The Globalization of Religion and Politics: Gandhi and Bin Laden - Literature review Example

Download file to see previous pages Charlie Brown is sitting under a tree talking to “the red-haired girl” who asks him: “What do you think security is, Chuck?” His answer: “Security is sleeping the back seat of the car when you’re a little kid, and you’ve been somewhere with you Mom and Dad, and its night, and you’re riding home in the car, you can sleep in the back seat. You don’t have to worry about anything . . . your Mom and Dad are in the front seat and they do all the worrying . . . they take care of everything.” To which the red-haired girl responds: “That’s really neat!” and Charlie comments: “But it doesn’t last! Suddenly, you’re grown up, and it can never be that way again! Suddenly, it’s over, and you’ll never get to sleep in the back seat again! Never!” Now the little read-haired girl asks: “Never?” and Charlie says, “Absolutely never.” To which she replies: “Hold my hand, Chuck!!”

Before September 11th, 2001, many of us felt like Charlie Brown. Surely, here at home, we were secure, protected, things were taken care of. But now, after 9-11, we know that was an illusion. It’s time to grow up: we can never go home again. People who feel secure don’t talk about security. Now we not only talk about it, but we also have a new government department devoted to it – Homeland Security. But it will take more than the FBI, CIA, and the military to make us feel more secure. They have work to do that will buy us time, but there are larger tasks. Like bin Laden and like Gandhi, we need to start thinking globally. And unlike bin Laden but like Gandhi, we need to start building bridges across religions and cultures, thinking and acting intelligently and with compassion. 

Religion and Politics

      “I can say,” says Mahatma Gandhi, “without the slightest hesitation . . . that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means” (Mehta, p. 69). When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s it was a commonplace of the sociology of modernization that in an age of science the world was becoming more and more secular and that religion would soon disappear. 

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