Religion and Political Change in the Modern World by Jeffrey Haynes

Author:Jeffrey Haynes [Haynes, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415744966
Google: 3CCCngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18552740
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-15T13:17:06+00:00

Religious Leaders and the State in Africa

Political leaders will seek to achieve or maintain domination over society by developing an ideology of their own legitimacy, justifying the status quo, through a pursuit of an often putative 'national unity'. Bolstering and underlying 'national unity' concerns is a hegemonic thrust, 'which drives the state and the self-proclaimed dominant social groups to seek to control and to shape civil society'.20 Class concerns in Africa (best understood in a Weberian rather than an analytically less useful Marxist sense) coalesce, dominate and override all other issues, except sometimes ethnic or religious divisions. Political officials may well also be merchants and businessmen: how else to make a profit in a context of very low remuneration for employment? Because religious actors suffer from the same economic problems, many attempt to use their network of contacts to advance their own self-interest.21 This gives them an important political role in the same way that businesspeople strive to develop contacts with political elites for mutual benefit.

Those who make it to the top of ecclesiastical structures are selectively recruited according to educational attainments and perhaps ethnic affinity, gradually socialized into the world of the political and social elites, and rewarded materially for their loyalty to the struggle to maintain the political status quo. What develops is a kind of hegemonic coalition with secular political leaders. The central goal is the maintenance of order and the continuation of elite control. Only occasionally do circumstances combine in such a way that religious leaders find themselves propelled to the forefront of popular opposition to state power. The issue here is the relationship of the sacred to the temporal. In the Christian conception the two realms of God and Caesar provide a theoretically clear-cut division of labour: religion is concerned with the spiritual aspects of life, politics with material concerns. Thus, for Christian leaders there is no necessity to propound on clearly political issues - provided the latter do not have a serious impact upon the ability of the former to practise and propound their religion. That is, provided that religious worship is tolerated by the state, democracy per se may not be that relevant to an expression of a belief in God or in the ability of the followers of a religion to worship. Many religious professionals no doubt believe that during their daily work they are performing God's mission to the best of their ability. They will be as certain as possible that their vocation is morally right, essential for the spiritual health of their countrymen and women. There may be occasional doubts of a 'technical' character, that is, they 'may doubt whether a particular action in operation or contemplation most expediently advances (their) larger life purposes, about which (they) can never be in any doubt'.22 In other words, religious leaders' long-term goals are clear, short-term expediency while regrettable is not of profound importance in relation to the overriding objective of achieving God's kingdom on earth. The implication is that God ultimately ordains all political and social authority on earth.

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