The Religious Affairs Office

We interviewed Dr Juan José Tamayo*, a theologian, sociologist and emeritus professor at the University Carlos III of Madrid, with a long career as an academic and activist. Activist, we say, because he is a harsh critic, without taboos, of the current institution of the catholic church and other majority religions, on the matter of democracy and gender perspective. He advocates ecclesiastical institutions for everyone but especially for those most in need, in line with liberation theology.

We’ll be speaking with him in Barcelona, within the framework of the “Religious freedom in Barcelona: the state of play”Day event, held a year ago, to assess the state of the right to religious freedom in Barcelona, gathering contributions from religious communities, organisations and experts. As a speaker he was tasked with reviewing the international legal recognition of religious freedom, although he added a “duties” perspective too, insisting on the need for requiring democratisation and gender equality from all religious institutions.

He took a tour through the legislation on the principle of freedom of religion, during the “Religious freedom in Barcelona: the state of play” day event. According to you, freedom of worship is the very basis of religions. Why then is this freedom absent is many parts of the world?

Religions arise as moral-value proposals, to promote co-existence and civically pass translate important ideas, and therefore develop with pluralism, freedom and respect for difference as their basis. The change of dialogue to anathema and confrontation between the various religions is due to the powers that be intervening in the management and orientation of religions. When a power becomes institutional, it appropriates this status and uses it as a weapon in its conflicts with other powers. While religion has an undeniably political side to it, it does have to maintain a dialectical relationship with it. It cannot be at its service because then it would lose its original raison d’être: its direct relationship with the divinity and its ethical commitment to the underprivileged.

You were very blunt in your conclusions at the “Spanish State protects religious freedom but not the equality of religions” day event. “The Transition was not such as regards religion and too many traces of National Catholicism remain.”

First I’d like to confirm or guarantee that religious freedom has been established since the democratic Transition. I don’t know of anyone who’s been imprisoned for their beliefs or spiritual practices. But we are very far from achieving equality between religions. I’ll explain: there are three types of religions in Spain: Catholicism, which represents all types of privileges on the part of the State; those with a “deeply rooted” status, which also have certain privileges through direct agreements, and those which, despite being registered as such in association registers, are considered minorities and have no special recognition.

Spain is one of the most flagrant examples of contradiction between supposed secularism and the reality, which is still very close to Franco’s National Catholicism. There are thousands of examples: up to three years ago members of the government used to be signed and sworn into their post before a cross and the Bible; the army has an archbishop at its service, although the most serious, I believe, is the issue of funding. How can we talk of equality of religions when one of them, Catholicism, has been receiving honorariums of between 250 million and 280 million euros a year through tax assignments? We remain under a National-Catholic conception in the political and social imagination.

What are minority or “deeply rooted” religions demanding?

Having privileges like the majority religions, although I rather think that the first- and second-class religions enjoy an abundance of privileges granted to them by the State, which they would end up losing from equalisation rather than from minorities being granted privileges. I’m well aware that this is practically impossible, for electoral reasons, but it’s the religions themselves, the big ones, that ought to renounce their privileges out of consistency with their ethics of poverty and solidarity.

Do you believe that democratisation and feminisation of religious institutions, regardless of creed, are crucial obligations if institutional support is to continue?

The Spanish Constitution stipulates that all Spaniards are equal before the law, but no such equality exists inside religious organisations when it comes to governance and gender. If unions and other social organisations are required to be democratic and non-sexist (and have gender-equality plans, for example), why shouldn’t religious institutions be as well?

Cities are places where people worship and teach religion, but what can a city do to make such democratisation and feminisation a reality?

Well, I say the same thing for Spanish State as I do for all the other political powers: they must ensure that all institutions, and I mean every single one, are governed by democratic principles and all members of these institutions can exercise the right to choose their representatives. Nothing is excluded here, so any local authority that demands democracy from residents’ associations, school management, clubs and other citizen spaces ought to do the same with religious organisations to fund projects. And it ought to be even more exacting on the matter of women’s discrimination. To be more specific, the Catholic Church is the most male-chauvinist and patriarchal organisation in Spanish society. It does not allow women access to the areas of representation or thinking or to the priesthood. Women’s discrimination cries up to the heavens.

Of course, this needs to be done through education, although funding for or participation in municipal decision-taking or advisory spaces ought to be conditional on democratic and non-discriminatory practices in themselves.

Speaking of women… in an interview you gave with El País in 2003, you were already talking about sexism in the Catholic Church and referring to “Christians” in both their masculine and feminine grammatical forms. You were a feminist communicator avant la lettre? How did you become involved with feminism, to end up today as one of the voices of feminist theology?

I had a completely patriarchal upbringing, evidently regarding language too, but I was lucky in that my partner is a feminist woman theologian and corrected me from the very start in the sexist language of my writings, making me see the contradictions of the patriarchy within and without religions. A second experience was the gathering, at the start of the new millennium, of a group of feminist women philosophers who invited me to join them in feminist thinking. I will be honest with you: I was going over in my mind why the patriarchy has this, making you weigh the pros and cons: on the one hand, I feared losing certain privileges granted through hegemonic masculinity, but on the other hand, I knew I’d gain in coherence and justice.

I gave up certain privileges that I did not deserve, just for being a man, and I discovered and embraced a new side to emotions, feelings and sensitive reason and a new way of seeing a less rigid life. I renounced the authority that has become authoritarianism, the fraternity in whose name so many murders have been committed and I moved on to fraternity-sorority, even in the way I work, in a more collaborative and horizontal way. It’s already twenty years since I became a feminist, to the point that I am preparing a book that will probably be called Soc un teòleg feminista [I am a feminist theologian].

Returning to the “Religious freedom in Barcelona: the state of play” day event, you proposed derogating all the State’s legislation and agreements with the various religious structures and to start from zero with the creation of a secular state. What does that involve exactly?

Yes, I made several proposals: to draft a new Act on freedom of conscience (including religious); a Statute of secularism to remove the centrality of religions from secular spaces; a civic educational model, without the presence of religion in schools and educational centres, and the self-funding of religious institutions. In short, a secular state that sees to democracy and gender equality everywhere and which guarantees the freedoms of everyone, whether or not they are believers.

One of its references is Pope John XXIII, and his Vatican II Council, whose precise purpose was to return the Church to the people, to the original idea of Christianity. Is Pope Francis, the present incumbent, a reference for you as well?

I’d say that John XXIII is a reference for the current pope, and that he aims to reclaim the spirit of the Vatican II council which remained a dead letter as his successors were neo-conservatives. He has been casting different images of the Church from the very start: he speaks of the church of the fringes, the fields and the poor. But above all, for me, Pope Francis’s great contribution is his criticism, which is actually harsh, of the neo-liberal economic system. He has come to affirm that it is harmful in its very essence, and not just in its consequences. He is one of the few political leaders to criticise neo-liberal globalisation.

Another of his crucial contributions is his ecological turn. No other pope had shown such concern for ecology. His Encyclical, entitled “On care for our common home”, is considerably in tune with ecologist movements and others in defence of the Earth’s dignity.

Maybe a third feature that I value very highly is the criticism he has been making of his own government, the Papal curia. But it is also here where I see one of the great flaws: for all his criticism, the initiatives for reform he has taken are hardly coherent: he has chosen a completely internal commission of cardinals to make changes, who have no outside perspective; everything continues to be very endogamous. It’s also true that he has a good many adversaries from within, but he will never get anyone to give up any privilege that way.

And, still on the theme of flaws, the other thing that surprises me as well is the lack of feminist perspective, he hasn’t taken any action at all to enable or encourage women into the areas of worship or drafting of doctrine. I believe he is still a very clerical, hierarchical and patriarchal person.

How doe a progressive theologian such as yourself relate to other Catholic theologians, but above all, to those of other religions?

As for Catholics, we created the John XXIII Theologians’ Association, with common progressive, ecological and feminist ideas that help us to protect one another. In fact, this association has also been joined by several Protestant theologians.

As for other religions, I myself, for example, have set up a Islamic-Christian liberation-theology project. I meet up with Muslim colleagues from around the world and we all agree that every theology has to be at the service of liberating marginalised and oppressed people.

Does Liberation Theology exist or have force? Hardly anything is ever heard about it…

Not only does it exist but I can also confirm it has force and is more extended: it began in Latin America but right now we can find it in Africa and Asia, even in countries in the north, in communities of African descent and in other communities. It is not recognised and has, above all, numerous adversaries who constantly announce its death. But is has plenty of vigour and will continue to exist so long as there marginalised and precarious communities.

You move between belief in and criticism of religious communities. On one occasion you said religion was “the relief of the oppressed, the heart of a heartless society”. Is there no relief without religion? Are there secular alternatives?

I would rather consider the need to bring together the various religions with atheist organisations or individuals, on two central issues: a “anti”, anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal; and afterwards, a “pro” issue, a proposal for an inter-religious, inter-ethnic, inter-cultural society where differences are not an obstacle to coexistence. Many movements, religious or no, have ideas that can be common, integrating and far-removed from the excluding neo-liberalism. For example, forgiveness in Catholicism, inter-dependence in Buddhism, community and communion with nature in Pachamama or identification of roots among people of African descent… there is plenty more. We are not talking about an institutional coordinator but rather a project where no one is excluded.

* Emeritus professor at the University Carlos III of Madrid, the director of that university’s Ignacio Ellacuría Chair of Theology and Sciences of Religions, a member of the International Committee of the World Forum on Theology and Liberation and the author of over sixty books, the latest entitled Hermano islam (Trotta publishing house).

Article summarising the day event.