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Лыман И.И. Спецкурс «Конфессиональная история Южной Украины XVIII - первой
трети ХХ века в контексте европейских религиозных традиций»

Модуль 1. Южная Украина как составляющая конфесинальной карты Европы:
компаративистские и междисциплинарные подходы.

?. Введение в курс
Темы для обсуждения:
- Компаративизм в исследованиях по религиозной истории.
- Общая характеристика Южной Украины.
- История Южной Украины в общеевропейском контексте.
- Междисциплинарные подходы: возможности истории, филологии, социологии,
религиеведения, психологии для изучения конфессиональная истории Южной
Украины в контексте европейских религиозных традиций.

Рекомендованная литература для чтения:

1. From Comparative Religion to History of Religions Author(s): A.
Eustace Haydon Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 2, No. 6 (Nov., 1922),
pp. 577-587.
The history of religions is replacing the search for an essential
religion. For a long time the bias involved in identifying religion with
some particular revelation made comparative religion a new form of
apologetics. With the rise of the idea of social evolution there began the
effort to discover, by the comparative method, the law of religious
evolution and the nature of religion. For many reasons the compara- tive
method proved unsatisfactory. The present interest is to appreciate the
unique significance of each individual religion with the consequence that
scientific history of religions takes primary place. Perhaps no branch of
study has struggled under so many burdening presuppositions and the
handicap of so much vague- ness as that which attempts to interpret the
religions of man- kind. A religion is sacred, involving things of
unspeakable value to a human group; religions are universal, common to all
races of men in all ages, and yet, after more than half a century of
laborious study of this precious and universal phase of human behavior,
scholars have not been able to agree upon a definition of religion. There
are hundreds of definitions, ranging from some so narrow as to be exclusive
to others so broad as to be empty of definite signification. The
theological presuppositions inherited by Christian, Jewish, and Moslem
writers often color their definitions as in India the bias is likely to be
toward a philosophical or mystical emphasis. Some definitions are stiff
with dogmatic self-righteousness, some are contemptuous, some prejudiced,
and many partial. This fog of confusion has made uncertain sailing for the
religious sciences; but a compensation now emerges in that the effort of
comparative religion or hierology to string the religions of the planet on
the thread of a definition or a law of religious development and to
evaluate them in relation to a selected standard is giving way to a new
emphasis upon the humbler 577
THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION task of tracing the historic development of
individual religions. To be sure, history of religions has always held an
important position in the science of religion, but a position often pre-
paratory to that of comparative religion which made use of its materials in
the quest for the law of religious evolution and an interpretation of
religion in general. Development, growth, and change were never taken
radically with the result that the search for religion obscured the unique
individuality of religions. This presupposition of a fundamental religion
appeared in several forms. The most natural was in the work of the
apologist who assumed that his own religion embodied the truth of man's
relation to the supernatural toward which all religions were blindly
striving or from which they had fallen away. Again, it was philosophical
and sought in the drift of cosmic history to trace the temporal
manifestation of a uni- versal spirit. Or it was psychological,
overemphasizing the "psychological unity of the race" and finding in this
unity the clue to the process of religious development. Finally, among men
more cordial to evolutionary theory, there was the effort to arrange
religious data so as to show the stages of the develop- ment of religion
from primitive origins to the highest forms of culture religions. Whatever
the emphasis, however, theo- logical, philosophical, psychological, or
anthropological, the comparative method was the tool and servant of all.
Now comes the era of pluralism; and particular religions, even the
individual forms and ideas of particular religions, demand that they be
evaluated and understood in their own unique and peculiar significance, and
not distorted to fit into a mythical concept of religion in general. This
means, in a word, that the thoroughgoing application of the historical
method in the treat- ment of religions has begun. Critical, objective
interpretation of the religions of the world is one of the new fruits of
modern scholarship. Only students of this last generation use the terms
"religious sciences" and 578
COMPARATIVE RELIGION TO HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 579 "science of religion"
without a sense of strangeness. Previous to the middle of the nineteenth
century any unbiased and open-minded appreciation of all religions was
impossible for the majority of men. The reason lay in the ancient under-
standing of religion as a way of salvation revealed by a trans- cendent
God, embodied in sacred books and mediated by special spiritual means to
mankind. The true religion was designated by the revelation. There could be
no easy tolerance of false religions. During the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth centuries Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, each confident of
its own revelation, faced each other at the Mediterranean in dogmatic
defiance. The touch of the Greek spirit in the New Learning brought no
softening of religious dogmatism and the Reformation with its warfare of
Christian sects held small hope of sympathy for foreign faiths. Yet the new
sciences, the new philosophy, the new commerce, political changes,
explorations revealing new lands and religions, could not fail to influence
thinking men. Historic thought forms became too narrow to contain the new
world-spirit. The writings of Alexander Ross, the Deists, Dupuis, De
Brosses, Hume, Herder, and Lessing indi- cate a new attitude toward the non-
Christian peoples. Until the opening of the nineteenth century, however,
strict theo- logical circles held firmly to the theory of revelation
yielding to the new knowledge of other faiths only to the extent of
admitting the possibility of a primitive revelation to all peoples which
had been lost or obscured among the heathen. The middle of the nineteenth
century marks the beginning of a new era in the study of religions. In the
first place, materi- als were available to act as a check upon dogmatism
and a priori, philosophic speculation. The sacred texts of other religions
were being translated; archaeology had begun to yield its precious records;
traders, explorers, travelers, and scientists furnished reports at first
hand from unknown terri- tories. The very mass of materials was a challenge
to research. More important perhaps than the availability of documents and
THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION data was the growing popularity of the
Darwinian hypothe- sis in biology which was being taken over by
anthropologists and ethnologists and soon began to appear in theories of
social evolution. Then flowered the comparative method by which facts were
gathered from the ends of the earth and from all ages and levels of
culture, classified under catchwords and used to demonstrate some chosen
theory of development. In the midst of this intensive study of culture it
was inevitable that religion should be included in the survey. Comparative
religion was born and in the hands of Max Miiller, Tiele, de la Saussaye,
and Albert Reville claimed a place among the empirical sciences. It would
be a mistake to assume, however, that, with the advent of the new science,
the traditional theory of a divine revelation was abandoned. It was too
deeply imbedded in Christian theology and in social tradition to be so
easily shaken. Yet in the works of the late nineteenth century a new
attitude appears. Omitting the solid conservatives who thrust aside the
materials of comparative religion with the contemptuous remark, "There is
no comparison," there were some who made selective use of them to
demonstrate the superiority of Chris- tianity, and others who became
advocates of a theory of revela- tion in a new form. Accepting with perfect
frankness the history of religions and the idea of development and change,
they maintain that the whole process takes place under divine guidance and
control. Accepted as a philosophy of religion the theory retains the values
of revelation and yet claims to give complete freedom to the study and
appreciation of the historic development of all religions. This point of
view is much more common than is generally supposed among writers of the
last thirty years. A philosophy of religion formulated on the basis of
religious facts and experience and growing out of them is one thing; an a
priori philosophy of religion continuing in new form an inherited tradition
is quite another. The tend- ency of the latter is to color, distort, or
sanctify historic facts. In the hands of a man like Reville the search for
the leadership of the divine Spirit added a glow to his scholarly treatment
of the history of religions. In the hands of others it becomes too
frequently a source of blindness and prejudice. This theory has made it
possible for Judaism to see in the experiences of Israel the special path
of God in history. It has inclined Moslem and Christian writers to localize
the divine interposi- tion and guidance in certain great personages and
events and to make it extremely difficult to deal objectively with these
sacred personages, records, and events. In a word, it tends to erect some
particular religion as a standard and to judge others in relation to the
selected norm. The result is apolo- getics rather than the empirical study
of religions. Apologetics has its own value and justification. No one may
deny the right of the Christian apologist to use the history and thought-
forms of other religions in order to demonstrate the superiority of his own
faith. The unfortunate thing is that these writers do not call it
apologetics but comparative religion. A Handbook of Comparative Religion by
Dr. S. H. Kellogg, an American pioneer in the study of religions, asserts
that all religions other than that of Christ must be regarded as false. By
a comparative study of doctrines,' Canon Maccul- loch comes to the
conclusion that, while there was a real preparation for Christian doctrine
in every pagan religion, Christianity is the final and normative faith. In
a handbook prepared for the Anglican church under the title Comparative
Religion by Dr. W. St. Clair Tisdall the reader is given the assurance of
the divine authority of Christianity, its unques- tionable pre-eminence,
and its ultimate complete triumph over its foes. The Hartford-Lamson
Lectures of I907 were delivered by Dr. F. R. Jevons under the title "An
Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion." As an anthropologist he
speaks of the evolution of religion but claims that the task of comparative
religion is to demonstrate that Christianity is the Canon J. A. Macculloch,
Comparative Theology.
THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION highest manifestation of the religious spirit.
All these works are apologetics and should be frankly so named. Scholars
who have been working to win a place for comparative religion among the
empirical sciences have a just cause of complaint against this
appropriation of the name. Parallel to this group, often antagonistic to it
and inclined increasingly to pass over into anthropology and sociology was
that formidable array of scholars who labored to establish an evolutionary
theory of religious development. They aban- doned all speculative and
theological presuppositions and sought to discover the origin of religion
and the law of its develop- ment on the basis of the facts furnished by the
study of relig- ions. The titles of the Hibbert Lectures illustrate this
point of view. They read, for example, "The Origin and Develop- ment of
Religion: Illustrated by the Religions of India"; "by the Religion of
Ancient Egypt"; "by the History of Indian Buddhism"; "by Celtic
Heathendom"; "by the Religions of Mexico and Peru." The quest was for an
understanding of religion. Individual religions were merely sources of data
to reveal the law of religious evolution. The great instrument was the
comparative method coupled with some theory as to the psychic nature of man
such as "a faculty of faith," "the sense of the infinite," "the
psychological unity of the race," "religious instinct," or "a religious
consciousness." Vast stores of material were at hand and labeled under such
terms as "fetishism," "magic," "taboo," "animism," "totemism," "shamanism,"
"sacrifice," and the rest. It remained only for the scholar to arrange the
materials to fit his hypothesis in order to present a very plausible sketch
of the development of religion. But the case rested upon three assumptions.
First, that religion is a certain basic thing in all religions and that phe-
nomena are therefore similar everywhere leaving to the investi- gator only
the task of discovering the order of their arrange- ment. Second, that
human nature is a unit producing similar 582
COMPARATIVE RELIGION TO HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 583 forms when brought
into contact with external nature. Third, that religious ideas and forms
are capable of being gathered under universal terms owing to that
similarity. The effort to set forth the law of development resulted in
confusion and conflict among the investigators. It was soon evident that
the selected order of development might be entirely subjective and that the
demonstration was achieved by arbitrary choice of a beginning of religion
and careful selection from the mass of materials to fit the plan. There
followed a period of con- troversy among the advocates of the various
theories. First, as to point of origin. Was fetishism the first stage of
religion ? Or did it begin in an awed respect for the great powers of
nature ? Was shamanism the earliest form of religious control or does taboo
mark the first stage ? Was animism the starting- point of supernatural
dualism or did it begin in reverence for the souls of the dead or in the
combination of soul and demon or spirit ? Or must we push back to a pre-
animism or anima- tism or even to an original manaism, an awed attitude
toward the mysterious powers active in nature and in living things ? Does
magic precede religion in the arrangement or is religion prior and magic a
degradation and later development? All theories found advocates and all
could be subjectively justified by a judicious use of the endless data. A
second source of difficulty was psychological. The rapid development of
psychology greatly reduced the significance of "the psychological unity of
man" and discredited such con- cepts as "a faculty of faith," a "religious
instinct," and a "religious consciousness" as original endowments of human
nature. This cut under the old confidence that there must be a uniform
manner of religious development and directly attacked the uncriticized use
of comparative data since forms, apparently similar, might arise from
different psychic causes and be really different. Slowly the comparative
method broke down. The classi- fication of materials in pigeonholes of
general terms became impossible with more intensive research. Fetishism was
no longer one thing but many. Totemism had no significance unless it was
very carefully specified what, when, and where. Ancestor worship had its
own peculiar meanings in different social settings. The same thing was
found to be true of other phases of religious activity and thought. It was
seen to be a fallacy to group phenomena together under a general term when
an examination of them in their own cultural environ- ment might show them
to be different. And, because they seemed to the observer to be similar, to
extract them from their own milieu where they had their peculiar
individuality and make them march with others in the line of a scholar's
theory was to compound the fallacy. Moreover it was pointed out that a
phenomenon at one stage might not have the same psychic significance in its
later functioning even in the same society; borrowed by another group it
might have almost none of its old meaning and to treat it uncritically as
the same thing was to miss an important distinction. The arrangement of
materials in a line of development became a most dubious undertaking. Since
all races of men have lived a long time on the earth it seemed quite
possible that the various elements of early religions might not represent
stages of development in relation to each other but might be the
accumulated technique of ages and exist side by side at the dawn of
history. The comparative method hoped to draw general laws on the basis of
widely scattered data apparently similar. It now appeared that similar
things could not be taken as the same thing when they were different. If
scientific accuracy demanded that every religious idea and form be
interpreted with all the thick meaning it carried in its own cultural and
genetic setting the comparative method was robbed, if not stripped, of
value.' Its worth, as a source of suggestion as to possible developments
and contacts, when individual religions were under survey, would depend
upon a careful, critical appraisal of the local I For a searching critic of
method see Frederick Schleiter, Religion and Culture. 584
COMPARATIVE RELIGION TO HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 585 significance of the
data. This cautious and restricted use of the comparative method is well
illustrated by Dr. L. R. Farnell in his studies of the development of the
Greek religion.I The failure of the comparative method was first evident to
the anthropologists. Comparative religion still held its ground. After the
bad lands of origins were abandoned there were still the broad areas of the
history of culture religions. Professor J. E. Carpenter writes: The study
of comparative religion assumes that religion is already in existence. It
deals with actual usages which it places side by side to see what light
they can throw upon each other. .... It is not concerned with origins. ....
Just as the general theory of evolution includes the unity of bodily
structure and mental faculty, so it will vindicate what may be called the
unity of the religious consciousness. The old classifications based on the
idea that religions consisted of a body of doctrines which must be true or
false, reached by natural reflec- tion or imparted by supernatural
revelation disappear before the wider view. Theologies may be many but
religion is one.2 Thus is maintained the old quest to find religion under
the manifold manifestations of religious thought and activity through the
ages. A variant of the quest is found in the work of George Foucart3 who
selected the religion of Egypt, owing to its antiquity, its long untroubled
development and abun- dant materials, as the ideal basis of comparison.
With this all others are compared. Here apologetics is abandoned and the
exaltation of one religion to the supreme place is not the goal. The search
is seriously made for the meaning of religion and the laws underlying its
development. The most tireless modern champion of comparative religion, Mr.
L. H. Jordan,4 is especially vigorous in his repudiation of the misuse IThe
Cults of the Greek States; cf. also his "Inaugural Lecture of the Wilde
Lectures in Natural and Comparative Religion," p. 9. 2 Comparative
Religion, pp. 30, 3I, 34. 3 La Methode Comparative dans l'histoire des
Religions. 4 See Comparative Religion, Its Genesis and Growth; Comparative
Religion, Its Method and Scope, etc.
THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION of the study in the service of apologetics. But
the more one becomes detached from bias and from special admiration of one
religion, the more objectively the data of religions are studied, the more
it appears impossible to draw them into a neat generalization. To
appreciate them truly is to see them in their peculiar individuality. To
set them side by side with others in order to look at them serves only to
make them more distinctly different. Comparative religion loses meaning
unless one has already some preconceived idea as to the standard of
religious excellence or some philosophical presupposition as to a single
cosmic power at work under all the forms. As an instrument for discovering
the law of religious evolution the comparative method is hopelessly
inadequate. The compari- son of data is meaningless unless some connection
can be shown. If the effort is to secure an appreciation of the many
religions of the world that result can be achieved more perfectly by the
history of religions. If the desire is to explain why certain ideas and
forms arise under certain conditions that task falls under the scope of
psychology of religion. If one seeks to show how interaction and borrowing
have taken place the history of the religions concerned will reveal it. If
religion, after all, is not one but many, a valid religious science will
devote itself to the conscientious interpretation of each one of the
multitude. When the comparative method fell into disfavor there still
remained the hope that the law of religious evolution might be discovered
by another method, namely, by selecting an isolated group and making an
intensive study of a single devel- opment. This Durkheim attempted for
Australia. No gen- eralization in regard to religion as a racial product
seems possible from this method. Even though the data were certain and all
contacts with other groups assuredly absent what is achieved may be the
history of a unique and individual reli- gious development. This in itself
is a very valuable result but no inference may safely be drawn from it as
to the early stages of any other single religion. 586
COMPARATIVE RELIGION TO HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 587 What remains then is
the study of religions in all their vast variety. History of religions
assumes a new dignity. Its task is to deal not with religion but religions,
each of them the product of the life of a human group and claiming to be
inter- preted in all the richness of its individuality. The given thing is
human life seeking satisfaction in a specific environment. The story of
this co-operative quest for the good life in rela- tion to varying natural
surroundings is the story of the religion in its early stages. There are
certain basic needs and desires. The geographic situation presents
advantages, dangers, and problems. The slowly expanding appreciation of the
cosmic powers with which men deal, the slowly developing technique of
control from rudimentary forms of magic word and rite to the sciences, the
enlarging conception of the good life from fundamental physical needs to
the higher spiritual values all enter into the story. And each religious
development has its own distinct individuality not to be lost or obscured
by any preconceived idea of religion as ideally represented in any other
group or as formulated by a comparative study of many. This demands a
sincere and thoroughgoing use of the historical method in the treatment of
every particular religion and of the ideas and forms of every religion and
an appreciation of their unique significance to the people who use them. If
this great labor can be carried through it holds out the hope of a
sympathetic understanding of all religions as products of human groups
rooted in the earth and striving, not always successfully, to achieve a
worthful life. Not only will it give an authentic vision of the varied
gropings of the families of mankind for the higher values of life but it
will make possible an apprecia- tive knowledge of the distinctive religious
attitudes, heritages, and attainments of the races now intermingling in a
narrowed world and so, perhaps, open a pathway for the coming of a religion
of humanity as the co-operative quest of the good life of the race.

2. What Is Comparative Religion Comparing? The Subject Matter of
"Religious" Studies Author(s): Antonio R. Gualtieri Source: Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1967), pp. 31-39
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for the Scientific
Study of Religion Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1384192
What is the subject matter of the study of religion ? Is it the
external expression of religious persons and communities, i.e., the
historical de- posit of sacred scriptures, theologies, social institutions,
ethical and liturgical prescriptions and practices? Accurate observation
and de- scription of these data and analysis to detect common structures
are important and necessary. This is not, however, primary, since it ex-
cludes from its purview the personal meaning these external traditions
possess for their participants. This objection suggests that enquiry should
focus on the existential selfhood of individual communicants. Yet this,
also, is unsatisfactory because it restricts study to the psychology of
individuals. Research should concentrate, instead, on religious faith,
i.e., existen- tial selfhood or personal faith as this is evoked and
expressed by an historical tradition. This entails discerning how items in
a cumulative religious tradition enter into the believer's faith or
selfhood by being existentially interpreted. THE EXTERNAL TRADITION The
meaning of external tradition wHAT should be compared in the com- parative
study of religion? On what * It will be evident to most students of com-
parative religion that this paper is written against the background of the
thought of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, especially as this has found expression
in The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1962). In fact,
much of this paper may be regarded as an exposition of the concepts worked
out in that book. Since few references to Smith's writings occur throughout
this article I wish to under- score this dependence at the outset. Where
page references do occur in the text they refer to the above mentioned
work. should academic enquiry focus in that broad field, in which persons
claim to attain true selfhood and relation to transcendence? Scholarly
purpose and personal profundity both demand a sys- tematic attempt to
delimit the subject matter-that which lies at the heart of that phenomenon
usually called "reli- gion." Perhaps the obvious thing to deal with in
comparative religion is the empirically discernible expressions of personal
faith. It is precisely the isolating, cataloguing, and comparing of facts
about such ex- ternal manifestations-canons of sacred scriptures, creeds,
cults, moral codes, and communal patterns-that has been the primary pursuit
of the schools of history
32 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION of religion.l. This
same external tradition is treated by a philosophical or theological
attempt at evaluation. The resulting im- pressive body of knowledge
regarding the observable historical development of these expressions of
faith is a challenging field for the comparative study of religious
activity. Grounds for tradition as the subject matter Academic
appropriateness. When we seek to justify the decision to study and appraise
the external traditions, we re- cognize immediately its academic appro-
priateness. Even after making all ne- cessary allowances for subjective
factors in perception, e.g., in the selection and correct interpretation of
data, it is still clear that we are left with a large body of activities
which are objectively dis- cernible, that is, evident to all attentive
observers regardless of their personal faith or life-position. Because
religious exter- nals are thus objectively apprehensible, attention to them
seems to guarantee the best results in terms of accurate and impartial
description. The comparative aspect of the study of religious externals
concentrated largely on the identification of similar features, at least
outwardly speaking, among the var- ious traditions. This involved, for exam-
ple, such similarities as the equal status ascribed to sacred scriptures
in diverse traditions; the parallel occurrence of sac- rificial motifs; the
presence of similar cultic practices, such as memorial feasts; identical
moral precepts; the common power of religious traditions to create
community organizations. 1 In a chapter entitled "Comparative Relig- ion:
Whither and Why?" in the volume The History of Religions, eds. Eliade and
Kita- gawa (University of Chicago Press, 1959), Smith suggestively advances
the view that The Ency- clopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings
(Edinburgh, 1908-21) may be re- garded as a symbol of the history of
religions' phase of scholarship in this field. Not all historians of
religion, of course, sought only identities, parallels, and anal- ogies.
Since the task was conceived as essentially descriptive, it entailed noting
dissimilar features where these were felt to exist. An outstanding example
of this is Rudolf Otto's comparative study of the mysticism of Eckhardt and
Sankara.2 This observing, cataloguing, and com- paring of the outward
manifestations of religious faith has been of immense value in the
acquisition of scientific knowledge. It follows that the external tradition
should be considered the proper subject matter of an intellectual task
which seeks to describe and appraise the religious enterprise of mankind.
Sociological function. A second reason for concentrating on the external
religious traditions is the obvious sociological im- portance they exercise
in the affairs of men. It is these traditions which de- marcate the
religious communities of the world. The patently visible facts that men
believe, worship, and practice in different ways enables us to observe that
people exist in varying degrees of isola- tion from one another. We can
deal with this fact of separation by recognizing the external forms within
which it mani- fests itself. So far, the diverse traditions are viewed
simply as emblems of the factual communal diversity of man. Beyond these
external forms, the sepa- ration of men into isolated groups may be
ascribed to diversity of world-outlook. Then men are viewed as organized
into distinct and often isolated communities, which have given their
ultimate allegiance to different deities or putative revelations or
ideologies. Here the diverse traditions are not simply external symbols of
com- munalism; they are regarded, rather, as expressions integral to
divergent personal faiths which deflect mankind into dif- ferent faith
communities. 2 Mysticism East and West, A Comparative Analysis of the
Nature of Mysticism (New York: Macmillan, 1932). We should, however,
observe that it does not follow necessarily that diversity of religious
tradition is evidence of a concomitant diversity of religious faith.
Exponents of the Hindu notion of "poly- morphic monism," for example, will
see the differing traditions as signs of the richness and depth of ultimate
reality and human nature which allow manifold externalizations of an
essentially common relation to transcendence. Most observ- ers, however,
(and certainly theologians adhering to a Judaic view of exclusive
revelation) will probably regard the vari- ous religious traditions as
visible signs of the real diversity of faith by which men orient their
lives to ultimate reality and value. In either case, it can be seen readily
why religious traditions can become the focus of descriptive and evaluative
stud- ies. For those whose orientation is basic- ally sociological, the
external traditions make visible the actual separation of men into
different communal groups. For those whose concern is chiefly theological,
the religious traditions serve not only to demarcate the religious
communities of mankind, but function also as indices of the varieties of
personal faith among men. Objections to study of the external tradition
Scholars who share the personalist pre- suppositions that animate this
paper but who approach the study of religious phe- nomena through the
disciplines of the social sciences, undoubtedly will have had occasion to
question the validity of the external tradition as the principal focus of
their studies. The inadequacies of the external tradition as the most conse-
quential field of inquiry are experienced in a particularily telling way
by the student of comparative religion when he raises questions of
evaluation. The dif- ficulties entailed are discussed briefly below, but
these may be taken as il- lustrative of the problems that emerge when
academic scrutiny is limited to the external tradition. Methodological
problems in evaluation. As long as one is engaged in that phase of research
which aspires to a description of externals, the comparative study of
religion proceeds fairly smoothly. How- ever, enormous problems present
them- selves when a move is made to the evaluative phase. How, for example,
does one appraise cultic performances? What criteria lead to the decision
that the celebration of the Lord's Supper is a more worthy expression of
adoration or more efficacious vehicle of the divine pre- sence than the
recitation of the Qur' an ? One possibility is to base evaluative judg-
ments on a mutually acceptable moral code. For example, based on a view of
reverence for life, one may readily elicit a unanimous judgment that hymn
singing is a worthier form of worship than the darwlsh mastication of live
coals. Or one may rightly conclude that the one cultic practice is
inherently elevated and the other barbarous. There remains, how- ever, the
vexing question of the personal meaning these practices possess for their
adherents. To this we shall return below. The expression of faith in creeds
and doctrinal systems may further illumine the present discussion of
methodological problems in appraising items in a religious tradition. The
tendency of western schol- ars in comparing diverse religious tradi- tions
has been to ask about their re- spective beliefs. It would be an easy
matter to assess diverse beliefs if one had an objective picture of
ultimate reality acquired independently of one's religious commitment and,
in principle, attainable by all. In these circumstances, the truth of
religious beliefs would depend on the degree to which they approximated to
that objective or neutral picture. The philosophical attack on natural
theology, however, deriving its thrust especially from Hume and Kant and
cul- minating in the linguistic analysts, pre- cludes such a procedure.
Most western circles have rejected the belief in the possibility of a
knowledge of meta- 33
34 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION physical reality
attained by autonomous rational inquiry operating independently of
particular historical traditions. The implication of this demise of nat-
ural theology is that if God is known at all, it is through revelation
enshrined in historical traditions that have the power to mediate
transcendence and evoke per- sonal faith. The beliefs entailed in his-
torical faith cannot, however, serve as universally legitimate criteria for
assess- ing competing religious assertions. For it should be clear that the
very signifi- cance of religious beliefs is that they are convictions
acknowledged by their ad- herents as ultimate. There is no going behind
them to obtain somewhere a clear- er idea of God with which to appraise
independently the notions given in all historical revelations or
traditions. A believer normally regards his religious convictions as the
truest statement about reality available in his historical period and,
therefore, the standard for apprais- ing all intellectual expressions about
transcendence, about God. Objective ap- praisal of diverse religious
beliefs with neutral criteria seems unattainable. Thus, on the basis of
these examples, we see that it is far easier to describe an external
tradition (though even here there are enormous problems requiring insight
and sensitivity for their resolution) than to evaluate its status as an
expression and instrument of one's relation to God. Evasion of the problem
of personal mean- ing of the tradition. The most profound objection,
however, to appraisals of reli- gious observables, viewed simply as ex-
ternal entities, is that they fail to take into account that which is
probably the most important thing about them. Their significance for the
persons who are loyal to them is their most decisive quality. For example,
the notion of God as an angry judge may serve as a representa- tion of
ultimate reality (and perhaps be evaluated by outside observers as inade-
quate or crude). This image may, how- ever, function in the believer's
personal life not primarily as a representation of ultimate reality, but as
a summons to assume an obligation to exercise all the moral forces at his
disposal in pursuit of a life of nobility. If we turn now to the evaluation
of worship ceremonies, we see that the same criticism applies. We saw above
that, using a mutually acceptable moral stand- ard, the judgment that some
forms of cultus are barbarous and others elevated is relatively straight-
forward. This as- sessment does not, however, exhaust the discussion. For
if we are concerned to plumb the depths of others' religiousness, we must
ask what the respective prac- tices mean to their participants. We must
inquire, for example, into the suc- cess of the respective rituals in
achieving for their participants communion with what they experience as the
transcendent ground of their lives. Sometimes an ex- cessively
rationalistic and moralistic view of human religiousness obscures its
heart, namely, the attempt to attain personal meaning-purposeful and worthy
life- in the face of contradictory events that threaten this intention.
Generally, this personal meaning is viewed as the out- come of relation to
transcendence, as participation in ultimate reality, as com- munion with
God. The worth ascribed to a religious ritual depends, then, not simply on
its inherent quality, appraised in detachment from the innermost personal
life of its devotees. Valid assessment is also (and perhaps most
importantly) contingent on the role that the cultic act plays in the com-
municant's quest for personal meaning. It is not only what a thing is that
gives it worth, but also what it does in a person's life. The comparative
study of religion must always bear in mind that "religion" is above all
else an intensely personal affair through which believers achieve meaning
in a universe which fre- quently seems to threaten personal value. This
stress on the primary importance of the personal meaning attached to ele-
THE SUBJECT OF "RELIGIOUS" STUDIES ments in a religious tradition
explains as well the deterioration of the excitement that used to prevail
upon the discovery of outward identities within different tra- ditions; for
example, the Three-Body doctrine of Buddhism and the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity. For now there is a growing insistence on ascertaining what
these outwardly similar beliefs and practices mean in the personal life of
the respective communicants. Contem- porary comparative study of religion
seems more ready than that of an earlier generation to acknowledge that
activities which outwardly appear the same may, in reality, convey quite
different personal meanings. This discovery is coupled, moreover, with the
conviction that it is this area of existential significance that is of
crucial importance. The examples adduced in support of this conviction come
from the field of comparative religion. I believe, however, that the
relevance of this personalist view- point and its elaboration in the thesis
of this paper is not restricted to the comparative study of religion. It
seems probable that any profound study of reli- gious data will devote
itself to understand- ing the personal meaning of observables. The
percipient sociologist of religion will not be content, for example, only
to tab- ulate statistics showing that a small pro- portion of those taking
college religion courses regularly attend chapel worship. He will press for
an understanding of the personal meaning of this behavior to the subjects
in question. Especially will he be alert to discern whether this attendance
or non-attendance of organized worship expresses a fundamental orientation
'in life. INDIVIDUAL FAITH The meaning of faith Implicit in the foregoing
criticisms of the external tradition (conceived as the essential subject
matter of research) is the assumption that the fundamental con- cern ought
to be with religious persons instead of the observable traditions through
which those persons are religious. The most profound judgments are those
which discriminate between persons, which see in one a higher attainment of
love, of depth of feeling, of grandeur. The descriptions and evaluations
attempted in the comparative study of religion ought chiefly to devote
themselves, in a word, to the faith of persons. By faith I mean that
quality of life in which one feels himself most essentially human, most
significant. Faith is the inner amalgam of a person's ultimate convictions-
of those irreducible and uncompromisable commitments which set the values
and goals to be pursued even at times at the cost of life. Faith is one's
fundamental orientation to existence determining how one responds to
others, to the challenges and crises of life and death, to the pos-
sibilities of one's final destiny, as well as to a way of conduct which the
self acknowledges as authoritative. Objections to study of individual faith
The description and evaluation of the faith of individual persons does not,
how- ever, shed much light on the problem of the diversity of religious
traditions. A study which proceeds on these lines will be essentially the
composition of bio- graphies. An assessment which is to be more than an
appraisal of isolated in- dividuals must ask further about the re- lation
of the personal quality of individ- uals to their observable religious
tradi- tions. Our preoccupation, then, is with the connection of personal
faith or ulti- mate human selfhood with the external traditions which
differentiate men into diverse religious communities. This con- nection is
represented throughout this es- say by the term "religious" and to its
explication I now turn. RELIGIOUS FAITH The concept "religious" The
employment of the qualifier "reli- gious" raises considerable problems. The
word "religion" (and its cognates) is used in such contradictory ways as to
suggest that its retention as a cashable term is a futile procedure. The
first chapters of Wilfred Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion are
devoted to an analysis of the terms "religion" and "religious" and trace
their changing meaning. Smith con- cludes that the reified and rationalized
significance assumed by "religion" makes it a misleading term to designate
the dynamic and existential quality of per- sonal faith, and he, in fact,
proposes its abolition in its noun form. In its place he substitutes the
pair of concepts, "ex- ternal tradition" and "faith."3 "Religious," as I
use it, is a complex concept correlated simultaneously with both tradition
and faith. When it is used to qualify tradition, it conveys the meaning
that the tradition is oriented towards a person's experience of abso- lute
value, ultimate concern, transcen- dence. More succinctly: to call a tradi-
tion "religious" is to claim that tradition induces existential selfhood.
When "re- ligious" qualifies personal faith, it sig- nifies that the faith
in question has been evoked by an external tradition and expresses itself
in that tradition (at least in part). In respect to tradition and faith we
may conclude that "religious" signifies a faith-producing (and expressing)
tradi- tion or a tradition-induced (and expres- sive) faith. The adjective
"religious" de- scribes that which is in relation to a systematized and
institutionalized tradi- 3 A succinct statement of Smith's programme is
contained in the following: "The proposal that I am putting forward can, at
one level, be formulated quite simply. It is that what men have tended to
conceive as religion and especially as a religion, can more rewardingly,
more truly, be conceived in terms of two factors, different in kind, both
dynamic: an historical 'cumulative tradition', and the per- sonal faith of
men and women." Wilfred Cant- well Smith, op. cit., p. 194. tion having
power to act as a catalyst in awakening a single-minded orientation towards
all existence, in evoking per- sonal faith. Since faith implies the
acknowledgment of some supreme author- ity in terms of which one resolves
to live one's life, it is not surprising that the tradition itself may, by
association, (and, godly men would presumably say, mis- takenly) assume
this place of ultimate value and authority in the life of the participant.
Implications of the definition. Several things will be noted about this
usage of the term "religious." First, although this was not the result of a
deliberate pro- gramme, it turns out that it unifies two meanings which
prevail in contemporary theological discussion. The first meaning derives
from Paul Tillich, where "reli- gious" describes the attitude of ultimate
concern which is, basically, personal faith as understood in this paper.4
The second meaning is seen in reference to "reli- gionless Christianity" in
which religion is taken to mean the observable forms by which man manifests
his personal encounter with God. Religion is the com- plex of scriptures,
creeds, myths, moral codes, rites, and communal institutions organized
around man's conviction that a divine reality stands over against him and
demands a certain ordino homines ad deum, a response commensurate with its
transcendent authority. The adjective "religious" in the context of
religionless Christianity serves to indicate relationship to this
institutional amalgam. The con- nection with this paper's concept of ex-
ternal tradition is evident. 4 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1951). "The religious concern is ultimate;
it excludes all other concerns from ultimate significance... The word
'concern' points to the 'existential' character of religious experience"
(pp. 11-12). Also, "Revelation is the manifestation of what concerns us
ultimately" (p. 110).
THE SUBJECT OF "RELIGIOUS" STUDIES In the second place, it should be ob-
served that my definition of "religious" does not necessarily involve the
notion of supernatural beings or the sacred. Rather, the emphasis is on the
normative experience of absolute worth and author- ity which transcends the
relative values and claims of ordinary experience and, further, about which
one is ultimately concerned and committed. In point of fact, the
transcendent has, in man's re- ligious history, been generally conceived in
terms of divine beings or, at least, the sacred. But the transcendent
should be viewed as sacred only when it has the pow- er to elicit
distinctive numinous feelings. It is probably evident that I am at-
tempting to formulate a comprehensive concept which will accommodate
certain types of Chinese tradition and faith, and Theravada Buddhism, where
supernatural beings and the sense of the sacred, if at all present, do not
play a major role. Thirdly, it may prove useful to indicate how my use of
the term "religious" resem- bles that of Smith. In spite of his strictures
against "religion" Smith retains the term "religious." He writes, "...
living religiously is an attribute of persons. The attribute arises not
because those persons participate in some entity called religion, but
because they participate in what I have called transcendence."6 Inasmuch as
Smith has posited "faith" as the per- sonal quality in virtue of which
persons are related to transcendence, one wonders why the more
linguistically consistent form "faithful" (perhaps spelled "faith- full" to
stress its novel technical use) is not employed for this adjectival
function. Such usage might avoid confusion of this adjectival quality of
persons with the censured concept of religion. Although Smith employs
"religious" to qualify, primarily, persons living out of transcendence, he
does not exclude a further, derived application to the ex- ternal
tradition. He asserts in this regard: 5 Smith, op. cit., p. 195. "A
cumulative tradition may be termed religious when it is the product and
chan- nel of men's faith."6 My own meaning of "religious" differs from
Smith's in the following manner: Whereas Smith primarily applies the term
"religious" to persons characterized by the quality of participating in
transcen- dence (and, by extension, to the tradition in which they express
that personal qual- ity, their faith), I use it with a simul- taneous
reference to personal faith and to external tradition. It would be il-
legitimate, on my premises, to call a person "religious" whose existential
self- hood is a response to transcendent au- thority unless it were also
clear that this selfhood had been called forth by his participation in one
of the historical traditions. Where a person acts con- sistently and single-
mindedly in terms of some authority and value acknowledged as supreme he
may be designated "faith- ful." Further, where this transcendent authority
is experienced and interpreted as sacred, as divine, we may refer to such a
person's faith as "godly." We would not, however, designate such faith
(godly or otherwise, as the case may be) "reli- gious" unless it had been
evoked by, and expressed itself in, an external cumulative tradition. This
preoccupation is justified by the fact that failure in definitional
precision is partly responsible for befuddlement in the study of religion.
The meaning of religious faith It should be remembered that this paper's
intention is to ascertain the most fruitful material for the comparative
study of religion. It began by surveying the prospect of the cumulative
traditions, the historically developing congeries of beliefs, cultic
practices, institutions. This option was criticized and the suggestion made
that for those with a personalist philosophical outlook that inspires the 6
Ibid., note 12, pp. 318-9.
discovery of personal meanings, the pri- mary interest, academic as
well as prac- tical, should be persons and not externals. Another
possibility was then examined: persons with a unique selfhood which
expresses itself in history. But, the claim was made, neither should the
scholar interest himself simply with persons in their uniqueness or
totality. He should be concerned, rather, with the meeting point of
traditions and persons. Calling into service the foregoing development of
the concept "religious," this intersec- tion is discerned in the religious
faith or selfhood of persons. Religious faith, we saw earlier, is personal
faith which exists in connection with a historical tradition. It is the
core of man's existential orienta- tion called into being and shaped (speak-
ing historically and not theologically) by a cumulative religious
tradition to which the person adheres and which, in turn, expresses his
life commitment and outlook. The succinct reply to the question about the
primary subject matter of the comparative study of religion is: com-
parative religion is concerned with relig- ious faith. Stated more fully,
we may say that it is the faith or selfhood of persons insofar as this is
engendered by and finds expression in a religious tradition. RELIGIOUS
FAITH AS THE EXISTENTIAL MEANING OF THE TRADITION What is needed now is a
clearer un- derstanding of the precise connection between external
tradition and personal faith. What, to focus on one issue, is entailed in
the "shaping" that tradition exercises on faith? An answer to this question
requires that we explore more closely the link between faith and tradition.
It is clear that if we are to talk of religious faith there must be some
exist- ential relation between a person's faith and the religious tradition
in which he participates. It is religious because it is attached in some
way to a historic tra- dition; it is faith because it deals with
fundamental existential attitudes and re- sponses. Since the tradition is a
reified external, the link-the shaping of faith by tradition-can take place
only as per- sonal meanings are attached to the var- ious items in that
tradition. The ex- ternal tradition can penetrate to the dy- namic center
of the self, thus creating faith, only through the meaning which it assumes
for a person. Cumulative tra- ditions can create personal selfhood be-
cause they are amenable to existential interpretations. Amplifying the
meaning of religious faith, we may say now that it is an existential life-
outlook deriving from an existential interpretation of a religious
tradition. Accordingly, to understand re- ligious faith it is not
sufficient to for- mulate a description of the observables in a believer's
tradition: one must move to the more subtle and difficult task of inquiring
what role these observable items exercise in the participant's exis-
tential dispositions and convictions. When we speak of existential inter-
pretation, our gaze is fixed not so much on the material of the tradition
whose meaning is being explored, but on the person who lives and forms
values on the basis of a life-position that he has grasped in and through
that traditional material. The tradition provides symbols which, when
existentially understood, illumine and shape personal existence for those
who adhere to them, and who see life in terms of them. The view advanced
here of religious faith may be more adequately appreciated by
distinguishing between the theological meaning of a tradition and its
existential meaning. The theological meaning may be called the "objective"
meaning of the tradition. This must not be taken to mean, however, that the
significance in question is objectively discernible, i.e. ap- prehendable
by detached scrutiny. For it is in fact evident only to those who have an
appropriate frame of reference, to those who have the required subjective
precondition for discerning this signifi-
THE SUBJECT OF "RELIGIOUS" STUDIES cance. In calling this theological
meaning "objective," the implication is that the transcendent is held to be
operative in the tradition quite apart from any human acknowledgment of the
fact. The existen- tial meaning, on the contrary, is quite incomprehensible
apart from such human discernment and commensurate commit- ment. Indeed,
this is precisely what the existential meaning signifies. This distinction
may be illustrated with the Christian doctrine of the resur- rection of
Christ. The theological meaning may be asserted in propositions of the
following kind: The resurrection demon- strates God's approval of Jesus and
con- firms his messiahship; it vindicates the way of the cross as the
method of divine reconciliation; it inaugurates the eschato- logical age.
But this theological meaning of this historical and doctrinal item in the
Chris- tian tradition is not yet the sort of mean- ing that personal faith
implies. To evoke personal faith, the doctrine of the resur- rection must
be existentially interpreted; its existential meaning needs to be grasp-
ed. The following scheme is intended to illustrate how the doctrine of the
resur- rection may be existentially interpreted: To say, "I believe in the
resurrection of Jesus" is to say (on the existential level): "I hear God's
summons to a new life of love and freedom, to resurrection life. I am
assured by God of this new life if I bear the cross. I experience here and
now a measure of resurrection life through the presence and power of the
indwelling Spirit." In brief: to believe in the resurrection of Jesus is to
orient one's life in terms of this resurrection outlook, to make it a part
of one's personal faith. The source (historically speaking) of this faith
is the message of the resurrection of Jesus in the Christian tradition. But
it is im- portant to see that this personal faith is the meaning of the
traditional resurrec- tion message for me; it is the existential
interpretation of the resurrection. This faith is designated religious
because it is shaped by an item in the external tradi- tion (the message of
the resurrection of Jesus), but it is faith because this is ex- istentially
understood and appropriated.7 CONCLUSION The concept of religious faith,
then, seeks to concentrate our attention on the distinctive selfhood that
emerges when a person effectively encounters an external religious
tradition. Moreover, it focuses on the integral connection between such
personal faith and its tradition. These points may be illustrated by noting
the procedure that the concept's acceptance would entail in the evaluative
side of comparative religion study. When we apply evaluative criteria to
religious persons and communities we appraise not only them but also their
religious tradition. If, for example, the criterion of com- parative
judgment is divine presence, we do not simply look at a man and ask, "Is
his faith godly, i.e. God-centered and God-indwelt?" To ask this kind of
ques- tion might profoundly illuminate the qual- ity of an individual
person's existence, but it would not advance the scholarly task of
comprehending and evaluating the diversity of the great religious systems
and communities of the world. Our focus, accordingly, is not on persons and
their religious faith in a narrowly individu- alistic or biographical
sense. Rather, it is on man in relation to the religious tradi- tion in
which he participates. We do not, therefore, simply ask, "Is that man's
faith a locus of divine encounter?" The pertinent question is, instead,
"Has this religious tradition the capacity to elicit a faith that is, in
reality, God-centered and an internalization of the divine pres- ence ?
And, if so, to what extent in com- parison with other external traditions?"
7 The existential interpretation of the resur- rection of Jesus is brought
out in James Ro- binson, A New Quest of The Historical Jesus (London: SCM
Press, 1959), pp. 42, 52, 122ff. 39

3. Universals, General Terms and the Comparative Study of Religion
Author(s): Jeppe Sinding Jensen Source: Numen, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2001), pp.
238-266.
4. The Rise and Fall of Civil Religion: Comparative Perspectives
Author(s): John Markoff and Daniel Regan Source: Sociological Analysis,
Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1981), pp. 333-352.
5. Beyond Christianity: A Critique of the Rational Choice Theory of
Religion from a Weberian and Comparative Religions Perspective Author(s):
Stephen Sharot Source: Sociology of Religion, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Winter,
2002), pp. 427-454.
6. Бойко А. П?вденна Укра?на останньо? чверт? XVIII стол?ття. Частина
1. Аграрн? в?дносини. - Запор?жжя: РА "Тандем - У", 1997. - 204 с.
7. Бойко А. П?вденна Укра?на останньо? чверт? ХV??? стол?ття. Анал?з
джерел. - К., 2000. - 308 с.
8. Дружинина Е.И. Северное Причерноморье в 1775 - 1800 гг. - М.: изд.
Академии наук СССР, 1959. - 277 с.
9. Дружинина Е.И. Южная Украина в 1800 - 1825 гг. - М.: Наука, 1970. -
384 с.
10. Дружинина Е.И. Южная Украина в период кризиса феодализма. 1825 -
1860 гг. - М.: Наука, 1981. - 214 с.

??. Особенности конфессиональных отношений в пограничном сообществе
(Border Community)
Темы для обсуждения:
- Возможности сравнительной характеристики процессов колонизации
представителями различных конфессий Южной Украины и Северной Америки.
- Особенности психологии представителей конфессиональных групп,
оставивших родину и оказавшихся в окружении неавтохтонных жителей.
- Ориентация отдельных конфессиональных групп в системе понятий «свой-
чужой», «мы-они».
- Соотношение традиции (инертности мышления человека) и приспособления
(отбора) к новым условиям существования.

Рекомендованная литература для чтения:

Лиман ?.?. Церковний устр?й Запорозьких Вольностей (1734 - 1775). -
Запор?жжя: РА "Тандем - У", 1998. - 180 с.
М?жконфес?йн? вза?мини на П?вдн? Укра?ни XVIII - ХХ стол?ття. / Бойко
А.В., ?гнатуша О.М., Лиман ?.?., М?льчев В.?. та ?н. - Запор?жжя: РА
"Тандем - У", 1999. - 252 с.
М?льчева А. Про роль ?сламського елементу у формуванн? локально? групи
болгарського етносу на злам? XVIII - Х?Х стол?ть (на приклад? болгарсько?
колон?? Тирновки (Терн?вки), поблизу м. Микола?ва // Записки науково-
досл?дно? лаборатор?? ?стор?? П?вденно? Укра?ни Запор?зького державного
ун?верситету: П?вденна Укра?на XVIII - Х?Х стол?ття. - Вип. 4 (5). -
Запор?жжя: РА "Тандем - У", 1999. - С. 219 - 220.

???. Сравнительный анализ религиозной ситуации на Юге Украины и в
соседних полиэтнических регионах
Темы для обсуждения:
- Черты сходства и различия южноукраинского региона и периферийных
районов Османской империи.
- Соотношение реализации государственной политики унификации-
децентрализации, предоставления отдельным этно-конфессиональным группам
определенной автономии.
- Использование немусульманами (задунайским казачеством, старообрядцами)
предоставленного Османской Портой особого статуса, автономии в вопросах
внутреннего самоуправления.
- Сравнение ситуации с использованием неправославным населением Южной
Украины соответствующих уступок со стороны российского правительства.
- Характер взаимоотношений между православными задунайцами и
старообрядцами-некрасовцами на землях Османской империи и на Юге
Украины.

Рекомендованная литература для чтения:

The State, Religion and Pluralism: The Turkish Case in Comparative
Perspective Author(s): Metin Heper Source: British Journal of Middle
Eastern Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1991), pp. 38-51 Published by: Taylor &
Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/195380

Introduction The development of pluralism as a significant dimension of
democracy is closely related to the nature of the relationship between the
State and religion. From this perspective, the realms of Christianity and
Islam present two contrasting patterns. However, the Ottoman-Turkish
polity, although belonging to the realm of Islam, differed considerably
from the other Muslim polities in this respect, and this fact has had a
critical impact on the fortunes of pluralism in Turkey. The present article
attempts to elaborate this point. Pluralism, or its political-institutional
counterpart polyarchy, means rule by the many. By 'many' is meant, of
course, groups rather than individuals. In this view, polyarchy stands in
direct contrast to democracy, the rule of all citizens, and to oligarchy,
the rule of the few.1 It also follows that not only statist monism but also
atomic individualism, the basic idea on which classical liberalism was
structured, is rejected.2 The political struggle is expected to take place
among various 'power groups'.3 In polyarchy, power still resides in the
individual, but this power is not to be expressed as majority versus
minority 'will'. Political preferences are crystallized around specific
issues; those voters forming a transient or a more permanent group and
interested enough in certain issues vote on the basis of those issues.4
According to its well-known definition, polyarchy implies 'a system of
interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into
an unspecified number of multiple, voluntary, competitive, non-
hierarchically ordered and self-determined categories'.5 As a consequence,
decision-making is incremental, based on partisan mutual adjustment.
Decisions are not reached through consensus about matters of substance.
Policy-makers are not considered omnipotent planners. 'Muddling through'
carries the day. For groups to impinge continuously upon government,
decentralization is stretched virtually to its limits. Such a system of
government provides multiple points of access for interest groups.6 In
polyarchy, there is also an emphasis on conflict rather than consensus. A
definite stand is taken against both 'a generalizing, integrating and
legitimizing state'7 as an incarnation of the Rousseauist 'general' or the
Hegelian 'universal 1. Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O'Leary, Theories of
the State. The Politics of Liberal Democracy (London, Macmillan, 1987),
p.17. 2. Andrew Wincent, Theories of the State (Oxford, Basil Blackwell,
1987), p. 186. 3. Agnes Heller, 'On Formal Democracy', in Civil Society and
the State. New European Perspectives, John Keane, ed. (London and New York,
Verso, 1988), p.130. 4. Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1956). 5. Philippe Schmitter, 'Still
the Century of Corporatism?', Review of Politics, 36 (1974), p.95. 6.
Dunleavy and O'Leary, Theories of the State: The Politics of Liberal
Democracy, pp.54-9. 7. I take this conception of the State from Kenneth
H.F. Dyson, The State Tradition in Western Europe: A Study of an Idea and
Institution (Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1980). 38
will', on the one hand, and a repressive, 'moral' society, on the
other. Politics has its own rationale; it is neither tied to the norms
belonging to the terrain of the State nor to those imbedded in social
structure, such as kinship groups, religion and the like. Polyarchy empties
the overarching moral content that the classics and the nineteenth-century
liberals attributed to democracy.8 In polyarchy, sovereignty is
'pluralized'. The doctrine of legibus solutus- one body having final
authority and not being accountable to any other body-is rejected. This
does not mean that the notion of the State representing the long-term
interests of community is alien to polyarchy; it is the absolutist vision
of the State, not the State per se, that the pluralists find unacceptable.9
Robert A. Dahl, for instance, has argued that while political organizations
should have their own autonomy, they should also be controlled.10 Otto
Kirchheimer noted the necessity for the institutionalization of the norms
and structures of the regime itself."1 This was found necessary because,
according to Samuel P. Huntington, a smoothly functioning democracy needs
political institutions which would temper, moderate and re-direct the
relative power of social groups.12 Models of pluralism The pluralization of
sovereignty and, concurrently, the degree to which political institutions
have come to have their normative and structural distinctiveness have, of
course, differed from one setting to another. In some contexts, not only
was sovereignty pluralized but the idea that the State too should have
sovereignty was also rejected. Some English pluralists, as well as Guild
socialists, for instance, envisaged sovereignty as being widely dispersed
amongst social groups, and not concentrated in the sphere of government.13
This view was related to the notion of social pluralism.14 Checks and
balances indispensable in every polity had to be provided for by non-
institutional, rather than institutional, means. According to F.W.
Maitland, social pluralism was a necessity, because liberty could only be
guaranteed by a dispersal of power in society. Social groups were expected
to act as agents of 'social coordination' through horizontal relations of
adjustment and exchange.15 An excellent example was A. de Tocqueville's
America, where he found numerous intermediary structures, standing between
the individual and 8. Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984), p.36. 9. Wincent, Theories
of the State, p.188. 10. Robert A. Dahl. Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy:
Autonomy v. Control (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1982).
11. Otto Kirchheimer, 'Confining Conditions and Revolutionary
Breakthroughs', American Political Science Review, 59 (1965), 964-74. 12.
Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven and
London, Yale University Press, 1965). 13. Wincent, Theories of the State,
p.37. 14. Concerning social pluralism, I draw on A.H. Birch, Representation
(London, Macmillan, 1971), pp.78-86. 15. Dyson, The State Tradition in
Western Europe. A Study of an Idea and Institution, p.193. 39
political authority and able to impinge upon government.16 Emphasis on
social groups at the virtual expense of central government in America led
in theory and, to a great extent, in practice to a mixture of two pluralist
models of the State-the 'weathervane' model and the broker model.17 In the
weathervane model, the State simply mirrors, or responds to, the balance of
group pressures in society. Developed by Arthur F. Bentley18 and elaborated
by David Truman,19 this model to some degree reflected the political
reality in America. The picture was largely completed by the broker model
according to which public policy is as much the outcome of primarily self-
interested contests within the government as it is of conflicts outside.
The combined version of these two models reflected the notion of government
adopted by nearly all the Founding Fathers in America. James Madison took
representation as basically representation of (sectional) interests. An
elected executive, Madison noted, will inevitably act to a very
considerable extent as a delegate for particular interests. The delegate
would either seek to promote the interests of his constituents or use his
position to advance his own personal interests-the first being more
desirable. Madison recommended frequent elections as a check on the elected
executive. John C. Calhoun improved the original model by introducing the
idea of concurrent majority. Calhoun was interested in defending the
group(s) in the minority against the group(s) in the majority. In making
policy, it was imperative, according to Calhoun, to take the sense of each
group. The sense of the entire community was made up of the 'united sense'
of all groups. In the Madison-Calhoun model, there was no place for a
notion of 'common interest', to be consciously and deliberately defined and
safeguarded by a group, institution and/or a person. In America, excluding
a few thinkers such as Walter Lippmann, this idea has not been looked upon
favourably. The praxis, of course, has not followed the theory. Thus, even
David Truman had to take account of latent or potential pressures for
promoting the general interest, such as the preservation of civil liberties
and the maintenance of constitutional procedures.20 Whereas in America
sovereignty of the monistic state was pluralized and its 'fragments' were
transferred to the various power groups, in Europe sovereignty was
'divided' between the State and civil society. It was in this context that
such ideas as 'general will', 'universal will', 'common will' or 'common
interest' were emphasized. Thus, in the European polities one came across
'mixed constitutions'. In these political systems, pluralism was not viewed
essentially as social pluralism; it was perceived primarily as
institutional pluralism. Some institutions were saddled with the
responsibility of safeguarding the long-term interests of the community.
16. A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York, Mentor, 1956). 17.
On these two pluralist models of the State, I draw upon Dunleavy and
O'Leary, Theories of the State. The Politics of Liberal Democracy, pp.43-4,
47-51. 18. Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Government (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1967), originally published in 1908. 19. David
Truman, The Process of Government (New York, Knopf Press, 1951). 20.
Truman, The Process of Government, passim. 40
In this version of pluralism, representation was not taken as a process
of mere delegation, but basically as attributing trust to the elected
executive which was not only responsible for representing interests but
also opinions. It was also asserted that there were differing levels of
opinions as well as of interests.21 Earlier Max Weber, and later Joseph A.
Schumpeter, had argued that not everyone in society was at the same stage
of development and, therefore, not all individuals could be engaged in
purposive-rational action.22 Thus, the English Whigs insisted that the
Parliament represented the whole nation; the decisions of the
parliamentarians were to be more than the arithmetic sum of sectional
demands. It is true that Tories perceived the elected executive as
responsible for representing sectional interests, but they assumed that the
king and his ministers had the main responsibility for looking after the
national interest. According to the French Constitution of 1871, too, the
National Assembly embodied the will of the nation; the representatives were
not supposed to be the representatives of only a particular departement.23
Institutional pluralism came to have two versions. The State as an idea and
institution was entrenched more strongly in continental Europe than it was
across the Channel.24 In the continental European version, there developed
an Idealist attitude to representation. This particular approach derived
from a belief in the organic unity of society and, therefore, from a
conception of society as a community of persons who shared certain values
and aspirations.25 There was emphasis on leadership and on the exchange of
opinions about what should be done among the people who were familiar with
the needs and interests of groups within the community.26 Although some
British thinkers such as T.H. Green, A.D. Lindsay and Sir Ernest Barker,
too, subscribed to the Idealist attitude to representation, the continent
of Europe proved a more appropriate environment for this particular
approach to flourish-a point made earlier. In Britain, emphasis has been on
party representation; the electors were to be presented with two or more
alternative programmes of action determined by political parties, rather
than the electors themselves giving particular mandates to their
representatives.27 The state model corresponding to institutional pluralism
where sovereignty was divided between the State and civil society, rather
than pluralized and appropriated by the civil societal elements as in
social pluralism, has been the neutral state, particularly its
substantially neutral state version. In the latter 21. Birch,
Representation, p.94. 22. Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of
Interpretative Sociology, Guenter Roth and Claude Wittich, eds., trans. by
E. Fischoff et al. (New York, Bedminster, 1968); J.A. Schumpeter,
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York, Harper, 1942). This point is
developed at length in Carnoy, The State and Political Theory, pp.33 ff.
23. Birch, Representation, pp. 38-46. 24. Dyson, The State Tradition in
Western Europe. See also Metin Heper, ed., The State and Public
Bureaucracies: A Comparative Perspective (New York, etc., Greenwood Press,
1987). 25. Birch, Representaton, p.94. 26. Ibid. (my emphasis). 27. Ibid.,
p.98. 41
version, the State was expected to promote substantive fairness and
preserve the stability and legitimacy of pluralist democracy. However, even
those pluralists who 'brought the state back in' continued to place
emphasis on groups. The State that they had in mind incorporated maximal
diversity of group life along with some kind of central authority. The
notion of the group that the pluralists cherished could not be accounted
for simply in terms of the individuals who comprised it. As already noted,
groups, whether institutional or non-institutional, were expected to have
their aggregate wills, which was not the same thing as the arithmetic sum
of the wills of the individuals making up those groups. It was thought that
when groups had aggregate wills of their own they would have autonomy both
against an over-arching State and a 'repressive' civil society, and that
the pursuance of political activity by those groups would have a legitimacy
of its own. The latter situation was encountered particularly in those
polities where the State and civil society were differentiated from each
other; both had autonomy vis-a-vis the other, and neither was in a position
to smother or 'absorb' the other. Pluralism in the Christian realms In
terms of the ease with which the said configuration of State-groups-society
relations could crystallize, the realms of Christianity and Islam have
presented two contrasting patterns. In the Christian lands, the State and
the Church have emerged as two separate and autonomous entities. The
realization of the distinction between what belongs to 'Caesar' and what
belongs to God, a fundamental tenet of Christian philosophy and theology,
was made easier by the demise, from the sixth to the eighth centuries, of
the 'two State formula', namely the notion of the executive power of the
German regna, resting on sacred foundations, and the institutional system
of the Imperium, based on Roman public law. Except in the Eastern Orthodox
Church, ius sacrum, or the sacred law, no longer formed part of ius
publicum, or the public law.28 In this process of establishing and
enforcing a separate set of (divine) laws, particularly in continental
Europe, the Church was supported by the landed nobility.29 Loyal to its
theory of Two Swords, the Church did not attempt to engulf, or even
dominate, the State. The argument was for the de-composition of the earlier
Christian universalism; secular power was to be removed from the sacred
sphere. This approach opened the way for a lay and rational derivation of
secular power: 'politics' could now be liberated from theology.30 Earlier,
while developing its ecclesiastical institutions including its periodical
council, synods and assemblies, the Church was influenced by the 'State',
that is, by the Roman and Germanic institutions.31 During the revival 28.
Jeno Sziics, 'Three Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline' in Civil
Society and the State. New European Perspectives, Keane ed., pp.299-300 and
Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State. A Sociological
Introduction (London, Hutchinson, 1978), p.120. 29. Carnoy, The State and
Political Theory, p. 11. 30. Sziics, 'Three Historical Regions of Europe:
An Outline', pp.299-300. 31. H.A.R. Gibb, Religion and Politics in
Christianity and Islam (London, Pall Mall Press, 1965), p.8. 42
of the State in the wake of the demise of feudalism, the Church
provided for the State a 'negative definition' of a temporal domain within
which the political system was left to develop its own legitimating
criteria and modes of operation.32 Having entrenched itself as a private
institution with political influence, the Church did not grant the State a
completely free hand, lest it again develop into a Leviathan and dominate,
if not smother, civil society. A Gregorian treatise of around 1080 promoted
the doctrine of lex regia: if the lay ruler broke the contract by which he
had been 'elected', annulment of the contract and resistance to the ruler
were justified.33 Here, too, the Church found itself in alliance with the
landed nobility. The Frankish and Aquitanian nobles, who were the highest
vassals of Charles the Bald, observed that if the King 'acted against the
contract in any manner (contra tale pactum)' he should be removed.34 And
Saint Augustine urged that by pressure of necessity Christian society
should permeate into secular power relations, 'mixing together' (invicem
permixtal).35 In this formulation, we begin to find a conception of civil
society as being not in a subordinate position to the State, but rather in
a position which impinges upon it. This process was the logical consequence
of the act that in the polity engineered by the Church-nobility alliance,
'the monarch exercised his powers not as sovereign but as a suzerain ...
sovereignty, having been fragmented, was absorbed into a newly formed
"political" sector of society'.36 The extrication of politics from ethics
not only enabled the re-emergence of the lay State, but it also added to
man, the natural being, subject and Christian believer, a new quality-that
of an Aristotelian 'political being'.37 The word politizare appeared in the
common language of the West around 1250. Man's political quality was
interpreted as more than a 'natural' quality, since it was expressed by the
contrasting ideas of naturalis and civilis. From this it was an easy step
to the notion of societas civilis.38 Jeno Sziics has taken societas civilis
as a synonym for the autonomy of civil society from the State.39 However,
it is possible to speculate that the distincton between naturalis and
civilis also paved the way for the autonomy of civilis from naturalis, or
the autonomy of 'politics' from social structure, including religion. The
idea was, of course, not alien to Christianity. Both the eleventh- century
Gregorian reforms and the investiture conflict had introduced, in the
Catholic realms, the notion of a self-organized Church separate from the
rest of society.40 Thus, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a
model was devised by which 'all possible people who existed legitimately'
formed at the same time a 32. Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum, The
Sociology of the State, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago & London,
University of Chicago Press, 1978), p.86. 33. Sziics, 'Three Historical
Regions of Europe: An Outline', p.203. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., p.300. 36.
Ibid., p.303. 37. Ibid., p.308. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Badie and Birnbaum,
The Sociology of the State, p.87. 43
community (universitas or communitas) of a corporate nature (corpus).4
These bodies were to have autonomy not only vis-a-vis the State (Calvinists
demanded that a judicial court should not be able to determine the internal
rules of such bodies),42 but also in respect of the group members. The
Calvinist doctrine took groups not as arithmetic sums but as aggregates of
individuals.43 It was this particular characteristic of the groups as
representing the aggregate will of their members that helped enable them to
supplant the over-arching 'state formula' with that of 'social relations',
and made possible the integrational lines of force emerging from below.44
In the process, the groups gained their autonomy from the State. The Church
not only legitimized the idea of an autonomous corporate group, but its
pluralization too. The conciliar movement, which envisaged authority as
lying in the whole Church and not in the Pope alone, encouraged such
pluralism of groups. By around 1000, the Church began to propagate the
notion of autonomous orders. In the Christian realms, rulers/governments
could on the whole no longer initiate policy without the consilium et
auxilium of the estates/interest groups. Pluralism in Muslim realms In
contrast, Islam enjoined the unity of the State and Muslim community.45
Religion and the State were considered one and the same entity. Islam was
equated with the State;46 in fact, there was an institutional merger
between the two. The ruler was given the duty of expanding Islam,
protecting the religious institutions and respecting the general principles
of Muslim conduct in public as well as private affairs. On the other hand,
the members of the religious establishment took their proper places in the
higher echelons of the government. Islam posited universalism; and this
notion was jealously guarded as a guide for State-society relations. For
instance, nationalism (qawmiyya), which among other things brings with it
the idea of the nation as the source of public policies, was fervently
rejected.47 This was because (secular) nationalism called for the
separation of the (lay) State from religion. Invariably, to the extent that
the de facto authority had been salient, the religious establishment-or at
least those members of it representing the (official) orthodoxy rather than
folk Islam-acted subserviently to that 41. Sziics, 'Three Historical
Regions of Europe: An Outline', p.307. 42. Wincent, Theories of the State,
p.206. 43. Ibid. 44. These two phenomena have ben noted by Sziics ('Three
Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline', pp.300,301). 45. Unless
otherwise indicated, this section on Islam, the State and pluralism draws
on the excellent essay by Gibb (Religion and Politics in Christianity and
Islam, pp.5-22). The level of generality at which the present discussion of
Islam, the State and society is presented, in my opinion obviates an
elaboration of differences encountered in this respect in such countries as
Pakistan, Iran and Libya. 46. Bernard Lewis, 'The Return of Islam',
Commentary, 1 (1974), p.40. 47. Ergun Ozbudun, 'The Specificity of the
State in the Middle East', paper prepared for submission at the Conference
on 'Dynamics of States and Societies in the Middle East', Cairo, 17- 19
June 1989. 44
authority. However, the relationship in question has always been an
uneasy, if not a hostile, one. For the Sunnis, it has been a conditional
condonation of some historical realities. In particular, the folk Islam of
the Sunnis, organized in popular orders, has always proved troublesome. For
the Shi'a, it has been a resigned acceptance of usurping governments,
pending the appearance of the divinely guided Mahdi. The Shi'a have never
attributed legitimacy, that is, de jure authority, to the rulers; and the
rulers, in turn, have not trusted religion as a 'private' institution. In
their eyes, civil society should not have developed into an autonomous
sphere of action. In the Muslim lands there has been, in general, one Sword
made up of two plates each constantly rubbing against and disturbing each
other. Also significant is the fact that in the Muslim realms neither the
State nor religion provided for each other models of institutions with
their own distinct values. Religion in these realms had no State model
prior to its emergence, nor did it come to have a corporate identity
differentiating it from the community (umma), thus providing a model for
the lay State. Kinship grouping rather than the parish had been the basic
constituent unit. In the classical Islamic conception, the notions of
bureaucracy and hierarchy had no place either in the structuring of the
community or in that of central authority. In relation to the Muslim
realms, 'religious institution' and 'the State' in their Western
connotations were both misnomers. The State was considered as no more than
personal rule; the role of defending the religious community and its values
was personified in the ruler himself. The State has not occupied a lofty
place in Muslim political theory and in Muslim common consciousness.48
Thus, all acts on the part of the rulers, other than those directed to
protect the religious community and promote its ideals, were taken as the
whims of the rulers aimed at promoting their personal interests. In the
Muslim realms the State, not unlike the community, could only be a moral
enterprise. Under the circumstances, the 'civil societal elements' were
also unable to develop into corporate entities, with their own distinctive
norms and interests. Free cities, estates, and the like were alien to the
Muslim experience. Crafts and professional guilds did exist but, on the
whole, they were held together by kinship ties and, therefore, suffused
with values imbedded in the community. They were also closely controlled
from above. This was only to be expected in the realms under investigation
where an 'egalitarian' thrust was quite pronounced. The overall objective
was that of promoting a common faith and consciousness. Individualistic
interpretations of the Sacred Law were not allowed. Even at the level of
religious scholars, the 'gate of interpretation' remained closed for
centuries. The emphasis was on a maximum degree of unity of purpose and
action both at social and political levels. Individual self-absorption and
self-seeking was considered evil. Competition, bargaining and the promotion
of special interests were all to be avoided. 48. Thus, according to Albert
Hourani, politics in these realms were 'politics of notables' rather than
'bureaucratic politics' [The Emergence of the Modern Middle East, London,
Macmillan, 1981]. 45
Pluralism in the Ottoman-Turkish Polity The Ottoman-Turkish polity and
society evinced some similarities to the general picture drawn in the
preceding section, but that polity differed in a critical dimension from
the other Muslim realms. In the Ottoman-Turkish context, the State was
distinctly separated from society. The state model in that polity
essentially came from the military: in fact, the members of the military
established the state. It is true that the ahi guilds (artisan
organizations with a strong religious colouring) had corporate privileges
and played some role in the formative years of the Ottoman state. Soon,
however, these guilds were deprived of their privileges.49 Also eliminated
was the feudal structure, which was inherited from the Seljuks.50 Those in
the higher ranks of the religious establishment were converted into an
official stratum of religious scholars (ulema-i riisum). In the process,
one came across an 'Islamic state' where the influence of religion was
greatly constrained. In that polity, the notion' of temporal power had been
stretched to its limits. Critical here was the concept of irf-i sultani-the
will or command of the sultan as a secular ruler. Drawing upon their
secular (sovereign) powers, the Ottoman sultans could easily issue laws and
regulations which did not derive from Islamic precedents.51 Consequently,
based upon the principles of 'necessity' and 'reason' and summed up by the
norm of rationality, a particular outlook was formulated that provided
basically secular ideals and values for the bureaucratic ruling stratum.
The bureaucratic elites assimilated these ideals and values through the
processes of their selective recruitment and training in the state schools
as well as through the roles which they filled-that is, through
organizational socialization.52 Called adab, this was a 'secular and state
oriented tradition'.53 In the Ottoman polity, even during the period of
decline from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the idea of a state
power independent of religion never lost its salience.54 During the
nineteenth century, informed by the cast- iron theory of Islam-that Islam
has fallen out of phase with life and cannot be adapted to modern
circumstances-,55 the traditional Islamic concept of 'justice' was
interpreted to mean promulgation of secular legislation outside 49. Gabriel
Baer, 'The Administrative, Economic and Social Functions of Turkish
Guilds', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1 (1970), 28-50. 50.
Metin Heper, 'Center and Periphery in the Ottoman Empire with Special
Reference to the Nineteenth Century', International Political Science
Review, 1 (1980), 82-3. It is true that millets (the religious minority
'estates') were granted autonomy to organize their internal affairs, but
the parameters of this autonomy were carefully delineated, and these
minorities could participate neither in the affairs of the larger Muslim
community nor, of course, in State affairs. See Kemal H. Karpat, 'The
Ottoman Views and Policies toward the Orthodox Christian Church', Greek
Orthodox Theological Review, 31 (1986), 131-55. 51. Halil inalcik, 'Islam
in the Ottoman Empire', Cultura Turcica, 5-7 (1968-70), 21. 52. Carter V.
Findley, 'The Advent of Ideology in the Islamic Middle East, Part I',
Studia Islamica, Ex fasciculo LV, p. 158. 53. Idem, Bureaucratic Reform in
the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte 1789-1922 (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1980), p.9. 54. Halil Inalclk, 'On Secularism in Turkey',
Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, 64 (1969), 438. 55. Nur Yalman, 'Islamic
Reform and Mystic Tradition in Eastern Turkey', Archives Europeennes
Sociologie, 10 (1969), 41-2. 46
the jurisdiction of the Islamic traditions and autonomous from them.56
Adab tradition was revived in its most secular form; the major criterion in
devising public policies was going to be reason. Consequently, the emphasis
was placed on enlightenment and education. Even the terminology pertaining
to the new concept of education changed. The traditional ilm (lore) of the
ulema (religious scholars) was challenged with the idea of maarif, that is,
the process of being acquainted with things unknown.57 In the 1860s, the
Young Ottomans became the first, and, for a long time, the only proponents
in the whole of the Middle East of a highly elaborate political and
intellectual movement. Their ideas were articulated in terms of (lay) state
and nationality. They posited the concepts of fatherland and patriotism
against the concept of umma.58 The Young Turks, drawing upon Ziya Gokalp's
ideas, agitated during the 1910s for the virtually complete replacement of
Islam as the basis of the state, although G6kalp himself did not ask for
such a sweeping revamping of the premises on which the state was to be
based.59 They developed a concept of territorial nationalism that brought
with it a secular image of government, and introduced the notion that the
nation was the source of all authority.60 During the Republican period that
started in 1923, the above developments were brought to their logical
conclusion. What remained of the Islamic state was virtually eliminated,
and was replaced by a notion of a completely secular state. The consequence
was an omnipresent State in the absence of a politically influential civil
society, let alone social groups as intermediary structures.61 The
religious community which, of course, maintained its vitality to some
degree but was barred from impinging upon public affairs (through the
doctrine of national rather than popular sovereignty), was viewed by the
State elites from the perspective of the lingering cast-iron theory of
Islam.62 Thus, according to Atatiirk, the founder of the Republic, the
truest guide in life was science, an idea that harked back to the early
nineteenth-century notion of modernization, which placed emphasis on
reason, a point already made.63 The Ottoman-Turkish modernization movement
that started at the end of the eighteenth century within the particular
configuration of State-society (or religion) relations and within the
specific political culture already delineated, 56. Niyazi Berkes, The
Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal, McGill University Press,
1964), pp.94-5. 57. Ibid., p.62. 58. Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young
Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1982). 59. Ziya Gokalp, Turkish
Nationalism and Western Civilization, translated and ed. by N. Berkes (New
York, Columbia University Press, 1959). 60. Serif Mardin, Jon Tiirklerin
Siyasi Fikirleri (Ankara, Ankara Universitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakiiltesi
Yayim, 1964). 61. For an elaboration, see Metin Heper, The State Tradition
in Turkey (Walkington, Eothen Press, 1985). 62. Idem, 'Islam, Polity and
Society in Turkey: A Middle Eastern Perspective', Middle East Journal, 35
(1981), 345-63. 63. Idem, 'Transformation of Charisma into a Political
Paradigm: "Atatiirkism" in Turkey', Journal of the American Institute for
the Study of Middle Eastern Civilization, 1 (1980-81), 65-82. 47
gave a particular twist to the notion of democracy adopted during the
Republican period, and along with it, to the fortunes of pluralism in
Turkey. While in the rest of the Muslim Middle East the authoritarian
regimes of one sort or another lingered on-a state of affairs which H.A.R.
Gibb attributed to Islam's rejection of all kinds of dissension and
conflict, and which would indeed have the said implication in polities
where the religious community had a decisive influence on the political
system-in Turkey a transition was made to multi-party politics during the
1940s, and the system remained intact despite the three military
interventions in 1960-1961, 1971-1973 and 1980-1983. To reiterate, this
state of affairs can be explained by the rift between the State and society
in that polity. Democracy in Turkey was the option of the State elites; its
introduction was not the outcome of agitation by civil societal elements64
or by the religious establishment.65 Given their predilection for
rationality, however, the State elites took 64. Until the early 1970s,
civil societal elements in Turkey had not even been able to form their
voluntary interest group associations, let alone shape politics. From the
mid-nineteenth century onwards the interest group associations-i.e. various
chambers emerged as modified versions of the earlier guilds, i.e. as
emanations of the state. They were supposed to work in close co- operation
with the Ministry of Trade to promote commerce and-later-industry [Ayse
Oncii, 'Cumhuriyet D6neminde Odalar', Cumhuriyet Dineminde Tiirkiye
Ansiklopedisi, 50 (1984), 1567- 8]. During the Republican period, too,
particularly during the single-party years (1923-45), the chambers were
expected to play a similar role. For instance, according to an Act enacted
in 1924, the Secretary-General of the Chamber of Trade and Industry was to
be a civil servant from the Ministry of Trade (ibid., p.1569). Following
the transition to multi-party politics in 1945, the government's formal
control was somewhat relaxed. Yet governments rewarded the members of
chambers which supported the party and harassed those which opposed them
[Robert Bianchi, Interest Groups and Political Development in Turkey,
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 115]. The post-1980
voluntary interest group associations did not fare any better. When asked
in 1981 why employers in Turkey did not articulate their demands
unequivocally and in a straightforward fashion, the chairman of the Turkish
Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (considered to be the most
prestigious voluntary interest group association in Turkey of the last two
decades) said: 'In this country, our philosophy has always been that of
taking the paternal state as paramount ... [and] refraining from
challenging it' (quoted in Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey, p. 103).
65. The leading work on interest group politics in Turkey (Bianchi,
Interest Groups and Politicial Development in Turkey) advances the view
that interest group politics in Turkey vacillated between state corporatism
and pluralism. It may thus be concluded that at times civil societal
elements in Turkey had been able to impinge on government and contributed
to the development of pluralism. In my estimation, such an interpretation
of Bianchi's work would not be credible. As Douglas A. Chalmers has shown
('The Politicized State in Latin America', in Authoritarianism and
Corporatism in Latin America, James M. Malloy ed. (Pittsburgh, University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), p.34), in some polities patterns of dependency
would have not only informal (clientelistic) but also formal dimensions-
e.g. granting certain legal and financial privileges in return for
political support. Sometimes the term 'corporatist' has been used to
describe some of these formal relationships, and in particular to emphasize
the patterns of vertical dependency involved. In his work Bianchi too
refers to the latter phenomenon in Turkey as 'state corporatism' and to
those cases where the dependency in question is somewhat weakened as
'pluralism'. As already noted, it was Bianchi himself who pointed out that
even during the post-1945 multi-party regime in Turkey, governments
remained unresponsive to civil societal elements. For an elaboration of the
dependent position of civil societal elements in general, and economic
interest groups in particular, on the political elites in Turkey, see Metin
Heper, 'The State, Political Party and Society in post-1983 Turkey',
Government and Opposition, 25 (1990), 321-33, and Heper, ed., Strong State
and Economic Interest Groups: The Post-1980 Turkish Experience (Berlin &
New York, De Gruyter, in press). 48
democracy not as the representation and reconciliation of the interests
and opinions of different social groups but as finding the one best policy
by the enlightened elite, that is, by the State elites themselves.
Democracy was equated with educated debate among a few.66 For Ataturk, this
state of affairs was going to be a transient phenomenon, for he believed in
the potential of the people to develop and become more rational. Only then
could civil societal elements have their weight in the polity; the dominant
state could turn into a substantially neutral state, and an Idealist
attitude to representation would be adopted.67 After Atatiirk passed away,
however, the state elites on the whole abandoned the belief in the
potential of the people to develop and become more rational. Thus, they
converted the Atatiirkian approach to politics, which could be best defined
as a 'mentality', into an ideology in the Shilsian sense, that is, into a
political manifesto. Not unexpectedly, secularism became the backbone of
the official ideology in question.68 As a consequence, particularly during
the 1950s, the politicians' utilization of religion for political ends
became the most contentious issue. This was the single most important
justification the military advanced when they interevened in 1960-1961 and
later. Groups (including the political parties) which did not adopt a
staunchly secularist policy, were not granted legitimacy. To the extent to
which the said groups did not follow such a policy, the State elites could
not tolerate a pluralization of sovereignty. They did not, however, turn
the regime into long-term authoritarianism, because, for them, democracy
continued to be an end in itself; the faulty party was the politicians and
not democracy. Each time the military intervened in politics, in 1960-1961
and 1970-1973, and to a lesser extent in 1980-1983, they tried to
restructure democracy so that presumably more rationality would be injected
into it. Looked at from this perspective, the decade of the 1980s promised
to usher in a new era in the State-religion-pleuralism relationship in
Turkey. The most important development has been the fact that Atatiirkism
has no longer been taken as a political manifesto. As a consequence, there
has been a softening of attitudes regarding secularism. Kenan Evren
(President from 1982 to 1989), who as Chief of the General Staff led the
1980 military intervention, repeatedly justified his various exhortations
to adopt 'modern' ways of doing things, by making references to some verses
in the Qur'an.69 A related development has been the realization that an
established religion might help enhance social control and limit the
intensity of interest, or class, politics. In its Preamble, the 1982
Consitution made reference to 'Turkish historical and moral values'. This
was a fundamental 'deviation' from the 66. For an elaboration, see Heper,
'Extremely "Strong State" and Democracy: Turkey in Comparative and
Historical Perspective', in Democracy and Modernity, Deborah Gremium ed.
(Leiden, Brill, forthcoming). 67. Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey,
chapter 3. 68. Idem, 'Transformation of Charisma into a Political Paradigm:
"Ataturkism" in Turkey', passim. 69. Idem, 'A Weltanschauung-turned-Partial
Ideology and Normative Ethics: "Atatiirkism" in Turkey', Orient, 1 (1984),
passim. 49
original Atatiirkian approach, according to which the consciousness of
the new Turk was to be rooted in science.70 The military regime had resort
to Ataturkian thought, but this time for discovering Turkish historical and
moral values. In a book by the office of the Chief of the General Staff,
entitled Atatiirkism Book Three (in Turkish; published in 1983), were found
quotations from Ataturk not only on the State and on the principles of
Ataturkism, but also on such topics as personal relations, family life,
youth, toleration, division of labour and work solidarity.71 These
developments paved the way for the recognition of, and toleration of (if
not for according full legitimacy to) the reality of a Muslim way of life.
Even if timidly, Islam now started to take its place alongside 'science' as
a source, if not a major one, for selective public policies. This
phenomenon occurred first in the form of 'technical elites' within the
governing Motherland party; they tried to develop a synthesis between
Islamic values and pragmatic rationality, through reconciling the former
cultural orientations with the requisites of economic growth and Western
democracy.72 The synthesis was incarnated first in the very structuring of
the Motherland party, which came to have 'liberal' and religious factions,
and secondly in some public policies such as those concerning education.73
Furthermore, Islam started to provide a theme for political participation,
though mostly in the form of political protest. The veiled students'
demands to attend classes in their universities with their heads covered
and their sit-ins when their requests were turned down by the authorities
were examples of such political participation patterns.74 In addition, the
new forms of political participation in question led the way to new debates
on human rights and political liberties, and, towards the end of the 1980s,
important improvements were made both in these latter and in related
areas.75 In brief, during the 1980s, Islam began to be rediscovered by the
Turkish elites. While attempts were made to use it for the purposes of the
State, Islam was also allowed to develop as a significant dimension of
civil society, contributing to the multiplication of sources for public
policy-making and providing additional themes for political participation.
These developments 70. For the Atatiirkian emphasis on science, see Serif
Mardin, 'Religion and Secularism in Turkey' in Atatiirk. Founder of a
Modern State, Ali Kazanclgil & Ergun Ozbudun eds. (London, Hurst, 1981),
pp.208-9. 71. Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey, p. 147. 72. Niliifer
Giile, 'Towards an Automatization of Politics and Civil Society in Turkey',
in Conflict and Consensus in Turkish Politics. Dilemmas of Transition to
Democracy, Metin Heper & Ahmet Evin eds., in preparation. Efforts towards
such a synthesis were started during the early 1970s by the National
Salvation Party. See serif Mardin, 'Religion in Modern Turkey',
International Social Science Journal, 29 (1977), 295. 73. The examples are
provided by Binnaz Toprak, 'The State, Politics and Religion in Turkey' in
State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s, Metin Heper & Ahmet
Evin eds., (Berlin & New York, De Gruyter, 1988), pp.131-4. 74. Gole,
'Towards the Autonomization of Politics and Civil Society in Turkey'. 75.
Ergun Ozbudun, 'Human Rights and the Rule of Law', in Perspectives on
Democracy in Turkey, Ergun Ozbudun ed. (Ankara, Turkish Political Science
Association, 1988) and Turkish Democracy Foundation, Development and
Consolidation of Democracy in Turkey (Ankara, Sevin9 Matbaasi, 1989). 50
were accompanied by efforts to bolster civil society through a greater
emphasis on market forces, the privatization of state economic enterprises
and the decentralization of government.76 The legacy of the 1980s in Turkey
may well be the eventual consolidation of pluralism, reinforced by a less
conflictual relationship between the State and religion. In other Middle
Eastern regimes, which could not effect a separation between religion and
the State, even a glimmer of pluralism is still not in sight.

М?жконфес?йн? вза?мини на П?вдн? Укра?ни XVIII - ХХ стол?ття. / Бойко
А.В., ?гнатуша О.М., Лиман ?.?., М?льчев В.?. та ?н. - Запор?жжя: РА
"Тандем - У", 1999. - 252 с.
М?льчева А. Про роль ?сламського елементу у формуванн? локально? групи
болгарського етносу на злам? XVIII - Х?Х стол?ть (на приклад? болгарсько?
колон?? Тирновки (Терн?вки), поблизу м. Микола?ва // Записки науково-
досл?дно? лаборатор?? ?стор?? П?вденно? Укра?ни Запор?зького державного
ун?верситету: П?вденна Укра?на XVIII - Х?Х стол?ття. - Вип. 4 (5). -
Запор?жжя: РА "Тандем - У", 1999. - С. 219 - 220.