On the one hand Protestantization is about modernity and the development of democracy and the nation-state. Peter Berger is among many, who underline the impact from Protestantism to tendencies of equality, less hierarchy, etc. “…the term is most apt in describing social changes within the church – to wit, the role of an increasingly assertive laity, the transformation of the church into a de facto denomination, and one doctrinal change that is definitely relevant here – the theological undergirding of the norm of religious liberty, (Peter Berger, in Banchoff 2007)
On the one hand the Protestant is not only citizenship and democracy, it is definitely also colonization. One thing is the struggle to become a citizen the border. This might be very much connected to Protestant influences and direct contributions. Another thing is the other side; the side Foucault called the heterotopic. When someone becomes citizen inside, some other people are outside and the opposite of citizens. People in the colonies (previous and present) are currently claiming both global and improved national citizenship. But may be one could interpret it as Protestant anyway?
A non-Orientalizing ecclesiology?
In the times of Reformation and many centuries after, those outside the Protestant area were first of all people just there, which often meant people to be colonized and disciplined. Edward Said called that Orientalism. Once the Oriental and the Protestant often were one and the same. But today such trajectories are more often shameful than powerful: one cannot stick to these kinds of Protestantism any more. But then the question comes whether it might as well be that the outside and people on the border are the ones that now (implicitly) shape and impact the Protestant.
One radical case illustrates brutally what this might mean: Most people escaping the colonies by boat to approach the richer “West” are all other things than Protestant. There are exceptions, but the absolute majority might be Muslims or all kind of African religions. Whatever background, they are travelling from the heterotopic and claiming space on the inside. In other words, they claim the quality of citizenship, which once was the pride of the Protestants to have achieved for themselves. But why could we not also call this new wave a priesthood of all believers, current version?
One might start with the more radical version of Lutheran ecclesiology, coming out of the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The church is more church when it dissolves and leaves its space for the others. The question, then, needs to be: How to re-interpret the figure of the Protestant if it happens today in spaces beyond – an on - the border? The historical Reformation, the one in the 16th century, which also happened when the heterotopic of that time became epistemologically and dogmatically significant and influential, is a very promising field for a current study of Protestantization and borders.
The (re) discovery of the other subject
If this is so, then one important reflection, which Dipesh Chakrabarty presents for Orientalism and the post-colonial, probably also exists for Protestantism and Protestantization: Chakrabarty tells us that he identifies himself with the classic Enlightenment issues, subjectivity and freedom, phenomena which inside the border may also be characterized as ‘Protestant’ values. But according to Chakrabarty, the Enlightenment environment, which created freedom and democracy, also became an agent of oppression, exclusion and colonization. It is at just this point that the post-colonial task starts. Since the Enlightenment project ended up in colonial oppression, the only solution is to start searching for genuine democracy and subjectivity outside the colonial trajectory. There must be practices, life-worlds and experiences, which favor these values, even if they take place outside or at the border.
Chakrabarty writes: “European thoughts is at once both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the experiences of political modernity in non-Western nations, and provincializing Europe becomes the task of exploring how this thought – which is now everybody`s heritage and which affect us all – may be renewed from and for the margins”.
Within the same tradition, Richard King has observed that “Colonialism may have inextricably transformed non-Western forms of knowledge. I refuse to believe, however, that is has wholeheartedly eradicated them. Moving forward, then, must also involve looking back with renewed vigor at the legacy of precolonial forms of indigenous knowledge”,
When I propose to turn the post-colonial gaze back to the Protestant, I do not first of all mean to criticize the orientalist tradition inherent in most kinds of Protestantization. This is so obvious that I do not think we need more studies to confirm this tendency, as no new knowledge is achieved in this way. What I propose, however, is to use the same optic as the post-colonial when studying traditions, practices and reflections within Protestant areas, both inside, outside and at the borders.
We should read King`s call to move forward by looking back with renewed vigor at the legacy of pre-colonial forms of indigenous knowledge in a non-fundamentalist way: What happens if we escape the classical traditions of Protestantism inside the border and look elsewhere for traces of subjectivity and recognition? Do we find them in spaces and practices on ‘the other side’? Have we here a radical critique of where ‘the Protestant’ is and a radical critique of where ‘the Protestant’ has been too many times already?
This challenge is not easy to respond to, first of all because of the dilemma presented by Chakrabarty. Protestantism has a decisive historical role in the development of modern European democracy. But it was exactly this modern, European democracy that also created all kinds of colonial non-democratic regimes in the South. So Chakrabarty` s position is then to preserve democracy, while opposing colonial regimes that did not build the democracy they had invented on the inside among the people living in the heterotopic outside.
Citizenships coming from the lived practice in the heterotopic
Citizenship (and thereby: democracy) is historically related to both religion and borders: One is a citizen, at least in the classical citizenship tradition, by virtue of living inside a border (or: the exception, because you live temporarily outside the border, but still belong to it by birth, ethnicity or other rights, etc.). And even if globalization has nuanced and opened up for all kinds of interpretations of this position, it is still valid. Citizenship and the Reformation principle of eius regio, cuius religio persist.
Now, citizenship sociologist Bryan Turner often refers to Augustine`s famous distinction between the heavenly and the earthly city. This distinction still needs to be reflected in modern politics, Turner says. Granted, the city of God is utopic, but Turner claims this “utopia” is also a space of friendship and charity. This influences the formatting of the space for citizenship. Is it a friendly citizenship space dominated by charity and friendship or is it a formal/legal and non-generous citizenship ruled by the earthly city monopoly?
Protestantization and the lived experience beyond the borders
Protestantization often refers to processes towards nation states, citizenship and democracy, reduced hierarchy (Berger, Habermas) and the secular. To research traces of the “friendly citizenship” (Turner) one needs to approach civil society with traditions and experiences formatted by positions developed among scholars more interested in civil society than states and principle of universality. Perspectives from the tradition of Scheleiermacher and the phenomenologists (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty), all underlining that human life develops as a connected and perceived life and that religion grows from there need to be given prominence.
This is the context for claiming that one could take Chakrabarty’s vision to reconstruct subjectivity on the other side of the colonial also as an interesting option for the study of Protestantization traditions and developments. The thesis that we can find something less orientalist in the embodied, spatial life worlds and in the practices might be a good research program for new, post-colonial, Protestant studies.
Bibliography:
Berger, Peter, “Pluralism, Protestantization and the Voluntary Principle” in: Banchoff, Thomas, Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, "Letters and papers from prison", in: Dietrich Bonhoeffers works: Vol 8, Minneapolis, Fortress 1996-2010
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, New York, Princeton, 2000
King, Richard, Orientalism and Religion. Postcolonial Theory, India and the “The Mystic East”, New York, Routledge, 1999
Turner, Bryan, “Religion and Politics: The Elementary Forms of Citizenship”, in: Isin, Engin, Turner, Bryan (ed.) Handbook of Citizenship Studies, p.259-276, London, London. Sage, 2002.