RELIGION AND GLOBALIZATION
I.
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What is Religion?
Religion
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Module Description: A unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred
things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite in
one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them (Emile
Durkheim)
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Wikipedia: a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals,
beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations,
that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual
elements.
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Religion in the local settings
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Philippines is mostly adherent to Christianity.
▪
79% of the Christian faith belongs to the Catholic Church
▪
9% Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Restorationist and Independent Catholicism
and denominations (e.g., Iglesia Filipina Independiente, Iglesia ni Cristo,
Seventh-day Adventist Church, United Church of Christ in the
Philippines, Members Church of God International (MCGI) and
Pentecostals)
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Islam is the second biggest religion in the Philippines, comprising of 5% of the
population as Muslim.
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Indigenous Philippine Folk religion is a precedent of every religion in the current
age and is made up of 2% of the total population.
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Buddhism is practiced by 2% of the population that is involved in the Japanese –
Filipino community.
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Evangelicals comprised 2% of the population.
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Non – religious people are estimated to be around 10% of the total population.
Population by religious affiliation (Based on the 2015 census
by PSA)
90,000,000
80,000,000
70,000,000
60,000,000
50,000,000
40,000,000
30,000,000
20,000,000
10,000,000
0
Number (2015)
•
Percentage
State of the PH Religion and State - The Philippines was declared to be a secular nation
which means that the Constitution guaranteeing separation of church and state and
requiring the government to respect all religious beliefs equally.
The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable. (Article II, Section 6), and
no law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and
worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No
religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights. (Article
III, Section 5).
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There elements in defining a religion
1. Beliefs that some things are sacred, set apart from ordinary things.
2. Practices (rituals) centering on the things considered sacred.
3. A moral community (a church) resulting from a group’s beliefs and practices.
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Two types of church
1. The Literal Church - the structure or the physical building in which the religion
adherents gather.
2. Church with one moral community – the people who share common beliefs
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According to Durkheim, they had three main findings in their study of religion:
1. The world’s religion is so varied that they have no specific practice or belief in
common.
2. Religions develop a community centering on their beliefs and practices.
3. All religions separate the sacred and the profane.
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Sacred VS Profane
➢ Sacred - the interest of the group, their unity. It is embodied in sacred
group symbols or totems. An aspect of life having to do with the
supernatural that inspires awe, reverence, deep respect, even fear.
➢ Profane – mundane individual concerns. The aspect of life that is not
concerned in the religion. Basically, the ordinary aspects of life.
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Example: In the Philippines, anything that is related to their Gods are sacred. The church
specifically, is considered a sanctum. For the Filipinos, prayers are akin to healing and
miracles. Opposite of this, in Filipino culture, we use the term profanity in the context of
blasphemous speech.
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History of Religion in PH
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Pre – Hispanic era - pantheon of gods, spirits, creatures, and men that guarded the
streams, fields, trees, mountains, forests, and houses. Bathala, who created earth
and man, was superior to these other gods and spirits.
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14th Century - Islam had been spreading northward from Indonesia into the
Philippine archipelago and was firmly established on Mindanao and Sulu by the
16th Century.
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1565 - Spain introduced Christianity to the Philippines in 1565 with the arrival of
Miguel Lopez de Legaspi.
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1896 – Era of Filipino folk Christianity, combining a surface veneer of Christian
monotheism and dogma with indigenous animism.
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1902 - Filipino Catholic priest, Gregorio Aglipay, became the first head of the
Iglesia Filipina Independiente.
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1914 - Another dynamic nationalized Christian sect is the lglesia ni Kristo begun
and was founded by Felix Manolo Ysagun.
II.
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Connection Between Religion and Economic Structure
In Max Weber's book "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism," published in 1905.
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Studies the relationship between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the
emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism.
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Religions and potential cause of the modern economic conditions.
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Weber first notices a link between being a Protestant and being involved in
business, and declares his intention to investigate religion as a possible cause of
modern economic conditions.
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Spirit of Capitalism and its source.
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He argues that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an end in itself, and
pursuing profit as virtuous. Weber's goal is to understand the source of this
spirit.
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He turns to Protestantism for a potential explanation. Protestantism offers a
concept of the worldly "calling," and gives worldly activity a religious
character. While important, this alone cannot explain the need to pursue profit.
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Belief Systems
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Factors that differ religions with the other. (Roman catholic and protestants)
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How they encourage their followers?
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Their path towards heaven
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Belief of predestination
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Roman Catholic; retain traditional way of life.
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Protestants; embracing change.
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According to Weber, the Roman Catholic belief system encouraged followers to
maintain their traditional way of life.
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While the protestant belief systems encouraged its members to embrace change.
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Roman Catholic: member of church
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Protestant; Knowing on the day of judgment.
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Roman Catholics were taught that because they were Church members they
were on the road to heaven, but Protestants, those of the Calvinist tradition,
were told that they would not know if they were saved until Judgment Day.
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Calvinism Protestants and psychological need for clues.
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As Calvinism Protestants developed, so did a deep psychological need for clues
about whether one was truly saved.
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Signs and God’s will.
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Calvinists began to seek a "sign" that they were doing God's will. They
discovered this "hint" in financial success.
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Valuing profit and material success as signs of God's favor.
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Thus, they came to value profit and material success as signs of God's favor.
Pietist, Methodist, and the Baptist sects
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Other religious groups, such as the Pietists, Methodists, and the Baptist sects
had similar attitudes to a lesser degree.
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According to Weber, this new attitude shattered the traditional economic system, paving
the way for modern capitalism.
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Protestant ethic is a term used to describe the ideal of a self–denying, highly moral life
accompanied by thrift and hard work, whereas Spirit of Capitalism is Weber's term for
the desire to accumulate capital not to spend it, but as an end in itself and to constantly
reinvest it.
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However, once capitalism took hold, Protestant values became obsolete, and their ethic
took on a life of its own. To the point where we are now enslaved to the spirit of
capitalism which is so beneficial to modern economic activity.
III.
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Religion and Globalism and It’s Realities
Globalism
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Other religious groups, such as the Pietists, Methodists, and the Baptist sects
had similar attitudes to a lesser degree.
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A globalist is not worried whether he will end up in hell or heaven.
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Globalism deals with how much of human action can lead to the highest
material satisfaction and subsequent wisdom that this new status produces.
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The globalist trains to be a shrewd businessperson.
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Globalists deals more in the seal trade, raise the profits of private enterprises,
improve government revenue collections, protect the elites form being
excessively taxed by the state and naturally enrich themselves.
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Realities in Religion
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Religions are the foundations of modern republics
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Religion has been at the very center of all great political conflicts and movements
of social reform.
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Religion is a combination of the most fundamental spiritual and material issues
that have engaged the best of human minds till the time mankind lived in isolated
societies.
IV.
Religion and Globalization
Globalization should be viewed as a chance to expand and spread around the globe, rather
than as a barrier. Globalization has lifted communities from the shackles of the nation-state, but it
also risks destroying the cultural structure that links them together.
In Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), Ferdinand Tönnies set out to develop the concepts
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft that could be used as analytic tools for understanding why and how
the social world is organized.
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Gemeinschaft, often translated as” community “, is a concept referring to individuals bound
together by common norms, often because of shared physical space and shared beliefs.
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Gesellschaft, often translated as” society “, refers to associations in which self-interest is
the primary justification for membership.
Indeed, some theorists believe that in one way or another the need for moral guidance or
some form of rule for human behavior is at the heart of religion. It is one of the most characteristic
features of a religious tradition to have a “moral code”.
It is an instrument with which religious people can put their mark in the reshaping of this
globalizing world.
Numerous writers have suggested that fundamentalism is a manifestation of resistance
to globalization (e.g., Stevens, 2002). Fundamentalists tend to detest the homogenization of
culture and the uprooting of traditional values and customs that anchor people in a meaningful and
predictable world.
V.
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The Global Religious Change Landscape
Religious Landscape
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The religious landscape consisted primarily of more than three dozen churches that
Methanites encountered. Although not evenly spaced across the landscape, they
amounted to more than one church for every two square kilometers (fig. 9.1).
Although all ‘proper’ communities had one or more churches, over the centuries a
number of ‘extra-mural’ churches have been built on Methana, as elsewhere in
Greece, as an act of devotion, well away from any settlement.
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The religious landscape has been in some ways the most enduring of all the
peninsula's aspects.
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The world’s population that is Christian is expected to remain steady.
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The world’s Christian population is expected to grow from 2.2 billion in 2010 to 2.9
billion in 2050
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Nearly one-in-three people worldwide (31%) are expected to be Christian at midcentury, the same share as in 2010.
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Christianity has spread far from its historical origins and is geographically widespread.
Regional change
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It has become a more geographically diverse religion since 1910, becoming less
concentrated in Europe and more evenly distributed throughout the Americas, subSaharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.
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The regional distribution of Christians is forecast to change considerably by 2050.
Europe is no longer projected to have a plurality of the world’s Christians
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Muslims are the fastest-growing major religious group
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Buddhists, concentrated in Asia, are expected to have a stable population (of just
under 500 million) while other religious groups are projected to grow.
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Indonesia is currently home to the world’s largest Muslim population, but that is
expected to change
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the projections forecast Muslims and Christians to be roughly equal in
number around 2070
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1991 Year in which digital age began.
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This current era whereby social, economic and political activities are dependent on
information and communication technologies. It is also known as the
information age or the digital era
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Age when an increasing number of human activities are taking, or have already
taken a digital form.
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The age of widespread use of technological products and networks and
technological methods’ over traditional methods in life practices
Chronology
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The earliest abacus was a wooden or clay board, divided into columns labeled with the orders
of magnitude of a base-60 number system.
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Papyrus is first known to have been used in Egypt (at least as far back as the First Dynasty)
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Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—
primarily sheep, calves, and goats.
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Paper was first made in Lei-Yang, China by Ts'ai Lun
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printing starts as early as 3500 BCE, when the proto-Elamite and Sumerian civilizations
used cylinder seals to certify documents written in clay.
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computers go back over 200 years. At first theorized by mathematicians and
entrepreneurs, during the 19th century mechanical calculating machines were designed and
built to solve the increasingly complex number-crunching challenges.
Group Members:
Aguanta, Jan Kurt Loisse S.
Arpilleda, Bryan H.
Corpuz, Marl Angeloe G.
Derequito, Louies Kenneth A.
Esquivel, Loise Jane P.
Garcia, Nimroi S.
Gayeta, Jim Czedrick A.
Javier, John Carl C.
Parato, Georswyn Ace DL.
Serrano, Daniel
Torrefiel, Ashley Jessica M.
Tueres, Gilmer R.
References:
1.
Jack Miller, https://asiasociety.org/education/religion-philippines
2.
Wikipedia, Religion in the Philippines, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines
3.
Wikipedia, Religion, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
4.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Summary | SparkNotes. (2022). SparkNotes.
https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/protestantethic/summary/
5.
Webb, M. (2017). Religious Experience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford.edu.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-experience/
6.
Social Sciences. (2021, February 20). Social Science - Libre Texts. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from
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7.
Salzman. (2008, July). Globalization, religious fundamentalism and the need for meaning. Science
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8.
Forbes, H. (2022). The Religious Landscape. Meaning and Identity in a Greek Landscape, 343–394.
https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511720284.011
9.
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