This is our 4th session in this series on What the Heck’s Wrong with Religions These Days. Thus far we’ve seen that there are, obviously, all sorts of conflicts taking place in the world these days. Most of them have either overtones or undertones of religious conflict. We’ve seen that the world religions, and most especially Islam and Christianity, which happen to be the only religions that espouse the propagation of their respective faiths, are embroiled in a war on two fronts. The war on the home front is between radical fundamentalist versions of those religions on the one hand and liberal or even moderate expressions on the other hand. The other front in these religious conflicts seem to be against other religions. I’ve proposed, though, that ironically each fundamentalist religious combatant is actually primarily concerned with fighting the same enemy. And that enemy, whether it’s called secularism, naturalism, empiricism, or social relativism, is the expansion of modern versions of Western Humanism.

Take the interesting story that broke last week. It seems that a Baptist church in Kansas has been sending picketers to funerals during the past few years – especially well publicized funerals – such as the burials of those who’ve been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Initially, when they heard the news of the killings of the 5 girls at the Amish school in Nickel Mills Pennsylvania, they planned to picket that funeral as well, but decided against it, when the governor of Pennsylvania announced that anyone disturbing the peace of those burials would be arrested. The members of that church believe that all the deaths – caused by 911 or the wars that have followed are God’s punishment of American immorality – particularly America’s tolerance of homosexuality. They carry signs to funerals that say, “God hates America.” They firmly believe what Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson said immediately following 911 – that God removed His protection from the U.S. to punish America because of Feminism, Gay Liberation, the ACLU and American sexual promiscuity. As I say, they see the real enemy as modern Humanism and its handmaidens Liberalism in politics and religion.

We’ve seen that such current religious conflicts aren’t new. Conflicts for control within religions and between different religions extend back at least 3500 years. We saw that at certain times in history there have been major shifts in religious thinking and expression and that those changes, together with wider social changes or perceived threats to established civilization, have created crises. Those crises, in their times, have riled the religious establishment and their political counterparts, which have often used each other to accomplish their own purposes.

One of the reasons that I find myself so concerned by the fundamentalist versions of religion having gained the ascendancy in our time – even though I understand why – is that I believe that there will eventually be a backlash and that they will negatively affect people toward Christian faith and spirituality in the next generation or so, as it did in Europe 70 years ago.

So what’s triggered the current conflicts? In a word, I believe it’s fear. Threats and perceived threats have generated enough stress and fear to trigger the kinds of widespread reactions that we’ve been seeing during the past 20 years or so.

1. Human population has exploded during the past 100 years more than tripling during that period.
2. Naturally, the demand for the basic resources to support human life – including space for living – has grown equivalently causing enormous stress.
3. Resource distribution inequities are being challenged.
4. Industrialization has increased in the developing world.
5. The impact of economic globalization is rapidly being felt allover the world.
6. The impact of all this is rapidly being felt in the global environment.
7. Therefore many sense that global disaster is looming.
8. Simultaneously peoples are exposed to cultures different from their own more than ever in history.
9. People are turning to what is both the foundation of their own civilization and the only hope beyond human ability to solve the problems, namely religion, in ways that are unparalleled in intensity.
10. Islam and Christianity are the only religions that propagate their faith, and enormous growth has taken place in both religions – especially in the developing world -- Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. And that has caused conflict between them.

It only stands to reason that with the aforementioned causes of anxiety and stress, coupled with the roles religions serve, that zeal and conflict would increase. On face value it would appear that religion is to blame for the conflicts in the world today. But that would be a simplistic understanding of current events. There are deeper roots to the current conflicts. Like no time ever in history, multiple civilizations exist in the contemporary world, which constantly rub up against each other -- causing friction on virtually every level of human interaction.

About 10 years ago Professor Samuel Huntington wrote a book. He called it The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order. Huntington is one of those people, who've been acknowledged both by liberals and conservatives alike as an undisputed expert in contemporary international relations, and he has the credentials to show for it. The Clash of Civilizations, is one of the most important works on the subject of global relations in our generation. It's helped me like no other work in my efforts to understand what's going on in the world today and how to approach being the Church in the contemporary global environment.

Huntington begins by stating that everything has changed since the end of the Cold War, and that what the world is presently experiencing has never occurred before in history world. The population of the world is so dense that people of divergent cultures are incapable of compartmentalizing themselves as they did in past history. Again, for the first time in history revolutions in communication, transportation and technology make it impossible for people in different cultures to isolate them selves from each other. Except for East Asia, Communism has evaporated and, with it, so has the artificial political issue of peoples' identification of them selves as pro-Communist or anti-Communist. While, initially, that may seem to have heralded a new age of harmonic global collaboration, everyone was unprepared for the new, even more conflicted, dynamics that it’s actually created.

You see we humans crave identity and ultimate meaning. Humans derive identity and meaning from their affiliations. We’re basically tribal. "Cultural identity is the most meaningful to most people. People are discovering new but often ancient identities and marching under new but often old flags, which lead to wars with new but often old enemies." He writes, "For peoples seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential, and the most dangerous enmities occur across the fault lines between the world's major civilizations."

Huntington's basic thesis is that "Culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion and conflict in this post-Cold War world."

1. For the first time in modern history global politics is not bipolar, but multi-polar and multi-civilizational.
2. The balance of power among civilizations has shifted: the West has declined in relative influence. Asian civilizations are expanding in their economic, political, and military strength. Fundamentalist Islam is exploding and destabilizing both Muslim countries and their neighbors. Non-western civilizations are generally rejecting Western values and reaffirming the values of their own cultures. We've lost the international culture war – even more precipitously during the past 5 years.
3. A civilization-based world order is emerging. Societies that share cultural affinities cooperate with each other. Attempts to shift societies from one civilization to another (nation-building) are unsuccessful. Countries group themselves around the lead of one Core State in their civilization, unless that core state abandons the rest of the states that group themselves around it, as America has done during the past 5 years.
4. The West's universalist presumptions increasingly bring it into conflict with other civilizations -- particularly Islamic and Sinic Civilizations.
5. The future survival of the West -- beyond the next few generations -- depends upon Western nations reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique -- not universal, but unique -- uniting to renew and preserve Western Civilization against challenges from non-western civilizations. To avoid a global war of civilizations world leaders must accept the multi-civilization character of global politics and cooperate to maintain it. I would add that in a very shortsighted way the U.S. has recently done more to harm that cooperation than ever in the past.

During most of what might be called the history of organized civilization contact between different civilizations was intermittent or non-existent. With the beginning of the modern era -- around about 1500 AD -- global politics assumed two dimensions -- the West and the rest of the civilizations of the world. For 400 years or more the nations of the West constituted a multi-polar international system within Western civilization -- usually jockeying with each other over which of them would take the position of dominance within Western civilization. Western nations -- for economic reasons and in pursuit of national superiority -- expanded, conquered, colonized and dominated every other civilization. That suddenly changed as a result of the world wars of the 20th century, because the Western nations engaged in those wars depleted their resources, military might and political will to retain control of the rest of the world. A stalemate ensued between Communist and anti-Communist nations.

During that Cold War global politics became bi-polar, and the world was divided into 3 parts -- a bloc of Communist nations (led by the Soviet Union), opposed by a bloc of anti-Communist (led by the U. S.), and other so-called, non-aligned, Third World nations. Much of the conflict of that Cold War between the Communist and anti-Communist blocs was played out in the Third World -- composed of often poor countries that lacked political stability or economic strength, recently de-colonized and claiming non-alignment. The Communist world collapsed in Eastern Europe during the 1980s, and that bi-polar Cold War suddenly ended. In the aftermath the most important distinctions between peoples have become no longer political, ideological or economic, but cultural. Peoples and nations are asking and answering the most basic question humans can face: "Who are we?" The answers are taking the form of the traditional way humans have always answered it -- by reference to what means most to them.

Humans define them selves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. Humans identify them selves with cultural groups -- tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, cultures, and at the broadest level with civilizations. Politics have become the way in which people advance their identity, and that’s most primitively shaped by who or what people are against. The most important groupings in the world today are not the previous two ideological blocs of the Cold War, but the 9 major civilizations of the world.

Huntington defines civilization as a cultural entity -- the overall life of a people. Civilization is a collection of cultural characteristics. Civilizations are comprehensive, which means that none of their constituent parts -- nations or peoples -- can be understood without reference to the civilization they’re part of. Civilization is the broadest level of cultural identity people have, short of being part of the same species. It is defined, but not limited to, such elements as history, religion, language, race, customs and institutions. It is the largest level us vs. the largest level them there is among humans. Civilizations are very long lived. Civilizations transcend nation states. Nations and empires rise and fall, but civilizations precede and continue on after their demise. They evolve and adapt and are the most enduring of human associations. Virtually all of the major civilizations in the world today have existed for at least 1,000 years. {Of the identifiable civilizations that have existed throughout history at least 7 no longer exist: Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Cretan, Classical, Byzantine, Middle American, and Andean -- though traces of them exist within the modern civilizations into which they evolved. There are traces of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilization in Islamic Civilization. Cretan or Minoan and Classical / Roman civilization evolved into Western civilization. Byzantine civilization evolved into Orthodox civilization. Traces of Middle American and Andean exist in certain expressions of Latin American civilization. And then, too, of course, there are isolated traces of extinct civilizations found in remote tribes. The point is that civilization refers to a very widespread, enduring and comprehensive general cultural tradition from which constituent peoples derive their identities as humans. They do not change by exposure to other civilizations, nor even by violent domination over centuries, though they do become extinct either by genocide or pandemic.}

As we all know from grade school the basic Eastern Hemisphere civilizations -- the seminal Neolithic cultures, if you prefer -- emerged from the so-called cradle lands of civilization along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Indus and Yellow Rivers. These evolved, during the past 5,000 years, into most of the civilizations that exist in the modern world. It wasn't until the 8th or 9th century AD that Western civilization emerged as a distinct entity from its Roman and Classical roots, which evolved, in turn, from the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Cretan and Minoan civilizations that existed 3 - 4 millennia earlier. It usually took centuries for ideas and technology to move from one civilization to another, simply because transportation and communication media were limited, and there was very limited contact among civilizations prior to 1500 AD.

1. Western Civ.: Comprised of North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
2. Latin American Civ.: Comprised of the nations of Mexico, Central America and South America -- people who mostly speak Spanish and have had affiliations with tribalism and Roman Catholicism.
3. African Civ.: mainly comprised of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.
4. Islamic Civ.: comprised of the peoples of Northern Africa, Southeastern Europe, the Middle East, Western Asia, Indonesia and other parts of Pacific Oceanea -- forged together by a common commitment to the religion of Islam and the Koran and consisting of over 1 billion people.
5. Sinic Civ.: Comprised of cultures with their roots in Confucianism, including China, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Singapore and consisting of over 1 billion people.
6. Hindu Civ.: Comprised of the peoples of India, Ceylon, Bangladesh, and other regions of the subcontinent of Asia and consisting of over 1 billion people.
7. Orthodox Civ.: Comprised of the peoples of Eastern Europe, including Russia, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, and other former member states of the Soviet Union and those peoples who historically identified themselves with Byzantine Christianity.
8. Buddhist Civ.: Comprised of peoples from Tibet, Mongolia, and parts of Southeast Asia.
9. Japanese Civ.: While some combine the Japanese with Sinic civilization or with the Western economic bloc. The Japanese core sense of identity is its own and it remains to be seen which larger civilization it will join and how.

Of these major civilizations only have what it takes to be engaged in play for world ascendancy at present -- Western, Sinic, Islamic, and Hindu civilizations. Due to the recent history of the West, and I would add, current U. S. policies, there is less likelihood of the West unifying around America as it did during the Cold War or of other civilizations unifying with the West for the foreseeable future, including Latin American Civilization, which until recently had been America’s hope. There is, however, a real possibility of Hindu, Japanese, and possibly Buddhist civilizations drawing closer to Sinic Civilization, with China taking the position of core state over against the West, especially if the U. S. continues its current international course and China softens its Communist ideological rigidity. If that happens more than half the world's population could gather effectively over against the West -- while the West focuses upon Islam and its nations bicker among themselves over ascendancy. In other words, while the West is busy fighting over who's the captain of the ship as it chases the red herring of radical Islam, Sinic civilization is the whale that may scuttle the ship altogether -- gaining world supremacy -- rejecting the most dearly held values of the West -- individ-ualism and pluralism. But pluralism is currently in jeopardy in the U.S. already.

One of the main reasons the U.S. is looking the wrong way at this critical time in history is that our house is severely divided and much of that is religious in nature. Jesus said that a house divided against it self cannot stand. Western Civilization in general and America, in particular, is a house divided at the very core. I’ve mentioned before that the core of a civilization is embodied by the highest values of the predominant religion of that civilization. But there are two very different faith systems that have cohabitated relatively peacefully within the house of Western civilization for the past few hundred years – one is Christianity and the other is Humanism. The rise and political influence of fundamentalist Christianity has destabilized that cohabitation. It is focused on three central issues: moral purity in the culture, doctrinal purity in the religion, and that, which galvanizes both – preparation for the apocalypse. We’ll speak more of this last one later. Suffice it to say that it remains to be seen whether the time is actually at hand for our Lord’s return, but meanwhile, it seems to me that Jesus never called us change our focus to a political one just because we may believe that He’s returning soon.

The culture wars within the U.S. (and between the US and Europe) as well as the war with Fundamentalist Islam are the result, at least in part, with a Fundamentalist Christian agenda. Among other things that agenda involves uncritical support of Israel, regardless of issues of injustice against Palestinians and Lebanon. And that uncritical support of Israel fans the flames of radical Islam. That agenda also involves the effort to reshape American culture and Western civilization in more explicitly biblical Christian ways. Therein lies the crisis for Western civilization in general and American culture in particular.

You see Western Civilization for the past few hundred years has been characterized by the Christian Faith tradition, Classical legacy, European languages, Separation of Church and State, Rule of Law, Social Pluralism, Representative Bodies, and Individualism -- these 7 traits -- are the basic components of Western Civilization. But at least 3 of these, possibly 4, are products more of Humanism than Christianity, namely classical legacy, separation of church and state, and social pluralism, together with individualism. The willingness by the Christian Right to curtail these threatens a 250-year old compromise between Humanists and Christians in the West. The home front wars between these two, to my mind, are reminiscent of the unresolved conflicts between the Orthodox and the Heretics in Byzantine Civilization, which set the stage for Islam to overcome that civilization in the end. One of the things at the heart of what’s going on in America is a catch 22 power struggle. Conservative Christians feel that Humanism has gone way too far and Humanists feel the same way about Conservative Christians. Without both, Western Civilization will morph into something else. So both need to moderate rather than dominate (Sym.)