The philosophy of covenantal pluralism guides and motivates much of the work that LYNC and its partners pursue around the world. The philosophy of covenantal pluralism calls for a holistic combination of enabling conditions: freedom of religion and belief, cross-cultural religious literacy, and the embodiment and expression of character virtues in practical multi-faith engagement. Put differently, it is the presence of positive, mutually reinforcing conditions both from the “top-down” (government policies) and the “bottom-up” (cultural norms and practices).
It’s a comprehensive vision for sustainable freedom, fairness, and flourishing for all.
But is it achievable?
I would argue that although the philosophy of covenantal pluralism is indeed ambitious and aspirational, there is hard evidence of positive potential for real-world progress toward this ideal. At the global level, some key evidence comes from the latest wave of the Pew Research Center’s international religion data, which was released in December. Annually since 2007 Pew has produced two 10-point indexes — the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) and the Social Hostilities Index (SHI). Pew scores virtually every country in the world in terms of government policies affecting religion and the social climate affecting religions. Pew then also groups countries’ scores into 4 categories within each index, based on percentile thresholds. Pew labels these 4 categories as “Very High,” “High,” “Moderate,” and “Low.”
Pew’s index scores often draw attention in international religious freedom circles because the ratings empirically expose the worst performing countries, countries with “very high” levels of government restrictions on religion and/or “very high” levels of social hostilities involving religion. But it’s also helpful to focus on the opposite end of the scale — the relative success stories. In terms of gauging potential for covenantal pluralism, that means looking at countries that manage to combine a low or moderate level of government restrictions with a low or moderate level of social hostilities.
To be sure, the combination of Pew’s two indexes is by no means a complete index of covenantal pluralism. A comprehensive index would need to include metrics for specific positive conditions such as religious literacy, engagement, and practical manifestations of character virtues. (For an example of innovative new research developing just such positive metrics in the context of Central Asia, check out the work of LYNC Senior Research Maksym Vasin.)
Still, Pew’s GRI and SHI do give us a sort of rudimentary, baseline indication of where the ground might be relatively more (or less) fertile for growth of covenantal pluralism.
The latest report from Pew updates the annual country scores through 2022. For this essay I went through the data and recategorized countries according to their low or low-moderate combinations of 2022 scores on the two indexes. Here’s who makes the cut:
Three important takeaways from Pew’s data. First, despite the criteria being fairly demanding, a great many countries around the world do fit these categories. As such, we shouldn’t imagine that it is somehow impossible to combine low restrictions on religion with low social hostilities involving religion, since all these countries (as of 2022) have managed to do it to varying degrees.
Second, Western countries are not over-represented in these lists, which means that positive potentialities for covenantal pluralism are not limited to a Global North, Christian-majority club. We see countries from a wide range of global regions, including Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Note as well that there are several Muslim-majority countries on this table as well, such as Senegal, Gambia, and Albania.
Finally, the latest Pew report also presents the results of some statistical tests of association between the two indexes, and importantly these tests confirm that good scores on one index are statistically predictive of good scores on the other. This finding can be added to the growing mountain of empirical evidence produced by scholars of religion and security which demonstrates that religious freedom and social peace do in fact work together in many countries around the world. Authoritarian governments routinely assume just the opposite, as they rationalize their repression of religions as being necessary to ensure social “harmony.”
Potentialities for covenantal pluralism exist the world over. And as LYNC’s work amply demonstrates, practical and strategic initiatives combining “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches help expand and maximize this potential.
About the Author:
Dennis R. Hoover (D.Phil. Politics, University of Oxford) is a Senior Fellow at Love Your Neighbor Community (LYNC). He is also Editor in Chief of The Review of Faith & International Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE). His recent books include Exploring Religious Diversity and Covenantal Pluralism in Asia, Volumes I and II (2023), and The Routledge Handbook of Religious Literacy, Pluralism, and Global Engagement (2022), co-edited with Chris Seiple.
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