State and Religion

This book first proves that the rationale behind Russia’s aggressive actions in its neighborhood resides in its goal of achieving certain geostrategic objectives which are largely predefined by the state’s imperial traditions, memories, and fears that the Kremlin may irretrievably lose control over lands which were once Russian. In other words, Russia constantly remains an expansion-oriented and centralized state regardless of epochs and political regimes ruling over it. That is its geopolitical modus operandi successfully tested throughout history. This book also scrutinizes Ukraine as a young post-colonial and post-communist state which, unlike Russia, is more prone to democratize and decentralize. To understand the logics of the ongoing Ukrainian transformation, its domestic and international developments are assessed in their connection to the Soviet political tradition and the medieval legacy of the Cossack statehood (15–18 centuries). This book outlines differences between the political cultures of Ukrainian and Russian nations. This envisages scrutiny of historical experiences and their impacts on the Ukrainian and Russian state-building, institutional structures, national identity, religious issues, and other features of sovereignty. Based on these discoveries, a structure of symbolic thinking which predefines indigenous understandings of justice and order has been constructed for Ukrainians and Russians.

Lecture presented to the Department of Indology, Kyoto University, 23 June 2018. 
 
Revised version of a lecture, “Pluralism, Patronage, and Documentary Protocol”
for the Seminar on Politics, Pluralism, and Patronage in Ancient India,
University of Texas, Austin, 3 November 2017
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/asianstudies/events/event.php?id=45165 ;
     
  Abstract:
Aśoka’s edicts (3rd-century BCE) expressed an ideal of civil religion that recognized that is realm was religiously plural, that all sects animated by a set of common concerns that his called dharma, that members of all sects sects were worthy of gifts (dāna), and that despite his particular attachment to the Buddhist order he himself offered patronage to all groups.  One particular act of patronage took the form of visiting the Buddha’s birthplace, building or improving cultic facilities there, and exempting the village from paying tax.  The latter enactments provided a model for religious patronage down through the ages in South and Southeast Asia.  Although later rulers have not promoted ecumenism so vigorously, many did adopt a policy of offering patronage to more than just their own preferred religious group.  This can be traced in the record of religious land-grant endowments and other gifts in later centuries that stipulate an expanding set of exemptions from tax-payments and other obligations to the king (along with other privileges conferring on the beneficiaries greater autonomy).  Property grants with such exemptions — for Buddhist and well as Brahmin beneficiaries — have survived from the beginning of the Common Era (in Sātavahana cave inscriptions, early Pallava copper-plates, etc.).  In broad terms, such grants embody a principle that religious aims and institutions have a justifiable claim to stand outside (or to be insulated from) the economic regime of the state.  This is furthermore justified by the principle, sometimes tacit, sometimes express, that religious undertakings contribute to the welfare of the society and the polity that supports them financially, that this support is an intangible asset of the state or of the donor.  When explicit justification is needed, sources point to the spiritual merit conferred upon donors, and more generally the maintenance of public virtue and order, and the continued security of the realm.  Sometimes it is even quantified, as when the king is said to derive 1/6 of the merit of approving a religious endowment because he thereby foregoes receipt of the normal tax, 1/6 of the revenue of the property.  In any case, the dissemination of a distinctively Indian model of patronage, in the form of legal mechanisms expressed in standardized diplomatic formulas (supported by scholastic textual models), provided an enduring basis for acknowledging religious pluralism (including an implicit notion of the analogousness of different religions).  Furthermore, such patronage implied that there was religious sphere conceptually distinguishable from secular affairs (in spite of the manifold ways in which religious individuals and institutions could and did participate in financial or commercial transactions).  Civic religion in ancient India, then, as in the modern world, was balancing act of granting the separateness of religion (i.e., its trancendence) while implicating it in the public welfare or the private welfare of the donor (i.e., its immanence).

Asumiendo el renacimiento del interés sobre la presencia pública del hecho religioso, el artículo propone reconocer y analizar algunas tendencias contemporáneas relevantes en su visualización en la esfera pública, incidentes en su recepción jurídica en los sistemas normativos contemporáneos occidentales. Para tal efecto, considera doctrina preferentemente contemporánea, cuyo influjo es habitualmente reconocido en el medio iberoamericano, analizando en clave sociojurídica las tendencias en las posiciones dominantes en el análisis organizacional de la religión, el renovado protagonismo del fenómeno religioso en la dimensión pública, su recepción político-jurídica, la posición de las comunidades de fieles en los ordenamientos seculares, la primacía de la libertad religiosa como principio informador del orden legal y el lugar de la religión en el Estado laico.

Based on the renewed interest in the public impact of religious practices, this article spotlights and analyzes some significant contemporary trends in the way they are seen in the public sphere which affect their legal recognition by legal systems in the West. Our analysis mainly focuses on a review of current doctrines in this area, whose influence is widely acknowledged in Latin America, and it is undertaken from a socio-legal standpoint. Among other aspects, it addresses the dominant trends in the institutional approach to religious practices, the leading role they have again assumed in the public sphere, their political-legal recognition, the place which communities of worshippers hold in secular systems, the overriding importance in legal systems of the principle of religious freedom and the status of religion in a laical State.

A treatment of efforts to discriminate against women in public space in Israel as part of a theocratic agenda that threatens Israeli civil democracy. Analogy to racism.

Published in a Special Issue in the Jerusalem Post about Religion and State in Israel.

May 16 2021 Is Silencing Women, Holding Them Captive, To Be The New Norm in Israel? Jerusalem Post Special Issue on Religion and State

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/is-silencing-women-holding-them-captive-to-be-the-norm-in-israel-668053

Values can come into conflict: promoting individual freedom may entail intolerance towards illiberal groups, while promoting tolerance of illiberal groups may entail accepting restrictions on the freedom of individuals. What should be done in such cases?
In Israel at present, some religious practices are offensive to the sensibilities of women and involve coercion. Coercion conflicts with the liberal elements of democracy that vouchsafes the rights of individuals. One of these is the right to follow one’s conscience and to practice one's beliefs as one sees fit, as long as this practice does not entail harm to others. This paper argues for separation between state and religion, deeming it necessary to avoid coercion and allowing people to pursue their conceptions of the good as long as they do not harm others. Israel today gives precedence to Judaism over liberalism. I submit that the reverse should be the case.

This essay aims to reexamine the debate on the impact of Fascism on religious studies, by reconstructing what Raffaele Pettazzoni, one of the founding fathers of this field of research in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, meant by “religion of the state.” His research on the origin of the religious state in Iranian history and in the Greek polytheistic prototype of the polis offers a key to the interpretation of his further analysis of the religious Fascist phenomenon. Mingling approaches of both political science and history of religions, this study constitutes an introduction to a new understanding — which remained hidden in Pettazzoni’s texts — of Fascism as a degeneration of state religiousness. While Fascism is an example of the sacralization of politics (according to one of the leading historians of Fascist ideology, Emilio Gentile), Pettazzoni showed how in other ways Fascism perpetuated the pre-Christian crisis of the religious state.

The paper deals with ways of transmitting and re-producing religious memory, religious knowledge and knowledge on religions through the education system in the Czech Republic. The paper summarizes the concept of religious memory as defined by D. Hervieu-Léger. The paper also defines two distinctive yet interconnected aspects of religious memory, "religious knowledge" and "knowledge on religions". "Religious knowledge" can be defined as a set of information as seen through the perspective of a specific religious tradition; "knowledge of religions" is broader and encompasses all information on the topic of religions. Religious memory in both its aspects is re-produced, transmitted and disseminated by various agents – the system of education represents one of these channels through which religious memory is reproduced. The paper also takes into account two different aspects of the process of reproducing religious memory through education: normative and practical. It explains the importance of examining the normative aspect in connection to the practical aspect of applying the laws regulating the access of the churches to the education system. The author also briefly treats the topic of defining the concept of “religion” in connection to the topic of his research and applies B. Saler’s prototypical definition of religion. Defining thus the field of research, the paper examines two legal norms regulating the access of religious organizations to the school system: the Education Act and the Law on Churches and Religious Societies. From the normative point of view, the legal norms set equal requirements for all churches and religious organizations as far as the access to the state school system is concerned. In reality, not all churches which are interested in obtaining the “special rights”, including the access to the school system, can meet the strict requirements as defined by the law. The legal requirements disadvantage alternative religions or non-Christian religions and minor religious groups. Applying the economic approach to this situation, the paper ascertains that the competition of churches at religious marketplace is not entirely free: the state power interferes with the competition by restrictions and regulations. The legal practice allows the Czech state to keep its control over the process of maintaining religious memory through the state school system. The case of religious education in the Czech Republic can be seen as a good example of state control over the "authorized memory" or the reservoir of knowledge that allows keeping the sense of historical continuity within the society. It also reveals that the image of the modern Czech society as "secularized", "irreligious" or even "atheist" can be too simplistic and that religion and the state interfere vividly within the public sphere of the Czech society.

The idea that Fiji should be a Christian State resurfaces periodically.  In 2012, it has appeared in a number of submissions to the Constitution Committee from the Methodist Church and a political party, the S.D.L: both of which are known to have strong support from the majority of iTaukei (indigenous Fijians).  In this paper, I explore how an influential faction of iTaukei Methodists has imagined Fiji as a Christian community connected to ‘place’ through kinship and narratives of historical belonging.  After sketching out iTaukei claims that resulted in the 1987 and 2000 coups, I examine the impact of the 2010 Decree, which shifted the word ‘Fijian’ from being a marker of racial identity to one of national identity, and show the disjunction between notions of a democracy based on international conceptions of human rights and the desire of many iTaukei for a Christian State.  This religious nationalism reflects the tension between communal and national identities, paralleling similar tensions in countries like India. Lastly, I examine some of the public responses to the Constitution Commission, which was the first time since the 2006 coup that the public have felt able to openly discuss their views about governance in Fiji.  Limited online access available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ubBEhB9scY35gJYktKzi/full