alepaillas
.com

Secularized religios expression in social justice protests

Table of Contents

• Secularized religious expression in social justice protests
• Bibliography

Secularized religious expression in social justice protests

We can find features or characteristics of religious expression in the movements for social justice that have their origin in sacred doctrines or beliefs, which today they manifest themselves outside of this context and in this sense, they have become secularized.

Of the major problems that must be faced at a global level, we can highlight without assuming priorities, global warming, gender equality and racial justice or racism systematized. To combat these issues, multiple organizations have emerged, both institutional and grassroots, made up of people from the community, political parties, governments, NGOs, etc. Most movements find their foundation in declaration of human rights so it can be said that they are this way, liberals, but that does not mean that the church does not speak out on the matter, but the issue of The following essay will focus on the former, since a distinction is assumed between both that tends to define one as rational/logical and the other as strictly dogmatic or even emotional/sentimental respectively. We will see that it is not so easy to separate both positions and that their speeches often function in essence, in the same way.

There is a lot that could be written about climate change, I still remember the first time heard about it, I must have been about five years old, a group of activists prepared in my school quite a presentation for children in first, second and third grade. In her In addition to the small theater that we saw and eating small food, we were shown the terrible situation Polar bears were going to disappear! On the other hand, the planet was warming and the layer ozone was torn but the truth is they didn't seem like such big problems in comparison. Such moment marked my baptism into green activism, even before my first communion. But leaving aside the story with which Greta Thunberg was robbed of her childhood, there is a particular phrase that attracts a lot of attention: “The science is settled.” Translated here as science is established. How can such a statement be true? Weber, on science and progress tells us: “every “finished achievement” of science means new "questions" and has the will to remain outdated and be "superseded" (Max Weber, “La ciencia como profesión”, p. 55). Of course This statement is not rescued by way of dismissing science or falling into the terrible sin of denying human participation in the environmental crisis, but rather allows us to give ourselves It takes into account what we are operating with when pronouncing such words. It's not with the logos scientific, because the consensus among researchers is with the effect of the activity of the man in the warming of the planet, not with the solution to the problem itself. Is he appeal to authority where activism meets Catholic religiosity? No really, but partially it could be, the closest to such an argument is perhaps the place apocalyptic that represents the world catastrophe.

Understanding global warming as the imminent end of the world is that we begin to dialogue from the properly theological. Science is not capable of making moral judgments or enact ethical laws, even on matters involving all of humanity, such as a rise in global temperature or the current COVID-19 pandemic. These without However, they are primary matters of religion. The apocalypse as final judgment, retribution divine for our deplorable acts works for both the biblical flood and the coming desertification. The decline of beliefs, postulated as one of the sub-theses of José Casanova, would not be expressed as a step towards the era of complete rationality, in change what happens here is a replacement. As belief in God is lost Christian, nature regains strength as a deity, it is re-sacralized. Sin is not then forgetting the commandments, on the contrary, focusing solely on them has result in abandoning Mother Nature. A new paganism has sprung up, which is not Weber's rationalized old gods, is literally the surrender to a new spirituality that possesses the individual. In it he finds a meaning that the scientific knowledge.

Incorporating the new ideology changes the person, he no longer only has rational guides, but that are equally ethical. And he faces something that he is not capable of fighting and defeating: the global capitalist system. Naturally the reaction is to activism, which is nothing other than evangelize, but given the ineffectiveness of the act he turns to his inner being. How can you not stop the container ship that pollutes more in a single trip than your car will do In all his life, there is comfort in clearing his conscience. So he will try to use less water, recycle, reuse and reduce your waste, adopt a vegan diet, etc. It happens then from a Christian ascetic, to a green ascetic. What little effect this has Achieving his big goals is irrelevant, the point is that he makes a change in his community. local and feels at peace, the same functions that religion fulfills in a practical sense.

It is worth pausing to explain the meaning of the secularization that is being worked on, understands the process of secularization, the passing of rites, doctrines, beliefs that some They once belonged to Christianity (or other institutions) towards life outside the church. What happens to content once it falls into “the mundane sphere” is not necessarily a rationalization of it, but can become sacred once again, in a new religion. Thus secularization is not something progressive in history, not at all. less defines what is modern, it is simply a phenomenon of institutionalized religion, which is incapable of controlling everything, since there is nothing pure in nature, nor anything new under the sun. Hence we can understand that for Berger “... the roots of secularization We must look for them in the oldest sources that we know today of the religion of the ancient Israel.” (Peter Berger, “The Process of Secularization,” in The Sacred Canopy, p. 163.) because the awareness of the religious implies a discourse or logos critical of himself, which for Judaism was something rational, but in the encounter with other cultures, what is born from syncretism is not purely rational.

Let us return then to global warming, once we understand that the arguments have greater power and involve people more when wielded with symbolism and religious rituality we can say that in reality we talk about the same thing with different words. Then it is truly possible to dialogue and work for common solutions. The proposal is that of Pope Francis, systematized in his encyclical Laudato si 'and his was more recent revelation on the day of the immaculate conception, with the participation of the vatican in the council for inclusive capitalism, together with CEOs of the largest banking institutions, with the same objective of updating the technocratic paradigm, which does not the logic of exploitation predominates, but that of the care of the common home, as it says in his own words.

It is also worth focusing on other social problems, since they clearly show Likewise a religious attitude, it is necessary to ask if the disenchantment of the world occurs in a famous phrase of the North American feminist movement, “Believe all women” of #MeToo, here sometimes located as “Friend, I believe you.” It is interesting the choice of words, because it is not difficult to find evidence that supports situations of widespread violence against women and yet the call is not to talk more with the another genre or stop to listen, it is enough to believe. An inverted logic is assumed here, similar to that of the decolonial Christianity-Christianity turn. The fact that the same system who has perpetuated injustices must be the one to judge whether a case really corresponds to Rape is a type of structural violence. Statistics make suffering invisible individual and sometimes serve to erase the other. Then faith is born as an alternative and becomes necessary to discuss from the same terms that the group conceives, before hegemony cultural. In the same way, one does not think of doing theology without believing in God. The opening to mystery allows us to build a consistent discourse without falling into the arrogance of power capture everything, that is why it is possible to understand the expression as religious, in the sense community that implies and not merely esoteric.

There are many other cases that could be cited to justify the thesis that the demonstrations social organizations operate from a primarily religious sense, for example, the Black Lives Matter of asking to kneel and raise your fist towards the sky or perform minutes of silence which means recognizing your position of privilege, becoming aware of a kind of sin original in the founding of the American states; but the matter has already been clarified at the level essential. It is important to note two key points, one that the future of history does not point to. necessarily towards a rationalization of all things, but the openness to Mystery, religious expression, has existed throughout humanity and does not seem to stop doing so anytime soon; two, this implies that dialogue from a religious perspective is not only possible but it becomes fundamental for a true global understanding of the issues. It doesn't work easy to separate phenomena as purely logical-rational or product of a mystical thought, but this also means that the discussion can shift focus to solutions that are capable of uniting rather than dividing.

Back to Table of Contents

Bibliography

Max Weber, “Science as a profession”, 53-89

José Casanova, “Secularization”, in Genealogies of secularization, 19-32

Peter Berger, “The Process of Secularization,” in The Sacred Canopy, 151-181

His Holiness Francis, Laudato si': On the care of our common home (paragraphs: 1, 2, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 66, 84, 85, 87, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 137, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144, 146, 151, 155, 156, 157, 202, 203, 204, 206, 215, 222, 233).

Sirin Adlbi Sibai, “Decolonizing the question” (19-33) in The prison of feminism: towards a decolonial islamic thought