ABSTRACT
Conventional methods of transmitting religious ideas depend on a number of social factors. Extended family structure, social and cultural homogeneity, and religious institutional structures are some of the factors necessary to ensure a sustained transmission of religious ideas from one generation to the next. When such support structures fail to survive in modern society, especially in the context of migration and resettlement in places far away from the original homeland, either new strategies need to be invented or old ideas and values allowed to decline. In the case of the modern West, a transmission of religious ideas has not been sustained. This has been attributed by scholars to gradual secularization and the tendency of people to stop going to religious centres and institutions for their spiritual nourishment and religious growth (Bruce 1992). Some scholars have wondered whether in a sense Europe with its secular tendencies is a special case (Davie 2000), since, while different types of secularisms have emerged in different parts of the world (Martin 1995), in some areas religions and their ideas have become even more powerful instruments shaping societies. The combination of religious ideas with global politics has become a recipe for serious conflict. We have witnessed this in India, the Middle East and many other places. One question that has relentlessly caught my attention is why religion has mattered so much in global conflicts. What is it in religious ideas that renders people unable to make compromises? Or, why are religious ideas such powerful weapons in conflict situations?
