Religion in <i>Espace Mondial</i> can be approached at three different levels, and we have to distinguish between these three levels of analysis: The first one will be the level of actors. How actors are socialized? What is the real influence of religion in the social and political behavior of individuals? And how these behaviors are organizing, shaping, the main issues and the main mobilizations around the world? The second level would be the system and the political system. Commonly we hear from media and from public opinion or opinion leaders… we hear some sentences like “the Muslim political system, the Christian political system, Islam and politics…” as if a religion was able to shape and organize a political system. In reality, in fact, the difference is much more important that we can imagine, it’s very difficult to coin a system as a “Muslim political system” or as a “Christian political system”, as it is obvious that many many kinds of Islam do exist around the world, and it is not possible to conceive a single model of Islam and politics, of Christianity and politics, so we have to debate about that. And the third level is the level of mobilization: is religion able to mobilize and to create, to generate a political mobilization? Or is religion only an emblem of a political mobilization? Is religion an instrument or is it a goal? And this is probably one of the main points we have to discover together. But the first question, the most important, because not so easy to solve is: what is a religion? We have to go back to famous French sociologist, Emile Durkheim who published a very important book dealing with religion in our world. And Durkheim in this book opposed sacred to profane, and this opposition is considered by Durkheim as a main founding opposition; for understanding and approaching the manifestations and the expressions of religion and politics. Sacred is the contrary of profane as sacred is considered as out of reach for human beings, sacred is the field which is not able to be shaped and organized by human beings, when profane is the real field of the human action and human creation. If now, sacred is considered as out of reach, we can imagine how sacred is a very strong argument for mobilizing people in a society. If sacred is conceding a legitimacy which is out of reach of individuals, it’s a very strong useful and successful instrument for mobilizing and convincing individuals, that’s why sacred is so used in politics. Using a formula which is coming from a field which is out of reach of individuals, is a very good instrument for convincing people. Inside sacred Durkheim distinguished rituals and believes, and religion is a combination of rituals and believes. Now the question is why sacred is so important in our modern or even postmodern world? If we follow Durkheim, sacred is supposed to decline when modernization takes place. And so, Durkheim who was writing in a positivist time, considered that religion was to be failed when modernization takes place, and however, we can observe something which is quite different from what Durkheim fore saw. So, three hypothesis can be mobilized. If sacred is so present in our modern and postmodern world, it is first because maybe sacred is now creating a new modernity, that is the first hypothesis. And even we can consider that <i>laïcité</i> would be something like a new secular religion, but, in <i>laïcité</i>, we can also find something like believes and even rituals. Can we consider that we are now facing a new sacred modernity? That’s the first hypothesis. A second one would be to consider that sacred is a kind of substitute; that’s to say in our modern world, some structures are not really operating, sometimes states doesn’t work, sometimes political parties doesn’t work, sometimes ideologies don’t work anymore and when these instruments of governing, ruling, mobilizing, protesting, are not working, religion and sacred can be a very useful and functional substitute. The third hypothesis will be to consider religion as a culture. Different religions are also expressing different cultures as I defined them in my previous lecture, and so religion will be back for expressing this diversity of cultures which is really at stake in our present world. So now, how can we consider religious actors? Religious actors must be considered as individuals, because first of all, we have to take into account the fact that religion belongs to individuals, and that every individual, each individual is shaping his own religion. So there is an individual level for approaching this very important notion of religious actors. And the second level will be the level of religious entrepreneurs, religions are organized, are structured, by entrepreneurs as Max Weber defined them, that’s to say as organized groups with an administrative direction. And so, we have to build up a typology of these religious actors, and to consider that these religious entrepreneurs are not working in the same manner because all the religious entrepreneurs are different and must be considered separately. For instance if you take into account the Roman Catholic Church, this is a religious entrepreneur, which is strongly centralized and which can be compared with the nation state. There is some similarities between the history of the church, this very centralized organization, and the nation state. But now if we move to the Protestantism, to the Christian reform, we are facing another model, in which the individual is much more important, and in which the church is fading as a transnational structure and don’t exist as a unified church like the case in the Roman Catholic Christianity. The third example would be the Orthodox Christianity in which church was merging with Empire when politics and religion are combined in a kind of dual structure. And now if we move to Islam, we are facing another model in which there is no church, no centralization, no organization but a very complex network of preachers and in which the Muslim community, the Ummah, is playing the role of integration. Now if we move to other religions from Asia, like Hinduism, we are facing another feature which is a kind of depreciation of power, depreciation of politics, when, on the contrary, Buddhism is contesting power, was created as a kind of protest against the power and which is creating new structures, especially around monachism. And so, that’s why when we consider religions and politics in the <i>Espace Mondial</i>, we have to take into account this diversity of actors.
