The end

This Friday I will be defending my PhD thesis at the University of Southern Denmark (official notice here in Danish). So now seems to be a good time to end this blog.

On the ‘politics of defining religion’

That there is such as thing as the ‘politics of defining religion’ is a fact. Definitions of religion are often used as political tools in disputes over economic privileges, public estimation, and legal rights. The question is how this bears on the problem of providing a definition of religion. Some think that the lesson to be learned is that scholars and lay people alike are social actors and that, for this reason, a definition of religion is never objective and reliable. There are, however, reasons to resist this conclusion.

First, it should be noted that even if it is a fact that there are many examples of politically motivated definitions, it does not follow that all definitions are politically motivated. This is of course unless one thinks that every act is a political act or something to that effect—but even so there could be room for degrees and qualifications so that, for instance, some definitions (in addition to the political motivation) are also informed by academic research and standards.

Secondly, the basic disagreement in ‘politics of defining religion’ is not about defining religion, but concerns distribution of privileges and goods. Because arguably if definitions are politically motivated, this must mean that they are ‘tailored’ to suit a specific agenda. So if someone is in opposition to a specific new religious movement such as Scientology, this political preference is prior to the attempt to provide an articulation of a demarcation. For instance, a criterion of ‘financial transparency’ is obviously designed to out rule Scientology—presumably the advocates do not revise their categorization of the Roman Catholic Church even if they on reflection come to believe that such transparency fails to apply. But if this is the general pattern in the politics of defining religion—that first comes the distrust and the wish to exclude, then comes the search for reasons to back one’s politics—then it appears that the heart of the disagreement in the politics of defining religion is in fact not definitions of religion, but rather political questions about which religions are desirable and should have a share in the economical and other privileges of a society.

The recognition of political issues behind what appears to be disagreements over the definition of religion is also relevant to the difficulties in the legal system. If the letter of the law is concerned with rights of religions, then lawsuits have to decide what counts as religion. But it may well be speculated that the purpose or spirit of the law is really not to secure rights and privileges to religions as such, but to promote the interests of religions which are useful to community. Historically, religion was simply assumed to be something benevolent and useful to community, and so the political task of formulating principles of which kinds of religions are of value has not been brought into focus.

So, instead of remaining satisfied that religions should have certain privileges qua religions, legislators could be called upon to consider openly whether all religions should have these privileges just because they are religions or whether something else is more politically desirable. This would no doubt prove a highly controversial political matter, but it would probably help deflate the politics of defining religion somewhat.