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rfmcdonaldYesterday, I took a book out from the Robertson Library on the similarities between Roman Catholic Christianity and Shi'ite Islam, of which there are a few. To me, however, the most interesting similarity lies in the institutional structures of the two faiths: just as Roman Catholicism is distinct from sectarian Protestantism in that it's a single transnational hierarchical organization unified by faith, so has Shi'ite Islam in Iran (both under the Shah and under the Islamic Republic) in the 20th century come to possess an institutional hierarchy of its own. There are differences, of course; the Shi'ite hierarchy in Iran does not extend to other Shi'ite communities outside of Iran, not even in neighbouring states like Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, and it is much more recent. Still, it is a recent development.
Large hierarchical religious organizations have their good points; they are enduring structures, capable of enforcing uniformity and unity across broad areas for long periods of time. They are flawed, however, in that their broad-based nature give them power--economic power if they are rentholders, political power if they want the secular state to be organized even loosely on their religious principles, social power if they want the masses to adopt churchly morality. When major crises hit the secular regime--when there is a war, when there is radical political reform, and so on--the religious institutional structures can often come under direct attack. This can happen relatively benignly: in Québec, Newfoundland, and Ireland, for instance, following their belated secularizations and (in the case of the latter two societies) revelations of scandals and improprieties, secularization of public life occurred quietly. Québec is now one of the most secular societies in the world; certainly compared to the United States it's radically distinct. I can point to other once purely Catholic societies--Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Mexico--which have gone through similar shifts.
When things go badly, well, there is the example of France. Once the "elder daughter of the Church," the over-close association of the Church between repressive powers of the state (whether the ancien régime in 1789 or the Second Empire in 1870) brought the Church under full-fledged attacks by people who didn't like the Church's claim to a monopoly on the public sphere. After the French Revolution, the Church's positioned was weakened; after the Paris Commune and the execution of the Archbishop of Paris by the Communards, and the establishment of the Third Republic, the Church was in a defensive position; after the Dreyfus affair and Vichy, the Church was reduced to a non-entity.
I wonder what will happen to the Islamic Republic and the Shi'ite religion in Iran in coming years. Certainly the Islamic Republic is a rather more thoroughgoing attempt at enforcing a religiously-inspired monopoly over public life than anything that the Church could attempt in 19th century France, and its assorted geopolitical and military ambitions could bring the Islamic Republic to a very severe regime crisis indeed. And secular global pop culture is so attractive ...
In the end, transnational religious organizations, judging by the Roman Catholic and Anglican examples, tend to be hollowed out--the former cores end up revolting and becoming secular, while the recently-acquired fringes tend to assume a new prominence. It might well be that the future of Roman Catholicism will lie in Latin America and in Africa; it might will be that the future of Anglicanism will lie in Africa and points elsewhere in Britain's former empire in the tropics and subtropics; it might well be that the future of Shi'ite Islam will lie not in a laicized Iran but in Iraq, the Persian Gulf states, and Pakistan. The question arises, then, of what happens to these transnational religious hierarchies in their former peripheries: Do the peripheries become the new cores? do they fragment along regional and cultural lines? do the peripheries also become thoroughly secular once they too tire?
Large hierarchical religious organizations have their good points; they are enduring structures, capable of enforcing uniformity and unity across broad areas for long periods of time. They are flawed, however, in that their broad-based nature give them power--economic power if they are rentholders, political power if they want the secular state to be organized even loosely on their religious principles, social power if they want the masses to adopt churchly morality. When major crises hit the secular regime--when there is a war, when there is radical political reform, and so on--the religious institutional structures can often come under direct attack. This can happen relatively benignly: in Québec, Newfoundland, and Ireland, for instance, following their belated secularizations and (in the case of the latter two societies) revelations of scandals and improprieties, secularization of public life occurred quietly. Québec is now one of the most secular societies in the world; certainly compared to the United States it's radically distinct. I can point to other once purely Catholic societies--Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Mexico--which have gone through similar shifts.
When things go badly, well, there is the example of France. Once the "elder daughter of the Church," the over-close association of the Church between repressive powers of the state (whether the ancien régime in 1789 or the Second Empire in 1870) brought the Church under full-fledged attacks by people who didn't like the Church's claim to a monopoly on the public sphere. After the French Revolution, the Church's positioned was weakened; after the Paris Commune and the execution of the Archbishop of Paris by the Communards, and the establishment of the Third Republic, the Church was in a defensive position; after the Dreyfus affair and Vichy, the Church was reduced to a non-entity.
I wonder what will happen to the Islamic Republic and the Shi'ite religion in Iran in coming years. Certainly the Islamic Republic is a rather more thoroughgoing attempt at enforcing a religiously-inspired monopoly over public life than anything that the Church could attempt in 19th century France, and its assorted geopolitical and military ambitions could bring the Islamic Republic to a very severe regime crisis indeed. And secular global pop culture is so attractive ...
In the end, transnational religious organizations, judging by the Roman Catholic and Anglican examples, tend to be hollowed out--the former cores end up revolting and becoming secular, while the recently-acquired fringes tend to assume a new prominence. It might well be that the future of Roman Catholicism will lie in Latin America and in Africa; it might will be that the future of Anglicanism will lie in Africa and points elsewhere in Britain's former empire in the tropics and subtropics; it might well be that the future of Shi'ite Islam will lie not in a laicized Iran but in Iraq, the Persian Gulf states, and Pakistan. The question arises, then, of what happens to these transnational religious hierarchies in their former peripheries: Do the peripheries become the new cores? do they fragment along regional and cultural lines? do the peripheries also become thoroughly secular once they too tire?
