Introduction

There has been a long debate over the role of religion in the public sphere (for instance Bellah 1967; Coleman 1970; Casanova 1994; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Habermas 2006) as well as over the secularisation and (de)privatisation of religion in Western societies (for instance, Taylor 2007; Calhoun et al. 2011; Putnam and Campbell 2012). In this and other debates, the relationship between religion and politics has been often conceptualised as a dichotomous one, whereby these two spheres (the sacral and the political) are viewed as easily distinguished and analysed as separate sectors of a modern society, whereby only their configurations are subject to change. Against this background, scholars explore for instance the impact of organised religion on nation-building and national identity (Jakelic 2010) or develop normative ideas about religious incorporation into the political life of democratic societies (Bader 2011).

In contrast, this chapter argues in tune with S. N. Eisenstadt's perspective (2005: 161) that religion should not be equated with the sacral, since many central dimensions of modern states are deeply rooted in the religious components of modern civilisation, even though in a modified form and frequently with a different appeal to legitimacy and ethos. In this sense, basic social functions of religion (such as strengthening of collective bonds, promotion of collective solidarity and social control through participation in collective rituals) are transformed and can function in secular terms, as they are often constitutive of political ideologies and without straightforward religious references.

Introduction

The 1960s initiated the era of the secularisation paradigm in the social sciences. It was on a presumption that was close to certainty that religion will gradually lose its social significance, as an effect of the process of modernisation. The most famous example of this paradigm is the seminal book by Peter L. Berger The Sacred Canopy (Berger 1967), that was strongly influenced by Max Weber's notion of modernisation and disenchantment. The popularity of the secularisation paradigm is no surprise in the light of the recent book by Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960's (McLeod 2007), which is the thorough analysis of a dramatic decrease in religious practices and beliefs in God among the West European and North American societies in the 1960s. This trend has been reflected by political and social scientists who relegated religion from the scholarly debate. However, the secularisation paradigm itself came under attack and has been repeatedly revised by social scientists during the last two decades. Interestingly, also Peter L. Berger has changed his position entirely.

After years of neglect, the study of religion moved to the forefront of the research agenda in political science. This shift in attention has been, in part, a reaction to the changes in social reality, including the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and the subsequent resurgence of religious conflicts, the rise of religiously motivated neoconservative politics in the USA, and the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe as a policy aiming at integration of immigrants with different cultural and religious backgrounds.

The relationship between religion and the state in Japan has been the object of investigation in an increasing number of scholarly works in the last decades (for example, Hardacre 1989, 2006; Kisala 1994; Nakano 1996; Forfar 1996; Mullins 2010; the contributions in Porcu and Watt 2012; Isomae 2012; Klein 2012; Fisker-Nielsen 2012; Kleine 2013; Dessì 2013). One of the most intriguing and debated issues in this regard has been the separation of religion and state (Jp. seikyō bunri) as legally sanctioned by the Japanese Constitution (1947), in particular by Articles 20 and 89. Article 20 sanctions freedom of religion for all, prohibits state privileges for religious organisations, and specifies the non-interference of the state into religious education or other religious activities. Article 89 is more related to the financial aspect of this matter and states that no public money should be used for religious activities. Both articles are included in the post-war Constitution of Japan, which was strongly influenced and demanded by the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP) after the defeat of Japan in World War II. Historically, it was preceded by the Shintō Directives in 1945 issued by SCAP and was conceived as a way to bring an end to what is known as State Shintō, that is, a system where state support was granted for Shintō from the beginning of the Meiji period until the end of World War II (1868–1945).

In mid-nineteenth-century england, George Holyoake coined the term ‘secularism’ to name an orientation to life designed to attract both theists and atheists under its banner. Impatient with positions defined in opposition to traditional Christian belief, such as atheist, infidel, or dissenter, Holyoake dreamed of a new formation, rallying around the ‘work of human improvement’, that would not be splintered by these older divisions. He sought a positive philosophy, one that was not parasitic on what was being rejected. His 1854 Principles of Secularism aspired to give voice to such an alternate vision. Its signature features were its appeal to reason, nature and experience and its passionate commitment to the amelioration of human life. Although clearly differing from forms of traditional Christianity that invoked clerical or scriptural authorities or focused on supernatural means and otherworldly ends, secularism, as Holyoake fashioned it, was not the antithesis of religion or one side of a religion–secularism binary. It was a canopy large enough to house some forms of religion as it excluded others. Its relative capaciousness was one of its defining virtues.

For Holyoake a strategic advantage of his newly coined label was the way it riffed on the term ‘secular’ in the Western Christian imaginary. Within a Christian theological framework the secular identifies the temporal and worldly in distinction from, though in relationship to, the eternal and spiritual. By appropriating a term ‘found and respected in the dictionaries of opponents’ Holyoake hoped to underscore the shared resonances.

When I began to study Chinese history in 1968, the standard understanding was that China had no native religion, that Confucianism was not a religion, and that Buddhism, a religion of foreign origin, had long since gone into terminal decline. Studies over the last half century have demonstrated that, on the contrary, there was a native religion, Daoism, Confucianism was a religion, and Buddhism has continued to thrive right down to the present. Together, these ‘three teachings’ (sanjiao) as they were called in Chinese received ongoing state support throughout imperial history (220 BCE–1911 CE). Often, moreover, they would band together to oppose a fourth form of religion, one founded on mediums (wu) who spoke for the gods enshrined in local temples. To be complete, a history of Chinese religion must therefore describe these four religions and their interactions. What such a description would lead us to discover is that the ultimate arbiter between these four religions was the state itself. Headed by a Son of Heaven who possessed the Mandate of Heaven to rule, the state in fact functioned like a church. That is, there is nothing really comparable in Chinese history to a conflict between church and state because the Chinese state was a church-state.

To explain what this affirmation means in concrete historical terms, we must begin with Confucianism, for it is chronologically speaking the first of the three teachings to emerge. Confucius (551–479 BCE) himself had no intention of founding a religion.

In 2012 the issues of the role of the Orthodox Church in Russian society and church–state relations came to the fore in public discussions in Russia. It became clear that the church was seeking to exert more influence on the social and political life of the country than ever before in the post-Soviet years. The seemingly growing importance of religious matters in a society that was often regarded as thoroughly secularised needs to be discussed from a sociological perspective. Apparently we should consider the interrelation of religion and politics in Russia during the whole post-Soviet period in order to clarify the current situation in this sphere.

This chapter partly draws on one of the trends in comparative-historical civilisational analysis that focuses on both cultural and political factors of social dynamics. However, we are trying not so much to apply the theoretical perspective of civilisational analysis to post-Soviet Russia, but rather to use elements of more empirical studies which seem to be compatible with this perspective. Special attention is devoted to the impact of the Soviet imperial legacy on Russia's political transformations. In particular, the relevance of Stephen Hanson's concept of ‘post-imperial democracy’ for making sense of Russian politics is evaluated. We also consider several other approaches to post-Soviet affairs that take into account the imperial legacy.

TheAnnual of European and Global Studies (AEGS) is an independent scholarly periodical, based in the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Wrocław (Poland). Its aim is to publish once a year a collection of articles with a shared thematic focus, dealing with European and global issues. The main goal of AEGS is to present wide-ranging scholarly reflections on paradigms, theories and problems concerning European and global developments and their background. In so doing, the Annual will strive for a genuine global dialogue of scholarly perspectives from different regions around the world. Willfried Spohn played a central role in establishing the Annual during his time at the Willy Brandt Centre (2010–12). His intellect, experience and collegiality were essential for the formulation and realisation of this project. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Willfried.

It seems fitting to begin this series with a volume on religion and politics, and all the more so because it links up with Willfried Spohn's published work and unfinished research projects. There are several weighty reasons to treat this theme as a key connecting link between European and global affairs. Debates on religion, its role and its prospects in the contemporary world have to a high degree focused on contrasts between Europe and other parts of the world; the long-established assumption that modern societies are on a secularising path seems, whatever the problems arising on closer examination, to have a stronger claim to validity in Europe than elsewhere.

In Western Europe at the turn of the twenty-first century, a new wave of anti-immigrant xenophobia has provided evidence of an edgy political and cultural response to the uncertainties of a post-Cold War world. This religious rebellion in the most modern of Western societies is one of the more puzzling features of the modern era. It is readily understandable that politicised religion could emerge at this moment of history in other parts of the world – Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, for examples. In these cases religious nationalism is a lingering response to colonialism, and traditional culture becomes a resource for a revived sense of national identity. What is less obvious is the way in which the same process has been part of the post-Cold War search for identity in the more developed parts of the world, including those societies that were dominant in the colonial era. In Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in the developed world, religious activism primarily associated with Christianity has surfaced with a vengeance at the same time that anti-colonial Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim religious movements have been active elsewhere. In all of these cases, however, the reasons may have been similar. These may be instances of a global response to political uncertainty, in which religion has provided a way of thinking about public virtue, collective identity and world order in the face of a social reality that seems to be losing its moorings in a post-Cold War world.

This chapter aims at revealing the tension between democracy, secularism and Islam in contemporary Turkey by focusing on the Islamist, Kurdish and Alevi claims vis-a-vis the monolithical state regime, which has so far denied the ethno-cultural and religious plurality of the society. The main premise of this article is that the social and political transformation of contemporary Turkey under the reign of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi) does not re constitute a democratic form of governance as the AKP has also proved to be bearing the authoritarian and repressive legacy of the Kemalist state tradition despite the fact that it receives its legitimation from the fight it has been performing against the Kemalist rhetoric. This chapter will claim that Turkish democracy is yet far from consolidation as the divide between laicism and Islam has so far been ideologically fabricated and exploited by both the so-called laicist and Islamist groups. Hence it will be argued that the democratic consolidation in Turkey is subject to the easing of this tension between the advocates of laicism and Islamism.

This chapter substantially profited from the findings of two separate FP7 (Framework Programme 7) projects, in which I was involved between 2009 and 2012. The first research, entitled Identities and Modernities in Europe (IME), mainly dealt with the ways in which European identities and modernities were constructed in different countries. The second research, entitled Tolerance, Pluralism and Social Cohesion: Responding to the Challenges of the 21st Century in Europe (Accept Pluralism) looked into the efficiency of the regime of tolerance in resolving the tensions resulting from ethno-cultural and religious diversity in various European countries.

Introduction: Willfried Spohn on religion and politics

It is a commonplace that the question of interaction between religion and politics has come back to haunt both academic and broader public debates. Less frequently noted is the inherent ambiguity of the trends and events in question: what some observers see as a return of religion to the political arena is portrayed by others as a stepped-up politicisation of religion. Samuel Huntington's work on the clash of civilisations (Huntington 1996) has become a standard illustration of the former view. For Huntington, religion is the most important objective determinant of civilisational identity, and as such, it is the main driving force behind the shift from national and ideological to civilisational politics. Huntington's critics, as well as many other authors with different concerns, have argued that the invocations of traditionalist or fundamentalist principles are better understood as new ways of drawing religious resources into power struggles that have not undergone any basic change. Disagreement on this point does not, however, preclude a common emphasis in another regard: the regained importance of religion is believed to undermine some well-established assumptions about the modern world. On this view, the idea of a fundamental tension between religion and modernity – or, in other words, a secularising dynamic as a defining feature of modernisation – is no longer tenable. The apparent historical evidence for that claim can then be explained away in various terms.