Theology—Descent into the Vicious Circles of Death by Zoran Grozdanov

Author:Zoran Grozdanov [Grozdanov, Zoran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cascade Books
Published: 2017-01-17T08:00:00+00:00

III. Postmetaphysical Turnaround of Religious Sphere

As indicated earlier, the third part of this discussion will be focused on providing an answer—of course in terms of a thesis open for critical examination and scrutiny—to the question on the key obstacle or, to put it affirmatively, the key precondition for religious communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to revive their potential for socialization of democratic political culture beyond politicization of religion and religionization of politics based on ethnic identity, and offer a concrete contribution to political liberation of man, as outlined on the final pages of The Crucified God by J. Moltmann.

Indeed, we are convinced that studying the predominant models of political socialization in LRCs has in a very specific way prepared us for this.

Metaphysical Mentality as a Fundamental Cause of the Instrumentalization of Religion for Political Slavery of Man Based on the Violent Configuration of the Religious Sphere

If we take a closer look at the analyzed mechanisms of political socialization in LRCs, unfortunately predominantly focused on the establishment and preservation of nondemocratic (or rather explicitly antidemocratic) mentality, and not only in the religious sphere but also in the political sphere, we will find out just to what extent the configuration of religion in our regional transitional societies is marked by violence; in fact, it is precisely this violence that binds them together.

But we don’t want to stop at that and simply state that the violent configuration of religion in our context prevents religions from being agents of political liberation of man but elaborate it further with two interconnected claims. First, the violent configuration of religion in our context conceals the servitude of religions to the metaphysical mentality. Second, it is this metaphysical mentality that is responsible for political slavery in our region, both in terms of religion and politics.

In a nutshell, the bottom line to this is a deeply ingrained conviction that religion (including the truth of religion), whether it be Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity or Islam, is a permanently established objective givenness (positum), timeless and spaceless, only to be indisputably admired and—the key element at issue here—blindly followed in all aspects of their private and sociopolitical life, including the principles and laws derived from that permanently established objective givenness by the religious leaders as its sole guardians and interpreters.

Consequently it’s about a concept of religion that eliminates every form of human freedom, primarily the freedom of critical thinking and challenging, of dialogue and pondering in general, as something redundant and disturbing. Moreover, in this conception even divine God, i.e., God beyond our will to power, becomes redundant and disturbing. For what is the ultimate purpose of the divine God—the question is well put—if religion (including the truth of religion) is a permanently established objective givenness to be guarded and applied to the present reality, even with the use of violence, which is of course completely legitimate since we are talking about the objective givenness of the divine origin?

Within such religion metaphysically conceived as a disposable kingdom of the eternal and unchanged truths,

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