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Since the Enlightenment, intellectuals have assumed that modernization would kill religion--and that religious America was an oddity. Yet from Russia to Turkey to India, nations that swore off faith in the last century--or even tried to stamp it out--are now experiencing a new religious fervor. While this global rise of
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faith has had a far-reaching impact and the destabilizing effects of this religious zeal combined with political unrest can already be seen, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, both of The Economist, argue in their new book, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (Penguin Press, April 2009), that religion and modernity can thrive together.
Viewing America as the new norm, the authors describe how the same American ideas that created the United States' unique religious style can be applied around the globe. Micklethwait and Wooldridge propose that this twenty-first-century religion, fueled by an American emphasis on competition and a customer-driven approach to salvation, could channel the rising tide of faith away from volatility and violence as market forces reshape the world. At this event, the authors will be joined by Luis E. Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. AEI's Henry Olsen will moderate.
| 1:45 p.m. | Registration | |
| 2:00 | Presenters: | John Micklethwait, The Economist |
| Adrian Wooldridge, The Economist | ||
| Discussant: | Luis E. Lugo, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life | |
| Moderator: | Henry Olsen, AEI | |
| 3:30 | Adjournment |
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WASHINGTON, APRIL 6, 2009--For good or ill, religion is back at the center of public life. The Economist's John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge argue in their new book, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World (Penguin, 2009), that the resurgence of deeply felt faith around the world represents the triumph of American-style religious pluralism, but that it brings with it increasing risk of religious wars, both violent and cultural.
At a book forum at AEI on April 3, Henry Olsen asked the authors where, if He had ever left, God went. "The elite assumed that modernity was crushing religion," Micklethwait said. It was taken for granted by the world's top minds that the Enlightenment had triumphed and that religion had been relegated to a private sphere. This assumption dominated the twentieth century and was instrumental in Communist regimes, Atatürk's secular Turkey, and the revulsion of Western democrats toward Nazism and fascism. Even The Economist published an obituary for God, Micklethwait said with a grin. Scientific and technological progress was supposed to make God obsolete. But the late twentieth century proved the elite consensus wrong. The Iranian revolution, the Polish pope, and the election of a born-again American president were all tokens of a resurgence of religion, not in the private sphere, but out in the open. Today, the president of the United States and the prime minister of Great Britain speak openly and warmly about their faiths and only a few people bat their eyes. Even regimes that are hostile to religion are increasingly powerless to resist it: China is on track to become the world's largest Christian country.
What is driving this resurgence? "People are going to religion because it is doing things for them," Micklethwait said. But it's not just a matter of getting material well-being (although that is part of it). Religions are growing fast in the global middle class, a phenomenon noted by Carol Lee Hamrin in an AEI paper on China's urban, educated Protestants. Religion has documented benefits for well-being and living a meaningful life--hence bestsellers like Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life.
Another factor that Micklethwait and Wooldridge cite for revivified religion is something I once noted in The American about U.S. evangelicalism: "Everywhere in the United States, people have more consumer choice in their exercise of religion than they do in almost any other sector of the economy. Individual parish churches, regardless of denominational affiliation, function as independent contractors of salvation in America's religious free market." This intense competition within and among religions explains why churches, mosques, and ministries have gotten better at meeting people's needs.
Luis E. Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, offered an additional explanation of religion's latter-day appeal. Modern life is full of insecurities and dislocation, especially those associated with globalization. People are "searching for community, searching for moral grounding," he said, and they are increasingly finding it in faith. Thus, modernity can strengthen religion. (Even secularists feel the pressures of modernity and reach for quasi-religious solutions; consider the apocalyptic prophecies of the environmental movement.)
Wooldridge highlighted the dangers of the religious revival. "Passionately held religious beliefs are a devil to deal with," he said. With them could come a return to wars of religion--not that interreligious conflict ever really died, but religion is returning to the statecraft of the great powers--which are intractable because the issues at stake do not invite compromise. Also of concern, Wooldridge said, is the "spread of American-style culture wars all around the world." He cited as examples debates over gay marriage, abortion, sharia law, and cartoons of Muhammad. But Micklethwait and Wooldridge locate the solution to American-style culture wars in the American constitutional order: separation of church and state. America uniquely "institutionalized toleration . . . and competition," which invigorated religious belief and practice in this country and paved the way for what Wooldridge called the "global spread of American-style religion." He contrasted this to Europe's approach to faith, a brittle secularism that props up lifeless state churches but cannot absorb deeply felt religions like Islam, professed by many of its immigrants. "America has created a regime that allows religion to coexist with modernity in a relatively safe and stable manner," Wooldridge said. "It's a solution, I think."
--EVAN SPARKS
Luis E. Lugo became the director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in January 2004. Prior to joining the forum, he served as the director of the religion program at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia, a position he held for seven years. Previously, he was a professor of political science for more than twelve years, teaching courses in international relations, Latin American politics, religion, and public policy. Among his published works are several edited volumes, including Religion, Public Life and the American Polity (University of Tennessee Press, 1994) and Sovereignty at the Crossroads? Morality and International Politics in the Post-Cold War Era (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).
John Micklethwait is editor-in-chief of The Economist. Previously, he edited the U.S. section of the magazine (1999–2006) and ran the New York bureau for two years, having edited the business section of the magazine for the previous four years. His other roles have included setting up The Economist’s office in Los Angeles, where he worked from 1990 to 1993, and being a media correspondent. He has covered business and politics from the United States, Latin America, continental Europe, southern Africa, and most of Asia. He is a frequent broadcaster and has appeared on CNN, ABC News, BBC, and NPR. He is the coauthor with Adrian Wooldridge of The Witch Doctors (Crown Business, 1996); A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization (Crown Business, 2000); The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (Modern Library, 2003), a critical examination of management theory; and The Right Nation (Penguin Press, 2004), a study of conservatism in America.
Henry Olsen is vice president and director of the National Research Initiative (NRI) at AEI. He disseminates and publicizes the Institute’s work to the academic community; works with AEI’s visiting, adjunct, and NRI research fellows; commissions and supervises NRI projects; and oversees the production of NRI publications. Mr. Olsen previously served as vice president for programs at the Manhattan Institute and as a judicial clerk to the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Danny J. Boggs.
Adrian Wooldridge is The Economist’s Washington, D.C., bureau chief and writes the magazine’s “Lexington” column. He covers politics, social policy, and social and political events. Previously, he was The Economist’s West Coast, management, and Britain correspondent. He is the coauthor with John Micklethwait of The Witch Doctors (Crown Business, 1996); A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization (Crown Business, 2000); The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (Modern Library, 2003), a critical examination of management theory; and The Right Nation (Penguin Press, 2004), a study of conservatism in America.
