Religious freedom over time

Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Lead by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

Our group started with a follow-up discussion of Brian Grim’s lecture on religious freedom. We talked about how issues of religious freedom might well change over time in response to events like the September 11 attacks. With such events conflicts between religious groups can escalate and religious freedoms can be compromised. If the face of threatened violence, restrictions on freedom might see like a logical response. We wondered when the documentation Grim used for his study was gathered and how his results might change over time. We also wondered how he coded social restrictions. Even in one country like the United States people’s perceptions are different.

We noted how imperialism can result in changes in religious freedoms and talked specifically about the experience of Korea. Native Buddhism was suppressed in favor of Shintoism by the Japanese in the first half of the 20th century.

In our reflections about Korea we noted that American influence has also likely affected Koreans’ acceptance of Christianity. It was sometimes thought to represent an attractive religion because American power and riches were understood to validate its cultural and religious superiority. This dovetailed into some reflections on this week’s readings about West Africa in which a similar dynamic was identified as a cultural invasion. There and in Korea mission initiatives seem to generally have introduced “western ways.”

Bruce Yoder, discussion moderator

with Cindy Wu, Myungeun Park, Taeseob Cho

Context of religious freedom

Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Lead by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

· One group member commented that she is interested in religious freedom, because religious freedom is related to sociology, culture, prejudices, and government power.

• It is difficult to untangle religious freedom from the web of other human factors. For example, one group member has spent time with people in Palestine and Israel and feels the conflict doesn’t originate primarily from religious differences, but rather from political issues that are perpetuated by the media. For instance, the media may say that only one side is to blame and presents a very skewed picture of what is actually taking place.

• The problem is quite complex. The matter of restriction cannot simply be relegated to religion. Many other factors such as political, military, and economic agendas carry influence.

Question: In discussing religious freedom and looking at the Atlas of Global Christianity, how do we account for the fact that some regions with great religious freedom show very weak religious growth or even decline (e.g., Sweden), while areas with considerable religious restriction seem to show increased religiosity (e.g., China)? Speaking of Christianity, is it better for the church to have persecution?

• Suffering is helpful in faith.

• In North Korea, people recognize that living as a Christian is extremely demanding. It requires commitment in the face of opposition. In the United States, on the other hand, belief or unbelief has few social consequences. It seems the strength of a person’s faith (and the vitality of a religious community) might be correlated to the level of suffering a person is willing to endure.

• It’s hard to say whether it is “better” for Christians to experience persecution. Historically the number of Christians hasn’t steadily risen, but rather ebbed and flowed. It seems that the flow generally occurs in areas where persecution is present but I’m not sure that reflects a better situation. The Chinese church has grown while being persecuted; the US church is shrinking while enjoying a state of relative freedom. But does that mean that the situation is better for the church in China?

• Maybe a little persecution is good whereas too much persecution can be devastating.

Question: How can religious majority and minority groups work together? In South Korea, we don’t have a lot of points of contact between Christianity and Buddhism. One member, who has participated in interreligious dialogues, felt the time was spent on achieving harmony between religious groups, but this member was not convinced such dialogues were aiming for the right goal, nor certain that these meetings were the best means for achieving religious ends.

Daryl Ireland, discussion moderator

Healthy competition between majority and minority religions?

Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Lead by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

Reflecting upon Dr. Brian Grim’s lecture on religious freedom, the members of our group were struck most by several things. From a theological perspective, the statistics illustrate an interesting interplay between society and government (Sam). Edward noted that pressures from the outside make religions reassess pressure on the government. Additionally, Amy was intrigued by the apparent correlation between religious freedom and other “goods”, and the challenges to freedom involved. The concept of “reasonable restriction of religious freedom” left blurry boundaries. Who and how can we make the boundary of “reasonable restriction”? (Gun) Our group also discussed the philosophical and sociological aspects of the question of religious freedom (Sam). It was interesting to see how many countries restrict religion, and the consequence it had via social hostility. The social hostilities are caused not only by inter-religious interactions but also between religious and non-religious individuals (Earl).

There are many benefits of religious freedom for both majority and minority religions. In theory, religious freedom will help both the majority and the minority to cooperate for fostering socio-economic progress, which refers to co-existing (Gun). However, pressures are always felt by the minority. Therefore, the amount of religious freedom looks difference depending on its stance (Sam).

Our group mused the question of whether it is possible to have healthy competition between majority and minority religions. We had varying responses. Earl felt the word “competition” was not comfortable, and Amy remarked that the idea of a marketplace for religions was unhealthy. However, the strong religion will invigorate itself by contrast to other religions, therefore you can have “vigorous co-existence” (Sam).

Gun Cheol Kim, discussion moderator

Reflections on religious freedom

Editor's note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Lead by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

One of our team members (D) questioned the “time frame” regarding Grim’s statistics. He asks, “How does the time frame of events affect the data as a whole?” In addition, he points out that the presentation did not mention any relationship between social events and religious freedom. For example, he wants to know how the religious riots in India in the 90s affected Indian society since then. Another member (B) shows her concerns over the lack of religious freedom in N. Korea, and wishes more numbers were available to consider.

(Student L) S. Korea does have social restrictions, despite what was seen on the chart. In S. Korea, Christianity is relatively conservative and preaches exclusivity, unlike any other faith in the country. (L) also raises questions over the reasons why the government wants to restrict the practicing of certain religions. Are there any cases when religious restrictions are needed? In other words, statistics can be misleading without mentioning the reasons for restrictions. We should acknowledge the fact that some countries have restrictions based on security.

Student J asks, “will the politicization of religion in Europe be prophetic for other areas where the state controls religion? Will religion fade in areas of the world where the state was tied so close to religion at one time? Or was European Christianity unique?”

Student D introduces very interesting concepts in understanding restrictions on religion, which are “shame-based“ and “guilt-based” cultures. According to him, Western cultures tend to have guilt-based culture which focuses on right or wrong, while Eastern cultures tend to have shame-based culture. And it seems that shame based society has more restrictions on religion (Iran, Iraq, etc). Guilt based societies have fewer restriction on religion (US, Canada, etc). Collective societies have more religious restrictions because they are more concerned about the group and the whole.

Student K argues that the government should play a strong role in promoting religious freedom, but should not be the primary initiative taker. What happens when there are conflicting ideologies brought forth by the government (i.e., banning the veil in France).

A number of members argue that the international community can play an important role by giving guidance to regional governments about religious freedom. Furthermore, religious groups and governments should provide education about the dynamics of all religions, tolerance, and understanding. Finally, regarding the role of the individuals, the role of family education seems to be important. Each family should teach the importance of being tolerant of other religions.

Hye Jin Lee, discussion moderator

Religious Freedom and African Christianity

Editor's note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Lead by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

In our Global Christianity course this week we were fortunate to have a guest lecturer, Dr. Brian Grim, who spoke on themeasurement of religious freedom in countries across the globe. Dr. Grim showed rankings in terms of social attitudes and government restrictions that pertain to religious freedom, broadly understood. Some of the countries that ranked in both extremes, high and low, were surprising to some of us. There are two South Korean master’s students in our discussion group. One student, Jin, was both interested and shocked that South Korea did not get a more severe rating. Although South Korea constitutionally guarantees freedom of religion, some of the Christians he knows experience some social pressures. Furthermore, Jin said that it was difficult to negotiate his pacifist beliefs with mandatory military service. Another South Korean, Dong Gyun, noted that there are many subtleties to religious freedom to consider. In our discussion we noted that although minorities may experience significant degrees of social pressurefrom family or friends, such as in South Korea where Christians are steadily increasing in number, the pressure is not strictly speaking restrictive or violent. There were also countries that ranked worse than we had expected, such as Indonesia. Most of us took for granted the common perception that Indonesia is a prime example of a moderate Islamic country – in fact it did not rank as high as we had anticipated.

The second major topic of discussion was about African Christianity. Africa is the continent that has experienced the most sizable Christian growth in the last 100 years. It was interesting to ask if people were aware of the growing Christian churches in Africa. Dong and Jin said that reading about African in regard to its religious diversity, as well as statistics, was new to them. Dong Gyun also made an interesting observation: “It seems to me that African churches are largely charismatic that are geared toward the religious experience.” I made the point that is it easy for us to categorize new churches in Africa as charismatic. Yet many of these churches that we regard as charismatic may actually be under the umbrella of ‘independent’ African Initiated Churches (AICs). Although AICs emphasize spiritual healing, lively music and liturgy, they may not be denominationally Pentecostal. One of the issues we kept returning to in our discussion of Africa was our presuppositions about these churches. Do we see the African churches as being more socially conservative than in America, for example? Jeff, who is from a Methodist congregation, says this is the standing assumption among many in his circles and a cause for concern, especially regarding the ordination and role of women. How, we asked, should we engage these different African Christians? As Jeff suggested, “I believe it is better that we engage African churches; so long as they strive to maintain a connection to the scriptures and the early church, we can still have a common ground from which to start discussions. That should serve as a decent basis for dialogue.”

Eva Pascal, discussion moderator