The World of Religions, January-February 2005 —
Editorial —
When I began working in publishing and the press in the late 1980s, religion interested no one. Today, through multiple forms, religion is invading the media. In fact, the 21st century is opening with an increased influence of "religious fact" in the course of the world and societies. Why? Today we are confronted with two very different expressions of religion: the awakening of identity and the need for meaning. The awakening of identity concerns the entire planet. It arises from the confrontation of cultures, from new political and economic conflicts that mobilize religion as the emblem of identity of a people, a nation, or a civilization. The need for meaning primarily affects the secularized and de-ideologized West. Ultramodern individuals distrust religious institutions, they intend to be the legislators of their own lives, they no longer believe in the bright future promised by science and politics: they nevertheless continue to be confronted with the great questions of origin, suffering, death. Likewise, they need rites, myths and symbols. This need for meaning re-examines the great philosophical and religious traditions of humanity: the success of Buddhism and mysticism, the revival of esotericism, the return to Greek wisdom.
The awakening of religion in its two aspects, identity and spirituality, evokes the dual etymology of the word religion: to gather and to connect. Human beings are religious animals because they look to the heavens and question the enigma of existence. They gather to welcome the sacred. They are also religious because they seek to connect with their fellow human beings in a sacred bond based on transcendence. This dual vertical and horizontal dimension of religion has existed since the dawn of time. Religion has been one of the main catalysts for the birth and development of civilizations. It has produced sublime things: the active compassion of saints and mystics, charitable works, the greatest artistic masterpieces, universal moral values, and even the birth of science. But in its hard-line form, it has always fueled and legitimized wars and massacres. Religious extremism also has its two aspects. The poison of the vertical dimension is dogmatic fanaticism or delusional irrationality. A kind of pathology of certainty that can drive individuals and societies to all extremes in the name of faith. The poison of the horizontal dimension is racist communitarianism, a pathology of collective identity. The explosive mixture of the two gave rise to witch hunts, the Inquisition, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and 9/11.
Faced with the threats they pose to the planet, some European observers and intellectuals are tempted to reduce religion to its extremist forms and condemn it wholesale (for example, Islam = radical Islamism). This is a serious error that has the effect of amplifying what we are trying to combat. We will only succeed in defeating religious extremism by also recognizing the positive and civilizing value of religions and by accepting their diversity; by admitting that man has an individual and collective need for the sacred and for symbols; by attacking the root of the evils that explain the current success of the instrumentalization of religion by politics: North-South inequalities, poverty and injustice, the new American imperialism, overly rapid globalization, contempt for traditional identities and customs... The 21st century will be what we make of it. Religion can be just as much a symbolic tool used in policies of conquest and destruction as a catalyst for individual development and world peace in the diversity of cultures.