 10 and less than 20 years 10 10 10 10 For more than 20 and less than 30 years 10 10 10 10 For more than 30 years 10 10 10 10 Total by gender 40 40 40 40 Total by discipline 80 80 Total 160

The decision to diferentiate in our sample between young researchers just beginning their careers from professors who have carried out their research activities for many years in the academic context originated from the necessity of measuring whether the perception of spirituality has in any way anything to do with their lives in the scienti c careers. The interviewees, who belong to two disciplines with diferent degrees of maturity, physics and biology, have been selected in the main university departments located throughout Italy to reach the saturation of the sample. The phenomenon has been investigated following three main orientations, since the notions of implicit religiousness and spirituality appear to be central, if by them we mean at least three items referred to science: how scientists perceive and de ne spirituality, what relation or connection they see between spirituality and religion, and to what extent the spiritual reference is compatible with the scienti c mentality. To do so, the research has tried to measure the scientists’ perception on these issues, asking them to position themselves in relation to some statements that summarize de nitions, concepts and guidelines of their colleagues as reported in the previous exploratory research. On the methodological side, the questionnaire opens with the de nitions that the subjects ofer of spirituality in a spontaneous way, rather than imposing categories and general indicators; only later were they asked to position themselves in relation to the proposed statements. This approach has allowed us to catch any new orientations beyond the traditional indicators of religiosity (Zinnbauer 1997). In this way, considering even the category of the “nonbelieving but spiritual scientist” (Ecklund and Long 2011, Sbalchiero 2012) might be of great bene t both for the de nition and a greater understanding of a concept that remains to be explored in all its complexity, fully participating in the debate about the complex directions that the forms of believing take in the contemporary world. spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 217

Spirituality and Scientists in Italy

Most interviewees do not manifest any adherence to a religious confession. Some 44% say they are atheist, 23% agnostic. Almost seven scientists out of ten, then, do not belong to any religion, and either deny the existence of God or do not believe such issue is important to their lives. A third of the sample contrast to them, asserting they are believers and mentioning their a liation to the Catholic religion.

Table 12.2: Religious identi cation

Religious Identi cation N % Agnostic 37 23% Atheist 70 44% Catholic 53 33%

Considering the descriptions of spirituality provided by the diferent groups, although they present some peculiarities, a common distinction is evident between this concept and that of religion, although the opening question of the questionnaire had granted ample room for expression being open and descriptive (“Please mention the main characteristics or adjectives you think may express the concepts of spirituality and religion.”). It is interesting to note that the scientists tend to use terms such as “shared, collective organization” to describe religion, while they make use of such adjectives as “individual,” “personal,” and “interior” to talk about spirituality. Regardless of religious identi cation, therefore, the scientists identify the two concepts as diferent (cf. Ecklund and Long 2011). Nevertheless, to the believing scientist, spirituality is an interior practice referring to a personal relationship with his own God and that can be shared collectively with other believers, returning to the religious ambit: Spirituality is intimacy, researching within one’s deep self. Religion is a set of practices to share spirituality with other people. (Believer, physics) Cultivating one’s spirituality leads to some extent to the necessity of sharing it with other people. We may grant the name of religion to this common human ground that shuns isolation, rather than to the notions of “hierarchy” or “organization.” (Believer, physics) To the atheist-agnostic portion of the sample (67%), spirituality is diferent and shows utterly personal quest paths that do not refer to a collective dimension, shared or religious, remaining con ned within the individual experience of the subject: 218 stefano sbalchiero

Spirituality is a personal relationship with the existent, understood as universe, nature, life; whereas spirituality is intrinsically dynamic and susceptible to change, religion intervenes mediating this relationship and forcing it within a dogmatic organization. (Agnostic, physics) Spirituality is an inner sensitivity that leads you to consider also aspects not related to the concrete, it helps to understand oneself and to have values and principles in life; religion is acceptance of values and dogmas imposed by others. (Atheist, biology) Italian atheist-agnostic scientists, expressing a degree of impatience toward the dogmatic aspect of religions, evidently nd spirituality more attractive insofar as it privileges the freedom to experiment and to experiment on one’s own. Religion and spirituality, therefore, are not considered by these scientists as perfectly overlapping categories. Besides, some indications of particular interest emerge concerning the degree of agreement expressed by the scientists in relation to some characteristics related to spirituality, as shown in Table 3.

Table 12.3: Perception of spirituality

Agnostic Atheist Believer All Agreement with the following statements: (n. 37)(n. 70)(n. 53) (N. 160) Spirituality is something open, uid and dynamic 68% 83% 87% 81% Spirituality is related to an organized system (as a 22% 7% 42% 22% Church) Spirituality is mainly a personal and interior 95% 93% 79% 89% experience Spirituality is largely independent from religious 70% 61% 28% 53% traditions Spirituality may be lived both by the believer and the 97% 89% 66% 83% atheist Spirituality practices are may be superimposed upon 3% 17% 55% 26% religious ones Spirituality necessarily implies the acknowledgment 0% 11% 75% 30% of a God

The greatest agreement among the diferent groups is recorded with respect to the consideration that spirituality can be seen primarily as a personal and inner experience (95% of the agnostics, 93% of the atheists and 79% of the believers). In a similar way, spirituality is perceived as something open, uid and dynamic by more than eight scientists out of ten. Neverthe- less, though to a lesser extent and in reference to the portion of believing spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 219 scientists, less clear positions are evinced indicating its continuity with religion and with an organized system such as a Church. The opinions of the interviewees strongly indicate the overall orientation toward a private and motivational spirituality of quest, without a Church and free from certain dogmas, thereby indicating an experience only “implicitly religious” (Bai- ley 1997). Linked to these premises, there is a widespread belief among the scientists that spirituality can be experienced both by the believer and the atheist; more than eight scientists out of ten con rm this position on average (89% of the atheists, 97% of the agnostics and 66% of the believers). The issue of the relation between a scienti c mentality and spirituality helps us to understand whether and how, even for a group such as that of scientists, some openness to transcendence is detectable and how, in this case, this dimension may be interpreted, as shown below:

Table 12.4: Compatibility between science and spirituality

Agreement with the following statements: Agnostic Atheist Believer As a scientist, apart from the fact that I am a believer or an 97% 94% 96% atheist, I believe it is plausible and important to cultivate my spirituality The atheist scientist does not ask himself existential questions, 5% 10% 32% he does not perceive the necessity of experimenting spirituality The scienti c work is compatible with spirituality: in both 86% 89% 98% cases there is the freedom to experiment and experiment oneself, a training of the mind with method Spirituality and science are compatible because they 54% 89% 88% continuously turn toward the research of truth, that is never dogmatic, that is a kind of horizon

The importance that spirituality has for all the players cuts across the diferent groups: More than 90% of the scientists believe it not only plausible but important to cultivate their spirituality. As to the contrary assertion, low levels of agreement are recorded about the fact that the atheist scientist does not ask himself any existential and spiritual questions, with the exception of a share of believers. The datum is easy to understand since it is widely acknowledged among the believers (75%) that spirituality somehow implies the acknowledgment of a God, thus containing a reference to the religious ambit. Despite the opening to nonbelievers, then, it must seem at least paradoxical to them that an atheist or agnostic scientist can embrace 220 stefano sbalchiero spirituality. However the interviewees believe that science and spirituality are compatible, despite the diferent manners of perceiving it, and this plausibility appears to be connected with the freedom of experimenting on one’s own without having to be subject to particular dogmas. Being a purely personal and intimate practice, as well as a quest for the gist and the meaning of their existence, spirituality consists in pursuing truth represented by a horizon that, in some ways, is never to be reached, similar to what happens in the process of scienti c research. To these scientists, and especially to non-believing ones, scienti c activity appears to be more compatible with spirituality than with religion (cf. Ecklund and Long 2011, Sbalchiero 2012). This widespread sense of spirituality is not merely linked to science, since it can actually ow directly from the practice of scienti c work, as shown in Table 5.

Table 12.5: Spirituality and scienti c mentality

Spirituality can ow directly from the practice of scienti c work Agnostic Atheist Believer No agreement 5% 11% 30% Little agreement 24% 21% 30% Substantial agreement 14% 14% 2% Total agreement 57% 54% 38% Total by religious identication 100% 100% 100%

It is evident that, if on one hand the scientists, notably the non-believer ones who represent the majority of the sample, separate the sphere of spirituality from the religious one, informing their approach to reality according to the scienti c method based on empirical evidence, on the other hand they integrate this approach with a view of reality that goes beyond the level of mere empirical evidence through spirituality, provided that their scienti c cognitive efort does not become a religious faith. Science is the search for truth according to a method which admits the possibility of falsifying it. Spirituality is an intuition that allows you to go further and put all the pieces together, and difer from religion which is based on blind faith and does not admit any intuition contradicting revealed truths. (Atheist, biology) Even when scientists do not believe in God, or do not consider this issue important to their own lives, even if they distance themselves from dogmatic religions and revealed truths, they perceive what is de ned as the spiritual need to seek meaning. spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 221

As an atheist I mean my spirituality as my way of living, of being, of perceiving things, the relations between things and people, leaving aside the strictly material aspects. […] I believe that there may be much spirituality even in an atheist, in the search for some form of the absolute and of the transcendent in those who refuse whatsoever type of dogmatic doctrine. (Atheist, physics) Not only do these non-believer scientists deem it important to cultivate their spirituality,but they proclaim they are atheist spiritual scientists: seven non-believer scientists out of ten de ne their experience as spiritual:

Table 12.6: Nonbeliever but spiritual scientists (N = 107)

I can consider myself a deeply religious non-believer, in other words an atheist but spiritual scientist Agnostic Atheist Total disagreement 3% 20% Little agreement 5% 6% Su cient agreement 11% 16% Total agreement 54% 59% 100% 100%

The spiritual atheist scientists acknowledge that the two approaches, spiritual and scienti c, do not so much perform diversi ed functions—as on the contrary they believe it happens between science and religious faith—but they contribute in a compatible way to facilitate the subject faced with the necessity of understanding the entirety of the real. Distinguishing between “old” and “new” spirituality (Giordan 2006; Wuthnow 1998), or between “traditional spirituality” and “the spirituality of quest,” in order to verify which is the prevailing orientation among the interviewed scientists, some indicators have been considered that are useful for this purpose. First of all, it is convenient to state what the signi cance of these two diferent assertions is. By the former we mean the sphere of spirituality in its connection with the traditional religions, which implies adherence to a system of meaning that is managed and organized. By the latter, instead, the protagonist is the subject, whose freedom of quest opens him up to the possibility of changing experience and to the contamination of symbols and elements of the sacred. Taking into account that the perception of spirituality is linked to the religious identi cation of the scientists, a certain opening toward orientations characterizing a dynamic and “new” spirituality seems to prevail (see Table 7, following). The highest grades of agreement with the proposed statements are recorded in the non-believer group. Among the agnostic-atheist scientists, the 222 stefano sbalchiero majority of the sample, an attitude of personal research prevails, based on the individual’s freedom to experiment for himself. These scientists glimpse the possibility that spirituality may emerge in moments of meditation and silence in a laboratory or working under a microscope, through reections that are not necessarily related to explanations provided by religion. This orientation belongs to 92% of the agnostics and to 83% of the atheists. On average, then, almost nine scientists out of ten among non-believers discern the connection between scienti c practice and the spiritual opening toward the transcendent to which it may lead. They feel they are spiritually challenged in ecstatic admiration for the beauty and perfection of the universe, acknowledging that there is something greater that goes beyond the immediate empirical experience, in some ways an elusive and charming mystery that does not necessarily coincide with the idea of God as proposed by religions. The group of atheists prefers to de ne this call to transcendence a “Whole,” a “cosmic Unity,” a unifying underlying logic in which they participate. Of particular interest too is the fact that to these scientists spirituality turns toward the Buddhist path, free from dogmas and open to continuous experiences of reality (cf. Ecklund and Long 2011; Sbalchiero 2012), in the perception and awareness of being part of nature and contemplating it through a method as a way to cultivate themselves in the unity of things.

Table 12.7: Spirituality characteristics

Agreement with the following statements: Agnostic Atheist Believer All My spirituality consists in enraptured admiration for 78% 70% 49% 65% the beauty and the perfection of the universe My spirituality makes me feel and acknowledge that 81% 80% 21% 61% there is something greater out there, in some ways an elusive and charming mystery, that does not necessarily coincide with the God of religions My spirituality as a scientist approaches Buddhism, it 68% 76% 30% 59% is feeling that we are part of nature and contemplate it, it is drawing from a method as a way to cultivate ourselves in the unity of things, it is experiencing great love for other people and freedom from dogma My spirituality as a scientist consists in the 54% 70% 30% 53% comprehension that a “Whole” exists, a “cosmic Unity”, an underlying unifying logic, and to feel that I am part of it During my scienti c work, for instance in silent 92% 83% 54% 76% moments in the laboratory, questions and spiritual reections may arise, that do not necessarily refer to explanations provided by religions spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 223

Spirituality is an intimate and personal suggestion, it is close to the inner feeling of perceiving and discerning transcendence of and in things; to those who are believers, religion organizes and directs spirituality and provides further sense, to those who are non-believers like me, anyhow, a feeling remains that refers to the transcendent without identifying it with God. (Atheist, biology) Spirituality is the need to caress one’s emotions, at personal level, but since I am a believer, it can tell me something of the God that created me. It is the possibility to enter into a relationship with Him. (Believer, biology) Although there are diferences depending on religious identi cations, where believers appear to be close to traditional spirituality, which implies the acknowledgment of God or one’s belonging to a religion, here are signs showing a certain openness and movement even among believers. Nearly a third of these people, in fact, admit in turn that the spirituality to which they refer is closer to Buddhist practice, in accordance with non-believers, as non-dogmatic, open to research and experimentation, which allows them the opportunity to feel they are part of a “Whole,” seizing the spiritual sense of an underlying cosmic unity (30%). As a matter of fact, spirituality is considered to be compatible with the scienti c method and oriented toward Buddhism because in both of them, following the arguments of the spiritual scientists, the primacy of experience, as well as the practical aspect of research and of the conduct of life, is set on a constant path toward knowledge (cf. Raveri 1998, Piantelli 2007). It is also notable that 54% of the believers, in line with the atheist-agnostic share of the sample, claim that while practicing science, questions of a spiritual and existential kind may arise whose answers should be sought even outside the borders of the religion they claim to profess. Despite the diferences between the spiritual pro les of the agnostic-atheists and the believers, then, the spiritual need to nd a meaning that goes beyond the limits of immediacy cuts across the scientists interviewed: 83% of the scientists agree that spirituality is a sort of middle ground where both the believer and the atheist can live. It therefore seems appropriate to refer not to “how” religious the scientists are, nor to the “quality” of their religious behavior, but rather to “how” spiritual they are through the practice of scienti c work. Factor analysis was used to investigate the key factors qualifying the scientists’ diferent types of spirituality (Table 8). The degree of agreement has been taken into account with respect to those claims that express the perception of spirituality and of its relation to the scienti c mentality. 224 stefano sbalchiero

Table 12.8: Factors qualifying the scientists’ spirituality pro les

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Plausibility: Traditional Statements New Spirituality Science and Spirituality Spirituality A2 0.86093 A7 0.71990 A8 0.78308 A12 0.75774 A14 0.83760 A18 0.76076 A15 0.85773 A19 0.68916

Extraction: Principal Component Analysis Rotation: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization Three components extracted with eigenvalues greater than one

The outcomes highlight three factors, each of which represents an orientation summarizing statistically signi cant groups of variables. These can be de ned as follows: New Spirituality; Plausibility, Science and Spirituality; Traditional Spirituality. The rst factor, ‘New Spirituality’, explains the 29% of the total variance and expresses the scientists’ orientation toward a uid and dynamic spirituality, which opens to contamination, setting the primacy of the subject, and the freedom of individual choice. The following statements contribute to determining this factor: in order of importance, statement A15 (“My spirituality as a scientist approaches Buddhism, it is feeling that we are part of nature and contemplate it. It is drawing upon a method as a way to cultivate ourselves in the unity of things. It is experiencing great love for other people and the freedom from dogmas.”), statement A8 (“My spirituality consists in ecstatic admiration for the beauty and perfection of the universe.”), and nally statement A18 (“My spirituality as a scientist consists in the comprehension of the fact that a ‘Whole’ exists, a ‘cosmic Unity,’ an underlying unifying logic, and to feel that I am part of it”). This orientation, while receiving maximum consensus in the atheist-agnostic group, at the same time expresses the attitude of those believer scientists who show greater openness to experimentation, appearing as believer scientists but in progress, engaged in research. These scientists are not only convinced that there is something else beyond science and empirical data, but that there are also other options and possibilities of spiritual and personal quest beyond spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 225 the boundaries of traditional religions, even when they claim to be believers and followers of the Catholic religion. The second factor, “Plausibility: Science and Spirituality,” explains 22% of the total variance and expresses the common conviction of the scientists, both believers and atheist-agnostics, that spirituality and science are compatible. Clearly this second factor approaches and continues the rst, related to the scientists’ widespread orientation toward “new spirituality.” The statement in A14 contributes to this factor (“Spirituality and science are compatible because they are turned toward the continuous search for truth, which is never dogmatic, which is a kind of a horizon.”), as well as that in A12 (“Scienti c work is compatible with spirituality: in both cases there is the freedom to experiment and experiment oneself, it has weakened the grip of the traditional religions in our societies, but has not eliminated the pressure or the spiritual need to seek a ‘meaning’ beyond empirical evidence.”). Each of these statements has obtained a high percentage of agreement through all the diferent groups of scientists. Not only do they readily deem it important to cultivate their spirituality, but they believe it is compatible with scienti c activity. It is interesting to note how even the orientation and the pressure toward spiritual research participates in the saturation of the factor, as an outcome or return of the sacred before its alleged disappearance due to the secularization process. Indeed, we witness scientists who not only claim or support its rebirth in terms of new spirituality, but who actually deny a correlation between the expansion of the scienti c mind and the decline of the quest for meaning and the necessity of nding “other” explanations than the tangible and measurable reality.These issues, in fact, as scientists claim, may emerge within science, forcing them to confront the rede nition of the scienti c ambit without precluding transcendent dimensions. The role played by spirituality in this process is particularly relevant, in light of the large share of the sample who consider spiritual experience more attractive than religious experience, since it is less binding and more compatible with the scienti c mind. Finally, the third factor, “Traditional Spirituality,” less signi cant than the rst two factors, explains 14% of the total variance and concerns the minority quota of those scientists who perceive spirituality in traditional terms and whose link with a religion of reference remains essential. The assertions that contribute to this factor are A2 (“Spirituality is referred to an organized and hierarchical system such as a Church.”) and A7 (“Spirituality necessarily implies the acknowledgment of a God.”). Viewed jointly, the three factors can be read according to two lines of interpretation: On the one hand we record a clear and prevalent dividing 226 stefano sbalchiero line between the two ambits, scienti c and religious, one based on empirical evidence and the other based on faith. They are two spheres that the scientists, depending on their own religious identi cation, interpret as incompat- ible, or that may even coexist, but remain distinct in any event. Moreover, such an approach is more often present in scientists at the beginning of their careers: the diferent level of scienti c experience gained seems to be related to the diferent approaches to spirituality. The younger scientists feel the necessity to explore their spirituality freely and more uidly, released from particular religious orientations, claiming also their opening toward the mysterious and the transcendent, whatever the mode of conceiving it, notwithstanding their being atheist-agnostic. On the other hand, as a hypothesis, the two spheres may not so much coexist as separate, but rather they can nd a point of contact through the medium of spirituality. If to the atheist-agnostic those signs of transcendence quoted by Berger (1969) are to be seen in the natural and immanent reality—signs that, although related to another dimension, are not believed by these scientists to coincide with the religious vision of God—even among the believer scientists some orientation and opening toward experimentation is recorded. These scientists, as a whole, express that personal and motivational invisible religion (Luckmann 1963), mostly anchored to the ambit of the implicitly religious (Bailey 1997), to which they are able to give the name of Spirituality.

Conclusion: Spirituality without Religion

In the light of these ndings, can we speak of a “particular spirituality” that characterizes and inuences the opinions of the scientists in Italy? On one hand, the relationship between scienti c mentality and spirituality seems to reect possible diferences based on the scientists’ religious identi cations. On the other hand, instead, we can speak of a shared sense of spirituality that, besides occurring in the scienti c realm, previously considered extraneous to considerations other than the empirical reality, concerns both those who place spirituality within traditional religious models and those who experience it outside these models. As a matter of fact, the spiritual dimension touches the most intimate and free levels of practice, belief and experience with the sacred by relating them to the freedom of individual choice, in line with the spread of the “culture of pluralism” (Gior- dan 2010). In this context the relationship with the sacred is not de ned or de nable by authorities or by conforming to particular external precepts, spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 227 but it is mostly subjective and characterizes the construction, the utterly personal perception, and rede nition of the very ambits of the sacred. In fact the data suggest how in the scienti c community, next to the “spirituality of believers,” other forms of “non-religious but spiritual” identi cation exist that are worthy of attention and have been too long neglected, not able to be grasped by the traditional indicators of religiosity: Spirituality is an inner, intimate feeling, arising from deep confrontation with ourselves and nature. It is acknowledging that nature as a whole is permeated by a mysterious force, by a complex mechanism that seems to be “thought,” but that we cannot de ne as God. Our spiritual impulse is generated by the wonder we feel at the beauty and mystery of life. (Agnostic, physics) I believe there is a close link between our paths of scienti c and spiritual research. Both are inspired by what I observe and are targeted to the abstraction of laws, of connections between things and meanings that go beyond our observations, but that nevertheless can be questioned, and this leads me to reject any religious doctrine and dogma. (Atheist, Biology) These quantitative data focusing on a subject rarely studied, the relationship between science and spirituality, make it possible to draw information useful for understanding as complex and multifaceted a concept as that of spirituality. Ninety-six percent of the 160 scientists surveyed consider cultivating their spirituality important and plausible, irrespective of whether they are believers or atheists. Among these, more than 40% describe themselves as deeply religious nonbelievers, that is to say “atheist but spiritual scientists.” In addition, 81% say that spirituality is compatible with science, identifying in the two experiences the possibility for the individual to experiment with freedom and method, while 58% stress that their spirituality is closer to Buddhism understood as a path to cultivate oneself in the unity of things, freed from the dogmas of religious traditions. For 71% of the scientists spirituality does not necessarily imply the acknowledgment of a God, taking the shape of a middle land that can be experienced by the believer as well as by the atheist. Drafting a de nition, as it emerges from the prevailing orientation of the interviewees, we can say that the scientists’ spirituality may be de ned as an “implicitly religious” experience with unique characteristics: some distancing from traditional and dogmatic religion in favor of the liberty of individual choice; the absence of a need to embrace the idea of an anthropomorphic God in favor of a generic cosmic entity conceived as the union in and with nature; the plausibility of the relationship between the scienti c mentality and spirituality, especially referred to in the Buddhist path; the compatibility between science and spirituality in the belief that they both are related to that basic 228 stefano sbalchiero need of humanity to go “beyond” in a quest for a “meaning”; the primacy of direct experience of reality as a source of understanding and awareness of the way, the universe, and of ourselves; the possibility that spirituality ows directly from the practice of scienti c work and becomes part of the pleasure derived by the discoveries of the scientists and that the new frontiers of knowledge contribute to producing or strengthening it. For all these reasons it is clear that to scientists spirituality is more appealing and attractive than traditional religions, especially among young people who are early in their careers. This emphasizes the fact that the process of the resacralization of the world, which touches new forms of the sacred within the contemporary era, involves science too. Actually science, unlike other activities, cannot be considered static, homogeneous, or susceptible to the changes afecting our societies and hence, the very contexts in which it operates. Even scientists, contrary to what we were inclined to believe, feel the need to inform their lives with implicitly religious and spiritual references in line with the new and diverse contemporary forms of belief (Giordan 2006). Both the bricoleur and the scientist, as they reinterpret the need for transcendence according to criteria and patterns that are no longer relevant to a speci c religious tradition, live an implicitly religious subjective experience that allows for realizing one’s spiritual self. Ultimately, in line with the American experience (Ecklund and Long 2011), the spirituality of the atheist scientist is similar to but diferent from the spirituality noted in the general population. Although spirituality is a personal experience that might suggest an individualistic kind practice aimed at improving one’s own condition (Roof 1993), the scientists describe their personal and spiritual engagement as the aim to help other people, providing their fellow creatures with their own achievements. In conclusion, to an atheist scientist spirituality is diferent from that of the common person, because through science it is possible to achieve greater and deeper awareness of the physical and biological world as well as of the personal world that, in turn, is made available to the community. Being actors of spiritual awakening in the scienti c experience, scientists feel the chance of living each action intensely together with the awareness of their inner feelings, also believing that the individual and direct experience of the physical and biological reality is the only way to understand transcendence, to help other people, and nally to go beyond in search for “meaning.” As it encourages further studies and investigations, the outcome of the present research adds complexity to the debate on spirituality, enrich- ing it with new ideas and issues that characterize the forms and directions undertaken by contemporary believing. spiritual pluralization and scientists in italy 229

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CONTRIBUTORS

Edward Bailey initiated the study of “implicit religion” (or secular faith) in 1968, and edits Implicit Religion: Journal of the Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion and Contemporary Spirituality. Since 1979 he has convened the annual Denton conferences in Implicit Religion at Ilkley, Yorkshire, and has been Visiting Professor at three universities. In 1997 he published Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society and in 1998 Implicit Religion: An Introduction.

Barbara Bertolani is a lecturer at the University of Molise in Italy, where she teaches sociology and economic sociology. From 2008 to 2012 she participated in the national research project “Religious Pluralism in Italy,” funded by the Italian government. Bertolani’s research focuses on Sikhs in Italy, transnational Sikh families, and the cultural and religious identity of second generation Sikhs.

Anthony J. Blasi is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Texas San Antonio. He has previously taught at Tennessee State University, as well as other institutions. In 2011 he edited volume 19 in the Religion and the Social Order series, Toward a Sociological Theory of Religion and Health. He is now completing a manuscript on the history of the Sociology of Religion in America.

Emanuela Contiero holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Padua, where she is currently postdoctoral fellow and Assistant Professor of General Sociology. She carries out research using qualitative methodologies applied to the study of the relationship that human beings have with the sacred, religion and spirituality.

Robert Dixon is Director of the Pastoral Research O ce of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Adjunct Professor at Australian Catholic Uni- versity, and a member of the Board of NCLS Research. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from Monash University as well as degrees in science, theology and education. 234 contributors

Anat Feldman received her doctorate in political science in 2002 from Bar-Ilan University, and is lecturer in political science and the politics of religious culture at Achva Academic College, Israel. She has published a number of articles on new religious communities, ritual adaptations and innovations, and ultra-Orthodox politics and society.

Giuseppe Giordan is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Padua. From 2007 he has served as Secretary of the Sociology of Religion Section of the Italian Sociological Association, and from 2009 as General Secretary of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR/SASR). With Enzo Pace and Luigi Berzano he edits the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, also published by Brill. He completed all his social science degrees at the Ponti cal University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome, receiving his doctorate summa cum laude in 2010. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in theology from the Theological Faculty of Northern Itally. His books in English include Identity and Pluralism: The Values of the Time (2004) and the edited volumes Vocation and Social Context (2007), Conversion in the Age of Pluralism (2009), and Youth and Religion (2010), as well as the edited volumes Religion, Spirituality, and Everyday Practice (2011, with Bill Swatos) and Mapping Religion and Spirituality in a Postsecular World (2012, with Enzo Pace). His articles have appeared in Implicit Religion, Social Compass and the Review of Religious Research.

Christina Gutiérrez Zúñiga has a doctorate in social sciences and is a teacher and researcher at El Colegio de Jalisco in Mexico. Her area of specialization is the sociology of religion, and in particular that of religious and spiritual movements. She is currently working on a project entitled Transna- cionalización y relocalización de religions afro e indioamericanas.

Barbara Kilbourne is Professor of Sociology at Tennessee State University. She earned her doctorate at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and Social Forces, as well as journals in the health eld.

Barbara Loach is a professor of Spanish at Cedarville University in Cedar- ville, Ohio. Her research interests include Latin American women writers in the genres of novel and memoir, immigration issues, and Hispanic culture, particularly the training of pre-professionals to interact in culturally efective ways with Latinos in the U.S. contributors 235

Oscar Miller is the chair of the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Urban Professions at Tennessee State University, having completed his doctorate at Vanderbilt University in 1994. He has published in the areas of occupations and medical sociology.

Niels Reeh is an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen in the History of Religions Section in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies.

Stefano Sbalchiero is a sociologist and a media communications expert. His doctoral dissertation focused on the role of religious spiritualization in science’s understanding of life. More recently he has focused on the intersection of the sociology of religion, science and spirituality. He has authored, in Italian, a book on science and spirituality (Scienza e Spiritualità Rome: Carocci, 2012).

William H. Swatos, Jr. served as Executive O cer of the Association for the Sociology of Religion from 1996 to 2012, prior to which he served from 1989 to 1994 as editor of Sociology of Religon, the ASR’s o cial journal. He has served as editor of the Religion and the Social Order Series since 2005, including editing the volumes On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity in 2006 and, with Diana Tumminia, How Prophecy Lives in 2011. He is also Executive O cer of the Religious Research Associa- tion and a Senior Fellow of the Center for Religious Inquiry Across the Disci- plines at Baylor University, serving as editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. A doctoral alumnus of the University of Kentucky, Bill is author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of over twenty books, including the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society (1998). With Kevin Christiano and Peter Kivisto, Bill has written the text Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments, soon to be issued in a third edition. In 2010 he was named Canon Theologian of the Anglican Diocese of Quincy (Illinois), of which he is also senior priest.

Renée de la Torre has a doctorate in social sciences, specializing in social anthropology, from CIESAS and the University of Guadalajara. Since 1993 she has been working as a Research Professor at CIESAS Occidente in the city of Guadalajara. A member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, her books include Los hijos de la Luz: Discurso, identidad y poder en La Luz del Mundo (1995, 2000) and La Ecclesia Nostra: La diócesis desde la perspectiva de los laicos (2006).

Religion and the Social Order

Edited by William H. Swatos, Jr.

ISSN 1061-5210

The series Religion and the Social Order was initiated by the Association for the Sociology of Religion in 1991, under the General Editorship of David G. Bromley. In 2004 an agreement between Brill and the ASR renewed the series.

11. State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies. 2005. Edited by Fenggang Yang and Joseph B. Tamney ISBN 978 90 04 14597 9 12. On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity. 2006. Edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. ISBN 978 90 04 15183 3 13. American Sociology of Religion: Histories. 2007. Edited by Anthony J. Blasi ISBN 978 90 04 16115 3 14. Vocation and Social Context. 2007. Edited by Giuseppe Giordan ISBN 978 90 04 16194 8 15. North American Buddhists in Social Context. 2008. Edited by Paul David Numrich ISBN 978 90 04 16826 8 16. Religion and Diversity in Canada. 2008. Edited by Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer ISBN 978 90 04 17015 5 17. Conversion in the Age of Pluralism. 2009. Edited by Giuseppe Giordan ISBN 978 90 04 17803 8 18. Religion Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diaspora. 2010. Edited by Afe Adogame and James V. Spickard ISBN 978 90 04 18730 6 19. Toward a Sociological Theory of Religion and Health. 2011. Edited by Anthony J. Blasi ISBN 978 90 04 20597 0 20. History, Time, Meaning, and Memory: Ideas for the Sociology of Religion. 2011. Edited by Barbara Jones Denison ISBN 978 90 04 21062 2 21. How Prophecy Lives Edited by Diana G. Tumminia and William H. Swatos, Jr. 2011. ISBN 978 90 04 21560 3 22. Mapping Religion and Spirituality in a Postsecular World Edited by Giuseppe Giordan and Enzo Pace. 2012. ISBN 978 90 04 23022 4 23. Testing Pluralism: Globalizing Belief, Localizing Gods Edited by Giuseppe Giordan and William H. Swatos, Jr. 2013. ISBN 978 90 04 25447 3