Globalization and Monotheist Religions: Opportunities and Challenges

Globalization refers to complicated processes making states and societies closer to each other. Although this phenomenon has a long history, it seems that it became more prevalent, in its new sense, after the emergence of the information revolution in the 1990s. Globalization has been influential in different political, economic, social and cultural areas, but perhaps it has been more controversial in the realm of global culture. Itscritics have considered it tantamount to the American domination over the world. On the opposite side, its proponents believe that global culture means the interminglement of cultures. However, there is a group of people who see it as cultural dis-integration that is globalization is an opportunity and at the same time a threat for different cultures. The effects of globalization on religion have been of paradoxical nature that is it has been an opportunity for religion from technological point of view and putting in questionmetanarratives for the life of religion and strengthening its social role, but a threat due to its post-modernist relativism and analysis of theological teaching in the framework of discourse analysis. Perhaps one of the most concrete consequences of globalization for religion in the contemporary world is the rapprochement of religions and the creation of a positive atmosphere for the formation of a kind of global theology; the fact that not only paves the way for dialogue between religions, but also strengthens religion as a software movement in the scene of international politics.