Transnational Religious Actors

Question 1

Why did scholars predict the secularization of world politics?

Answer 1

• principles of Westphalia: disentangling political power and religious power
• rationalism and modernism

(secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward nonreligious values and secular institutions)

Question 2

What actually happened with religion?

Answer 2

Resurgence of religion

• Islam, Christianism, Hinduism -> in governments
• religion as response to globalization -> communities

Question 3

What are imagined communities

Answer 3

Benedict Anderson

• nation = socially constructed
• notion of imagined community (can be religion and nation)
• diffusion through print capitalism
• create alternative map of the world
• religions as the suspicious “other” e.g. muslims

Question 4

What is meant by the transnational practices of community

Answer 4

• religion as local practice
• pilgrimages as binding practice
• preserves community

Question 5

Is religion a transnational actor?

Answer 5

yes

Question 6

What are the 2 ways in which religion acted as transnational actors by affecting sovereignty?

Answer 6

1. subverting state sovereignty

2. transnationalizing state sovereignty

Question 7

How was state sovereignty subverted?

Answer 7

• liberation theology: movements against right-wing dictatorships
• catholic church and communism: church supporting anti-communism
• muslim brotherhood and Nasser: modern Egypt conflict, religious based movements
• religion vs. politics

Question 8

How was religious sovereignty dispersed transnationally?

Answer 8

• colonialism and missionaries: brought missionaries to colonies -> forced conversion
• young nation-states and fear of Rome’s influence: Vatican (no political and catholic division)
• Turkey and Morocco: managing Islam at a distance

Question 9

What are transnational religious actors

Answer 9

transnational religious actors:

- > non-governmental actors
- > claims to represent specific religious traditions
- > relations with other state or IO

Question 10

What is transnational civil society?

Answer 10

transnational civil society

• > result of self-conscious constructions of networks
• > by decentred, local actors
• > cross reified boundaries of space as though they weren’t there