Religion: Struggle for purification and liberalization

Ignas Kleden, Sociologist, The Center for East Indonesian Affairs (CEIA), Jakarta

It seems every religion must struggle with some internal tensions, which usually result from the fact that religion is a living phenomenon. One of these tensions exists between the wish to keep religion in its pure, original form and the motivation to initiate its development from the too rigid constraints of orthodoxy.

The two inclinations often have the same goal: To keep religion as authentic as possible to enable it to be a means of salvation for people living in a particular time and place.

Ever since Max Weber published his seminal studies on the sociology of religion, we have been made aware of a sort of competition going on between the need to keep religion within an esoteric circle of the highly qualified, and the tendency of religion to reach out to as many people as possible.

However, if religion is to be brought out of the circle of religious elite and made understandable and accessible to the public, the language and the idioms used must be common and familiar to the people.

For a religion to be accepted by the masses, it has to be adjusted to the traditional beliefs and local customs of its followers. Syncretism is easily found in many religions, in which case there is, according to Weber, a transition from ethical religion to traditional religion.

Various reforms in religion aim to reverse this tendency by removing the magical elements from religious practices while trying to purify spiritual life by reverting religion to its original form and content.

To a certain extent, religious purification is "backward" reform, because the evolution of a religion is already geared toward its original beginning.

In contrast, there are also reform attempts which are liberal in nature. The aim is not so much to purify a particular religion, as it is to liberate a religion from the constraints of orthodoxy so that it is free to adjust to new situations and to be relevant to emerging contemporary problems.

It seems that both purification and liberalization have something in common insofar as the contextualization of religion is concerned.

In the case of purification, religion is de-contextualized to bring it back to its original condition, to its status nascendi. Conversely, in the case of liberalization, religion is de- contextualized from its original context so it can take its place in the context of actual, present time.

Both attempts run certain risks for religion. If purification is pushed too far, it can result in rigid religious behavior and, once this becomes unbearable, it could easily lead to mere formalism or even hypocrisy. If liberalization goes out of control, it can easily lead to a new, unintended permissiveness and even to mere subjectivism.

In this sense, religious leaders play an important role in judging how far the purification and the liberalization of religion can proceed without becoming unnecessarily unproductive.

From a sociological point of view, it is interesting to see how purification and liberalization are related to the double function of religion -- both as a way toward an individual's personal perfection and as a social force.

The two functions of religion must not necessarily coincide nor be in harmony with one another. This means that if religion is overly emphasized as a personal path to perfection, it can lead an individual to a solitary existence, wherein an individual is preoccupied with one's own spiritual exercise at the expense of social engagements, or of social life.

Great mystics become asocial simply because they often believe they are able to exert an influence on social life through the indirect mediation of their self-mortification, spiritual meditation, or individual devotion and personal prayers.

In contrast, it often happens that an individual will try in vain to substitute a highly active social engagement in place of the irreplaceable spiritual struggle and personal search for truth. In many cases, an intensive involvement in social activities is due to the inability of an individual to be alone.

Only those who are well trained spiritually and are socially mature can combine the two exercises in a productive manner which helps spiritually and is effective socially.

In both cases, however, religion has meaning and a role as a vehicle through which the salvation of men and women can be attained.

In this regard, both purification and liberalization raise their own claims. The religious purist would say that a faithful, obedient adherence to religious norms would necessarily lead to salvation. Religious liberals, meanwhile, would contend that the way to salvation is a continuous attempt, because the promise of salvation is fulfilled differently according to different times and places.

A critical question is thus raised: Is it possible to examine whether an attempt at either purification or liberalization is still conducive to the attainment of the basic aims of religion? This essay dares to bring up two proposals as far as the sociological effects of both purification and liberalization are concerned.

First, from a sociological perspective, religious reform can be viewed as successful if it makes followers relatively more open in dealing with others, especially with those people of other religious communities.

This can be compared to the cultural development of members of a cultural community. Those who have come of age culturally within their own cultures are more likely to be open and tolerant towards people from other cultures. They are usually more at ease with meeting differences without the fear of losing their own cultural identity.

Second, from a philosophical point of view, religious reform fulfills its mission if the salvation of followers is made the main goal of its activities. This is worth mentioning, because on this point there used to be a slight distortion, whereby the followers of a religion or even mankind as a whole were required to make sacrifices or even to give their lives for the security and the salvation of their religion.

The dubious presumption is, of course, whether sacrificing one's life for the sake of religion is identical with giving one's life to the glory of God.

The world might be a little more peaceful if all world religions were united in a common belief that measures their existence and significance against the extent to which people are permitted to enjoy their spiritual freedom and are guided toward their salvation without being forced to follow one way or another.

In contrast, the failure of world religions is discernible, among other traits, in the preoccupation shown by the respective leaders of each faith, especially in their efforts to secure and save their own position with all the means at their disposal, even at the cost of their own followers or other human beings.