Dimensions of religion
Ninian Smart
Ninian Smart
• Roderick Ninian Smart was a Scottish writer and university
educator. He was a pioneer in the field of secular religious studies.
• Educated at Glasgow Academy, he was in the British Army
Intelligence Corps from 1945-48, where he learned Chinese (via
Confucian texts) and had his first extended contact with Sri Lankan
Buddhism. He continued his studies in philosophy at Oxford
University, graduating in 1949, and subsequently in Sanskrit and
Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, at Yale.
• In the 1960s, Smart began challenging what he saw as the
‘intellectual hegemony’ of much contemporary Christian theology.
Following his appointment in 1967 to the first professorial chair of
religious studies at Lancaster, he developed a new department
which, unusually for the time, made no assumptions about the
religious convictions of its staff and was attentive to diverse
religions and multi-disciplinary in its approach.
• In the 1970s Smart was also involved in several initiatives in Britain
to broaden the public religious education curriculum, previously
purely Christian, to include the range of world religions.
Smart’s sevenfold scheme of study:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
•
Doctrinal
Para-Historical
Mythological
Ethical
Ritual
Historical
Experiential
Institutional
Material and artistic *(added in his 1989 text)
Smart maintained that the Historical factors (4-6) could be studied empirically, whereas the
Para-Historical factors (1-3) required engagement and dialogue in order to be fully
understood.
1. Doctrinal
• Systematic formulation of religious teachings
in an intellectually coherent form
2. Mythological
• Stories (often regarded as revealed) that pass
from generation to generation. Narratives
sometimes fit point towards a complete and
systematic interpretation of the Universe,
God and Humanity.
3. Ethical
• Rules about human behaviour (often
regarded as revealed from supernatural
realm)
4. Ritual
• Forms and orders of ceremonies (private
and/or public) (often regarded as revealed)
5. Experiential
• Dread, guilt, awe, mystery, devotion,
liberation, ecstasy, inner peace, bliss (private)
6. Institutional
• Belief system is shared and attitudes
practiced by a group. Often rules for
identifying community membership and
participation (public)
7. Material
• Ordinary objects or places that symbolize or
manifest the sacred or supernatural