In Defence of Religion: Sacred Referent Objects for Securitization
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290031601 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Ole Wæver,Carsten Bagge Laustsen |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Millennium: Journal of Int ernational Studies, 2000. ISSN 0305-8298 . Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 705-739
705
In Defence of Religion: Sacred Referent
Objects for Securitization
Carsten Bagge Laustsen and Ole Wæver
It is a widely shared assumpt ion that since the end of the Cold war, conflicts and
wars are less dri ven by political-ideol ogical systems. Also they are no t much
caused by eco nomic motives or even the c lassical ones of territory and power as an
aim in th emselves. The roots of conflicts are increasin gly related to culture and
identity, be i t the wide-spread labe ling o f conflicts as ‘ethni c’ or the mac ro-
interpretati on of glo bal politics in terms of a ‘clash of civ ilisations’.1 To Samuel
Huntingto n, civi lisations a re ultimately defined to a large extent by religion s.2
Furthermore, he argue s, one of the trends o f the p ost-Cold War pe riod is a
‘revitalisat ion of religion t hroughout much of the world’ which reinforces cultural
difference.3 Since th e 1970s, the hope and fea r of a ‘withering away o f re ligion’
started to b e defied. Not because of a l ack of modernisation, but because one o f the
unexpecte d side-effects of modernisation was a ‘revenge of God’, an
‘unseculari zation of the world’.4
In the area of international security, this has most keenly been felt in the form of
an alleged threat from ‘fun damentalism’.5 This ha s meant primarily Islamic
fundamenta lism,6 but the increasing influen ce of evangelic fund amentalism on US
For helpful criticism and suggestions, we wou ld like to thank Ulla Holm, Vibeke Schou Petersen,
Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, Stefano Guzzini, Pertti Joenniemi, Lene Hansen, Barry Buzan, Birgitta
Frello, Katalin Sarvary, particip ants in the workshop on ‘Holy Places in Mod ern Global Societies’ at the
Danish Conventi on of Sociologists, August 2000, and the two anon ymous reviewers of the journal.
1. Samuel P. Hun tington, Th e Clash of Civilizations and the Rema king of World Order (London:
Simon and Schuster, 1997); Douglas Johnston, ‘Introduction : Beyond Power Politics’, in Religion, The
Missing Dimensio n of Statecraft, eds. Douglas Johnston and Cyn thia Sampson (Oxfo rd: Oxford
University Press, 19 94); and Barry Rubin, ‘Religion and Internatio nal Affairs’, in Religion, The Missing
Dimension.
2. ‘Religion i s a central defin ing characteristic of ci vilizations, and, as Ch ristopher Dawson said, “ the
great religions are the foundations on whi ch the great civilizations rest” ’. See Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations, 47.
3. Ibid., 28f.
4. Ibid., 95ff. ‘The revenge of god’ is a phrase borrowed from Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The
Resurgence of Islam, Christia nity and Judaism in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polit y Press, 1994).
5. Martin E Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., The Funda mentalism Project, vols. 1-5 (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1 991-1995).
6. Bernard Lewis, ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’, Atlantic Monthly 22 6, no. 3, (1 990): 47-54 ; John
Esposito, The Islamic Threat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19 92); and Abdullahi A. An-Na’im,
‘Political Islam i n National Politics and International Relations’, in The Desecularization of the World:
Millennium
706
foreign po licy is a cause of wo rry to others.7 Even ob servers critical of the rh etoric
of (and research o n) fundamentalism like Peter L. Be rger, state with great emphasis
that ‘[t]hose who neglect religion in their ana lyses of contemporary affairs do so at
great peril’.8
The discipline of Internatio nal Relations (IR) is dist urbed by this for gene ral and
specific reasons. It shares with ot her modern social science s th e ge neral
predisposi tion for secularisation , assuming that the world of tradition gives way to
modernity, superstition and religion to science and rationality.9 M ore specifically,
the ‘foun ding act’ of much IR thin king, the peace o f Westphalia is widely seen as
the end of an era where interna tional relations and wars had been about reli gion.
Kal Ho lsti, for inst ance, states abo ut the period 1815-1914: ‘The secularisation of
international politics, begun in 1648 and virtually completed by the conclusion of
the War of the Span ish Succession, continued without change’.10
We are not going in this article to assess the validity of the claim about a shift
towards re ligiously d riven co nflicts. Inst ead we will e xplore t he dyn amics
characteristic of secu rity action on behalf of relig ion. How does securit ization of
religiousl y constitute d referent objects happen? Even the ‘why’ question ca n to
some exte nt be ans wered, be cause by ex ploring the structure o f disco urse
constituti ve of threats to relig ious objects, we can show what makes this form of
securitization particularly attractive and under what conditions. Based on the
investigat ion of securi ty action on expl icitly religious object s, we tak e our insights
to a broader field of security practice , which is commo nly seen as ‘on ly political’,
but which actually contains important religious dimensions. Finally, this
exploratio n of religion and securitization has wider implicati ons for IR theo ry and
security studie s, which are expl ored in the third main section of the artic le.
In do ing this, we will take recourse to th e theory o f securitiza tion (‘the
Copenhag en school’), which explores the processes where ‘something’ (a referent
object) is dee med threatened and security actio n taken in its d efence. A central idea
of se curitization theory is that the c haracter of the re ferent objec t makes a
difference. Making the securit y speech act in the name of ‘the st ate’ is different
from do ing it on behalf of ‘the n ation’ not to speak of ‘the whales’ o r ‘the lib eral
internatio nal eco nomic order’. Survival means so mething different to different
referent objec ts and an ap peal to a defence of someth ing triggers different
dynamics depende nt on the constitution of the refere nt ob ject. In the sphere of
religion, the first task is therefo re to characterise the nature of religiou s beliefs and
of o bjects constitute d by a religious discou rse. This impl ies an exc ursion into t he
Resurgent Relig ion and Wo rld Politics, ed. Peter L. Berg er (Grand Rapi ds, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 199 9).
7. William Martin, ‘The C hristian Right and American Foreign Policy’, Foreign Policy, no. 114,
(1999): 66-80.
8. Peter L. Berger, ‘Secularism in Retreat’ , The National Interest, no. 46, (1996 /97): 12.
9. See Edward Luttwak, ‘The Missin g Dimension’, in Religion, The Missing Dimension.
10. Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order 1648-1989
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ ersity Press, 1991), 149.
In Defence of Rel igion
707
writings o f Søren Kierkega ard, Georges Bat taile, and Ninian Smart. On this basis,
the first step of t he analysis is to explore th e logic of sec uritization of obj ects that
are clea rly of a religi ous nature, and t he article here mainly uses illust rations from
the ‘fundame ntalism’ questio n. This part of the analy sis primarily seeks to
understand why it is oft en parti cularly temp ting to securitiz e religion, how it is
done (the charact eristic modalities of securitizat ion in this sphere), and the question
what do ing it does (what cha in reaction s are usually ac tivated, for example, the
role of sacrifices, myths, rituals).
The second step of the analysis is to no tice how wha t is taken to be specific to
religion is actually presen t in many po litical ideologies. Thus, mu ch securitization
that at first would be seen as belonging to the sphere of politi cs is better understo od
if the mechanisms characteristi c of the religiou s sphere are taken into accou nt. We
use the case of Ge rman Natio nal Socialism to i llustrate this part of the analysis.
This p art of the argumentation draws on th e writings o f Sla voj iek, and pushe s
the analysis into its third step: the meta-theoretical implication s of religion for
securitizati on theory (and by infere nce much of IR theory).
If religion is not t o be distilled as a spec ial atavistic anomaly but seen a s
integrated into most polit ics, and when post-structura list philoso phy in recent years
has be en veering in to ruminations on the nece ssity of self-refle ction in rela tion to
the religi ous dimension of the We stern philosophical tradi tion, religion is re-
habilitate d as a dimen sion of (primarily post -structuralist) IR theory. Alt hough, the
article starts ou t quite narrowly looking at what happens whe n you defend religious
referent o bjects, its t itle takes o n a more radical meaning when it e nds up
defending religion as an important dimen sion of theory and self-reflection in IR.
This p art of the article draws—in addition to the post-struc turalist philosophe rs—
on some of the older connectio ns between religio n and IR, no tably among classical
realists and early En glish School.
The relationship between the three pa rts o f t he a rticle is unconventiona l. In
several respects, they build on each other, the way any cumulat ive anal ysis is
expected to. However, there are also deliberate shifts of angle where the parts
challenge each other. Graph ically, it might be seen like this. In the first part,
religion i s contained wi thin the framework of secu ritization as on e among several
sectors. In the second p art, relig ion and securitizat ion are on par. And o f great
consequen ce, in the third part, religion becomes the overarching problematiq ue
from which also securitizati on—and thus the origi nal framework—is in terrogated.
Securitizatio n and Religion
Securitizati on is one of the defining ele ments of the so-called Copenhag en School
in sec urity studies11 (other key elements are ‘sectors’ and ‘regional security
11. The name ‘Copenhagen School’ was co ined b y Bill McSweeney in the critical review essay,
‘Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School’, Review of International Stu dies 2, no. 1
(1996): 81-94.
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