CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Religious Engagement
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Chapter II. Literature Review
The chapter indicates theories and literature to study the interaction between state and religion. Next, the exploration continues to examine the value of ‘religious actors and groups' in the national political history and social issues. The last but not least, several examples of Buddhism activists in the political revolution will be indicated. As a consequence, how the state delivers a strategy to deal with religious grievances.
2.1. Religious Engagement
After sequences revolutions in Iran, Nicaragua, and the rise of ‘New Christianity Rights’ in the United States, stress not only the importance of religion in society, but also challenge new form of relevant agents, religion moved forward to the new revolution. The third sector developed, included vast areas of associations, clubs, voluntary organization and religious group. Religious groups may be regulated but not controlled by the state, and market relations are generally excluded, through this is contested (Gellner& Bryant, 1994)3. In the account of a strong religion-state relationship, whereby religion directly influences state policy and the state intervenes in religious organizations, is incompatible both normatively, and in the long term empirically, with democratic forms of modernity (Casanova, 1994)4. For illustration,
3Bryant, C. (1994) ‘A further comment on Kumar’s “civil society” ’, British Journal of Sociology, 45, 3, pp. 497–9.
4Casanova, J. (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
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active across the development-related fields including conflict resolution and reconciliation; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief; environmental protection and conservation; politics and social movements; and social welfare. The temples, churches or mosques are no longer a place to worship but play diverse co-ordination bodies; missionary and political organization.The ‘functional’ act that religious association adopted was to serve political aim rather than supporting civilians. In European colonial period, Christianity was enforced in the society with the duty to civilize and convert ‘backward’ peoples. It is not a singular case, under the authoritarian regime of Suharto, Aspinall (2004)6 found that ‘ most large civil society organizations were affiliated to political parties that aimed to hold or seize political power. Civil society became a mechanism, not for generating civility and ‘social capital’, but rather for magnifying socio-capital conflict and transmitting into the very bases of society.
In origin, corporatist is to study on how ‘modern nation-state consolidation challenged traditionally powerful corporate identities and organizations. ‘ The ideal organization is able to practice in any political format, as Unger and Chan (1995) 7 found ‘ the corporatist mechanisms… do not define a political system: a polity can
5Lunn, J. (2009). The Role of Religion, Spirituality and Faith in Development: A critical theory approach. Third World Quarterly, 30(5), 937-951.
6Aspinall, E. 2004. Indonesia: Transformation of Civil Society and Democratic Breakthrough. Civil Society and Political Change in Asia: Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space, M. Alagappa. Stanford, Calif.: Stan- ford University Press.
7Unger, Jonathan, and Chan.A. 1995. China, Corporatism, and the East Asian Model Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 33:29–53.
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contain corporatist elements and at the same time be a dictatorial Communist Party regime, or an authoritarian Third World government, or a liberal parliamentarian state’. In specific, associational life in China lead corporatist became ‘instrument of state rule’.
The corporatist framework is entirely fitted in ‘government-organized nongovernmental organizations’ (GONGOs) in term of attracting foreign investments, boost legitimacy in institutions. In the contrast observation, Bill&Scott (1994)8 argued that the relevant agents in struggles over legitimation are now seen as actors and groups rather than systems and institutions because ‘the contestable character of legitimation derives from the fact that the uses and functions of power always involve participating (human) agents. ‘ As a consequence, we found emergencies in society for ‘group of expression’ or the real actors to renovate places where ‘government is absent, impotent, or unwilling to act. Ammerman (1990)9 stresses the contingency of active mobilization (agency) rather than cleavages in the broad presumptive structures of normative reality. In the meantime, the concept of
‘bottom-up’ grassroots introduced. It is similar to religious organization the mean of having neither government ties nor official government support. It is different from the NGOs concept in Corporatist theory. They are diverse in-group purpose, for example, in the matter of environment eco-religious activist, human issue as anti-racism, anti-discrimination. They may able to ‘challenge government policy’ or alternatively, “As the state has expanded its functions, particularly in areas of welfare, education, equal rights legislation, and other kinds of regulation that affect
8Billings, D. B. (1994). Religion and Political Legitimation. Annual Review of Sociology, 20(1), 173-201
9Ammerman NT. 1990. Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press
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the day-to-days activities of citizen, special interests groups arisen for the express purpose of combatting, restraining or promoting certain types of government activity’.
If the official GONGOs are willing to receive foreign funds and regulated in authoritarian states under the term ‘corporatism’, functional temples in Vietnam are arguably similar to grassroots associations, relates with the government by the concept of ‘contingent symbiosis’. The temples that operate hospitals, orphanages, and schools located in villages or provinces in Vietnam gains support from local citizens, administrations rather than the central governments. Indeed, the ground-level realities construct a relationship that is symbiotic in that NGOs are looking to meet social needs, while government officials, especially at the local level, seek to make sure problems in their jurisdictions are dealt with in ways that do not attract unfavorable attention from the higher up’. Indeed, religion such as Muslim in civil society also plays a vital role to deal with specific fields. For illustration, Herbert (2009)10 reported that Brotherhood, the BJP and related organizations are active at grassroots, running education, training and welfare schemes. We may conclude that the foundation of social work rooted from the compassion of human being. In the development, one of humanitarian issue is living in a democratic environment where the opportunities of choices are enlarged. Tocqueville ultimately concluded ‘free and voluntary association, was the bedrock on which American democracy was built’.
10Herbert. D in Haynes, J. (2009). Routledge handbook of religion and politics. London: Routledge.
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