The Territorialism of Religion - Roy A. B. Tolentino

The hypothesis is that the great world faiths are different contexts of the salvific transformation of men and women from natural self-centredness to a new orientation centred in the Real or the Divine. They constitute different ways of conceiving and therefore of experiencing the Real, expressed in correspondingly different historical forms of life. –John Hick (Hick 2001:90)

An unfortunate reality in the history of religions (not only in Indonesia, but in the world) is that relations between religions often devolve into territorialism. On the most mundane level, there is a material territorialism consisting in competition for resources, property, adherents, government support, etc. More even-minded religious leaders might counteract this territorialism with genuine initiatives towards dialogue. On the other hand, there is also something I would describe as an epistemological territorialism, which occurs not so much on the material level as it does on the cultural and intellectual.

Every religious adherent understands and experiences how one’s thinking is “rewired,” so to speak, by one’s upbringing in a particular religion. One can think almost exclusively in the categories of one’s religion, applying these systems not only on religious matters, but also more worldly ones. In some cases, this “rewiring” or “hard-wiring” of our thought patterns contain within them the possibility for their own dissolution; for instance, a Catholic who falls away from Catholicism because he or she cannot accept its logic (or lack thereof, depending on one’s view). In most cases, however, it conditions our thinking such that we can no longer accept other ways of looking at the world, or other “traditions of knowledge.” It is in this mode that the material and epistemological territorialism converge, paving the way for conflict and violence. In a way, this territorialism is graphically painted in Indonesia and in the Philippines, as the demographics for religion are almost exclusively described by actual territory.

Even social scientists are not immune to this territorialism, as when Frederick Barth describes the difference between Balinese Hinduism and Javanese Islam, it is obvious that he favors one over the other:

The contrast to Islam could not be more significant: ther God, though omnipresent, does not manifest himself in any particular signs, and his command is finite and given onceand for all in the Koran; here the Godhead descends among us and addresses unique and new commands to persons and congregations. We see, in other words, a potential source for drastic and authoritative change in the tradition of knowledge. (Barth 1993:208)

Barth’s last line suggests that the “tradition of knowledge” in Islam might be superseded by that of Hinduism in Bali, a position which just evinces the territorialism described above. At any rate, this territorialism might be tempered by an acknowledgement of what is common to the religious experience, as John Hick recommends in the quotation above. Inasmuch as religions condition our thinking, there may be something common to the religious experience that allows us to see that these religions are contextualized articulations of “a new orientation centred in the Real,” as Hick says. In that case, there would not be competing traditions of knowledge, but varied ones; possibly contradictory, usually confusing, but grounded in a common orientation. Inasmuch as religions stake claims on their “territories,” it is good to remember that it is the same air that sustains us.

Hick, John. “Religious Pluralism and the Divine: A Response to Paul Eddy” in Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 90.
Barth, Frederick. Balinese Worlds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 208. Italics mine.