The Future of Religion: Global Boundaries and the Fork in the Road

Abstract

The question of how religions will look like tomorrow is speculative. But this is not the case with the boundary conditions, or limits, of the future trajectories of world religions. Answers can be found in the intersection of three disciplinary perspectives. The disciplines are anthropology, philosophical ethics (or its political equivalent, international law), and the environmental and climate sciences. Anthropology has gained an understanding of the past development of religions, especially about its shifting functions in successive stages of civilization: among prehistoric bands and tribes, in ancient chiefdoms and medieval kingdoms, and in modern secular states. We know what social purposes religions served in the past, what kind of shifts occurred, and what the trend of religion from prehistory to today had been. Based on the empirical record, anthropology tells us what it means for religion to slide back to a less developed stage of civilization. This is one set of boundary conditions. Ethics discusses the meaning of right and wrong, but its debates cluster around normal, middle-of-the road issues. There is little disagreement over extremes. International institutions (e.g. International Criminal Court), treaties (e.g. Geneva Conventions), and metrics (e.g. Human Development Index) give a clear picture of the limits of right and wrong. As the moral assessment of genocides illustrates, there is no confusion over what counts as evil. We also have a clear idea of what constitutes a life that is safe and dignified. In this way, ethics and international law can tell us whether the social manifestation of faith is acceptable or not, whether it is good or evil. This is another set of boundary conditions. The environmental and climate sciences, finally, have arrived at a conclusion: civilization is maladapted to its environment. The ecological overshoot of humankind has worsened to the point that degradation of ecological integrity is tangible in accelerating extinction rates; that deterioration of environmental services is tangible in climate change; and that depletion of natural resources is tangible in rising prices (compared to incomes) of food, land, and rare earths. Since civilization relies on a global market economy whose stability needs material growth, and since our ecological overshoot makes such growth unsustainable, our species has arrived at a fork in the road. Either we keep doing business as usual and sink into crisis, or we redesign civilization and move towards sustainability. This fork in the road sharpens the anthropological sense of ＂regress＂ and ＂progress,＂ and tweaks the ethical meanings of ＂good＂ and ＂evil＂. Since religion is integral to the fabric of any society, the dimension of sustainability places a fork in the developmental road of religions, too. One future trajectory of faith is a path that is hopeful. Another is a path that is terrifying. The biophysical fork in the road establishes a third set of boundary conditions. Although we do not know what the future will bring, the environmental crisis and the opportunities for mitigating the crisis tell us what a good future will amount to, and what a bad future will boil down to. Anthropology and ethics tell us what it will mean for civilization to move forward or to slide back, to proceed to a healthier, safer world, or to regress to a harsher, poorer world. The purpose this paper is to use the findings of anthropology, ethics, and the environmental sciences to determine the best- and worst-case scenarios of future religion- how faith may look like along an evolutionary, enlightened, and sustainable pathway, and how it would look like if events and people push faith into the opposite direction. I argue that these two scenarios are clear and justifiable. I contend that only the sustainable pathway is compatible with Chinese cultural wisdom, as in Confucianism, Lao-Zhuang Daoism, and Chan Buddhism. And I suspect that Chinese culture and its spiritual traditions will become more influential globally if and only if civilization moves towards sustainability. But if civilization failed at this project, regressed, and suffered collapse, I fear that Chinese culture would be swept away by Middle Eastern creeds.