Rebuilding Sacred Worlds: Lay-Oriented Buddhist and Catholic Reformism in Malaysia

Abstract

Implicit in the reformist movements that have mobilized Catholic and Buddhist lay people is a strong response to the rapid pace of Islamization and aggressive Protestant evangelism in Malaysia. Catholics and Buddhists, in rebuilding and defending their sacred worlds buffeted by ideological competition and hegemonic technologically based professionalism characteristic of capitalistic culture, have committed themselves to systematic programmes of renewal and reformism that greatly enhance the role of the laity. These programmes, in each case, have taken place within distinctive institutional frameworks. Among Catholics, laicization was initiated by the clergy in the context of reform from above, while among Buddhists the laity themselves took the lead. Neither of these routes to laicization can avoid the paradox of secularization. Mobilization of the laity to intensify religious practice , and to systematize world-views and organization, involves a contradictory process of re-enchanting a sacred enclave within a disenchanted world and defending it against the claims and intrusions of other such enclaves by secular methods of organization.