In addressing the relationship between religion and culture, it is very tempting oftentimes to name religion as the cause, and culture as the effect. Indeed, we do not have the more difficult case of the chicken or the egg here, as our chicken and our egg are fortunately open to the historical records. These records show us some striking examples of a successful religious cult giving birth to an ostensibly all-new culture. This is what must have happened with regard to Christianity and Mormonism, to name just these two. Indeed, we are confidently talking about the Christian culture and the Mormon culture, where religion is demonstrably playing the determining role… Or does it?
It is, however, presumptuous to jump to this conclusion on the basis of such shaky evidence. With regard to Christianity, we may easily contradict our assumption by pointing out that the Roman Empire at the time of St. Constantine had a long-established culture, which somehow chose to repudiate the frivolous polytheistic religion of old, sufficiently ridiculed by Gaston Boissier in his magnum opus Roman Religion in the Age of the Antonines to make this repudiation easily comprehensible. In other words, the old religion of the Roman Empire was no longer adequate in meeting its cultural and political needs, whereas the youthful and energetic new religion of Christianity conveniently filled the cultural vacuum also serving as a unifying political (!!!) force. As for a pre-Constantine existence of a Christian culture, all historical evidence shows us that there had been none. Christianity had been a Jewish religious sect that revolutionized Judaism by opening it up to the Gentiles in abolishing the restrictive-- for the Jews only-- provisions of the Mosaic Law. In other words, Christianity had abolished its own pre-existent Jewish culture, offering the world an attractive new religion, yet by no means a new culture. It was up to the rulers of the Christianized nations to adapt their old cultures to their new adopted religion, by adapting the latter to the former. The rulers obviously loved the new religion, as it allowed them to suppress the all-too-powerful caste of old-religion priesthood, reasonably expecting that the new priests would be too dependent on the ruler to pose a political challenge to his power. Surely, they were not too much concerned about the growing power of the newly established priests, that could later become a problem for their successors, but not in the first or second generation, which was all that mattered…
As for Mormonism, we can reasonably argue that the defining factor in the establishment of the distinctive Mormon culture was not exactly the new religion, but the conspicuous fact of its physical geographical isolation in the State of Utah, and therefore the Mormon religion cannot be pronounced as the sole cause of the birth of the Mormon culture. Having said that, Mormonism was certainly a unique case, which should be treated as an exception, rather than the rule
On the other hand, we have elsewhere concluded that, say, Protestantism shows us an already independent culture divergent from Roman Catholicism, thus naming that new culture as the cause, rather than the effect of the new religion of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli. By the same token, the earlier critical split in Christianity between East and West reveals a pre-existence of the two different cultures of Eastern and Western Roman Empires prior to their decisive split, allegedly along the religious lines.
Thus our causal chain runs rather contrary to certain superficial preconceptions: not from religion to culture, but from culture to religion, even if first impressions may lead us to a different conclusion.
Generally speaking, it is the culture, rather than the religion which defines the nature of a polity. Religion is a political statement of the given polity, which in many cases amounts to a battle cry. Russian Christianity, for instance, is a pledge of the collective social will for Christian totalitarianism and State socialism. As for the role of Islam today, its green flag very much reminds me of the red flag of the world revolution, raised more than a century ago to rally the poor and powerless against the rich and powerful. Superficially, the red flag had nothing to do with religion, but in their political substance, the red flag of yesterday and the green flag of today, prominently raised over Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt, are blood brothers. Had the red flag been flying over these countries, we should not have been surprised, but of course, religion always trumps Marxism as a lethal weapon.
A Postscript.
It is very dangerous when religion is used as a militant rallying cry. Too bad when the situation gets out of control like that. But it is much worse when the situation is pushed out of control by external powers, when a secular government is deliberately destabilized, the religious element is further radicalized, and the national law and order are physically destroyed. We saw such practices in Iran in 1979, in Afghanistan in 1992, in Iraq in 2003, in Libya in 2011, and today the same thing is being threatened in Syria. I have no sympathy for the third world’s dictators, but the alternative has proved to be much worse. Today’s Libya is a barbaric bloody mess, and Syria may easily go the same way, should the Assad government fall...
…Who and how expects to benefit from it all?, I wonder…
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