Abstract
Religion has been integral to human societies throughout the ages and continues to be so. As the world we live in changes, however, our experience of life changes with it. New forms of experience create demand for religions commensurate with contemporary life. Max Weber famously charted the commensurate features of modern life and modern religion in the early 20th century but the world and its political economy have changed again since. In this paper I discuss new popular forms of religiosity that reflect our contemporary experience of life in a late-modern context of economic globalisation and accelerated inter-cultural exchange. These trends (revitalisation, new age spirituality and fundamentalism) will be illustrated by reference to case material from my research in Bali and other parts of Indonesia over the last two decades, while emphasizing that similar trends can be observed worldwide.
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- 1.
One example to illustrate such historical continuities is the role of media in modernity. The new media in modernity’s case were the print media advanced by Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, coupled with a new Protestant zeal for disseminating the Bible (and soon other texts) in vernacular languages rather than Latin, using the new print medium, which in turn was made feasible by the adoption and financing of the Enlightenment project of mass literacy and education by the modern state. Modern society was thus already a media society, though of a different kind, and the same is true of pre-modern agrarian societies. Nonetheless, media-technology advances are always major factors in the history of cultural change.
- 2.
For a more detailed discussion on the effect of fragmentation on the consciousness of post-modernity, see Reuter (2006).
- 3.
This attitude is new as a popular trend, but it is not new as such. The mystical or esoteric traditions of many religions have espoused a similar monistic approach for millennia and continue to do so. Historically, individuals with such attitudes have formed a small minority in the West, often subject to persecution, and hence often forced to maintain secrecy. Mysticism has largely lost this need for such secrecy in a New Age context, though it continues to be misunderstood by other sectors of society.
- 4.
Failure to formally subscribe to one of the five religions causes severe difficulties in obtaining ID cards or other official documents such as marriage certificates and can bar access to state services such as education. Until recently, it could also trigger accusations of atheism, which was held to be synonymous with communism.
- 5.
The effect of modernist colonialism on major non-Christian religious traditions or “world religions” is a complex matter beyond the scope of this paper, but there is some need to consider it here as it relates to the Balinese case. The term “Hinduism” is the product of a colonial dialogue between Indian religion and modernism. What is relevant to the present case is that Balinese traditions could be protected and maintained – at a cost – by evoking this already internationally established, modern idea of a “world religion” called “Hinduism.” This affiliation elevated the status of what might otherwise have been dismissed as no more than another one of the many local religious traditions of the archipelago which the Indonesian state, until this day, chooses to classify as primitive animism (animisme) and subsumes under the modern category of “local custom” (adat) and “beliefs” (kepercayaan) rather than “religion” (agama). Similar protective alignments of local religions with larger traditions under similar circumstances can be observed across the world.
- 6.
Bali has also been a New Age travelers’ destination and continues to be a place of inspiration and pilgrimage for many foreign proponents of post-modern spirituality.
- 7.
The mass commercialization of tourism in Bali and elsewhere along the global spiritual backpacker trail was part of a wider trend toward commercialization of New Age spirituality by market forces during the 1980s.
- 8.
The tourist boom has had great impact on the environment, economy, and social relationships. Bali is no longer an agrarian society. By 2005, half of the population lived in urban areas, whereas in 1990, the proportion was only one quarter. Between 1970 and 2002, the agrarian sector of the economy shrank from 56.6% to 21.4%, while the tertiary sector (primarily tourism) increased from 40.6% to 63.2%. By 1998, tourism accounted for 51.6% of Balinese income and – if related export enterprises are included – employed more than 50% of the workforce.
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Reuter, T.A. (2012). Religion in the Age of Globalization: Emerging Trends, Indonesian Examples. In: Manderson, L., Smith, W., Tomlinson, M. (eds) Flows of Faith. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2932-2_2
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