Introduction : globalizing religions

Religion and globalization are intimately intertwined" conceptually, historically and certainly in terms of contemporary practice. In the arena of power and politics, going back to the Crusades and earlier, globalizing empires were passionately caught up in the religious concerns; and this has recently re-emerged subjectively in contemporary phrases such as the 'clash of civilizations' and the 'clash between the crescent and the cross'. Religion lies not far beneath the surface of many of our globalizing practices, from globalizing warfare and the Olympic Games to internet communications and mass broadcasting. Prior to the current code names for the United States' invasion of Iraq" Operation Infinite Justice and then Operation Enduring Freedom" the war was fought under the name Operation Crusade. In the sporting arena, just beneath the surface of the Olympic practice of transporting a lighted torch across the planet, resides a sacred flame with its origins in the traditional animism of Ancient Greece and the modern territorial aspirations of the Nazi minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis were aiming to give cultural depth to the 1936 Berlin Games with a technology developed by the munitions manufacturer, Krupps of Essen, once the world's largest industrial globalizing corporation. In the cultural arena, religious groupings are drawing heavily on the electronic communications revolution. Planet Shakers, a Pentecostal evangelical group with websites in Australia and Malaysia, uses its website to sell religious music through World Stores. It proudly supports the work of the missionary-based US organization, World Vision" 'an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God. Examples of the intertwining of religion and globalization abound" world without end. However, explaining the nature of the relationship between religion and globalization is rather more difficult. The universal and, more particularly, the universalizing nature of most religions make for a complex and compelling comparison with the all-pervasive dimensions of globalization, including different ideologies of globalization (globalisms). Both religion and globalism provide ontological and normative accounts of the world-as-a-whole, and both tend towards a generalizing world-wide remit. The wold religions, as they tellingly have been called, variously include Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, with others sometimes listed such as Zoroastrianism and Jainism. Across global history, but particularly in the Common Era, they have been central to processes of globalization. The very term 'Common Era' (CE), itself an explicitly globalist-historicalist reference, had its beginnings as Anno Domini or AD" 'In the year of our Lord'" referring to Jesus Christ. Thus, again, just beneath the surface of contemporary attempts to globalize and historicalize the last two millennia, is a religious dimension. The Common Era still effectively begins with birth of Christ. Here the concepts of 'globalism' and 'historicalism' are treated as parallel processes: the first to do with the generalizing of social relations across world-space; the second referring to the generalization of connections across world-time -viz., the consciousness of history as linking the past and present in themselves, rather than as teleological, sacred or messianically-connected dimensions that point to Something Else.