What parts of these criticisms, if any, strike you as plausible?

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What Do YOU Think?Your Visit to the Hsi Lai Temple in Southern California

I magine that you’re walking up the broad fl ight of stone steps to the Hsi Lai (shee lai) Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, California, just east of Los Angeles. Hsi Lai claims the distinction of being the largest Buddhist temple in North

America, and it certainly looks like it from where you stand! When you get inside, you look around and realize that this is a religious building complex like none other you have ever seen. There seem to be no large-group ceremonies going on, at least right now. Instead, small groups of wor- shipers and tourists come and go, doing their own thing. Some off er incense, a few are carrying fl owers to leave in the temple, others are praying and meditating in front of statues, and out in the courtyard there are people doing meditative exercise routines.

Most of the neatly dressed families coming to this tem- ple do not seem to refl ect deeply here on their faith. You see nobody reading Buddhist religious texts, nor does any monk teach or preach to a group. Rather, most worshipers come here just to sense something of the sacred and be in its presence. Their minds are calmed by the familiar architecture, by the many statues of the Buddha, by the soft smell of incense. They engage in quiet, low- key activities.

You notice people who aren’t doing tradi- tional Buddhist worship. You wonder if this means that they might come

from other religious traditions. Some people you see are just tourists, a few of them mostly interested in the tasty vegetarian buffet lunch served every day. But per- haps they too have come to absorb the beauty of this place, and at least some of its religious meaning. This temple was founded not only to bridge the differences between different groups of Buddhists, but also to be a bridge between Eastern and Western religions and ways of life.

As you are introduced to the academic study of religion, you may fi nd yourself bewildered— by the varieties of religion, by

distinguishing religions from other move- ments, by the different academic

methods used to study religions, and by hot topics such

as religion and gen- der, ecology, and vio- lence. You may have questions about matters of fact and value: is one religion true, are dif- ferent religions true, or are none of them true? What might it all mean for you?

“Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong.” —Karen Armstrong

Religion is mostly about fi nding one’s way to eternal life, however that is understood.

Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

h hh kWhat Do YOU Think?

< As sunlight moves over the Eastern Hemisphere, one can see the regions where most world religions were born. The new perspec- tive of Earth from space has helped to stimulate global thinking in religions.

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4 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

These issues may occur to you as well:

● Formal “separation of church and state” is strong in the United States and Canada, but religion and poli- tics are mixed in powerful ways here and around the world. The government of China’s continuous pressure on Buddhism in Tibet and on the Falun Gong movement is just one example.

● Most people in North America affi rm the importance of religion for their lives, but fewer actually practice it. For example, almost 90 percent of all North Americans believe in the existence of God or gods, but only about half regularly participate in religious services or in other religious practices such as prayer, meditation, or giving to those in need.

● Despite a high level of religious belief in the United States, most Americans have surprisingly little knowl- edge of their faith. Stephen Prothero (PROTH-er-oh), a professor of religion at Boston University who has appeared on The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, has shown that many Americans—even many who attend services often— are “religious illiterates.” As Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times wrote in summarizing a 2010 study of religious knowledge in the United States, “Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.”1 In Western Europe, most people don’t hold formally to a religion, but they know a good deal about religion, because it is a required academic subject in the schools.

● Is religion in the world shrinking, or is it growing? Actually, both. Although some parts of Christianity and Judaism are shrinking, other parts of these religions are growing, and Islam and Buddhism are also growing. The number of people in North America who formally adhere to

1 Laurie Goodstein, “Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans,” New York Times (city edition), September 28, 2010, page A17.

no religion at all is growing, but certain religious practices such as prayer are stronger than ever.

● Most of the major religions of the world come from ancient times. However, every decade of the last two hundred years has seen new religious movements born around the world, some of them now powerful, some controversial. You might wonder why we still get new religions—don’t we have enough already?

● Religion has evoked some of both the best and the worst in human life. Great acts of love, service, and even self-sacrifi ce have arisen from religious conviction. Religion has inspired some of the world’s great- est music, art, and architecture, and has lifted the human spirit in count- less ways. Ironically, it has also been the source of much destruction.

LO1 What Is Religion? Religion is found across all cultures and throughout the entire span of human history. Evidence of early human remains shows signs of religion, including veneration of animal spirits in art and human burials that suggest belief in a life beyond death. Most anthropologists today have concluded that Neanderthal humans who lived around 200,000 years ago may have had religious beliefs and practices, but that Cro-Magnon humans (around 35,000 years ago) defi nitely had religion. From the dawn of human civilizations until modern times, religion has shaped the beliefs and values of all human cultures.

Defining RELIGION But this talk of the prevalence of religion leads us to ask: What exactly is religion? Defi ning academic subjects can be a boring business, but on the subject of religion, most people have something interesting to say. Grappling with this question involves both careful, objective academic thinking and personal engagement. The University of Cambridge scholar John Bowker remarks, “We all know what [religion] is until someone asks us to tell them.”2 If pressed for an answer, most people in the Western world would say fi rst that religion is based on belief in God and obedience to God. However, do

2 John Bowker, ed., Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), xv.

“Americans are by all

measures a deeply religious

people, but they are also

deeply ignorant about

religion.” —Laurie Goodstein

W H AT I S R E L I G I O N ? 5

they mean the God followed in a particular religion or something more general, such as “gods”? Some major religions—certain branches of Hinduism and Buddhism, for example—have relatively little teaching about gods. A few religions such as Jainism have no gods at all.

Some people around the world would give a sec- ond answer to “What is religion?”—that it is a system of morality. On fi rst refl ection, this might seem to be a more all-encompassing defi nition than the previous one. Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun and now a popular writer on world religions, recently wrote that “Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong,” and that the value systems in reli- gions set out to deal with that wrong.3 The three main Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam— have strong moral teachings. Confucianism is so cen- tered on morality that the issue of whether it is a social philosophy or a religion is often debated. However, a few religions, such as Shinto, have little or no devel- oped teaching about a way of life. All this shows how our prior perceptions color our answer to the ques- tion “What is religion?” Despite the diffi culties of this question, many scholars from various academic fi elds have attempted to answer it in as objective a manner as possible.

Notable Definitions of RELIGION Another way of studying the issue of what religion means is by looking at defi nitions that have been offered in the past and have had some infl uence on the discussion. Here is a sampling of how religion has been defi ned in the Western world, by scholars and others. Religion is …

“The feeling of absolute dependence” —Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian theologian (1799)

3 Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994), 1.

“The opiate of the people” —Karl Marx, nineteenth-century founder of communism (1843)

“A set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of”

—Mark Twain, American writer (1879)

“The daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable”

—Ambrose Bierce, American social critic and humorist (1911)

“A unifi ed system of beliefs and practices … which unite into one single moral community”

—Émile Durkheim, French sociologist of religion (1915)

“What grows out of, and gives expression to, experience of the holy in its various aspects”

—Rudolf Otto, German scholar of religion (1917)

“All bunk” —Thomas Edison, American inventor (ca. 1925)

“Something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines”

—Bertrand Russell, British philosopher (1928)

“An illusion deriving its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires”

—Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (1932)

“The state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern … which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life”

—Paul Tillich, Christian theologian (1957)

“What the individual does with his own solitariness” —A. N. Whitehead, British philosopher (1960)

“A set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence”

—Robert Bellah, contemporary American sociologist

“Feeling warmer in our hearts, more connected to others, more connected to something greater, and having a sense of peace”

—Goldie Hawn, contemporary American fi lm actress

The Definition Used in This Book Each student will have to wrestle personally with defi n- ing religion, because scholarship isn’t settled on any one defi nition and because defi ning it involves some subjectivity. Here’s the defi – nition used in this book: Religion is a pattern of beliefs and practices that expresses and enacts what a community regards as

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religion Pattern of beliefs and practices that expresses and enacts what a community regards as sacred and/or ultimate about life

6 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

sacred and/or ultimate about life.

Let’s “unpack” this defi nition. First, religion is a pattern of beliefs and prac- tices. All religions believe certain things about ultimate reality in or beyond the world. They answer existential ques- tions most humans have:

● Why am I here?

● What does it mean to be human?

● How can what is wrong in the world—and in me—be corrected?

● Where am I—and the world—going?

They answer these questions in different ways. The dif- ferent religions believe in one God (monotheism) or many gods (polytheism). They believe, with or without belief in a god, in a world soul in Hinduism, in Nirvana in Buddhism, and in the Dao (also spelled Tao, with both pronounced “dow”) in both Daoism (Taoism) and Confucianism. They practice these beliefs in certain ways: in worship, rituals of passage at various points of the individual life cycle, meditation, and ordinary actions in daily life. Each religion has its own way of arranging these beliefs and practices into a distinctive pattern. Second, this pattern expresses and enacts what is sacred. Sacred refers to what is considered most holy and important, whether in this world, in a supernatural world that transcends this one, or both. Religions draw on their experience of the sacred, both ancient and contempo rary; express the sacred in all of its aspects; and enact it by continuing to make it real for believers.

Because common West ern notions of the “sacred” or “holy” often entail belief in a holy God, we add this further phrase to our defi nition: ultimate about life. This “ultimate” may be a principle, an impersonal force, or a spiritual power, hidden in the world or beyond it. Sacredness or “the ultimate” in world religions is wider than a divine being. Third, note that it is a community of like-minded people that forms a religion. Religions sometimes begin with an individual (Buddha, Confucius, Jesus), but they become social communities of shared belief and practice even during the lifetime or in the sec- ond generation following the life of these founders. They persist through history as communities of religion. Not all religions try to grow throughout the world, but all of them are concerned with passing themselves from gen- eration to generation, thus becoming “traditions.”

The meaning of religion is typically traced to the ancient Latin world religio (ree-LIG-ee-oh), derived

from the verb religere, “to bind/tie fast.” This verb is itself derived from the word ligere, “to bind” (compare our words ligament and ligature). Of course, the mean- ing of a word today can’t be limited to what it meant thousands of years ago, but this ancient meaning shows how religion began and still illustrates nicely the different parts of our defi nition. Ancient Romans used religio in several senses. First, it means a supernatural constraint on behavior, doing what is good, and especially avoiding evil. It “binds” people to what is right. Second, it entails a holy awe for the gods and sacred power in general. Third, religio means a system of life that binds people together in a group and orients them to the gods. Finally, it entails the practices of rites and ceremonies by which the Roman people expressed and enacted their religion.4

Although the Romans and some other peoples used the term religion for their system of belief and prac- tice, different religions of the world call themselves by different names, most of them not using the word reli- gion at all. For example, Daoism is “the Way” to most Daoists; they don’t refer to it as “the Daoist religion.” Many Hindus call their religion “the Eternal Teaching”; Buddhists sometimes call theirs a “school”; and many Jews, Christians, and Muslims prefer the term faith instead of religion. But no matter what they call them- selves, they are in fact religions as that term is used in scholarship and teaching. However, the defi nition given above doesn’t rule out the necessity for world religions students to wrestle with this question on their own.

A good defi nition will carefully identify the subject being defi ned, but it can also be used to exclude other things from the defi nition. How does the defi nition given above exclude things that aren’t religion? Here are two examples. First, the defi nition speaks of religion as a system based on the sacred or on ultimate value; other systems that do not view themselves as religions do not usually speak about the “sacred” or “ultimate.” This is true of most political ideologies and parties such as Democrats and Republicans, academic philosophies, systems of popular psychology like that of “Dr. Phil” McGraw, and so on. (This isn’t meant to demean these other groups; many people fi nd a great deal of meaning and inspiration in them.) Therefore, people who belong to nonreligious groups can also practice a variety of religion or no religion at all. Second, a pattern of belief held by only one person can’t be a religion as we defi ne it here. Such do-it-yourself religion may be popular in Europe and North America, and it is usually sincere and important to the person who holds it, but it doesn’t bring with it a social bond. Some scholars sometimes refer to this as private religion, but

4 P. G. W. Glare, Oxford Latin Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 1605–06.

monotheism Belief in one God

polytheism Belief in many gods

private religion Pattern of belief held by only one person

W H Y S T U DY R E L I G I O N ? 7

others question whether “private religion” is really religion at all.

LO2 Why Study Religion? At fi rst, the question “Why Study Religion?” may seem pointless to you. You might say, “I’m taking the course, aren’t I?” You may go on to give your reasons for taking this course: to get course credit, to fulfi ll a cul- tural studies requirement at your school and maybe pick up some knowledge and skills along the way, and ultimately to get an academic degree. But let’s explore a bit further why students today should study religion.

Studying the Persistence of Religion in the Modern World Religion should be studied—among other reasons—to understand its persistence in the modern world, which in many ways is not hospitable to religious belief and practice. The rise of secularism, or life without religion, has challenged most religions for the past two hundred years. Today, the secular approach to life rejects religion

for the perceived evils of fundamentalism (“Look what happened on 9/11!” is commonly heard); the inappro- priateness of religious training for children (“Children should be allowed to decide for themselves when they are older”); and the better view on life offered by science (“Religion is false, because we know about evolution”). Secularism has led to a lessening of religious belief and practice, and in North America to widespread illiteracy about religion. Many people, including about half of all Europeans and a growing number of North Americans, are neither especially religious nor completely irreligious; they are “in the middle” between them. They com- bine aspects of secular life with aspects of religious life.

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In Avatar, indigenous peoples prepare to defend their world—especially the “Tree of Souls” connection with the spirit world—from colonizers.

secularism Life without religion

Is Religion a Dirty Word?

To some religious people, religion is, if not a dirty word, at least a derogatory one. Some Christians, Jews, and Muslims think that “religion” is a bad thing. Many religious people want to have a strong connection with God/ ultimate reality/cosmic power, but not a “religion.” They call their own beliefs a “faith,” “teaching,” “school,” or something similar, but they often call other people’s belief systems, somewhat pejoratively, “religion.” In his best-selling book written for Christians, The Shack, William Young even has Jesus say, “I’m not too big on religion.”

People who don’t like any religion at all also use religion in a negative way. An increasing number of people in North America and Europe say, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” A 2008 documentary fi lm featuring comic and social critic Bill Maher was titled not Religious, but Religulous, Maher’s unfl attering combination of religion and ridiculous.

“I’m not too big on religion.” —Jesus, in

The Shack

To study world religions well, you have to put aside prejudice, whether pro or con, if you have it. All scholars of religion use religion as an academic, neutral, descriptive term, and you should, too, regardless of your own personal stance on religious belief and practice. To use an analogy, many people today, including students, often use the word politics prejudicially. But to study well in the academic fi eld called “political science,” one must put aside prejudice about the term politics. The same is true for the study of religion.

A Closer Look:

8 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

This means that reports of the death of reli- gion are mistaken. Religion persists today and is often on the rise, even as secularism has become more widespread. More than three-quarters of the world’s people identify with one or more religions. We still fi nd religion everywhere: in high culture, in popular culture (for example, the 2009 fi lm Avatar and the rock band U2), and in everyday life in North America and around the world. The religions of the world are now present in North America, and almost every religion is as close as one’s keyboard, on the Internet. In the Soviet Union and China—which tried with Communist fervor in the twentieth century to suppress and even extinguish all religion—it has come back with vigor. The government of China is now bringing back Confucian texts and teachings to counteract the “money-fi rst” mentality among so many young people there. At the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century, religion is at or near the center of global issues and cultural confl ict. Religion has an increas- ingly visible role in national and even interna- tional politics. One simply can’t understand many of the confl icts in our world with- out a basic knowledge of religion. What’s more, new religious movements are aris- ing every decade, so that the number of religions in the world is increasing, not decreasing. Religion is emerging as one of

the main markers of human identity in the twenty-fi rst century, along with gen- der, class, and ethnicity.5

Why does religion keep on thriving? First, despite the challenges to religion, it continues to be a powerful resource for everyday life all around the world. Religion still provides meaning, strength, and joy to many. Another reason is that most religious traditions have proven them- selves adaptable to the ever-changing situations of human

5 Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2007), 5.

life. They’ve changed over the thousands of years that many of them have existed, and

the study of these changes forms a large part of the study of religion. (If religions can’t or don’t change, they usually die

out.) Many religions even have some room for skepticism and for the secular, which gives them strength in our rapidly changing world. In many places, especially in central and south-

ern Africa, indigenous religions tied to local cultures

are fading, but universal religions

such as Christianity and Islam have taken their place.

Overall, religion is powerful and persistent, and it shows no signs of disappearing. For everyone who wants to be informed about the world, religion is an important part of understanding it.

The study of religion is also a persis- tent part of the academic scene. Around

750,000 undergraduates take a reli- gion course each year in the United

States. Enrollment in world religion courses in the United States has grown rapidly after the religiously connected attacks on this country on September 11, 2001. Some of the students decide to make the

study of religion their major or minor. Religions are taught in most

liberal arts colleges, as well as in private and state universities. Leading universities

that didn’t have a religious studies program in the past because of a more secular orientation estab- lished one in the twentieth century, among them Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and Stanford. In 2009 the American Historical Association reported that more historians in the U.S. now specialize in religious issues than in any others. Even the government of China, which is offi cially atheistic, is setting up undergraduate and graduate degree programs in religious studies in several of its most selective universi- ties. What’s more, the study of religion in U.S. K–12 public schools is growing, with new guidelines from the American Academy of Religion, an association of religion professors.6

In sum, the academic study of religion is alive and well.

6 “American Academy of Religion Guidelines for Teaching about Religion in K–12 Public Schools in the United States,” http:// www.aarweb.org/Publications/Online_Publications/Curriculum_ Guidelines/AARK-12CurriculumGuidelines.pdf.

The rise of

secularism has

challenged most

religions for the

past two hundred

years.

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Religion is powerful and persistent,

and it shows no signs

of disappearing.

D I M E N S I O N S O F R E L I G I O N 9

What the Academic Study of Religion Can Offer You Intellectual exploration to shape one’s knowledge and values is one of the joys of being a student, but most students today also have valid concerns about how studying religion will help them to earn a living in today’s economy. A small proportion of students in religion courses choose to make religion the center of a professional career, either as the leader of a religious community (such as a rabbi, priest, or minister) or as an academic specialist in higher education. Some students take a world religion course to clarify or strengthen their own religious knowledge and values. They real- ize the truth in the proverb fi rst said by Max Müller, “Those who know only one religion know none.”

Most students take a world religion course to learn more about an important aspect of the world today. This study offers students training in a unique combina- tion of academic and everyday skills such as these:

● The ability to understand how religious thought and practice are related to particular social and cultural contexts

● The ability to understand the religious dimensions of confl icts within and between nations

● An appreciation of the complexities of religious language and values

● An ability to understand and explain important texts both critically and empathetically

● Cross-cultural understanding, or what is now becoming known academically as “cultural intel- ligence” or “cross-cultural competence”

Few academic fi elds bring together so many different forms of analysis as religion does. With this broad lib- eral arts background, many religion majors or minors go on to study law, business, education, and medicine in graduate school. In short, the study of religion offers a foundation for a successful and fulfi lling career, in addi- tion to growth in personal knowledge and satisfaction.

LO3 Dimensions of Religion As we examine the varieties of religious experience, all sorts of human beliefs and practices come into view. Religion seems to be as wide as human life itself.

This was illustrated in one American publishing com- pany’s poster, which read: “Books about religion are also about love, sex, politics, AIDS, war, peace, jus- tice, ecology, philosophy, addiction, recovery, ethics, race, gender, dissent, technology, old age, New Age, faith, heavy metal, morality, beauty, God, psychology, money, dogma, freedom, history, death, and life.” To get a grip on this complexity, various scholars have organized the dimensions of religion in various ways. These patterns are somewhat artifi cial, but they’re helpful in grasping the mass of information avail- able about religions, for both beginning students and experienced scholars alike. The prominent scholar of comparative religion Ninian Smart fi rst laid out fi ve dimensions in the 1960s, but by the 1990s he had come to think there were nine. Following Smart, Rodney Stark and Charles Glock have systematized the various interlocking aspects of religion in six dimensions.7

The Cognitive Dimension Religions have cognitive (thinking) dimensions that teach their followers what it is necessary to know. Most religions teach deep knowledge about their gods and founders, often in stories. They teach about the creation of the world, the meaning of life, and ways to overcome death. They teach about human identity, both individ- ual and social: gender, class, ethnicity, and others. They provide ways of understanding what the world is and what it should be. Often the history of religion itself is explained so that followers can know that they stand in a great tradition. The cognitive dimension of religion entails analyzing and systematizing knowledge, as well as learning it and passing it on. Its teachings are framed in stories, short statements that summarize beliefs (for example, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism), songs, proverbs, laws, and many other forms. The cognitive dimensions of religion typically grow so comprehen- sive and important that religions can contain an entire worldview. However, we must keep in mind that there is often a signifi cant gap between the offi cial levels of religious teachings and what is believed and practiced by most people.

The Ethical Dimension Ethics are important in almost all religions, because, as we saw above, religions seek to correct what they perceive to be wrong in the world. Personal ethics are

7 Rodney Stark and Charles Glock, Patterns of Religious Commitment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).

“Those who know only one religion

know none.” —Max Müller

10 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

found in most religions, but the emphasis is strongly on social ethics. All religions have moral expectations for marriage, families, religious societies or congrega- tions, social classes, and even whole nations. We may think of religious ethics as “rules” more negative than positive, but most religions have a balance of both “do this” and “don’t do that.” These systems of social ethics sometimes become the law of the nation where religion is not separated from the state, as in Shari’a, religion-based law in some offi cially Muslim countries. Values, norms, and patterns of behavior in religions are internalized with the help of moral rules. Different people and activities serve to shape religious behavior: living models such as professional religious specialists (clergy, monks, gurus, and the like); legendary models such as saviors, saints, and immortals; and behavior in the overall group. When social morality based on religion is

constantly, care- fully practiced, religion becomes a way of life.

The Ritual Dimension Ritual is symbolic action in worship, meditation, or other religious ceremonies. It’s symbolic and sometimes abstract, but meant to achieve very practical goals. When most people in North America today think of religion, they think of the ritual ceremonies of worship. But ritual also includes formal and informal prayer, sac- rifi ce, chanting of scriptures, public processions, and even pilgrimage. Pilgrimage—travel to a special des- tination to increase one’s devotion or improve one’s religious status—doesn’t often come to the minds of modern North Americans as a religious ritual, but in 2009 millions of people worldwide went on a pilgrim- age and spent the equivalent of 18 billion U.S. dollars on it. Ritual can be long, elaborate ceremonies performed by religious specialists or simple daily acts like such as a short prayer before eating a meal or going to sleep. Rituals are directed to one God, many gods, or to spir- its or deceased ancestors. Ritual is not only symbolic, but also effective; it helps to reenact and reapply the deep truths of a religion to people in the present. Mircea Eliade (MUHR-chuh eh-lee-AH-deh), who died in 1986, advanced his infl uential theory of “eternal return” about myths. This theory holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate past acts of the gods, but actually participate in them and bring worshipers to the gods. In some religions, sacrifi ce of food or drink is thought to “feed” the gods or deceased ancestors and make them happy with those who offer sacrifi ce to them.

Within religions there is often a mixed attachment to ritual. For example, in Christianity some Protestants minimize formal rituals, whereas most Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox have many elaborate ritu- als. Sufi Muslims emphasize pilgrimage to God “in the heart,” in part to contrast with other Muslims who view

ritual Symbolic action in worship, meditation, or other religious ceremonies

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Ethical and ritual dimensions come together in a Hindu wedding in Ahmedabad, India.

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D I M E N S I O N S O F R E L I G I O N 11

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the pilgrimage to Mecca as the highlight of their life. Some Hindus have given up the rituals of the home and temple to seek salvation in purely solitary meditation. Although ritual may be downplayed in favor of other dimensions of religion, it never completely disappears.

The Institutional Dimension Because religions are social more than personal, they give an organizational structure to their religious com- munity and (usually) the wider society. Moreover, many religions are internally diverse, with different institu- tional structures for each internal group. Most religions come from ancient, traditional societies, so they aren’t “democratic” organizations; power in religious institu- tions tends to fl ow from the top down. This is also true of new religious movements (NRMs), religious groups that have arisen since the nineteenth century and now have suffi cient size and longevity to merit academic study. They are typically founded by a charismatic leader, such as L. Ron Hubbard of the Scientology movement, who wields great power. Religions typically make

a valid distinc- tion between specialists (reli- gious healers, priests, monks) and others, typically called “laity.” This ins t i tu t iona l dimension is so important that people often speak of “organized religion.”

The Aesthetic Dimension The aesthetic (beauty) dimension is the sensory element of religion. Beauty appeals to the ratio- nal mind, but has a special appeal to human

emotions. This dimension encompasses religion’s sounds and smells, spaces, holy places, and landscapes. It also includes its main symbols (Judaism’s six-pointed Star of David, Buddhism’s wheel), devotional images and statu- ary, and all the religious items of material culture. Islamic religious art tends to be abstract, because of strong pro- hibitions of anything that could enable the worship of other gods. Most Hindu art, on the other hand, is fully representational, some of it even explicitly sexual. The aesthetic dimension encompasses the architecture and decoration of religious buildings, as well as works of music, poetry, and hymns. It also includes ritual gestures: hand gestures in yoga, kneeling bodies in prayer, hands pressed together in Hindu greet- ing and Christian prayer, and many others.

Beauty adorns a wall and the dome of a mosque in Isfahan, Iraq, to the glory of Allah and inspiration of those who worship.

new religious movements (NRMs) Religious groups that have arisen since the nineteenth century and now have sufficient size and longevity to merit academic study

Dimensions of Religion

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Participating in initiation rituals, as these ten-year-old males of the Yao tribe in Malawi, binds the initiates

closer to their gods and their tribe.

12 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

The Emotional Dimension This dimension includes the particular emotions and wider “moods” experienced in religion. They include senses of awe, fear, and love. They also include some religions’ hope for life after death or other religions’ hope for no more life after death. The emotional dimension includes confi dence received to cope with death, suffering, and evil. The emotional self-confi dence and sense of purpose that religion brings are so notable that “losing my religion” or “getting religion” about something are common expressions. The emotional dimension includes the emo- tions that come with belonging and per- sonal identity, as well as with concern for others. It also includes extraordinary feel- ings and experiences such as isolation, feelings of union

with an ultimate reality or God, and hallucinations. The emotional dimension of religion looms large today in the Western world, where belief for many is primarily a matter of emotion. In the words of the 1981 hit song

by the rock group Journey, put to more recent use by such tele- vision shows as Family Guy and Glee, “Don’t stop believ- ing, hold on to that feeling.”

To conclude this sec- tion, sometimes people reduce religion to one or two of these dimensions. For example, they may suppose that religion is primarily an ethical system, a system of teaching about the divine, an institution, or even a feel- good emotion. This reduction is to be expected, but it’s wrong. Almost all religions are multidimensional. That the many dimensions of religion are closely related to one another was suggested by the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who once wrote that the power of religion lies in its grasp of this truth: “The order of the world, the depth of reality of the world, the value of the world in its whole and in its parts, the beauty of the world, the zest for life, the peace of life, and the mastery of evil, are all bound together.”8

LO4 Ways of Studying Religion The study of religion is pursued today with a wide vari- ety of methods. These center largely on six different

academic disciplines, some of which you may be studying. We’ll consider the methods and the work of promi- nent scholars who have contributed to them, and along the way we’ll encounter different theories of the ori- gin and purpose of religion. Before we discuss these methods, however, we should deal with the important mat- ter of the difference between theology and religious studies.

Theology and Religious Studies The study of religion in America today is pursued in two main ways. Theology is the study of a religion, based on a religious commitment to that religion,

8 Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York: World, 1960), 115.

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The sense of purpose that

religion brings is so notable

that we speak informally of

“losing my religion” or “gett ing

religion” about something.

Sensual Hindu art put to spiritual use: a goddess in a temple sculpture

theology Study of a religion, based on a religious commitment to that religion, in order to promote it

WAY S O F S T U DY I N G R E L I G I O N 13

in order to promote it. It is study from the “inside.” Christian theology has been an important part of the Western university since the oldest universities were founded in thirteenth-century Europe. Theology is pursued today at many American schools, especially those with religious affi liations. To use the words of the eleventh-century Christian theologian Anselm (AHN-sehlm) of Canterbury, England, theology is “faith seeking understanding.” This statement is true of theological study in other religions as well, in both Eastern and Western religions. The university thought to be oldest in the world still existing today–– at the Al-Azhar (al-ah- ZAHR) mosque in Cairo, Egypt––was founded for theological study. Theology is older in Buddhism and Hinduism than it is in Christianity or Islam. Theology in these religions has typically relied closely on philosophy and tex- tual studies to carry out its intellectual work.

The second branch is called religious studies, a relatively new fi eld of academic study of religion that aims to understand all religious traditions, not just Christianity and Judaism, and to do so objectively, in a religiously neutral way, from the “outside.” It doesn’t ask students to make religious commitments or even require students to refl ect on those they have. In the Enlightenment (ca. 1650–1800), the independence and separation of human reason from religion had developed to the extent that a schol- arly treatment of religion independent from theol- ogy could begin. Reason, not faith, was now seeking understanding of religion. By about 1875, religious studies was emerging as an academic fi eld. Now uti- lizing the tools from many other academic fi elds in the humanities and sciences, religious studies arises out of a broad intellectual interest in the nature of religion and the different world religions. It offers a unique, nonthreatening opportunity for students to ask important questions about religion, different world religions, and life itself.

History History is the scholarly study of the past, whether that past is remote (the beginnings of human civi- lization, for example) or recent (the events of last year). It seeks to fi nd out what really happened and why. This task is important because, as the historian Philip Jenkins has written about religion, “Virtually everybody uses the past in everyday discourse, but the historical record on which they draw is littered with myths, half-truths, and

folk-history.”9 When history is applied to religion, rich and important knowl- edge emerges, because religions come from the past, both remote and recent. History studies the process of a religion’s beginnings, growth, diversity, decline, and so on. An example is a recent vol- ume of essays entitled Sacred Schisms: How Religions Divide, which carefully studies internal splits in a dozen reli- gions and draws conclusions about the different factors and events involved in religious splits.10 History has almost

always been a main method in the study of religion. The Oxford historian of Indian culture F. Max

Müller (1823–1900), whom we already met above, is one of the founders of religious studies—some would say the founder. He edited a fi fty-volume collection of ancient sacred scriptures from the main Asian religions,

9 Philip Jenkins, “Ancient and Modern: What the History of Religion Teaches Us about Contemporary Global Trends,” ARDA Guiding Paper, http://www.thearda.com/rrh/papers/guidingpapers/jenkins.asp, accessed 7/17/10.

10 James R. Lewis and Sarah M. Lewis, Sacred Schisms: How Religions Divide (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

After World War I, historians

would become less naïve

about their ability to be

“scientifi cally” objective about

their work.

Al-Azhar University in Cairo, founded in 972 C.E.

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religious studies Academic study of religion that aims to understand all religious traditions objectively, in a religiously neutral way

14 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

translated for the fi rst time into reliable English edi- tions (the Sacred Books of the East series, 1879–1910), a foundational contribution to research and teach- ing in religious history. He promoted a scholarly dis- cussion on developmental patterns in religious history and on the relation of myth, ritual, and magic to reli- gion in the past. In his Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873), Müller argued that religious scholar- ship can be fully scientifi c in its methods and results. It can collect, classify, and compare religious texts just as scientifi cally as a botanist collects and studies plants. Müller’s investigations led him and others to a supposed “oldest stage” of European and Asian culture and reli- gion that extended from the Indians to the Germanic tribes—what he called the “Indo-Germanic” or “Aryan” stage beginning around 2000 B.C.E. By the end of the 1800s, the notion of near-steady, almost evolutionary progress often assumed in these studies (and in much of European and North American higher learning and cul- ture at that time) started to fade, and the surprising hor- rors of the First World War (1914–1918) ended almost all assumptions of automatic progress in religion and culture. Müller’s work was largely text-based, and based in scriptures as well. This was a necessary fi rst step, and a part of other text-based studies in other specializa- tions in history, but the fi eld of history would widen in the twentieth century to social history, popular history, and even the history of material culture. It would also become less naïve about the ability of historians to be “scientifi cally” objective about their work.

One particular approach taken by some historians of religions is the “History of Religions School.” This school of thought began in Germany in the nineteenth century, lasting with some strength into the middle of the twentieth century, and is still occasionally found today in Europe and North America. It was the fi rst to study reli- gion systematically as a social and cultural phenomenon. It depicted religion as evolving with human culture, from “primitive” polytheism to ethical monotheism. Religions were divided into stages of progression from simple to complex societies, especially from polytheistic to mono- theistic and from informal to organized. Despite the obvi- ous faults of such an approach, the nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in knowl- edge about other religions, an increase caused by imperial expansion by European pow- ers and the growth of a genuine interest to know about other cultures. For the fi rst time, an

accurate “map” of the different religions of the world emerged (see Map 1.1).

Psychology Psychology deals with the structure and activity of the human mind. It is the scientifi c study of individ- ual behavior, including emotions and other thoughts. Psychology has an interest in religion because of reli- gion’s role in shaping human behavior—for example in coping with the challenges of life-cycle changes and death. Psychology also focuses on how religions under- stand the human self, including gender. It has been particularly concerned with research in conversion, mysticism, and meditation.

Psychology sought at fi rst to explain the origins of religion in terms of the subconscious mind. Sigmund Freud (froyd) and Carl Gustav Jung (yoong), the found- ers of psychoanalysis, sought in opposing ways to trace the origins from the strongest, most basic human needs and drives. Freud (1856–1939) and his school regarded religion as a neurotic condition that needed therapy when it persisted into adulthood. (See his defi nition of religion on page 5.) He held that religion, particularly a belief in God, derives from adults’ need for a father fi g- ure when they achieve independence from their actual fathers. These ideas can be found in his books The Future of an Illusion, in which the “illusion” is religion, and Moses and Monotheism. Freud later admitted that a person could experience an “oceanic feeling” of reli- gion in a positive way, but later Freudians would con- tinue to be mostly negative toward religion until about the 1980s, when some change began.

Freud’s pupil Jung (1875–1961), on the other hand, was appreciative of religion. In his books Modern Man in Search of a Soul and Memories, Dreams, Refl ections, he held that conceptions of the divine, whether of god(s) or some other form of ultimate reality, were related to an ancient archetypal pattern that resides in the sub- conscious of all human minds. Religion enables each developing person to bring out and employ this arche- type as the individual personality grows and achieves what Jung called “individuation,” or personal maturity and wholeness. The notion of “individuation” would become important in the human potential/humanistic branch of American psychology. This positive arche- type is found in all societies, Jung argued, and his theory became important for many researchers in the academic discipline of cultural anthropology.

William James (1842–1910), a professor at Harvard, was an American founder of the fi eld of psychology. In his still-important book The Varieties of Religious

WAY S O F S T U DY I N G R E L I G I O N 15

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What parts of these criticisms, if any, strike you as plausible?

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