Is Religion Opposed to Change?

Is Religion Opposed to Change? Religions are often presented as if they are opposed to choice and change. To what extent do the controversial futures examined in Book 4 support or challenge this view? Controversies surrounding religious futures rely on a premise of religions either remaining true to their origins to retain authenticity or adapting to change to accommodate an increasingly spiritual and consumeristic world. The tensions that arise stem from assertions that religion, in an unaltered state cannot remain relevant to modern adherents and therefore will eventually die, alongside a view that a religion that adapts loses the essence of its original message to the pressures of consumerism and therefore its integrity is depleted. Proponents of the latter view argue that when an adopted message become too far removed from the revealed religion a cut flower culture (Herberg, cited in Mercadante, 2014) is created where the moral and spiritual messages of the root religion withers and dies; in other words, they lack the moral depth and social cohesiveness of more traditional religions (Gauthier et al., 201, p. 292) The choice between stasis and change is not binary, however, as there is a continuity between sacred scriptures and the most eclectic, free-spirited spirituality of today (Gottlieb, 2012). This continuity has become increasingly important as the terms religion and spirituality become less synonymous than they have previously been, highlighting a shift from a static, structured and institutional view of religion to a more individualistic pick and mix (King cited in Harvey, 2013, p. 20) approach to spiritual futures. This transition has witnessed approximately 40% of Americans unchurched with no connection with organized religion who claim to be strongly religious or spiritual on a personal level (Fuller, 2001, p. 1), exemplifying the balancing act that religions must take in charge to maintain identity against a maelstrom of modern demands whilst adapting to attract or retain the consumers needed to exist in the competitive spiritual marketplace. The change of emphasis from institutional to individual has been in discussion for many years, indeed the definition of religion varies from the personal and psychologized versions of spirituality (Harvey, 2013, p.19) where the individual feelings and experiences are of supreme importance or the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude (James, cited in Harvey, 2013, p.9) to the institutional view of a religion where the church is central and essential to a faith, or as Durkheim suggests the idea of religion is inseparable from that of the Church (Durkheim, cited in Harvey, 2013, p.9). Durkheims view could be considered to represent a view of religion that is resistant to change, placing emphasis on the continuity of the Church and the sacred things therein (Durkheim, cited in Harvey, 2013, p.9), whereas James view of religion, being more individualistic in nature is infinitely more susceptible to change because the very nature of the individualism adapts spi rituality to the person who perceives it, a situation in which a spiritual seeker creates or rec-creates his or her own private system of symbolic meanings and values (Hanegraaff, 2009, cited in Harvey, 2013, p.25). Such individualism allows for exploration of spirituality outside of the constraints of church mores, spirituality then, can be seen as the positive aspects of the ancient religious traditions, unencumbered by the dead hand of the church; (Carrette King, 2005, p.2), with a strict emphasis on the self and on spiritual experience not a concept of God, but, rather, of the higher self (Hanegraaff, cited in Houtman et al., 2009, p.170). Such contrasting viewpoints highlight a definition of religion as a being concerned with external dogmatic authority set over the individual and spirituality being concerned with the deepest experiences of the individual (Vincett and Woodhead, cited in Woodhead and Catto, 2013, p.158). The individualistic element of spirituality has often bee n labeled as New Age, although this is an all-encompassing label for a multiform hypersyncretic splicing of ideas (Sutcliffe, 2000, cited in Harvey, 2013, p.23) that is hardly satisfactory. Such is the diversity of human spiritual need and options available to the seeker that a consistent formula for spiritual satisfaction cannot be achieved, in which case a label such as New Age can only be used as a contrast to traditional religions under the assumption that traditional religions do not undergo any form of borrowing from other faiths; as Hanegraaff suggests the term New Age is a label attached indiscriminately to whatever seems to fit it and as a result, the New Age means very different things to different people (Hanegraaff, 1996, p.1, emphasis in original). However, New Age belief invariably stems from traditions as there has been a mutation of traditional religions for a New Age believer to accommodate, in this sense New Age religion unquestionably emerged from esoteric traditi ons in Western culture (Hanegraaff, 1996, p.383). Such variation means that New Age believers, with such an infinite matrix of needs become ready consumers and, as their spiritual needs change so do their material wants, a phenomenon borne out at Glastonbury in the South West of England; which is a keen example of the mutation, adaptation and commercialisation found within religion and spirituality. Glastonburys past is steeped in claims made for it on behalf of goddess worship, paganism, Christianity and new age spirituality. These claims range from Glastonbury being the site of Avalon; the site where Joseph of Arimathea washed and buried the Holy Grail and a venue that Jesus himself visited; it is therefore a popular pilgrimage site for Christians and non-believing pilgrims as pilgrimage is not clearly distinguishable from acts such as tourism (Hedges, 2017). Such a diverse pedigree in one venue has the potential for conflict and controversy between groups of believers, as well as between believers and local residents; however, Gl astonbury, as a religious site, has successfully incorporated all of these claims in such a way that, not only do different belief groups co-exist but they do so symbiotically, with each group benefiting, often financially, from the lure of diversity for spiritual consumers keen to sample all that beliefs that Glastonbury has to offer; this has created a spiritual marketplace of significant proportions. The attraction of Glastonbury for the spiritual seeker is evident in the windows of the shops which display a plethora of spiritual material culture catering for a wide variety of spiritual interests within one shop. This enables the spiritual seeker to purchase containers of the sacred (Colman and Elsner, cited in Bowman, 2013, p.55) from one or many religions to suit their particular needs; this example of vernacular religion in which consumers either produce ritual objects themselves, re-purpose traditional religious props, or shop off the shelf from other religious traditions to use for their own inventive, often empowering, spiritual practices (Twitchell, cited in Scott and Maclaran, 2009, p.60). Such commercial opportunity creates a level of competition with each religion vying for custom and therefore creating a spiritual economy which is leading to the establishment of an appropriate, sustainable and new Glastonbury economy (Ivakhiv, 2001, p.124), an economy fed by competition which traditional religions are not immune to. The consumer spiritual market place has encouraged the Abbey at Glastonbury to retain and recruit new adherents by marketing their own brand of religion that resonates with dominant social values of individualism, empowerment and aspiration to affluence (Yip and Ainsworth, 2010, p. 702) indeed, the Glastonbury Abbey website not only describes the history of the Abbey but also displays a level of commercialism as it advertises entrance to the Abbey at  £8.25 as well as an array of gifts including Celtic designs, the Green Man, and ch urch mice among other gift ideas (Glastonbury Abbey, 2017), many of which are not directly Christian in nature but are available as a commodity for tourists, spiritual or otherwise, thus demonstrating a recognition and an acceptance of change within a traditional religious setting. The commercialization of Glastonbury Abbey is not new, historically it has been a land owner and wool trader and as such played a major part in developing market capitalism in Glastonbury (Bowman, 2012, p.15); however, the Abbeys economic influence is no longer restricted to the physical world as the Abbey has adopted technology to create a website capitalises on e-commerce, trading on the provenance of Glastonbury as a sacred space, to allow people who may not have attended Glastonbury to purchase items in order to support the upkeep on the Abbey stating that All profits from the shop are used to help to care for the abbey ruins as well as enhancing the experience for our visitors and that Shop and ticke t sales and donations are the abbeys main source of income'(Glastonbury Abbey, 2017). Glastonbury therefore is an example of religious change in which a traditional religion has recognised that competition within the market and has adapted its offerings to retain custom. Glastonbury Abbey is by no means unique in its willingness to adapt to the demands of its consumers; Luss Church in Scotland boasts fifteen hundred years of continuous Christian presence and, despite a small population, and a smaller local congregation, attracts seven hundred and fifty thousand visitors to Luss many of them to our Church and Pilgrimage Centre (lusschurch.com, 2017) This represents a significant change from the churchs past in which a financially struggling church has adopted the availability of the internet in which New technology has opened up alternative ways of making relationships with visitors real and profitable and our small congregation is enjoying discovering new ways of being the Church in a new century (Luss Church, 2017). This is clearly a development that has been embraced by a worldwide congregation of people who regularly access online services streamed over the internet, this technology also allows friends and relative to view the weddings of people f rom over 40 countries (Bowman, 2013, p.79) express a desire to marry at the church. The exposure that Luss has received from the internet has enabled them to tap into a lucrative wedding industry, removing market share from local hotels who previously would have enjoyed the income from overseas couples wanting to marry in the picturesque setting of Luss. In return, the church adds to the local tourist economy as many friends and relatives will stay for prolonged periods after the wedding at local hotels. The adoption of new technologies has allowed Christianity to reach a larger audience of potential customers, as Pope John Paul II states With the advent of computer telecommunications and what are known as computer participation systems, the Church is offered further means for fulfilling her mission (Pope John Paul II, cited in OLeary, 1996, p.782), a sentiment that has been taken up in many churches. A survey by Elena Larson finds that the Internet is being used being used by congr egations to strengthen the faith and spiritual growth of their members, evangelize and perform missions in their communities and around the world (Larson, 2001, p.2) with the main use of technology being to encourage people to visit the church and become part of the local congregation. Regardless of the success of this mission religions are embracing the opportunity that change brings, indeed Larsons survey suggests that 83% of those responding to our survey say that their use of the Internet has helped congregational life (Larson, 2001, p.2). The spirit of change lies not just with the church but also with by the congregation who, according to a job to vacancy for a new Minister are looking for someone not bound to the past, who are open to change (Luss Church, 2017). In conclusion, traditional religions are not averse to change, indeed, the adoption of different practices and ideas has long been part of religious traditions and a need to adapt to accommodate modernity is essential for a religions survival. Modernisation, and a shift from religiosity to spirituality, is not necessarily a prelude of the death of religion, or its social extinction, but its continuing relevance has required a change in and transformation of its social forms (Adogame, 2014, p215). The continuation of traditional religion within an individualized spiritual market proves it to be a constantly moving target (Beaman, 2016, p. 185) that consistently displays the elements of individualism, mutation and commercialism that enable it not only to survive, but in its manifold manifestations thrives (Bainbridge, 2004). Indeed, the arrival of competition within the spiritual marketplace, rather than being detrimental to traditional religion has encouraged it to mutate into marketa ble entity that has increased its presence and market share of consumers worldwide. Word count, 2047 Bibliography Adogame, A. (2014) Putting God in Place! Religious continuities and mutations in classic and diasporic communities, Social Compass, 61(2), pp. 207-218. [Online] DOI: 10.1177/0037768614524662 (Accessed 8 March 2017). Bainbridge, W. (2004) Thinking about religious futures, Futures, 36(9), pp. 943-946 [Online] Available at http://dx.doi.org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1016/j.futures.2004.02.006 (Accessed 3 March 2017). Beaman, L. (2016) Grace Davie, Religion in Britain: a persistent paradox, Religion, State and Society, 44 (2), pp. 185-186. [Online] Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2016.1210345 (Accessed 3 March 2017). Bowman, M. (2012) Understanding Glastonbury as a site of spiritual consumption in Lynch, G. and Mitchell, J. (eds). Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader, Abingdon, Routledge. [Online]. Available at Google Books https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=enlr=id=z4eoAgAAQBAJoi=fndpg=PP1dq=Religion,+Media+and+Culture:+A+Readerots=U-7W5rpHptsig=oS-Qq2lYBhtPm4hpFIW_TSXWyFs#v=onepageq=Religion%2C%20Media%20and%20Culture%3A%20A%20Readerf=false (Accessed 21 March 2017). Bowman, M. (2013) Consuming religion: materiality, markets and spiritually shopping around in Controversial Futures, Milton Keynes, The Open University. Bratton, M. (2015) Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 30(2), pp. 327-329 [Online] Available at http://dx.doi.org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1080/13537903.2015.1025565 (Accessed 4 March 2017). Carrette, J. and King, R. (2005) Selling spirituality, [Online], London, Routledge. Available at ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/open/detail.action?docID=182496. (Accessed 7 March 2017). Fuller, R. (2001) Spiritual, but not religious, [Online] Oxford, Oxford University Press. Available at ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/open/detail.action?docID=3051860 . (Accessed 7 March 2017).. Available at ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/open/detail.action?docID=3051860 (Accessed 7 March, 2017). Gauthier, F., Martikainen, T. and Woodhead, L. (2011) Introduction: Religion et societe de consummation/ Religion in Consumer Society, Social Compass, 58(3), pp. 291-301. [Online] DOI: 10.1177/0037768611412141 (Accessed 10 March 17). Glastonbury Abbey, (2017) Gift Items Glastonbury Abbey Shop [online]. Available from http://www.glastonburyabbeyshop.com (Accessed 20 March 2017). Gottlieb, R. S. (2013) Spirituality what it is and why it matters. New York, Oxford University Press. [Online] DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738748.003.0006 (Accessed 5 March 2017). Hanegraaff, W. (1996) New Age religion and Western culture, Leiden, Brill. [Online]. Available from ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/open/detail.action?docID=253432. (Accessed 20 March 2017). Harvey, G. (2013) Religious individualism: the rise of spirituality in Controversial Futures, Milton Keynes, The Open University. Hedges, P. (2017) Remembering and the Creation of Sacred Place: Glastonbury, Anglican Christian Theology, and Identity, Implicit Religion, 17(3), pp. 297-320, [online] DOI: 10.1558/imre v17i3.297 (Accessed 19 March 17). Ivakhiv, A. (2001). Claiming sacred ground. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.[online] Available at https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QNHTOvnZ3poCdq=adrian+ivakhiv+glastonburylr=source=gbs_navlinks_s (Accessed 8 March 2017). Larson, E. (2000). Wired churches, wired temples: Taking congregations and missions into cyberspace Pew Internet American Life Project: Online life report [Online]. Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media/Files/Reports/2000/PIP_Religion_Report.pdf.pdf (Accessed 21 March 2017). Luss church. (2017). Luss Parish Church. [online]. Available at http://lusschurch.com/history.html (Accessed 20 Mar. 2017). Maclaran,P. and Scott, L. (2009). Spiritual Tourism: Mystical Merchandise and Sacred Shopping in Glastonbury, Advances in Consumer Research, 36, pp. 60-63.[Online] Available at http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/14366/volumes/v36/NA-36 (Accessed 21 March 2017). Meradante, L. (2014). life without borders: inside the minds of the spiritual but not religious, 1st ed. New York, Oxford University Press, [online] Available at http://www.oxfordscholarship.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199931002.001.0001/acprof-9780199931002-chapter-1 (Accessed 14 March 2017). OLeary, SD. (1996). Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks, Journal Of The American Academy Of Religion, 64, 4, pp. 781-808, [Online]. Available at http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk (Accessed 21 March 2017). Woodhead, L.and Catto.R. (2013), Religion and Change in Modern Britain, [Online]. Available at ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/open/detail.action?docID=957397. (Accessed 17 March 2017). Yip, J. Ainsworth, S. (2010). Religious Artefacts as Consumer Culture Products, Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 37, pp. 702. [Online] Available at http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=truedb=bthAN=57668009site=ehost-livescope=site . (Accessed 20 March 2017). Should the State Promote Positive Liberty? Should the State Promote Positive Liberty? Critically discuss the argument (Isiah Berlin) that the state should not promote positive liberty. The term freedom has always been a difficult discussion; there are various views of freedom in different fields. According to Heywood, A, (2004), he pointed out that in philosophy, freedom is often described as an attribute of the will to observe and study. However, in economics and sociology, freedom has always been seen as a social relationship. The political theorist often viewed freedom as a liberal ethic or normative principles. Among many definitions of freedom, Isiah Berlin subdivided freedom into positive and negative liberty. On the basis of this distinction, Berlin not only declared that positive liberty concept is the theoretical basis of totalitarianism, but also aggressively criticized the concept of positive freedom. He believed that the state should not promote positive freedom. In this essay, we will discuss the theoretical structure from Berlin’s concepts of liberty and pros or cons respectively. Also discussion about whether the state should not advocate posi tive liberty will be included. According to the Berlin (1958) in the Two Concepts of Liberty à ¯Ã‚ ¼Ã…’the concepts of negative liberty and positive liberty were clearly distinguished. The negative liberty was defined as a personal action without interference from others. For instance, the individual has the freedom that others do not have right to attack him. The positive liberty means that the choices of individuals living pattern were decided by themselves rather than any other factors, or simply known as everyone has the freedom to pursuit happiness. In other words, the purpose of negative freedom is the protection of individual rights and resistance of collective rights, which serves for the implementation of various individual rights. For the positive freedom, its main purpose is to obtain certain interests or achieve contain goals. Mostly it displays in the social rights of various participatory. Therefore, it is often expressed as social rights. Isiah Berlin indicated in his theory of freedom that positive freedom always lead to despotism and society should focus on negative freedom. Pursuing positive freedom may lead to no freedom. For instance, we asked for the right of education, which is a positive freedom. It will require government intervention; hence the power of government will increase accordingly. It may result in a violation of individual freedom. As comparison, the negative freedom is less risky. The freedom of not suffering from invasion by external forces is a fine illustration of such point. If people want to enhance the negative freedom, we only need to change regulations. However to promote the positive liberty, not only we need to change the distribution system, but also the ability of mankind. More importantly it is related to the desire of people. Therefore, compare with negative freedom, positive freedom has more opportunities for people to abuse. Criticism of positive freedom from Berlin was very critical. He warned us that dangers come with positive freedom, which are restriction and compulsion. Berlin thought that positive freedom has a generally applicable correct mode, rationale for instance, and we should do everything in accordance with this model. However, in reality, people are affected by various factors including level of understanding, which leads to diffident opinions about right model. Therefore, they need an authority to define what the right model is and force people to comply such rule. Eventually, people will follow the rules under the power of authority, but meanwhile it has changed freedom to restriction. Berlin called the procedure of turning positive freedom into not restriction as strange conversion. After such change, the reversal of positive liberty becomes deprival of freedom. However, in fact such phenomenon is unlikely to happen. Berlin was not completely certain about positive freedom will move tow ard to constraint and inevitable fetter. He only recognized that the possibility was extremely high. Based on that, Fromm,E (1941) refuted the view of Berlin. He thought that positive freedom has a generally applicable correct mode. This mode implies that people can only act in accordance with this model without other choices. He analyzed through German history to understand the reason of Nazi successful controlling their power. He believed despotism of Nazi could be achieved based on the two premises. The first one is that with the development of society, people have the negative liberty, which appeared before the rise of capitalism. The second one is that people obtained the negative liberty, but not the positive freedom. He also indicated that freedom will become constraint even tyranny, if and only if society does not have positive freedom. Fromm’ opinion was consistent with other members from Frankfurt school. They all thought that fascism and capitalism had a close rela tionship. The tyranny of Nazi will become a powerful weapon to deny Berlin’ view, as no matters what negative freedom will always stay the same. In Fromm,E s opinion, state should promote positive liberty due to it will promote development of society. Although in Berlin’ view, the positive freedom is always connected with rationalism and through the rationalism, it can turn into constraint or autocracy. However, negative liberty will also face such problem. For example, when people do not have any restrictions, they will do anything just based on their desires, and this will lead to conflict inevitably. Therefore, as a result, we need the law to limit the people’ freedom. Based on that, positive and negative freedom face the same issue as law is required to restrain both of them. The negative freedom and positive freedom must be considered as equally important factors when people discuss the problem of freedom. However, because of positive freedom is very easy to be used by the autocratic government. It always associated with a very poor reputation, which makes people embarrassing to advocate positive liberty. Taylor, (1985) pointed out, contemporary liberalism paid too much attention to the negative freedom and rejected positive freedom. This behavior was inappropriate. The negative freedom and positive freedom are indispensable parts of the liberty. In order to achieve real freedom, it is necessary to link both of them. Secondly, in the real practice, positive freedom is one of the most essential freedoms in any society. Negative freedom alone can never constitute freedom completely. If there is no positive freedom, negative freedom cannot exist by itself. For example, the right to vote is recognized in all free societies. Such freedom is an essential condi tion for guaranteeing various freedoms. However, this freedom itself is not a negative freedom, but a positive freedom. According to this, positive freedom is always the condition of guaranteeing and completing negative freedom. So the negative liberty could not be understood and implemented alone. Apart from voting right, we can cite many other apparent examples, which also belongs to the positive freedom and also very important that we cannot understate it. For example, it includes obtaining the basic right of survival; the rights of freedom of speech, press freedom; the right of education; the right of obtaining medical support and healthy environment; the right of obtaining healthy food; and the right of enjoying the sunshine, clean air and water. Everyone has to admit that these rights are critically important, but they are all positive freedom. Therefore, it is incorrect that Berlin suggested that state should not promote the positive freedom and only keep the negative freedom . He ignored the importance of positive freedom, as the freedom that people wanted to obtain it directly is always a positive freedom, these freedoms help people to carry their life. Negative freedom should only be used to guarantee or protect the positive freedom. If there is no positive freedom, negative freedom will lose its meaning. The goal of freedom is the positive freedom; negative freedom is just a rational agreement, which provides a limit upon positive liberty. It can be seen that the negative freedom itself is hollow; its only content is to guarantee rational strategy of positive freedom. In the conclusion, Berlin’s theory was against positive freedom, and mainly it was directly against the positive freedom of Marxism. He stated that the positive freedom of Marxism will lead to a totalitarian society, which will vanish individual freedom. However, we cannot just focus on negative liberty and ignore positive liberty, and vice versa .We need to link them together, use the negative freedom as the premise, then we could carry out various positive measures to protect the negative freedom. Therefore, if the positive freedom implemented without negative freedom, it will fall into compulsion or tyranny as Berlin said. However if the negative freedom does not involve positive freedom, it will become weak and fragile, as such freedom cannot maintain a long time by itself. So if a state wants to achieve a good level of development, only negative freedom is inadequacy. Hence the state needs to promote the positive freedom, as it has its own unique value, which also made a certain contribution to the society. Reference: Heywood,A.,(2004).Political Theory: An Introduction .3rd Edition Berlin, I., (1969). Four Essays on Liberty,Oxford: Oxford University Press Matravers, D., Pike, J., Warburton, N. (2000). Reading Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill.P231 Fromm,E.,(1941). Escape from Freedom. Inc., New York Fromm,E., (1942). The Fear of Freedom. Inc., Great Britain Taylor, C., (1979). Whats wrong with Negative Liberty, in D. Miller (ed.) (1991), Liberty. P141-162