“I suspect that, in the aggregate, religion is more likely to have negative consequences for civility – that is, that religion, more than not, tends to create conflict both within and between societies.”
This position seems to reflect a trend in academic as well as political circles in a post 9/11 world, at least seen from a North American and European perspective, in which the resurgence of religion in politics is regarded as a threat to Western democracy, and even as a security problem for Western societies. In fact, simply talking about ‘civility and religion’ gives rise to specific associations of the opposite, namely confrontation, intolerance and violence, or simply what is deemed – by some – to be ‘uncivility’.
Religious actors and community
The question I wish to address is to what extent religion may contribute to civility in times of conflict and what such practices might be at the local level. At first glance, a discussion of religion and civility may resemble the religious violence or non-violence debate, but as I shall argue, the concept of civility takes our discussion in a slightly different direction, away from theological or philosophical reductionism, or away from random examples of so-called religious violence.
In my view, the debate about ‘religion as violence- or non-violence’ reduces the rationale for individual action to religious ideas and practices. Although far from being able to capture the full picture of the complex dynamics at stake, I suggest that the concept of civility is useful for understanding particular ways in which religious actors engage in community reconstruction in times of violent conflict, particularly at the local level. By ‘religious actor’ I refer to people who define their role in public life in terms of religion. I also want to make a clarification: My concern is not with philosophical or theological reflections on the concepts of ‘tolerance’, ‘compassion’ or ‘reconciliation’. Rather, it deals with religion’s social aspect and the ways in which it interconnects with other societal spheres.
Critical civility
Like all interesting concepts, ‘civility’ is kaleidoscopic in its diverse meanings, but I suggest that these do not fully capture the interplay of religion, civility and civil society in times of violent conflict. Therefore, based upon material from India, Sri Lanka and Rwanda I suggest a new way of understanding civility, which I refer to as ‘critical civility’. The example of the sacred city of Varanasi in India gives optimism to the hope that shared local interests might prevent violence. Varanasi displays a specific communal civic identity which is based upon a shared city identity as well as shared local interests.
Being one of India’s sacred cities, this cultural ethos is practiced and ritually communicated in a specific religious fashion. However, in deeply divided societies, such a shared ethos is lacking. In Sri Lanka the promotion of hardline nationalism and exclusivist identities is carried out not only by state actors and politicians, but also by civil society organizations, among them religious associations. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda stands as a horrific reminder of the terrible consequences of religion’s absorption and patronage by a racist and genocidal state. During the genocide, churches, rather than being safe havens, were used to trap and massacre Tutsis.
As these highly contrasting empirical cases illustrate, and despite different conceptualizations of ‘civility’, ‘civil society’, ‘politics’ and ‘religion’, religion’s role in the construction of meaning, as well as its potential for public mobilization, makes it a force in public life which cannot be ignored, regardless of it being deemed a threat to secular liberal notions of peace and democracy. If civil society participation is crucial to a democratic state, and given the fact that in many conflict-ridden societies religious institutions are important arenas for civil society activities, then religion’s role in society has to be carefully investigated. From a policy-making perspective, this carries with it the possibility of co-operation with religious institutions of un- or even anti-democratic values.
Classification of the world in which we live is a basic human enterprise, and self-identities are constructed by distinguishing ourselves from what we are not. Being ‘civilized’, and not ‘uncivilized’, is thus a specific conception of self. Throughout history, it has been an important part of religious self-understanding to represent ‘civility’ and ‘civilization’ and that others are ‘uncivil’, ‘barbarians’, ‘subhuman’, or possibly infants yet to be civilized. Such categories of civility/uncivility and civilized/uncivilized are parts of a discourse of difference, to speak with Foucault and Said, expressing power relationships.
Religion and the evolution of civility
As shown by Norbert Elias in the The Civilizing Process, European manners and attitudes to violence changed in the transition from feudal warrior culture to state formation and domestic pacification. The concept of civility expands, Elias shows, from French courtly individual civilité to civilizing the state, the nation and the broader spectrum of the population. This suited European colonial aspirations outside of Europe. However, it should be noted that civilizing processes and the history of self-restraint are not restricted to Europe. Another problem with Elias’ theory is that he is largely silent about the role of religious norms and institutions in the regulation of social behavior, including the regulative and restraining functions of religious norms in the historical process of civilizing military violence.
In fact, Elias argued that “Religion… never has in itself a ‘civilizing’ or affect-subduing effect. On the contrary, religion is always exactly as ‘civilized’ as the society or class which upholds it.” This is in contrast to Max Weber, who took major interest in the ways in which religion disciplines the person, especially through ascetic practices. The Weber-Elias dichotomy points to opposing positions in European intellectual history regarding the effect of religious beliefs on society. The ‘Augustian position’ expresses the view that religious belief helps to pacify people.
This positive view on the power of religious beliefs came to be influential in later European intellectual history, for example in the work of Weber. However, there is also a long tradition for the opposite view, back to Roman intellectuals such as Lucretius, in which religion does not contribute to civilizing humanity. Elias’ neglect of religion represents this tradition. However, there is no reason why religious ideas, practices and institutions could not have been included in Elias’ notion of the civilizing process. In fact, just war theory can be viewed as closely linked to the civilizing process. Significantly, just-war theory is not only about justifying war; it is also about moral restraints on the use of violence.
The notion of civility has close associations with etiquette and good manners, which distinguish the civilized from the barbarian, the upper classes from the lower, from a given religious in-group to those defined as the out-group. Therefore, unlike justice, civility does not necessarily require adopting a socially critical moral point of view. Rather, it implies compliance with social norms. Not complying with social norms carries with it the potential for conflict. Civility forestalls the potential unpleasantness of a life with other people. Without it, daily social exchanges can turn nasty and sometimes hazardous. Thus, civility is not only about politeness: its scope is greater in that it relates to the obeying to social norms and its opposite, i.e. the breaking of social norms. It cannot be denied that religion, as one of the prime sources for moral order and social norms is closely linked to civility, i.e. good manners and correct behaviour.
Central to Elias' idea of civility was the acknowledgment that as the webs of human interdependence have expanded and differentiated, social figurations have generally become more dependent on forms of self-restraint that are attuned to this inter-connectedness. Civility fits citizens for life in an inter-connected, pluralistic society and is closely connected to peace and tolerance. This perception of civility is compatible with liberal political philosophy, in which civility is considered a virtue specific to liberal democratic societies. According to the ideal, the civil citizen exercises tolerance in the face of deep disagreement about the good, respecting the rights of others, refraining from violence, harassment and coercion.
In addition, citizens must seek accommodation through dialogue. A political conception of civility therefore is that which fits us for life in a pluralistic society, wherein nonlike-minded people will have to enter into political dialogue in order to reach compromise agreements. Thus, civility includes regulations on these dialogues in order for them not to break down. Consequently, absolutist ideologies and world-views, whether religious or secular, may collide with such an accommodation of positions in a plural setting.
Civility can also be regarded as a moral virtue because it implies consideration of others’ feelings, engaging in tolerant restraint, gratitude and politeness. For my analytical purpose, I distinguish between the descriptive and normative aspects of civility. Although it is problematic to distinguish social norms from morality, I nonetheless suggest that there is a need to distinguish ‘etiquette civility’, here understood as obeying to social norms, from what I call ‘critical civility’, which denotes a certain courteous behaviour in contexts in which such behaviour otherwise is not expected, or cannot be taken for granted. This may prove to be a particularly important distinction to make in assessing religion’s diverse roles in times of conflict. The reason is that religious actors may conform to established social rules, for example at the local village level by only catering for what they regard as being the needs of their community, by lending their support to state organized violence, or by other means supporting their in-group.
Critical civility: empathy, tolerance and the common good
By contrast, by the concept of critical civility I refer to ideas and practices in which members of one group transcend the boundaries of their community to show empathy for human suffering in defined out-groups. This civility is ‘critical’ in two ways. First, it is critical in that it takes on a socially critical view on social norms; either by recognizing that not all social norms should be obeyed, say, if they result in other people’s suffering, or if by disobeying social norms one can rescue other civilians, or in other ways contribute to conflict-transformation. Why I emphasise the moral aspect is that this sense of civility requires individuals who, when necessary, are willing to put themselves at risk by going against ‘etiquette civility’ or dominant exclusivist discourses for the sake of others. Critical civility, therefore, includes a broad sense of community.
Second, critical civility refers to a specific context of crisis and sense of urgency, like that in violent conflicts. The notion of critical civility is to be distinguished from theological notions of tolerance or compassion (although such notions might be crucial for individual motivation) in that it refers to specific practices materialized as a result of lived experience in highly divided and conflict-ridden societies. It is to be distinguished from political civility (as a prerequisite for democracy) as religious actors involved in ‘critical civility’ may or may not comply to liberal democratic values. Rather, ‘critical civility’ is a combination of empathy for the ‘other’, tolerance and ‘politics of the common good’.
Iselin Frydenlund recently defended her Ph.D. thesis at the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages at The University of Oslo
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Critical civility and interreligious dialogue
By Oddbjørn Leirvik
In a session at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting last November, titled “Confronting Islamophobia. How to Prevent a Holy War”, Stephen Prothero suggested that in some contexts establishing trustful dialogue would simply be asking too much from ordinary believers. More realistically, he suggested, we should aim at a kind of elementary “civility” which (according to Prothero) means that “we behave as if we like each other”.
Reading Iselin Frydenlund’s interesting reflections about civility, I also recall James Davison Hunter’s use of the notion “ethic of civility” in his book about “Evangelicalism” from 1987. Hunter’s basic argument is that conservative evangelicals, to the extent that they engage themselves in local community work or in national politics, over time may become more tolerant of others’ beliefs but also more “tolerable to others” in the sense that intolerant, religious absolutism (again, over time) tend to be underplayed in faithful interaction with citizens of other convictions. One may discuss whether Hunter’s observations from the nineteeneighties have actually come true, in US and elsewhere. But the still valid point of his reasoning is that engaged citizenship (as opposed to seclusive fundamentalism) simply tends to make people more “civil”.
Frydenlund’s observation is that such elementary civility does not happen automatically, since there are so many social conventions in the religious traditions that draw in the opposite direction and offer themselves as munition for confrontational identity politics. In Frydenlund’s notion of critical civility, a reflective element comes in: showing solidarity to those who do not belong to one’s cultural or religious in-group seems to require a critical decision.
In other words: Whereas some forms of (etiquette-oriented) civility is nurtured by tradition, critical civility needs to be fostered by new forms of social behavior. In my view, this is where interreligious dialogue comes in. Entering into long-term, committed dialogue with significant others reflects a critical recognition that traditional ways of relating to others does not necessary foster group-transcending solidarity and equal citizenship. New forms of relating, based on critical awareness of religion’s desctructive potential, are needed.
Against Hunter, I would suggest that a change in the direction of “ethic of civility” does not always come by itself, not even through political participation. This corresponds to Henrik Syse’s observation (in his response to Frydenlund) that for religion to be “civilized”, a critical change in religious attitudes is often needed. With Frydenlund and Syse, I hold that some kind of critical decision is normally needed – in both Varanasi, Sri Lanka and other places.
This is where, in my view, the phenomenon of interreligious dialogue comes into the picture. In theories of interreligious dialogue, the possibility of deep change in attitudes is often linked to face-to-face interaction over time. Such interaction (unless it is merely superficial) is normally based on a critical decision to counteract divisive tendencies by establishing structures for trust-building dialogue. In societies ridden by religious identity politics, the counter-measure of dialogue needs to be organized and firmly institutionalized simply because it does not come by itself, and is always threathened by the opposite tendency of identity politics.
I believe this understanding of interreligious dialogue tunes in with Iselin Frydenlund’s concept of critical civility. With Henrik Syse, I would emphasize that there are in fact rich theological traditions to draw upon when engaging other believers in faith-based dialogue. But also when mobilising the potential resources of theological traditions and sacred scriptures, (self-)critical thinking is necessary. For the tension between open dialogue with other traditions and confrontational identity politics is found not only in contemporary society, but in the sacred traditions themselves.
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