Globalization has been a decidedly mixed bag.
On the plus side, it’s managed to knit diverse people together economically and, to a lesser degree, culturally. But it’s also further divided others along religious, political, race, and class lines.
It’s introduced us to a myriad of once exotic consumer products at relatively cheaper prices (cheaper for many Westerners, that is). Globalization has also brought us fresh ideas and life choices that — while I certainly don’t agree with every new view put forth — has enormously enriched my own life experience.
On the negative side — and this is huge — it’s allowed multi-national corporate boards (and shareholders) to escape the full weight of responsibility for the enormous environmental degradation their decisions have produced in exploited regions thousands of miles distant from their posh corporate headquarters.
Also, let’s not forget the foreign workers, including child laborers, exploited by unscrupulous employers trying to satisfy their Western customers insatiable demands for rock bottom prices.
For the United States and other Western nations, globalization’s complex outcomes has produced still another key Gordian Knot dilemma. I’m referring to the vast numbers of desperate human refugees heading, most often without proper documentation, to the United States, Europe, Australia — and even to neighboring countries that may be only relatively better off.
The latter group includes situations American news media rarely cover. They include Nicaraguans fleeing to Costa Rica and South Africa’s burgeoning refugee population comprised of hopeful immigrants from a variety of sub-Saharan African nations.
Is it any surprise to anyone with a working knowledge of Homo sapiens that we demand globalization’s creature comforts without us wanting to deal with those actual Homo sapiens that globalization has negatively impacted.
Religious leaders have long involved themselves in the immigration debate, taking a variety of of pro and con positions. But what about rank-and-file religious believers? How do they feel about the massive movements of immigrants?
Does religiosity make people more welcoming, or more suspicious, of the stranger?
This recent Religion News Service story tries to answer the question as it has unfolded in Europe. It was written following Pope Francis’ recent visit to Greece, where he sought to remind his global audience of the international migrant crisis.
Here’s this story’s opening graphs:
(RNS) — On Sunday (Dec. 5), Pope Francis, visiting the Greek island of Lesbos, made an emotional pitch for European states to be more welcoming to foreign migrants. The pontiff called on Europeans to stop ignoring their suffering, insisting that Jesus “is present in the stranger, in the refugee, in those who are naked and hungry.”
“I ask every man and woman, all of us, to overcome the paralysis of fear, the indifference that kills, the cynical disregard that nonchalantly condemns to death those on the fringes,” he said.
Francis is clearly leaning on the faith of his listeners to motivate his audience to see refugees as neighbors and to work toward what he has called “the miracle of an ever wider ‘we.’” But how common is it for faith to drive compassion toward refugees? Does religiosity make people more welcoming — or more suspicious — of the stranger?
The story’s complicated conclusion: Religious believers are a hugely diverse group, and their faith, broadly speaking, is often just one element of their tribal identity, though an important one. A few of the story’s many info bites include:
* Catholics tend to prefer significantly more restrictive policies than the religiously unaffiliated. However, Catholics who attended church frequently by and large support more generous immigration policies than the religiously unaffiliated.
* Religious minorities are more open to receiving refugees in their countries than other religious groups and the unaffiliated. Since Muslims comprise a large share of Europe’s most recent refugees, they were more prone to empathize with fellow migrants.
* The bottom line efficacy of Francis’ message, in short, depends largely on his listeners’ individual religious context and personal religious practices.
There’s a lot more to glean from the story. Ditto from the survey results it was based on. Too much, in fact, to enumerate it all in this post so I suggest you go to the story itself and read it in its entirety. Here’s the link again.
Interestingly, the story was part of an RNS collaborative effort with the Association of Religion Data Archives and the John Templeton Foundation. The project, titled “Ahead of the Trend,” seeks to draw attention to stories the editors believe warrant future attention.
This interests me because it’s an example of the growing journalistic trend of news platforms teaming up with independent research groups — and sometimes even with platforms they previously competed against — to jointly produce stories that otherwise might never get done due to journalism’s rapidly shrinking economic resources.
One last point, an important one, I think. While the RNS story was based on a recent analysis of the study published in the fall journal issue of the Sociology of Religion, the findings it parsed date to the 2016 European Social Survey, a large-scale, cross-national study.
My question is, are the findings still valid?
I think likely not. In fact I think the migrant situation is likely to worsen because of climate change’s still uncertain but likely devastating impact on food and water supplies caused by rising temperatures and sea levels. The COVID-19 pandemic only makes the situation tougher.
Read this Washington Post story to better understand.
Afghanistan, Madagascar, Central America, sub-Sahara Africa are some of the places cited as on the brink of great disaster. How will religious organizations respond should the worst come to pass? It’s time to start asking.
FIRST IMAGE: Illustration from the Gordian Knot weblog.