Giordan, Giuseppe, & Swatos, W.H. Jr. (eds.). 2013, Testing pluralism; Globalizing Belief, Localizing Gods. Leiden: Brill, 235 pp., ISBN 9789004254473, €105.00/$133.00 (hb).
This volume of the Religion and the Social Order series draws a picture of diversity in faith as related to globalization, increased mobility and diaspora formation. In its introduction, the volume questions the thesis of secularization (in the sense of overall decrease in the importance of religion), pointing out that exceptions of many kinds exist. Individual faith and collective religious life is refreshed, even if temporarily, by populations of migrant origin, as a number of contributions state. Aged Catholic constituencies in Australia for example, benefit from migrants coming from non-western countries, migrants who both care about attending mass and are overall rather orthodox in their religious views (Dixon). In a similar way, religious minorities diversify the religious landscape of Italy with Orthodoxy, challenging the present equilibrium between the Catholic Church and the State (Giordan). Moreover, diversity in Italy appears not only between different religions but also within them, as in the case of Sikkism, where caste differentiation remains important (Bertolani). An inferior socio-economic position also influences one’s faith content: in the case of the Shas movement in Israel, the argument about the movement’s orthodoxy of practice targets foremost a more outstanding social position (Feldman). Furthermore, as global communities and transnational connections make a difference in religious life, some communities, such as protestant groups in Mexico can be said to bask in the advantages of a glocal situation (de la Torre and Gutierrez Zuniga).
However, not only migrants contribute to diversification, but also new movements within Catholicism such as The Renewal of the Spirit help rejuvenating faith. In time, movements such as this, have their distinctive elements integrated by the Church, contributing to reframing inner and outer institutional and faith boundaries (Contiero). Institutional changes and the abandonment of traditional Christianity are also taking their course in the Anglican Church, foremost through woman’s ordination and the acceptance of homosexual unions (Swatos). To my mind, the question remains, to what extent are present inner changes calling for future even more dramatic turns and to what extent traditional faiths are to remain unchanged in their essence.
Most of the articles in this volume conclude that diversity promotes tolerance (Blasi, Kilbourne and Miller) and that plurality is overall beneficial for religion. However, as the trends for voting for Obama show, politics may have lost the clear ethnic and religious backing from before (Loach). Thus what religion means for society at large, and especially for politics is much more of a conundrum than before, I believe.
While the role of religion in social life is continuously changing, pluralism itself might be considered an implicit religion. This axiomatic stance has the advantage of opening up an intriguing line of inquiry about pluralism’s ethics, its ontology, rituals and character (Bailey). However, it remains a question what is included, but even more, what is excluded in a pluralist model. The position of life stance communities in Norway shows how the intricacies of the religious argumentation, which is at the basis of pluralism, remain contested and thus change in time, allowing different positions to be included or excluded (Reeh). Besides, the distinction between what is secular and what is religious is by now also blurred: as non-religious Italian scientists also use implicit religious concepts, this points to spiritual sensibilities which are more difficult to categorize in a secular-religious model (Sbalchiero).
An interesting read at the level of individual contributions, the book disappoints through its limited geographical coverage: one third of the contributions deal with Italy, another third with Northern America especially the US and the rest are disparate cases with little theoretical justification. Moreover the argument remains circular: diversity exists and it is rather diverse. This is also what makes the overall read a theoretically uncomfortable one; little difference is being made between pluralism and diversity throughout the contributions. All in all, this book might be of interest to students of the various religious traditions addressed in the case studies as well as those who are interested in global migration and its effects.
Carolina Ivanescu 