Unity and diversity: a critique of religion and ethnicity in Europe

Both religion and ethnicity are linked to the question of identity. Humanity has always clustered round various forms of identity, and has tended in more sophisticated societies to adhere to a range of identities, from broad racial or religious affiliations down to the immediate family. A useful distinction can, however, be made between those forms of identity that could be called "rooted", and those that are "created".

Rooted and created identity

A rooted identity includes what is inherent and what one inherits: birth, family and the land in which one lives. These rooted elements of "blood and land" can of course be overcome by choice, but they are generally regarded as intrinsic aspects of identity. Ethnicity is precisely such a rooted form of identity, connected as it is to race, language and inheritance -- those aspects of identity, in other words, which are to a degree inescapable.

Created identities, on the other hand, are forms of community that are not a matter of the chance of birth so much as the consequence of revelation, thought and organization. They can take the form of a political organization, a religious community, or the concept of an ideal community, as for example Plato's Republic or Muhammad's Islamic state in Medina. In all cases, however, a created identity is "conceived" rather than inherent, and may in its formation challenge or subsume rooted forms of identity.

Religion can be either a rooted or created form of identity. The concepts of Christendom and of the umma Islam (the whole community of Islam) are created identities; by contrast, "pagan" religions are normally an expression of local rooted identities. In what might be called the "high" tradition of European thought, rooted identities -- tribe, natio, ethnos, ethne, gentes -- are seen as inferior social categories, lying beyond or buried under the civilized, organized world. But there is a counter-tradition -- expressed in Homer's Odyssey -- of the sacredness of the fatherland, the family and the local community, embodying stability, order and prosperity.(1)

At first sight, it may seem difficult to distinguish between rooted and created aspects of identity in the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition, particularly the history of the Jewish people. If, however, we consider the Judaeo-Christian tradition principally from the perspective of identity, it is apparent that that entire tradition hinges on an emphasis on divine unity against human diversity. God's covenant with the nomadic, "rootless" children of Israel is precisely a challenge to purely human, rooted -- and thereby diverse -- concepts of the ordering of the world. Israel's right to the land of Canaan is not a rooted inherent right, but is purely conditional, dependent on Israel's adherence to certain rules of devotion and principles of justice. God's special relationship with Israel is a symbol or affirmation of the primacy of the divine word over the ways of humanity, of divine justice over human power, and of divine unity over human diversity (cf. Ps. 105:8-15).

With the coming of Christianity, the principle of divine unity and the distance between the divine and mundane order was no longer symbolized by a people, but embodied in a person, Jesus Christ. The creation of a universal community of believers in the church transformed a symbol into a mission. The spiritual community of the church, however, coexisted with the diversity of earthly kingdoms and communities. The concept of a universal community ruled by the spiritual principles of divine unity (tawhid) was carried furthest in Islam, when Muhammad created his Islamic state with over-riding political as well as spiritual authority, governed by an unalterable divine constitution shaped by the Qur'an.(2)

Compared with Islam's unambiguous linking of political organization and spiritual unity, the relationship between the universal Christian community and other forms of identity and loyalty is more complex. Christ himself told Pilate that "My kingdom is not from this world" (John 18:36); but he also made it clear that this spiritual mission was fundamentally at odds with rooted forms of human identity, and would in fact "set a man against his father" (Matt. 10:35). This ambiguous coexistence between church and state reflected the persistence within the European tradition of a pre-Christian concept of ideal political unity. Such a concept was embodied in the idea of Rome's destiny as a universal empire: Imperium sine fide dedi (Virgil, Aeneid, I, 279; compare the reference to oikoumene in Luke 2:1, equating "all the world" and the Roman empire). This notion of Rome's universal destiny and the reality of imperial power facilitated and at the same time complicated the mission of the church.

In practice, the subsequent history of Rome and Christianity showed that the unity of neither the church nor the empire could be sustained. Virgil's and Dante's dreams of a universal empire conferring peace and order to the furthest extent of humanity faded away, though aspirations to European unity -- in malignant or relatively benign forms -- have remained alive. The concept of unity and universality have of course remained fundamental within Christendom, despite the reality of schism. It is significant, however, that the break-up of Christian unity has tended to follow -- and to exacerbate -- linguistic, cultural and ethnic fault-lines. It has been argued, for example, that the schism between the Western and Eastern churches largely reflected irreconcilable differences between Hellenistic and Latin civilizations.(3) The later break-up of the Western church had even clearer ethnic and national implications, which are well illustrated by the importance of the English, German and Welsh translations of the Bible for the consolidation, in an age of growing literacy, of their respective national identities.(4)