Religions / Globalizations [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION For the majority of cultures around the world, religion thoroughly permeates and decisively affects the everyday rituals of survival and hope. Reflected in diverse spiritual customs, sacred symbols, and indigenous worship styles, global religions are permanent constituents of human life. In fact, for most of the world's peoples, religion helps to construct the public realm. The norm, therefore, is not a false divide between secularity and spirituality but the coexistence and interweaving of the so-called holy and profane. Moreover, as the contributors to this volume substantiate, religions embodied in disparate human cultures have served as the foundation for national differences, racial conflicts, class exploitation, and gender discrimination, on the one hand, as well as for the resolution of hostility and the achievement of full humanity for those at the bottom of all societies, on the other. Religious spirituality remains both endemic to controversy and empowering for social transformation. Worldwide religious dynamics have accompanied contemporary economic and political events. With the breakup of the Communist governments of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, formerly smoldering religious embers have erupted into prairie fires interconnected with national, racial, ethnic, territorial, and linguistic wars. Peoples from an earlier Marxist-Leninist era strive for ultimate meaning in their lives, and consequently religion rushes in to fill the void left by a transforming state apparatus. Similarly, the destabilizing of the geopolitical configuration caused by the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the effects of having a single world superpower have produced regional disputes often clothed in religious language. A manifestation of globalization—the breakdown of familiar boundaries and power balances—allows religion to be deployed to help refabricate new communities.