Modernity and religion

The philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that in the ageof Enlightenment, religion as well as politicalpower have to defend their truth claims in the faceof a universal reason. Consequently, religion wasnot abandoned altogether, but rather becameinternally rationalized by the attempt to replacethis-worldly forms of spiritual experience andcharismatic power with a logically coherentreligious doctrine. From a sociological point ofview, Max Weber thus describes modernization as aprocess of increasing and comprehensiverationalization that results in a secular world viewor in a pervasive ‘disenchantment’ of the world thatcorresponds to the Calvinist and capitalist‘habitus’ of this-worldly asceticism (1988 [1920]).This description of a ‘disenchanted’ world applieseven though during the last decade the ‘grand recit’of secularization has been shattered by theunforeseen fact that religion became a powerfulaspect of world politics – a process that has beenidentified by some scholars as a ‘return ofreligion’ in modern society (Berger 1999; Riesebrodt2001; Habermas 2005).

In what follows, I will investigate if and in whichrespects the model of modernization asrationalization can be applied to the religiousfield of Bali, giving special regard to a politicsof religion in Indonesia that seeks to reinterpretthe various ritual and cosmological traditions ofthe archipelago in line with the principles of amodern religion (agama). The Indonesian republic officiallyguarantees religious freedom and pluralism, albeitonly with a strict definition of religion informedby the paradigm of a monotheist and scriptural worldreligion that implies a prophet and a holy bookpreserving a universal and coherent doctrine.Paradigmatic of this agama is the national majority religionIslam, but it would be misleading to assume thatthis politics serves a tacit Islamization; rather,it imposes the Enlightenment idea of religion as auniversal and logically coherent doctrineencompassing ritual practices, cosmologicaltraditions and animist beliefs including indigenousforms of a distinctively Indonesian Islam.Ultimately, Indonesian politics aims at theconsequent reinterpretation of presumably backwardforms of immanent ancestor and nature worship interms of a rationally coherent and thus potentiallyuniversal belief system or doctrine.