52 Peter Beyer
of state constitutions guarantee “freedom of religion,” thus lending religion a high de-
gree of legitimacy and a certain autonomy. To count as a religion affords distinct rights
and it can therefore become important to know and to decide which claimants to the
category will be acknowledged. Thus, to mention briefly a few examples, in Canada,
Wiccans have sought to have their beliefs and practices accorded recognition as a legiti-
mate religion (even though, perhaps somewhat ironically, many of them also reject the
category in other respects) in child custody and other legal cases. In China, the govern-
ment has declared Falun Gong a “cult” (xiejiao=evil teaching),^4 expressly denying it
the protection of a religion. In Indonesia, the religious traditions of various aboriginal
peoples are not recognized as religion (agama) unless they affiliate and identify with
one of the five officially recognized religions (Schiller 1997: 109ff). Otherwise, they
can only claim the less-privileged category of culture (adat). And in South Africa, there
are strong movements to have African indigenous religions recognized formally by the
government as legitimate religions, equal in dignity to others, especially the “world
religions.” In reverse direction, various religious strands have wished to avoid the cate-
gory, sometimes as in the case of State Shinto to avoid the limitations that freedom of
religion and the differentiation of religion imply; at other times because of a relatively
negative valuation of the category.
The positive and negative evaluations of religion in contemporary global society
stem from some of the features already indicated, and others besides. On the positive
side, a movement or set of beliefs and practices accorded the status of a religion can in
most parts of the world claim a certain autonomy of operation and dignity of recog-
nition; even more so now that the former Soviet bloc has disintegrated along with
its expressly “atheistic” policies. The adherents of a recognized religion can in that
light expect their faith not to be a basis of discrimination in other spheres of life, such
as politics, economics, and education. On the negative side, the category of religion
may in various circumstances appear as a foreign, especially Western, imposition. It may
carry the hue of being considered “irrational,” “ideological,” or “illusionary.” It may
imply the unacceptable imposition of outside authority in a domain that is deemed to
be highly personal. Or it may carry with it the kind of restriction in sphere of opera-
tion that the notions of secularization and privatization imply. The carriers of potential
religion may reject the category and seek not to be included under it for any of these
reasons. Thus, for example, many Muslims insist that Islam is not a religion, but “a
way of life.” Most Chinese reject that “Confucianism” and an array of other tradi-
tional “religious” practices are religion or a religion, asserting instead that these things
are about ethics, philosophy, or more broadly that they are simply aspects of Chinese
“culture.” Followers of the Maharishi Maheshyogi’s Transcendental Meditation and its
successor organizations consistently present their beliefs and practices as more science
than religion. And, especially in Western countries, a wide variety of seemingly religious
practitioners ranging from New Age to human potential movements, from “spirituality
in the workplace” to Wicca and neopaganism explicitly reject the term religion in favor
of less authoritarian, more individualistic categories such as “spirituality” (cf. Heelas
1996). The latter, along with “culture,” is also more favored by many representatives
and practitioners of traditional North American aboriginal practices.
(^4) I thank Dr. Wang Jiwu and Dr. Li Qiang for information regarding this case and the word
usages.