Religious Transformations and Socio-Political Change (Eastern Europe and Latin America) ||...

Abrahim Η. Khan

Opposition within affinity between religion and politics with reference to Golden Age Denmark and Brazil

One of the best known and most influential ideas in the social sciences is Max Weber's thesis on Protestantism as a factor in the emergence of modern capitalism. The idea implies an affinity between religion and politics. But within that affinity, I contend, is an opposition that is indicative of a necessary demarcation of a boundary between religion and politics, and that is suggestive of incompatibility between the two spheres. Clarifying that opposition would enhance understanding of the religion of the solitary individual, an ideal type that neither becomes institutionalized as do sectarian movements headed by charismatic lead-ers often become nor issues in the formation of a movement or a following. This type, bearing some resemblance to the prophetic type, is prefigured in the modern period by certain individuals, especially the religious thinker Soren Kierkegaard. To explain the opposition, the primary task of the paper, I consider two critiques of modifications in the affinity between religion and politics in two different locations and periods in history: Golden Age Denmark (1800—1850) and Protestant Brazil. These situations, that are instances of modifications, indicate that when incompatibility between the two spheres no longer obtains, religion tends to become repressive, i. e., a function of the ideology of established order.

Religion is understood in this study especially in light of Weber's thesis which refers mainly to the ascetic Protestant strain of faith which Puritan Calvinism and to some degree Lutheranism, with their emphases on this worldliness, reflect. The doctrine of predestination, the sheer

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190 Abrahim Η. Khan

willfulness of an inscrutable, deity, seems to drive men, in Weber's view, to seek success as a sign of salvation. In short, this definition of religion implies a human quest for salvific certainty and an ordered human life as warranting that certainty. More specifically, it falls within the pro-phetic tradition which has, as one of its cardinal features, fearless criticism of the existing order for its shortcomings in light of operative values that constitute a standard by which shortcomings in the politico-cultural sphere might be detected. This tradition of prophetic religion with ramification for politics is still alive, especially in the context of Latin American liberation theology movements.

By politics, I intend broadly the activities of persons in collective decision making, or the carrying out of collective activities in the context of institutions. A complex of such institutions by which indi-viduals attempt to accomplish mutually desired goals constitute gov-ernment (Buchanan 1968: 78). Politics so defined takes the individual as the basic component unit, and accords with the idea that government is not only for the people but also by the people. That is, individuals must count in determining what is for them. The definition further suggests a preoccupation with attitudes regarding the here and now, with giving meaning to personal concrete living in one's own social milieu.

Along the lines of modern western ideology, the social milieu is marked by commitment to progress and economic growth. A society so committed has a functional need for the discipline and organization of individuals. In this respect, politics implies the exercise of power by individuals to organize themselves in a community that would allow them to actualize certain preferred values: ones that will enhance life, and allow for a higher development of individuals living in commu-nities. But the activities to which politics refers include also the organ-izing of human communities to facilitate the supply of worldly or economic demands.

The idea of human communities as organized social entities that exercise authority and influence is a presupposition of Weber's thesis that links the two concepts of capitalism and Protestantism. The fact



Opposition within affinity 191

that he spoke about the spirit of capitalism and not just capitalism means that he was thinking about an ideal type, about a pattern of organization characterized not only by economic operations, but also by political structure, legal system, and scientific and technological institutions as well. Or, as Herbert Liithy points out, the word "capi-talism" for Weber means no less than the inner structure governing modern western society — a whole civilization type permeated by rationality (1968: 89). This is often forgotten largely because, in the debate that Weber's thesis began, the use of the term "capitalism" was limited to economic management, accumulation of capital, or profit motive. Thus, by restricting the meaning of the term, the debate shifted attention to one aspect of the relationship between the teachings of the Reformation and the modern western world, and away from the "many interconnecting links supporting a civilization's entire history" (Lüthy 1968: 91). In fact, for Lüthy and some others, the major impact of Protestantism on European history is in the political sphere or with reference to historical materialism (Eisenstadt 1968: 7).

An explanation of the affinity between Protestantism and capitalism will inevitably take into account the transformative potential of the former. The Reformation was not originally a modernizing movement but a religious one aimed at restructuring the world according to religious precepts. For Troeltsch, the restructuring was the initial im-petus of Calvinism and was to be totalistic. Though Protestantism as a movement failed to carry out its initial totalistic impulse, it did contain a dynamic transformative tendency of its own. By transformative ten-dency is meant, says Eisenstadt, the capacity to legitimize either reli-giously or ideologically "the development of new motivations, activi-ties, and institutions which were not encompassed by the original impulses and views" (Eisenstadt 1968: 10). The transformative tendency seems to arise from a combination of outlooks stressing both the ideas of worldliness and of transcendence. The emphasis on individual activity and responsibility for one's action in this world is combined with emphasis on the individual becoming directly related to the sacred and the sacred tradition (Eisenstadt 1968: 10 — 11).




The first institutional aspect that Protestantism tended to transform was the symbols and identities of institutions in the political sphere. These constituted the natural focus of interest and activities, given that Protestantism had already within it reformatory impulses. The teachings of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin contained reformulations of the rela-tionship between church and society, rulers and the ruled, and the nature and scope of political associations. Of course, the various crises of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European society, especially re-garding state versus society, reinforced the original totalistic disposition of Protestantism towards the political sphere. The crises, as with the Reformation movement, had the same broad roots: Catholic civilization in general and the Catholic Church in particular as preordained medi-ators between society and the sacred. Protestant rulers, needing new sources of legitimation and seeking to forge new symbols of national identity, turned to their religion which was quick to facilitate the development, to the point where it might be said that state and Church were in complicity.

Golden Age Denmark, an example of the modification in the affinity between religion and politics, manifests a failure of Protestantism to realize its initial totalistic socio-religious aims. Lutheran Christianity was the official state religion of the Danish people since the Reforma-tion. During the absolutist period (1660 — 1849), official Danish citizen-ship, university entrance, access to professions, and the availability of employment opportunities depended on whether one espoused State Lutheranism. The Church was the property of the powerful bureaucrats: the royal regime and a small educated elite in Copenhagen. In the countryside, local pastors became the symbol of royal authority and of Copenhagen's high culture. After the revolutionary tide of 1848, noth-ing had changed in the relation between Church and state. According to Kirmmse's recent study, the Church was simply absorbed into the state apparatus without having a constitution or legal corporate exis-tence of its own (Kirmmse 1990: 73 — 74).1 The June 1849 Constitution contained a clause stating that the Evangelical Danish Church is the Danish People's Church and as such is supported by the state. Kirmmse



Opposition within a f f i n i t y 193

points out that this clause is deliberately vague, since it is unclear whether its substance is intended to be taken normatively or descrip-tively; in fact, the "Church remained more tightly bound to the state administration," under the "liberal-democratic regime" than it had been under absolutism (Kirmmse 1990: 75 — 76). The difference, however, is that after 1849, both Church and state, became "the inalienable moral and political property of the common man" (Kirmmse 1990: 75 — 76). It was the "common man" that Kierkegaard called on, especially in the final phase of the attack upon organized religion, to free religion from the ruling political regime, to recognize that the connection between the two was that of an affinity only.

The affinity between religion and politics might be explained also by the fact that, sociologically considered, institutionalized religion operates through the interpretation and application of symbols by which it remains close to the texture of social life. Religious symbols, to be operative, have to be internalized by adherents and then interpreted "with all the particularities of time and space that exist in the lives of the faithful" (Bellah 1978: 157-158) . Symbols, to be effective, should touch people close to their deepest feelings, says Bellah (1978: 157 — 158). But depth feelings are bound up with feelings for family, locality, ethnicity, and race. In fact, religion's strength is its involvement with social reality through action, as suggested by the biblical prophets and, in contemporary society, by the writings of individuals such as Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr, or by the voices of Martin Luther King, Jr., and of Ruben Alves, among others.

As with religion, politics too involves social reality and action, for political power when wielded effectively affects millions of people. Unlike religion, however, politics has limitations and must depend on religion to legitimize it. In the Reformation period, Protestantism provided the political sphere a new basis for the legitimization of authority, namely, direct reference to the Bible. Rulers who adopted Protestantism forged new symbols of national identity, reformulated many concepts of natural law, and restructured legal institutions along the lines of the biblical covenant and contracts (Eisenstadt 1968: 12).




In fact, because of its original impulse to restructure the world in accordance with religious precepts, Protestantism facilitated and rein-forced in various European states a continuous orientation towards the political sphere. Lüthy, however, seems to think that the influence of Protestantism on politics was not due to anything inherent in Protestant religion in general or in Calvinism and Puritanism in particular, but to the exigencies of the victory of Protestantism in certain European states (Eisenstadt 1968: 6).

Be that as it may, the fundamental categories of thought in the political sphere seem to be strikingly religious in origin. Persisting in the human mind is the idea that certain values are preferable. In both the religious and political spheres we find that justice as fairness is not in the interest of the stronger, that peace is preferable to war, that freedom means control over one's mind and body, that economic well-being is desired for all, that excellence in all things is meritorious (Riemer 1987: 8).2 A religious covenant endeavoring to provide sensible rules for human conduct, to guard against the abuse of power, and to establish limits upon human action has been assimilated into a secular structure for the preservation of human life and sane human activity. This secular structure is constitutionalism with its positive policies to optimize preferred values. Though the prophets of Israel were not modern liberal democrats or socialists, they first articulated the preferred values or ethical ideals that were to become central to a democratic-socialist constitutional tradition (Riemer 1987: 8).

Constitutional politics, in so far as it takes natural science and the relation of man to nature as its model, is a constituent of modern ideology. What Louis Dumont says about modern ideology is applicable also to politics (Dumont 1977: 5, 7, 10). Both take the individual and not society as the bearer of basic ultimate value. To judge from the behavior of political parties with a long tradition, politics is itself religious. It unconsciously mimics religion in so far as it demands faith in its basic political assumptions and employs symbols that express commitment. It has implicitly a developed soteriology whose salvific agent is some form of an economic development theory that will save




the nation. In its striving to achieve material success or salvation, it cultivates a constellation of attitudes and motivations that would bring about the wealth, power, and comfort indicative of its ideal of human fulfillment.

While the fact that politics is itself a means of responding to the human condition underscores its affinity with religion, that fact can at the same time hinder recognition of the opposition and, conceivably, incompatibility between the two. The marked difference between the two, in the first place, might be expressed in this way: politics, unlike genuine religion, lacks a dialectic of return. Bellah explains this dialectic as having experienced within one's faith something radically other and then returning to one's faith in a new way (1978: 167). This is a second naivete achieved in and through criticism. Politics has nothing within that becomes absolute in itself, it is no longer liberating but oppressive and destructive. In the second place, religion too, when it becomes institutionalized and an extension of modern ideology, ceases to have a dialectic of return. It is no longer genuine religion but an instrument and expression of the political-cultural ideology, a tool of repression, a case of affinity turned into complicity.

In Kierkegaard's view the boundaries between the spheres of religion and politics in Denmark had become obfuscated, disastrously confused to the point that any reformation by Christendom was simply a replacing of the bad with the worse. The situation did not improve even after the revolutionary events of 1848 and the introduction of a democratic constitution in 1849. To dispel for his countrymen the confusion between the two spheres, Kierkegaard took upon himself the task of delimiting them and in so doing shows, I believe, that the two are oppositional, to the point of being incompatible.

Their incompatibility does not imply for Kierkegaard that their co-existence is problematic. In fact, he saw them as mutually delimiting categories connected by a common boundary which we have sketched earlier as warranting their affinity: the individual as bearer of basic or ultimate values, a set of preferred values based on the exercise of choice or choosing absolutely that which is infinite within oneself. Kierke-




gaard's thinking about what it means to be a genuine self or person is informed by a ground rule that guides his delimiting of the two spheres and anticipates their opposition. The rule might be stated as follows: For an individual to become genuinely human, he must simultaneously relate himself absolutely to the eternal and relatively to the finite, otherwise he is misrelated and in despair (Kierkegaard 1968a: 352—353, 248, 231, 219; 1980: 13-14) . 3 Implicit in the rule is the idea that a healthy human individual is a synthesis of two qualitatively different factors: the eternal and the temporal, and that the relationship to the eternal must always take priority for the synthesis to be absolute.

For both religion and politics, the individual is the basic unit. But each sees him differently. Genuine religion views the individual in relation to God, or speaks of an egalitarianism with the respect to the eternal. The integrity of the individual is based on a personal and infinite relation with God, on relating oneself infinitely to the absolute and finitely to the finite. Becoming inwardly passional to sustain that relation, the individual affirms what is genuinely universal and human about humanity.

But the relation that characterizes religion brings the individual into radical opposition with the political sphere or established order as Kierkegaard frequently refers to it in his writings. The political sphere has as its primary concern the individual in relation to material or finite ends (historically determined). Personal relation, at best, can be only a finite one, since to become related infinitely to finite ends is to despair. Egalitarianism in this sphere is concerned with abolishing finite or relative differences among members of the group. The claim on the individual is for solidarity with fellow individuals to attend to practical arrangements and material or finite ends of members of the association or group. But political-cultural formations seem also to have a built-in tendency to become deified and take hold of the entire individual personality. Kierkegaard felt that this had occurred in his day, that the political-cultural formations marking Golden Age Denmark had created a spiritual wasteland in which free space for the spirit is filled up with




civic responsibilities or finite commitments (Kirmmse 1990: 400). In-dividuality had become subordinated to political consensus.

The position Kierkegaard took on the question occasionally causes a liberal society serious problem and underscores the priority that the eternal has over the temporal or finite with respect to individuality. To the question of whether the individual is higher than the established order, Kierkegaard answers in the affirmative and in accordance with the ground rule enunciated earlier. That is, the established order can be completely in the right with respect to practical matters or means regarding the attainment of materials ends of its members. But with respect to moral and spiritual matters the individual is not subordinate to it. By this he meant that religion, at least in its genuinely Christian form, does not cling partisanly to any political position or established order since the latter is continually in rebellion against the eternal by claiming that it has a hand in the development of the world and in the making of the individual. When a gadfly appears to remind that the individual is higher than the established order, there is an inevitable collision (Kierkegaard 1944).4 God uses such a person, Kierkegaard claims, to irritate the established order out of its self-complacency and satisfaction. The task of that person is to witness to a higher reality by keeping the political order open and subject to doubt. In his attack upon Christendom, Kierkegaard writes:

What every religion in which there is any truth aims at, and what Christianity aims at decisively, is a total transformation in a man, to wrest from him through renunciation and self-denial all that, and precisely that, to which he immediately clings, in which he immediately has his life... To become a Christian in the New Testament sense is to loosen... the individual out of the cohesion to which he clings with the passion of immediacy, and which clings to him with the same passion (Kierkegaard 1968b: 222-223) .

In short, genuine religion as Kierkegaard understood it requires that the individual break with immediacy. It is disruptive of personal alii-



198 Abrabim Η. Khan

ances with political-social formations. In reality, however, that break which Kierkegaard's genuine religion demands is difficult for most people to make. Ironically, the difficulty leads to the formation of socio-political classes that provide them with the privileges and comforts of this world but that pervert religion and compromise the requirement for the integrity of genuine individuality as Kierkegaard presented it.

A situation similar to Kierkegaard's Denmark occurred among Prot-estants in Brazil in this century. Conversion to Protestantism meant breaking with cultural roots that, throughout Latin America, show the deep influence of Roman Catholicism. Religious transformation meant shifting from a Hispanic cultural tradition to an Anglo-American one. The prominent missionary leader and ecumenist John R. Mott remarked on his first visit to the continent that it provided opportunities for evangelization and that missionary policy for the Protestant Church should have the Monroe Doctrine as its model (Alves 1985: 169). As the case study by Ruben Alves indicates, Brazilian Protestants point to the United States as a model of what Protestantism can do economically, politically, and culturally for a nation (Alves 1985: 167 — 169). However, what they see in the model is not democracy and progress, but social Utopia accompanying conversion to Protestantism. The basic presup-positions governing the way that the model is perceived is deduced, Alves explains, from their understanding of the doctrine of divine providence.

Most representative of this mentality is a certain type or spirit of Protestantism that Alves dubs "Right-doctrine Protestantism" in his investigation of the Presbyterian Church in Brazil. This Church — a blend of Calvinist Fundamentalism and Pietism — and its leaders reacted violently against all socio-political movements for change at a time when Protestants in Brazil were becoming involved in such changes (Alves 1985: xiv—xv). They denounced the struggle for liberation as a betrayal of the gospel and, with some other Protestants, gave their support to the repressive political regime. As with Kierkegaard's Den-mark, Church and regime became one. Protestant faith became Prot-estant ideology.




The study by Alves explains why this occurred. It points out that a social ethic is not an essential part of the Protestant universe, that it has no place for concerns about social justice, the exploitation of the poor, or structural changes on account of the role that the doctrine of divine providence plays in the explanation of reality (Alves 1985: 96 — 97, 103, 204). Contradictions cannot be named, nor are secondary causes real since the universe is a single, total, and closed rational system. Experience possesses no cognitive function for believers, since the doctrine sacralizes existing structures as the product of divine causality. Even unjust structures, established by secular power, have a place in the salvific plan. Consequently, no opposition to institution-alized totalitarian ideology is called for, no break that genuine religion demands of persons is made with immediacy (Alves 1985: 154 — 157, 161).

The break with immediacy, rooted in Kierkegaard's position of an infinite qualitative difference between time and eternity, is one of the ideas central to Paul Tillich's understanding of the Protestant principle as a prophetic denunciation of a sacralized secular order. That principle implies an attitude of permanent vigilance against ideology that can be either secular or sacred, a refusal to adopt a status quo that represses freedom of the spirit, an iconoclastic rebellion against any established order. The assumption here is that the human situation is basically distorted. Vis-a-vis this distortion, of which original sin is a symbol, the Protestant principle is in effect a call for a desacralizing of the world and a sacralizing of the integrity of the individual. As in the Lutheran Church of Kierkegaard's Denmark, so in the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, the Protestant principle seemed compromised, the spirit of the Reformation betrayed, the integrity of individuality vio-lated, and religion as freedom from socio-political restraints discarded.

The opposition between a genuinely prophetic religion and politics suggested by the two critiques is no way tempered by Max Weber's thesis of a link between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. If anything at all, Weber's analysis underscores opposition more than affinity. The Weberian thesis is sometimes mistaken as establishing a




causal connection between the two spheres. But in fact the thesis implies only a functional relation between the two. That is, Weber's ideal type of Protestantism is structurally similar to his ideal type of capitalism, is adapted to and better suited to the expansion of the latter. The modern world, a society committed to progress and economic growth, has a functional need for discipline and organization. Protestantism introjected the functional demands of the socio-politico-economic sys-tem as if they were theological virtues and thereby transformed indi-viduals into a function. To the extent that an ascetic-fundamentalist strain of historical Protestantism facilitates discipline and organization, modernity is a fruit of repressive Protestantism and not of religion understood as a response to existential questions of human being.

In the closing paragraphs of his classic work, Weber denounces both capitalism and Protestantism as being repressive, indicating that they might lead to a cultural development which has "specialists without spirit, and sensualists without hearts" (Weber, 1958: 182). Implicit in that denunciation is the recognition of a basic opposition existing between politics or rational conduct on the basis of vocation, on one hand, and religion understood as proclaiming the priority of grace over law, on the other hand. The reason for that opposition is that the former is repressive, transforming the individual into a function, while the latter works for the freedom of the individual, sacralizing the integrity of personhood. This note on individuality is heard again when he spoke of an opposition existing between charisma and freedom, on the one hand, and a society that organizes on a rational basis economic growth and political demands, on the other, noting that the individual is functional, "shorn of his natural rhythm as determined by the structure of his organism,... attuned to a new rhythm through a methodological specialization..." (Gerth-Mills 1958: 262-263) .

In conclusion, critiques of the two modifications do not rule out that religion and politics have much to do with one another. The co-existence of the two spheres is a part of a system of checks and balances against the misuse of power. But co-existence of the two demands continual vigilance to ensure that they remain mutually delimiting




categories, or that complicity between them is avoided. Insinuated by their mutual delimitation are two points. One is that there is nothing particularly sacred about any of the forms of political institutions or pattern of nation-states which the modern West takes for granted. The other is that while persons are the subject for religious transformation, political institutions are objects for reform under the law. Politicians and statesmen might be "Christianized" but not politics and the state, since the latter two are ordained to remain secular according to a Protestant understanding of religion.

Further, co-existence of the two spheres is to be understood as implying that they are always in opposition. To understand their relation as such, as having conflict integral to it, is part of the totality of ideas, values, and attitudes characterizing modern western ideology, and is an attempt to break free from the fascination which representations of ideology exert on us. Or, in the words of Louis Dumont, "to isolate our ideology is a sine qua non for transcending it, simply because otherwise we remain caught within it as the very medium of our thought" (Dumont 1977: 27).

Finally, the claim that an oppositional relation between the two spheres characterizes an ideal type (the religion of the solitary individual) has to be tested to see whether it holds for traditions other than Protestantism. Though this ideal type has a prophetic element, it is clearly not institutionalized. It may very well be that individuals such as Gutierrez in the Catholic tradition, and Ramakrishna and Gandhi in the Hindu tradition also prefigure the ideal type. Further testing would disclose whether opposition within affinity between religion and politics is a characteristic of an ideal type belonging primarily to Protestantism or to the phenomenon of religion in general.




Notes

1. Part one of Kirmmse's book is a valuable study of the political, economic, and social history of Denmark from 1750 — 1850. The second part treats the relevance of Kierkegaard's writings for delimiting the boundaries between politics and religion.

2. Riemer presents a model of prophetic politics based on four commitments. One of them is to eight prophetic values; another is to social scientific analysis and fearless criticism of the existing order. A third is to constitutional breakthroughs, and the fourth is to continuous prophetic scrutiny (1987: 3 - 1 2 ) .

3. Kirmmse states the rule in the negative, that is, one must not relate oneself infinitely to anything finite (1990: 323).

4. Kirmmse underscores an important point about Kierkegaard in relation to politics; it is not one of content but of the priority of the personal and spiritual sphere of love. There is no "Christian" politics, only ordinary ethical-political rules (1990: 326-328) .

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