Studying Religion
Widely used as a primer, a class text, or just a provocation to critical thinking,
Studying Religion clearly explains the methods and theories employed in
the academic study of religion by tackling the problem of how we define
religion. Written for newcomers to the field, its chapters explore the three
main ways in which religion is defined and, along the way, also considers a
range of related topics, from the history and functions of religion to public
discourse on religion, religion in the courts, and the classification of religions. The works of classic and contemporary scholars—from Karl Marx
and Sigmund Freud to Bruce Lincoln and Wendy Doniger—are analyzed
and explored in its readable chapters and detailed supporting materials.
Studying Religion represents a shift away from the traditional world religions approach and, instead, invites readers to consider how they divide
up, name, and come to know the world around them.
Thoroughly revised throughout, this second edition now includes a
significantly expanded glossary, summaries of technical terms and global
case studies at the end of each chapter, and additional biographies of key
scholars. This book will be invaluable to all students of religious studies—
whether in the introductory class or as an example of an alternative way of
approaching the field.
Russell T. McCutcheon is University Research Professor and Chair of the
Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, USA.
Studying Religion
An Introduction
Second edition
Russell T. McCutcheon
Second edition published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2019 Russell T. McCutcheon
The right of Russell T. McCutcheon to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McCutcheon, Russell T., 1961- author.
Title: Studying religion : an introduction / Russell T. McCutcheon.
Description: 2 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2019. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018032417| ISBN 9780815353621 (hardback) | ISBN
9780815353638 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781351112079 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Religion—Study and teaching.
Classification: LCC BL41 .M36 2019 | DDC 200.71—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032417
ISBN: 978-0-8153-5362-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-8153-5363-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-11207-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
This book is dedicated to the legacy of Mary Douglas
(1921–2007), a scholar whose work has influenced my own in
fundamental and far-reaching ways.
There is nothing more difficult to convey than reality in
all its ordinariness. . . . Sociologists run into this problem
all the time: How can we make the ordinary extraordinary
and evoke ordinariness in such a way that people will see
just how extra-ordinary it is?
Pierre Bourdieu, On Television
Contents
Preface to the second edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction: what is the study of religion?
ix
xiii
1
1
What’s in a name?
13
2
The history of ‘religion’
25
3
The essentials of religion
37
4
The functions of religion
55
5
The resemblances among religions
71
6
The public discourse on religion
83
7
Religion and the insider/outsider problem
97
8
Religion and classification
111
Afterword
123
The necessary lie: duplicity in the disciplines 124
JONATHAN Z. SMITH
Honesty is the best pedagogy 130
K. MERINDA SIMMONS
viii
Contents
Glossary
Scholars
References
Resources
Index
133
183
257
259
267
Preface to the second edition
It’s been just over ten years that this little book has been in print, conveying
a way of introducing students to the study of religion that took a number
of years for me to develop. The original edition of the book took several
years to write as well, what with other projects as well as the fact that
I’m not a big fan of textbooks—inasmuch as academic freedom and the
desire to see faculty (as opposed to publishers and credentialing associations) govern their own profession are values that I hold dear. Add to that
my dissatisfaction with common approaches to the field (which usually animate classroom resources), and you might understand my reticence with
launching into writing a book for use in classes. So I set out to create an
anti-textbook: a small book that, as the original preface stated it, might be
read by anyone curious about the field but which could also just help to
set the table for those who decided to use it with students, knowing that
it was up to instructors to bring some of the dishes that they’d be serving
all semester long. But, for a variety of reasons, some who used the book
wanted more; either they wished to move beyond mainly examining how
it is that we define religion or they desired a series of practical examples or
case studies to assist with thinking through the issues covered in the main
chapters. While I initially resisted the invitation to write a second edition
(since subsequent editions of classroom books, especially world religions
textbooks, have rarely struck me as helpful for anyone but publishers and
authors), my interest in offering some practical assistance to faculty who,
for a variety of reasons, now find their time and energies divided between
too many tasks, won out. What resulted is the book you now hold, considerably larger than the first edition—which, I hope, is helpful to you.
Although expanding the book, I’ve retained my expectation that it
should be useful not only as a primer (that almost anyone can pick up and
read, to orient themselves to what the academic study of religion is and
does; for there are all sorts of ways of talking about religion but not all,
I’d argue, suit the needs of non-confessional, public scholarly approaches)
but also as a class resource. If used for the former purpose, then I hope that
readers will move from here to exploring the writings of the various authors
(both historical and contemporary) mentioned throughout the book and
x
Preface to the second edition
included in the Resources section at the end. But, if used for the latter purpose, I still retain the hope that instructors will limit me by bringing their
own examples and exploring with their students their own digressions and
curiosities—it’s still a small book, after all, with brief, easily read main
chapters (half the book is supporting material, after all) and so it hardly
has enough in it for an entire course (whether the shorter 10-week semester
that some have or what others may find to be the more grueling 16-week
semester that we have here in Alabama). But as a little encouragement for
those using the book in their classes, I’ve now offered a brief, additional
section after each main chapter, to help get students using and applying
each chapter’s main point; as their titles make plain, consider each of these
a helpful e.g. (from the Latin, exempli gratia, for example) that, sticking
with my dining metaphor, might whet the appetite for further exploring
how the approach modeled throughout the book can help us to understand
a variety of common situations. In selecting these examples, I’ve relied on
some of the items that I sometimes invite students to examine when I teach
my own introductory course (something I do at least once every year, usually in a large lecture with 150 students); but, finding myself as a Canadian
who has had his entire career in the US, I’ve also worked to find some e.g.s
that derive from other times or places around the globe; for although I, like
anyone else, am situated, that doesn’t mean that I can’t offer readers elsewhere in the world something they can find a bit familiar (and just a little
strange too, hopefully) and which might then prompt them to go digging
for some useful examples of their own. Each of these new sections ends
with some brief ‘Further considerations’, intended to suggest a few other
directions readers might go in to keep exploring the issues of each chapter.
(And yes, I’m aware that instructors using this volume may find there some
further hints for what else they might consider doing in class—for, as I’ve
said, the chapters are short and the book is hardly a textbook.) The technical vocabulary used throughout the book has been updated considerably,
adding over seventy more technical terms, such as anxiety, canon, society, laïcité, identity, author, and experience—terms that, in some cases, are
well beyond the vocabulary commonly used in the study of religion), all
of which are still bolded when used for the first time in each chapter and
which therefore coincide with a detailed definition in the book’s glossary.
I’ve also included a few more scholars of religion who, when mentioned in
the main text, have their names bolded as well, to signal to readers that a
more detailed discussion of their work is included in the Scholars section
at the back of the book. It’s important to note that the scholars mentioned
throughout the book, and explored in a little more detail in the Scholars
section, are merely representative of the field, its history and current shape.
[Aside: I’ve always thought that a useful assignment, when this book is
used in a class, would be to ask students to keep a running list of vocabulary (and accompanying definitions) that was new to them, when reading
the book, but which was not defined in its Glossary. One could even do
Preface to the second edition xi
much the same for the scholars mentioned in the main text but who are not
discussed further at the back of the book, let alone an assignment where
they identify yet other scholars (whose work they may know about from
the readings assigned in other classes) who also exemplify (or maybe even
challenge) the issues examined in this volume but who are not discussed
here at all—after all, both the Glossary and Scholars sections are hardly
exhaustive. These would be the sorts of tasks that would thicken a student’s
understanding of the main text while bringing something original and of
their own to the course—and it’s also a great example of where instructors
who use this book could easily bring to the table new examples and thus
new content of relevance to their own expertise. For instance, what would
a student’s 250 words on, say, Sikhism be like or their brief description of
rites of passage . . .?] Also, a summary of key vocabulary and the scholars
whose names were mentioned in each chapter has been added to the conclusion of every chapter, signaling once again that more information on
each is available in the second half of the book. And, finally, the three main
chapters devoted to different approaches to the problem of definition have
had criticisms of each approach put into a more clearly defined section of
each chapter.
And, as with the first edition, the book closes with an Afterword by the
late Jonathan Z. Smith, used with the kind permission of his wife, Elaine
Smith; for although it might not seem to have all that much to do with the
study of religion, his brief remarks have everything to do with teaching any
course as well as the approach that I’ve come to develop in my own courses
and which readers find in this volume—something I’ve tried to make even
more explicit to readers (who have sometimes had a tough time seeing its
relevance) by pairing it with a brief commentary by my colleague at the
University of Alabama, K. Merinda Simmons (who has herself long used
that essay in her own introductory classes). Smith’s work has had a profound impact on my own, including the book you have before you now, and
so I hope that readers are interested in looking behind the curtain a little,
with both Smith’s and Simmons’s help, by the time they’ve worked through
its pages.
I’ve therefore changed the book quite a bit and reorganized it just a little
(in hopes that it makes a second edition worth publishing), aiming to make
it more useful (in response to the recommendations of those who have been
using it in their classes), but, I’d also like to think, I did so strategically; for
retaining its brief format (and thus more affordable price) is something of
importance to me, both to get it into people’s hands and to resist the totalizing drive of most textbooks and the overly ambitious nature of most survey
courses. For this book (and the sort of course that might use it) is not a survey; instead, as its title should make clear, it is an introduction, which (as I
learned from Smith long ago) amounts to an act of initiation that displaces
someone from one domain and, yes, introduces them into another (think
of an old-time letter of introduction or introducing a new species into an
xii Preface to the second edition
environment); so, as I noted at the outset, the aim of the book is just to help
newcomers orient themselves and gain a foothold—to just get a few things
on the table, in a certain way, to suggest what sort of meal might take place,
hoping that either instructors or general readers will cook up some things
of their own and use the ingredients in ways that this cook hadn’t expected.
This brief primer is therefore intended as a concise, readable introduction to the hard work of re-conceptualizing this thing many of us commonly
call religion, seeing it as a form of ordinary behavior that is comparable
to a host of other all too familiar things that we do. That’s what I hope to
have communicated in the quotation from the late French sociologist, Pierre
Bourdieu, that I have used to open both the first and now this, the second,
edition of this book.
So, with that my terribly over-used metaphor in mind, I’ll close by just
saying bon appétit.
June 2018
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Acknowledgments
Having taught a large number of introductory courses since first beginning
full-time work as a university professor, back in 1993, I have many
undergraduate students to thank for their patience with a professor who
experimented with various ways of making this material worth thinking
about—which went so far as once to encourage graduate assistants teaching
Mary Douglas’s work on ‘soil/dirt’ to take a handful of the cookie crumbs,
or should I say ‘soil’, from a clay plant pot and eat it, just to make the
point of performing some taboo action in a rather more memorable way. No
doubt I’m not the first lecturer to stand in the classroom’s doorway, one foot
in and one foot out of the room, to illustrate the ritual state of being between
social statuses (the notion of being liminal, or being on the limen [Latin for
threshold], as in, ‘If there’s no chewing gum in class, then does that rule
apply to me now?’), but I bet that few of us have considered course preparation to involve scraping out the filling and then crushing up a whole pack
of Oreos the night before a class. I have no doubt that a number of those
students still recall that grad student’s little stunt to this day. Although the
direction outlined in the following pages is not nearly so theatrical or inventive, if it still proves memorable and useful to those who read this book, then
all of those past students are to be thanked for entertaining my invitation for
them to think differently about material that they assumed to be familiar,
and thus uninteresting, when they first walked into the classroom.
Also, many friends and colleagues have influenced my thinking on the
following matters—including, but surely not limited to, those with whom I
first worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto, some years
ago, and those with whom I’ve taught at three different public universities
in the US. To all of these people I express my thanks. Of course, my version
of the introductory undergraduate course—first developed at the University
of Tennessee, further tweaked at Southwest Missouri State University (now
known as Missouri State) when I realized that teaching a world religions
course was rather unrewarding for me and less than intellectually challenging for my students, and then fine-tuned at the University of Alabama—
ranges far wider than what appears in these pages, but the following at
least provides an indication of how I try to, as I say, set the table for my
xiv Acknowledgments
introductory students, as a way of beginning to persuade them that the varying degrees of folk knowledge that they bring with them to my class does
not exhaust what they’ll learn. Because a handout that I once used to do just
that on the first day of class has also turned out to be of use to a number of
people at other schools (and it’s used to this day, I’ve learned, such as the
onetime student who recently wrote to me to say that her daughter had it
handed out to her in a summer course in religious studies elsewhere in the
US), all of whom teach their own version of an introductory course, my goal
is that this short book (which could be considered a greatly expanded version
of that old handout) will come in handy for them as well.
I also express my thanks to the estate of the late Jonathan Z. Smith for
again permitting me to include his brief essay on pedagogy, ‘The necessary
lie: duplicity in the disciplines’. Long ago, this essay was available only on
a University of Chicago website for graduate students who were teaching
for the first time. As far as I can tell, the site was taken down sometime in
the summer of 2006. It was first presented orally as what Smith described
(in a September 16, 2006, letter to me, when I was acquiring his original
permission) as the inaugural address to the Chicago Teaching Program’s
Conversations on Teaching, in 1988. Given how influential Smith has been
with regard to my own thinking—both in terms of what I study as well as
how it is that I go about my work as a scholar and, just as importantly, a
teacher—closing this book with his essay is an important tip of my hat to
one of the figures who lurks in the background of the chapters that precede
it. Because I have used this essay in many of my own courses, as a way to
make the class and its syllabus objects worthy of the students’ collective
attention, using it to close this book will likely be very useful to instructors
and to readers—but, to help make that utility a little more evident to readers, I’m grateful to my colleague, K. Merinda Simmons, for granting me
permission to include her brief commentary on Smith’s essay.
My thanks also go to Jennifer Alfano, an undergraduate senior majoring
in both English and religious studies who worked in our Department for the
2006/7 academic year, and who helped to format Smith’s essay for inclusion
in the first edition. With students in mind, I should also mention two other
early student workers at the University of Alabama who deserve to be singled
out: Kim Davis and Christine Scott; both are now graduates of our BA in
Religious Studies, and both have long ago gone on to other careers and other
futures. But, way back in the summer of 2005, when portions of this book
were first written, they assisted with researching and drafting earlier versions
of some of the definitions and scholar biographies, and also helped to make a
website that once featured earlier versions of some of the following material;
for all of this I still owe them a debt of gratitude. Also, with this new edition
in mind, let me thank Ellie Cochran and Caity Bell, who both checked over
the bolded terms to make sure they all match up with something in the back
of the book, and Caity also assembled the summaries of terms and names
used in each chapter; Sierra Lawson, who, in the summer of 2018, read over
Acknowledgments xv
the whole manuscript for consistency; and Andie Alexander, who made the
index (the first is a current student and the latter three are grads of our undergraduate program, with the former two now pursuing their MA and the
latter her PhD), and also my colleague Vaia Touna, who read some of the
new portions of this edition and provided very helpful feedback. In addition,
Jonathan Z. Smith long ago conveyed some suggestions of his own to me
concerning the first edition, which have been included in this revision. One
in particular was my inadvertent replacement of a hyphen by a colon (see his
reference to Lévi-Strauss 1970–83, in the afterword, which in the first edition
mistakenly became Lévi-Strauss 1970: 83). ‘By altering my reference . . . you
destroy my point’, he wrote to me on February 24, 2008, not long after the
book first came out. Of course I have kept his letters and, happily, I’ve corrected that error in this edition; I leave it to readers to consider how that
small change upended the joke, as he also described it in that letter, that he
was making by means of that example.
Also, along with Equinox Publishers, who first contracted and published this book, I’d like to thank all of those with whom I’ve worked at
Routledge—for convincing me that a second edition of this little book was
a worthwhile exercise.
Finally, this book’s first edition was dedicated to my late eldest sister,
Ingrid (d. 2006), who always told me that I should write something for
non-specialists (or, as she phrased it, people like her) to read. Although I’m
not really sure that this is the sort of book that she had in mind, I do know
that it’s surely closer than anything else I’ve written. But for the second
edition, I’ve decided to make clearer than before the influence that the late
Mary Douglas’s work has had on my own career as a teacher and scholar
(and thus this book and the intro course I teach). Working in a tradition
indebted to Émile Durkheim, Douglas unknowingly paved the way for the
book you’re about to read. And dedicating a book written for newcomers to
a field to her legacy is all the more fitting when I add that I was taught by her
once, at the University of Toronto, when she was visiting there for a summer to offer a course to grad students (in the summer of 1990, as I recall).
To say that I was a poor student back then would be an understatement;
as an undergrad, at Queen’s University in Canada, I had a habit of never
attending a class that conflicted with lunch hour at the cafeteria and, as a
grad student, I was a bit better but, for the first few years at least, I didn’t
take it all that seriously. So I recall lightly revising a research paper that I’d
already written for another course (I think it was on the symbolism of rites
of passage in Canadian fiction) and handed it in to her—but she picked up
on it right away, as her comment (and the poor grade—or, as we said then
in Canada, mark—that she gave to the essay) made clear when I got it back.
As should be pretty obvious, I still remember that episode, one among many
on the road to becoming a far better student who took his studies far more
seriously. So here’s to hoping that the students who read this book will figure
this all out far sooner than I did.
Introduction
What is the study of religion?
When we say that we’re studying religion, what is it in the world that we’re
talking about? This is a question that self-reflective scholars of religion must
ask themselves, right from the start of their studies. For if scholars, like the
people whom they study, presume that their word ‘religion’ refers to something unique or special, outside of the world of human claims, actions, and
institutions—something that apparently existed well before, and will long
outlast, us—then how can one even talk about such things? Just what do
scholars mean when they say something is ‘religious’?
There cannot be a ‘history of religion’ for the simple reason that there
is no religion: rather, such a history can only trace how and why a
culture or epoch allows certain experiences to count as ‘religion’ while
excluding others.
Gary Lease (1994)
2
Introduction
So just what do scholars mean when they say something is ‘religious’?
As a way of offering an answer to this question, imagine the following
situation, which is likely so ordinary that it will strike you as uninteresting:
you walk into a dark room and fumble for the light switch on the wall; finding it, you casually flick it on as you enter the room—but nothing happens.
Surprised that you’re still in the dark, you quickly flick it back and forth a
few more times, much like people who impatiently push the ‘Close Door’
button on elevators, as if that’ll help. But still, nothing happens. With one
hand still on the switch, you peer into the darkness, to where you think the
light is on the ceiling. ‘Its burnt out’, you mutter to yourself, as you wonder
if you’ve got any spare bulbs in the cupboard.
Although scholars are often accused of making simple things overly (and
unnecessarily) complicated, I think it worthwhile to consider what is going
on in this example of routine, day-to-day behavior—an example so mundane
that it might strike us as silly to examine it in greater detail.
Based on countless past experiences of walking into dark rooms, as well
as rather rudimentary beliefs about such things as electricity, electrical wiring, and a hunch we have about the average lifetime of filaments inside
light bulbs, we routinely infer a relationship between a wall switch and a
ceiling bulb—an inference that usually matches reality so closely that we
never think twice about whether flicking the switch has an effect on the
bulb overhead. In fact, I’d hazard a guess and say that the person walking
into the dark room does not even consciously believe that the switch is connected to the bulb, if by ‘believe’ we mean that they consciously subscribe
to a series of principles or propositions that posit a relationship between
the switch on the wall and the light overhead. Instead of seeing their belief
about the light as a conclusion reached by means of a systematic set of
rational processes, or even a bold conjecture that predicts some future state
of affairs based on one’s past experiences, we might understand it more
as a form of unreflective behavior. Much like walking through a doorway
without first stopping to form a well-grounded hypothesis concerning the
likelihood that it is in fact an open physical space through which physical
objects might pass, reaching for the light switch in a dark room is more
than likely not a conscious, intentional activity.
(And I’d be careful thinking back on such a moment, right now, as you
read these lines, in an effort to analyze it, for there’s likely a considerable
difference between a social actor unreflectively immersed in a situation and
one reflecting, in hindsight, on being in such a situation.)
As should be evident from this brief discussion of a failed attempt to
illuminate the darkness, reality does not necessarily match our expectations,
no matter how reasonable those expectations may seem to us. Birds regularly fly into clean windows (often with deadly results), intelligent people
walk straight into patio screen doors (usually with embarrassing results),
and sometimes we’re left in the dark, pointlessly clicking a switch, when
the light bulb burns out. Surprises (and sometimes bruises) result when the
Introduction 3
world does not match our expectations; learning to become curious about
the surprises (and curious about why we were surprised in the first place)
is perhaps the first step toward becoming a scholar. For, at least to me, if
nothing else being a scholar at least means being prepared to examine your
own assumptions.
Apart from being a practical illustration of how familiar patterns of
human behavior do not always match the way the world seems to operate,
I think that there is more that we can draw from this simple example of the
light bulb. Consider the conclusion that we (eventually) reach concerning
the bulb being burned out. Having changed a number of light bulbs in my
time, it seems pretty reasonable to conclude that the filament has burned
out when it finally dawns on us that repeatedly flicking the switch up and
down causes nothing to happen. So I’ll unscrew it, see if it is blackened,
and, without even thinking much about it, I’ll usually give it a little shake
beside my ear to listen for the sound made by the damaged filament, all to
confirm my conclusion. If the light still doesn’t work after replacing the
bulb, I’ll likely hold the new bulb close to my ear and give it a shake as
well—after all, bulbs, like eggs, don’t always make it home from the store
in one piece. If the new bulb seems fine, yet still nothing works, I’ll start
doing some additional problem-solving; I’ll hunt for a flashlight and go
find the circuit breakers (and then try to figure out which one is the right
one through a series of trial and error attempts); depending on what results
from that, I’ll wonder about the switch being broken, whether the wiring
itself is having troubles or the light fixture might have failed for some reason (as happened in my kitchen not long ago, in fact); maybe I’ll try some
other switches in the house, in other rooms, to see if the power is off all
over the house. As I peer out the window, at houses across the street, I ask
myself if I should go next door to see if the neighbor also has power. Should
I call the electric company to see what’s up? Was there a storm? Did a tree
fall on a line?
In the midst of all this, I think that most readers would probably agree
that it is highly unlikely that the person left in the dark will (instead of all
this practical problem-solving I outlined) conclude that one or more powerful, invisible agents had infiltrated their home’s electrical system. Not that
this is a silly conclusion to draw—far from it. Instead, given the way many
of us usually go about problem-solving, it is a highly curious conclusion to
draw—or at least it is curious when people do and when they do not make this
rather bold conjecture about how the world works. For there are indeed
times in people’s lives when they find it completely sensible to conclude just
that—that their daily, practical behaviors have little or no consequence to
bring about some desired state of affairs; instead, they turn to a series of specific behaviors intended to affect the world at large through the actions of
other agents we could call spirits, ancestors, or gods. Or maybe even what
they term fate, the odds, or just something known as dumb luck.
But why?
4
Introduction
Those scholars who see what some people do, some of the time, as religious
are interested in answering just this question.
Anyone who has owned an old, temperamental car might know exactly
what I’m talking about. Those who have the good fortune of driving a new
car probably don’t think twice about turning the key and driving away.
Much like the presumed connection between the wall’s light switch and
the bulb on the ceiling, they go about their daily lives acting as if there is
some necessary connection between a turn of a car key and the vroom of
the engine. (My italicizing the as if in the previous sentence should attract
your attention, I hope, for, as the Glossary’s definition of cause makes
clear, even our ordinary and routine sense of causality is a bit magical, if
you think about it.) But not everyone can afford—and, in the case of cars,
I literally mean afford—to have such confidence in their assumptions about
the world. Instead, those of us who drive old cars know all too well that
inserting the key into the ignition, and then giving it a turn, does not necessarily result in anything whatsoever. To help bridge the gap between the
hoped-for outcome and the unpredictable actual state of affairs, such people
sometimes develop little rituals, like crossing their fingers before trying the
ignition, pumping the gas a specified number of times before trying the key,
or treating the car as if it was alive, like an old friend of mine back in high
school who treated his car like a horse, petting the dashboard to put it in a
good mood before turning the key and then revving the engine while saying ‘Whoa’—as if it was a feisty, maybe even cranky, young maverick (or
old mare?) with an unruly mind of its own (constituting a good example of
what scholars call anthropomorphism).
Of course he knew that the car was not alive, at least not in the way
you and I imagine ourselves to be alive and to be agents able to accomplish
things in the world. But treating it as if it was, as if petting the dashboard
had some connection to the outcome of turning the key and cranking the
engine, somehow seemed to help. Whether it helped the car to start or,
instead, helped him to deal with the anxiety of never really knowing the
outcome of his actions (a common theory concerning the psychological
function of ritual), is, of course, the question that the curious among us will
want to ask.
Now, I realize that those readers interested in just getting on with the
business of describing the ins and outs of the world’s religions may be a
little frustrated by now, wondering what all this has to do with the topic at
hand. Why start out by talking about burnt light bulbs, walking into screen
doors, and starting up decrepit old cars, when we could just be talking
about ancient Hindu myths, studying Buddhist rituals, and learning more
about Jewish scripture?
If that’s what you’re after, then, sadly, this might not be the book for
you; instead, you’re recommended to find a world religions website, dictionary or one of the many textbooks devoted to their survey. I say this
because you’ll probably find what you’re after in those resources, and so
Introduction 5
there’s no need for this book to offer yet another descriptive compilation of
the whos, whens, wheres, and hows of those things we often call religions.
Instead, this little book is intended for people who find it curious that,
for example, no matter how religious (whatever that word may end up
meaning) auto mechanics are, more than likely they first check the spark
plugs and wiggle the wires, and don’t necessarily start by praying over the
car, to get the engine running the right way (though the car’s owner might
say a little prayer before the bill for the parts and labor appears). My point:
this little book is about why we might call those people religious (or not),
some of the things that we might mean by using that designation, in various
ways, and, once understood in some way, how we, as scholars, might better
understand the people whom we’re studying.
So this book is intended for those who find it curious that some people
even name one element of human behavior ‘religion’, in the first place, as if
it were somehow identifiably distinct from other elements of daily life (such
as the domains we sometimes call culture, society, or history; a variety of
scholars have studied this topic over the past twenty years—for example,
consider the work of Daniel Dubuisson in France). For, prior to describing
how, and then developing a theory concerning why, people are religious,
we need to consider why it is that we generally collect up and name certain
human behaviors as religious. Case in point: precisely how do we know
that those things commonly known as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism
are things that a scholar of religion ought to study? What’s more, how do
we know that those three things are sufficiently related to all appear in the
same list? After all, there are those who today might term, say, Judaism
more as an ethnic identity instead of a religion, no?
For instance, consider a case that may be well known to some people
in the region of the US in which I live and work: some years ago the then
Chief Justice of the state of Alabama’s Supreme Court—the highest judicial authority in the state—used private funds to have a two and a half
ton granite monument depicting the Ten Commandments as an open book
(also bearing inscribed quotations from a number of widely recognized historical influences on the US legal system) built and then, on the night of
July 31, 2001, installed in the lobby of the state’s Supreme Court Offices.
Given the long, contested nature of church/state issues in the US, his action,
followed by his refusal to have the monument removed, resulted in a series of
lawsuits, none of which the Chief Justice won, despite his arguments that he
was merely following the state’s 1901 Constitution, which he, inasmuch as
he held the office that he did, had sworn to uphold. (The Constitution opens
as follows: ‘We, the people of the State of Alabama, in order to establish
justice, insure domestic tranquility and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God,
do ordain and establish the following Constitution and form of government
for the State of Alabama . . .’.) In the spring of 2004 he was removed from
his office for defying a court order to remove the monument (which, back in
6
Introduction
August 2003, had already been removed from the lobby—but it then went
on a national tour of the US).
Question: is this a religious news story or, say, a political one? Or perhaps
neither? Maybe a little bit of both? If so, which part of the story is which?
If you were a newspaper editor the answer to this question of classification
would have pretty practical ramifications, determining on which page, and
in which section, you would run the story. Would you feature it on the
front page, amidst the day’s most pressing political and economic news,
or would you run it on the back pages, among the various ads for local
worship services? Your decision could likely influence how seriously people
took the issue—after all, they might not know about it if you bury it on the
back pages among the so-called human interest stories. And if no one knows
about it, then, much as with the proverbial tree falling in the lonely forest, it
might as well not even have taken place. Moreover, if you featured it prominently on page one, would it be there because this obviously religious news
story had political implications (assuming, perhaps, that religion is a private matter that sometimes makes its way into the public sphere) or because
the story was political through and through (and even calling the judge’s
motives ‘religious’, as some commentators did at the time, was perhaps a
tactical move meant to score points with a portion of the voting public; I
think here of the recent work of Eddie Glaude, as a public intellectual, in
the US or even Linda Woodhead in the UK, both examples of a scholar
of religion aware of how such classification can function in our politics)?
Depending on which of these options you selected, you will have likely taken
a stand on a variety of fairly complex questions, such as: is religion a unique
domain, separate from culture? If so, does religion influence culture? Does
culture influence—perhaps even cause—religion? Are they separate domains
that ought never to interact? Just what is religion?
Case in point: consider a photo of a man sitting with a bottle of coke,
taken by the famous photographer, Steve McCurry, that was taken in Bodh
Gaya, in northeastern India India, back in 2000. Does it obviously depict
something religious? Better put, what must you assume about the young man,
perhaps based on the way he’s dressed (he’s wearing saffron-colored robes
and so is a Tibetan Buddhist monk, isn’t he?) in order to see it that way? It’s
called ‘Young monk in a tea shop’ after all, and so my hunch is that many
can’t see it as anything else. But can we (or better, how can we . . .) see it
as something else entirely—perhaps an item from contemporary, globalized
culture, given the large red Coca-Cola sign behind him and what he’s drinking. (After all, how did a drink that originated in the state of Georgia, not
long after the US Civil War, make it all the way to that little tea shop in Bodh
Gaya?) Or perhaps it’s just a mundane moment from someone’s day that
happens to have been photographed—if you think about it, we all get thirsty
and we all need to just take a break from time to time. Or, come to think
of it, what about asking why a Tibetan is even sitting in a tea shop having
a Coke in northeast India—and the photo opens the door on to a discussion of geopolitics and why the country once known as Tibet is now called
Introduction 7
by some ‘the Tibetan Autonomous Region’ (since the People’s Republic of
China annexed it after military action in 1950) and treated as a province
within modern China. Suddenly, the photo is not so simple and straightforward anymore.
Sometimes people pray to gods, cross their fingers, or call upon their
ancestors and, sometimes, they just replace the light bulb; sometimes references to powerful, invisible beings are considered a sincere, personal
statement of faith and, sometimes, they are heard as a sly rhetorical move
doing otherwise unseen political work. Investigating why one results as
opposed to the other is what the academic study of religion is all about. So,
if you happen to be curious not just about the descriptive when and who
and how and where but also about the explanatory why of these behaviors,
along with a curiosity over how and why we even use the term ‘religion’—
whether that ‘we’ is the general public or scholars—then studying religion
might be for you.
8
Introduction
Example: ‘but not specifically defined’
The term church is found, but not specifically defined, in the Internal
Revenue Code (IRC). The term is not used by all faiths; however, in an
attempt to make this publication easy to read, we use it in its generic
sense as a place of worship including, for example, mosques and synagogues. With the exception of the special rules for church audits, the
use of the term church throughout this publication also includes conventions and associations of churches as well as integrated auxiliaries
of a church.
So it states on page 1 of the US government’s 501(c)(3) Tax Guide for
Churches and Religious Organizations (last revised in 2005). Did anything
stand out as you read it?
At least three things might attract the attention of a scholar of religion:
(i) the term ‘church’ is (quite explicitly) left undefined; (ii) it is then used in
a circular fashion (what we might call a tautology); and (iii) a term local
and thus relevant to one group is used as if it applies to all members of the
groups. While the last of these may be inevitable—that is, there’s no position that is not situated and so we have no choice but to talk about the
world from somewhere within that very same world—the first two are problematic for scholarship. For, whatever else scholarship may be, it is at least a
discourse in which our terms are clearly defined (that is, we make plain that
they have limits) and they are never defined in light of themselves. For after
all, saying that a fast car is a car that is fast doesn’t help us much, does it?
We’ll tackle each in order.
First, it’s odd, to say the least, that in a document meant to help taypayers
figure out how the law applies to certain sorts of non-profits (that’s what the
501[c][3] part of the US tax code discusses, such that a non-profit organization is commonly just called a 501c3) the key term—church—is undefined.
All that the code does is offer a synonym (that is to say, place of worship)
and some examples (mosque and synagogue). Critical readers ought to ask
themselves why the term apparently doesn’t need definition, especially in a
document where everything is all about very careful and precise definitions
(to what does this tax apply and to what does it not?). Is this a shortcoming
of the guide, something that really ought to be corrected in a new edition,
or, ironically perhaps, might this lack of definition be its strength (inasmuch
as it might provide either the government or taxpayers with considerable
wiggle room for negotiation)?
Second, you’ll notice that the term is used in a circular fashion, such
as at the end of the quotation where we learn that ‘the use of the term
church . . . also includes conventions and associations of churches as well
as integrated auxiliaries of a church.’ The problem is that unless we already
know what a church is we have no idea what a church auxiliary might be.
For of all the many conventions that happen across the country, in large
Introduction 9
and small convention centers, which deserve the tax advantages of being
classified as church conventions?
But, as with the first problem, what if the authors of such a booklet
thought that the term ‘church’ was so well known in current popular discourse, such as among those who might use this guide, that readers would
automatically begin using it in some commonsense (and, at least to the IRS,
desired) fashion . . .? Might this lack of definition tell us something about
either a consensus, or at least a presumed consensus, among those who
write and use such guides . . .? What’s more, might the fact that analogous
organizations are explicitly named (e.g., mosques and synagogues) tell us
something as well? For I have trouble accepting that a comparable guide
from some decades ago, back when Christian dominance in the US population was far more easily taken for granted, would have included these two
alternate examples. (In fact, investigating when these analogies first entered
the document might be a fascinating research project—since it’s not tough
to imagine some for whom the term church has no analogous sites.)
And this brings us to the third, and last point: the ease with which one
member of a family is sometimes elevated to name all members of that group,
something that probably also tells us much about the group that’s doing that
naming. For to the ears of many who may read this book, it would probably
sound quite peculiar to find the IRS claiming, for instance, that the term
‘temple’ or maybe ‘shrine’ (what about ‘lodge’?) was being used as a general
stand-in for all places of worship—let alone if the document used the word
‘mosque’ for that general purpose. (In fact, given how Islam is currently
viewed by some in the US I would imagine that such a usage would be seen
as terribly controversial, maybe even unpatriotic.) It’s somewhat like saying
‘Kleenex’—which is actually a specific brand name—for any all brands of
facial tissue or, as some do in the American South, calling all carbonated
beverages ‘Coke’, regardless of the brand or the flavor. Again, this undefined but universal use of the local term church tells us a lot about the group
writing and reading such guides (that is, we should ask: local to whom?)—
making plain a point that will be discussed throughout the rest of the book:
classifications often tell us far more about the classifier who is naming things
in the world than they do about the item being named.
But to circle back to a point made at the opening of this example: we are
all situated (in bodies that are classified in terms of their gender, their race,
their generation, their citizenship, as well as within larger political and economic systems, within historical and geographic contexts—none of which
are of our making) and we therefore have no choice but to use the language
that we each happen to know to talk about what happens to interest us
in the world. So this analysis is not criticizing the IRS but using its guide
as an opportunity to start considering the relationship between the words
we use and how we use them (that is, how they’re defined and for what
purposes we employ them)—something you’d think is pretty important in
a tax guide, let alone in scholarship. For although I have little choice but to
10 Introduction
use my own language, and my own vocabulary, using these words to talk
to my friends might be sufficiently different from using them to do crosscultural scholarship—suggesting that folk, local, familiar terms may have
to be retooled in explicit and sometimes significant ways when we’re doing
scholarship. And some of those local words, even though we may use them
every day, may be so immersed in a specific way of talking about the world
that their usefulness to scholars who aim to do cross-cultural and historical studies is rather limited. The initial question, then, is whether this term
church has sufficient usefulness, given what the guide was written to do in
a place like the US today.
The implication of all this is to get you thinking about your own locals,
your own taken-for-granteds, and, as you work your way into the book and
increasingly consider what it means to study religion as a scholar, whether
a scholar of religion could use such local terms so expansively and in such
an undefined manner.
Further considerations
An interesting project would be to consider what other aspects of our world
we tend not to define explicitly—and why. Or better yet, if, in day-to-day
life, we do take for granted the identity of certain things in our world (such
as the definition of freedom, justice, or maybe truth, perhaps, or what about
how we understand who is a member of our in-group and who is not, whatever that group may be—from the family to the nation), then we could ask
why it is that we sometimes work very hard to define them clearly and concisely. What prompts these moments of concision? And what results when
the explicit definitions we sometimes come up with get put into practice—
for, although some scholars may criticize governments for their vague definitions of such terms as religion, given the centrality of that term to how
nations work (such as its links to other important notions like the individual
and conscience), the wiggle room that comes with this vagueness may be
crucial for how our lives ordinarily work.
Introduction 11
Summary of vocabulary
Agent
Anthropomorphism
Anxiety
Belief
Buddhism
Cause
Christian
Church
Church/state
Classification
Conscience
Culture
Description
Discourse
Ethnic
Experience
Explanation
Faith
Folk knowledge
Functionalism
Hinduism
History
Identity
Inference
Intention
Judaism
Magic
Mosque
Myth
Necessary
Private
Psychology
Public
Public intellectual
Religion
Rhetoric
Ritual
Scripture
Sincerity
Society
Synagogue
Tautology
Theory
World religions
Notes
12 Introduction
Summary of scholars
Daniel Dubuisson
Eddie S. Glaude
Linda Woodhead
1
What’s in a name?
Readers beware: this opening chapter is not about religion. Come to think
of it, despite what many readers might think, neither are all of the other
chapters. Instead, they are about some of the issues involved in defining
an object of study—whatever that object of study may be. Although in our
case it happens to be a collection of claims, behaviors, and institutions that
many people today know by the name ‘religion’, the insights derived from
examining how definition works elsewhere could pay off in our field as well.
Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of
matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.
Mary Douglas (1966)
14 What’s in a name?
Before one can start to study religion, one had better figure out who uses the
word (and who does not) and what we, as scholars, mean by it. Does it refer
to some real thing out there in the world? Does it refer to something deep
inside the human heart? Or is the word itself just a tool that some of us use
to name parts of the world that we happen to find curious? Just what does
it mean to define something as a something?
To start to offer some answers to these questions, consider the following
case . . .
In March of 1856 Andrew Scott Waugh wrote a letter. Twenty-four
years prior to this he had joined the team of British surveyors who were
carrying out what was then called the Great Trigonometrical Survey of
India. Eventually, he became the Surveyor-General in charge of this massive project. But in 1856, having just completed the survey, he wrote a
letter to Captain H.L. Thuillier, Britain’s Deputy Surveyor-General of
India, who was stationed in the city then known as Calcutta, on the shores
of the Ganges River in northeastern India, near the Bay of Bengal. The contents of Waugh’s letter were then communicated to London and eventually
reached the desk of not only the Royal Geographical Society, which had
been monitoring the progress of the survey, but also the British Secretary
for the State of India. In his letter, Waugh addressed what up until that
time the surveyors had simply named ‘Peak 15’, a rather tall mountain
in the Himalayas, in the region of the world known as Nepal, bordering
what was once known as Tibet to the north, but which is today considered
by many (though, of course, not all) as part of the People’s Republic of
China—a region called the Tibetan Autonomous Zone. Among the work
carried out by the survey was measuring the depths of all of its valleys
and the height of all of its mountains. By 1856 it was clear to Waugh that
Peak 15 was indeed the highest mountain as yet discovered in the world,
and he intended to honor his predecessor, the man who began the Great
Trigonometrical Survey in the earliest years of the nineteenth century, by
naming Peak 15 after him.
In making his recommendation to rename Peak 15, Waugh acknowledged that ‘I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor . . . to assign
to every geographical object its true local or native appellation’. Despite
assuring his reader that he had always followed this rule in the past, his letter
went on to say that what the surveyors simply named Peak 15 was
without local name that we can discover, whose native appellation,
if it has any, will not likely be ascertained before we are allowed to
penetrate into Nepal and to approach close to this stupendous snowy
mass. . . . In the meantime the privilege as well as the duty devolves on
me to assign to this lofty pinnacle of our globe a name whereby it may
be known among geographers and become a household word among
civilized nations.
What’s in a name? 15
In honor of his onetime chief, the man who began the Great Trigonometric
Survey of India so many years before, Waugh suggested that this ‘stupendous snowy mass’ be named after Colonel George Everest (1790–1866). He
therefore christened it with the French designation ‘Mont Everest’, a suggestion soon changed by Waugh to the English ‘Mount Everest’. And, as almost
anyone can tell you today, the name has stuck.
You may be wondering what this 160-year-old story about the naming of
a mountain half a world away (at least judging from where I sit writing this—
all judgments come from somewhere, after all) has to do with our topic. It
certainly is not because I wish to sing the praises of British colonialists who
surveyed India—though, to be honest, given the fact that they measured the
mountain to within 33 feet of modern surveys that place it at 29,035 feet
(or 8,850 meters), praise of these skills would not be out of place, especially
considering the perils associated with their work at that time. Neither am I
citing this example to illustrate how such things as measurements are not as
objective and as factual as they might at first appear—though that would be
a handy way to use this example, especially taking into account that when
we say ‘Mount Everest is 29,035 feet tall’ we need to know that this measurement is in fact the expression of a relationship between two points, the
peak’s tip and sea level; what’s more, we also need to know whether high tide
or low tide is what counts as ‘sea level’ (for example, back in 1802, when the
Great Survey began, the high water mark was used as the standard, though
later the mid-point between high and low tides was taken as the baseline for
‘sea level’—a nice example of how [possibly arbitrary] standards need to be
established and invoked for any judgment to be made about anything—not
unlike me using my location to judge the mountain as being ‘half a world
away’, just above). And I am not citing this example simply because Mount
Everest was in the news quite a lot back when first writing this book, since
May 29, 2003, had marked the 50th anniversary of the peak being climbed
by the New Zealander, Edmund Hillary, and his Sherpa partner, Tenzing
Norgay—though the way in which their 1953 ascent was popularized in
some parts of the world certainly has helped to create our modern view of
the mountain’s mystery and majesty. No, the reason I use this example is to
put squarely before readers the problem of naming and the issues involved
when we set out to define things as being a this and not a that. For this story
sets the stage rather nicely for us to consider the role classification plays in
enabling us to know and act in the world around us—whether we are classifying mountains, people, cultures, or those things some of us call religions.
Before moving on to examine the issues involved in defining and thereby
studying religion, let’s re-consider this example of naming a mountain.
Although it is pretty difficult to think of Mount Everest as anything but Mount
Everest, things are always more complicated than they at first appear. (I use
the italics on purpose, for Waugh was right: its name has become a household word that communicates awe, challenge, danger, and even triumph—but
16 What’s in a name?
are these qualities inherently in the mountain or the result of social groups
projecting the qualities onto it?—this is the question that will come up in
this book, again and again . . .) In fact, despite the commonsense assumption that the names we give to things reflect, capture or correspond to some
key feature of the things being named (called the correspondence theory
of meaning), the names we give to things may, instead, tell us more about
the namer than they do about the thing being named. For example, despite the
name for this mountain now being a household word, the fact that we say it
the way we do sets us rather far apart from the people who might have read
Waugh’s letter back in 1856. For if you had the opportunity to meet the good
Colonel for whom the mountain was named, and pronounced his name as
we do now, ‘Ever-est’, you would have been quickly corrected to pronounce
it as ‘Eve-rest’. Although this seems a rather minor example that can be easily overlooked—as in when some people in the US say ‘pop’ and others say
‘soda’ for what both agree to be a carbonated beverage or soft drink—it does
bring to light the fact that names are products of social worlds that change
over time; despite what we usually think, names are not necessarily neutral
and objective labels that are placed on things. ‘Mount Ever-est’ has become
such a widely accepted pronunciation that you’d likely have trouble using
‘Mont Eve-rest’ to conjure up a sense of awe in a conversation with someone, for more than likely they wouldn’t be able to get past what they’d hear
as your mispronunciation of the name. Whether or not the way in which
Sir George Everest pronounced his own name has any bearing on how we
say it today—in other words, is it correct to say that we are ‘mispronouncing’
it, as if his own pronunciation was a standard against which all others are
measured?—is a topic to which we shall have to return when studying the
way people understand and talk about their own beliefs and behaviors (what
we call the insider/outsider problem—a topic raised in the earlier quotation
from Waugh’s letter concerning his habit of trying, when possible, to use the
‘native appellation’ for geographical features).
But it is not just the fact that the pronunciation has changed over the past
160 years—as if the meaning was uniform despite differences in the way
it was pronounced. Whether or not Waugh knew it at the time, the south
side of the mountain (which is the side that is seen from the modern country of Nepal) had long been known as ‘Sagarmatha’, meaning ‘goddess
of the sky’; and in Tibet, on the north side of the mountain, it had long
been called ‘Chomolungma’, meaning ‘mother goddess of the universe’.
Although of little use to the British surveyors, these two local names were
obviously meaningful and useful to those who had long used them, for
these local classifications functioned in relation to different systems of belief
and behavior that helped to make the Nepalese and Tibetan social worlds
possible. And let’s not forget that to Colonel Everest himself the mountain
was not known as Mount Everest, at least not while he worked on the
survey, but simply ‘Himalaya Peak 15’—a seemingly neutral designation
but one equally immersed in a complex belief and behavioral system of its
What’s in a name? 17
own, one that had something to do with the presumed importance (at least
to the British) of measuring mountains in distant lands in the first place,
and naming them by using a modern numbering system derived from both
ancient Indian and Arabic cultures. Including these names, along with the
various pronunciations of Everest’s own name and Waugh’s original use
of the French ‘Mont’, we have at least six different designations for what
some could simply understand as a common, and therefore relatively uninteresting, geological formation that began forming (as geologists would say)
about sixty million years ago when one tectonic plate started moving north
at about fifteen centimeters per year, grinding against another plate and
thrusting the sediment upward.
Voilà, from a generic snowy mass an impressive mountain is born—
perhaps due more to the interests of surveyors than to the impersonal laws
of geology.
This little episode in the history of naming is just the tip of a rather large
topic that, when we are going about our daily business, we simply (perhaps
necessarily) overlook. But if we pause and refocus our attention—something
scholars generally do—we might start asking some questions that we might
otherwise not have asked: just why does a mountain in Nepal bear the name
of a British surveyor? Despite Waugh’s seemingly well-intended assurance
that they always worked ‘to assign to every geographical object its true local
or native appellation’, what were the British even doing in India in the first
place, and why were they mapping it from top to bottom? Are maps, like
the names we give to things, simply neutral representations that correspond
to stable land masses or, like height being measured in relation to sea level,
which is itself hardly a stable basis, are they expressions of ever-changing
relationships, not only between the namer and the thing being named but
between competing namers and their competing names and competing
interests? If we opt for the former choice, then we take no notice of the fact
that a mountain high in the Himalayas is named for a man born in 1790
in Greenwich, England (pronounced Gren-itch), and we simply continue
presuming that Mount Everest couldn’t be anything but Mount Everest—
after all, if this is the way we approach naming then the name bears some
direct relationship to some inner aspect, quality or essence in the thing being
named. A slight variation to this approach is to hold that objects possess
some inner characteristic that is only arbitrarily and loosely linked to the
labels that we place on them. After all, whether you are an English speaker
and call it a book, livre in French or Buch in German, you still read it. And,
whether you know it as pop or soda (or simply call all carbonated beverages
Coke, as they do in the US South), you still drink it when you’re thirsty.
But if we do not think that one can so easily separate name from identity—
therefore making it rather difficult for young Romeo simply to, as Juliet
requests, ‘doff thy name, which is no part of thee’—then we might opt
for the latter choice and understand the ways that groups define, classify,
name, and plot things as the tips of very large social and political icebergs
18 What’s in a name?
bumping up against each other, grinding away at each other (not unlike
massive tectonic plates). In this case, the rose’s sweet smell and its name
are not so easily separated. For example, look no further than the very system we now routinely use to tell time and the system we commonly use to
plot longitudes (latitudes are determined by the equator)—these are systems of chronological and spatial classification that both make reference
to the town in which George Everest happened to be born. Of course, I am
referring to Greenwich Mean Time and the Greenwich Prime Meridian of
the World, which means that time is measured either as being ahead of or
behind the time in Greenwich. In the Central Time Zone of the US, where
the University of Alabama is located, we are at GMT −6 (‘minus 6’ means
6 hours west, and thus ‘behind’, Greenwich). Moreover, because Greenwich
has just been assigned a longitude of 0 degrees, every point on the globe can
be measured in relation to being either west or east of this point—much like
the use of sea level for measuring height. So, regardless of how locals around
the globe talk about the passage of time, the link between this one town in
southwest England and the systems that we now routinely use to plot our
place and time on the globe can be seen as (1) an unquestioned natural fact;
(2) a neutral, and possibly even arbitrary, relationship, since we had to use
somewhere as the starting point; or (3) evidence of the history of British
colonial rule, its unmatched naval supremacy over the past several hundred years, and therefore that nation’s political and economic dominance of
much of the world for quite some time.
So, what’s in a name? Apparently, an awful lot.
As we look deeper into the issue of definition, it gets increasingly difficult to see classification as merely a natural, neutral or innocent activity.
Instead, classification seems fraught with interests, agendas, and implications. It was just this point that was so nicely illustrated in Christopher
Monger’s film, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a
Mountain (1995). Starring Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald, this once popular romantic comedy was about two English government cartographers
(map makers) who arrive in a small village just over the English border,
in Wales, back in 1917, and find that the mountain that is so loved by the
locals—which they refer to as ‘the first mountain in Wales’—fails to meet
the 1,000 foot minimum height to be designated on the cartographers’ map
as a mountain. Wounded local pride, mixed together with a long history of
antagonism between Wales and the rest of England, prompts the townsfolk
to get out their shovels and wheelbarrows and add a few extra feet to the
‘hill’, ensuring that upon being re-measured (since it failed to meet the government’s [arbitrary] standard the first time) it is designated by the official
map-makers as a ‘mountain’. If this is the case—if classifications are not
innocent or natural but, instead, intimately linked to groups of people with
(sometimes conflicting) interests—then one might be forced to ask whether
the thing we call either ‘pop’ or ‘soda’ is always ‘something to drink’—after
all, what if you’re not thirsty? Perhaps, then, it might be an irrelevant item
What’s in a name? 19
in your environment that does not even attract your attention, much less
prompt you to attach a name, and thus an identity and value, to it. Maybe
it’s a good candidate for a corrosive substance that, as I recall doing in
Grade 5, you hang a nail in for a science experiment, to see if it rusts, or,
if you work for the Coca-Cola Company, perhaps it’s just one of the many
things that you manufacture and exchange in an effort to turn a profit for
your shareholders . . . .
The late Mary Douglas, the well-known British anthropologist, once
observed in her classic 1966 study of ritual purity systems, Purity and
Danger, that the difference between the idea of ‘dirt’ and ‘soil’ (a classic
example of a binary pair) was that the stuff we know as dirt was simply
‘matter out of place’. Her point? The same generic material takes on different meanings, values and identities in relation to different classification
and thus organizational systems (just as that large snowy mass did when
the surveyors arrived), each of which puts into practice different sets of
interests—which changes from time to time, group to group, and occasion
to occasion. The same generic stuff of the world, once mapped into one
set of preferences, allows us to experience it as ‘soil’ (say, when it is in a
farmer’s field or providing nourishment for a potted plant in your home),
whereas mapped into another set prompts us to see it as ‘dirt’ (say, when it
gets on your clothes or falls from the pot onto the carpet). So, as Douglas
concludes, the concept of dirt is ‘a by-product of a systematic ordering and
classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate
elements’. Rephrased, we could say that the label ‘dirt’ does not necessarily
correspond to something dirty in that which we know as ‘dirt’; instead, she
seems to be saying: show me something classified as dirt and I’ll show you a
prior classification system that prompts us to distinguish safe from dangerous, allowable from unallowable, pure from impure—not because there’s
something inherently dangerous in the things we know as a danger but,
instead, because things classified as dangerous threaten interests that are of
relevance to a group.
Quick thought experiment: are coal miners dirty when they’re working?
Or is that just what coal miners look like while they’re mining coal? What
about farmers out in the field plowing? Or do they only become dirty—that
is, become understandable as dirty—when they leave the mine or leave the
tractor, and go home to their ‘clean’ house . . .?
Classification is therefore a social act that helps us to make values, establish relationships (often they’re ranked relationships, since clean is usually
assumed to be better than dirty), and thereby manage the world.
Question: could we see such labels as ‘religion’, ‘myth’, or ‘ritual’ as working in the same way, providing evidence of a larger classification system that
makes possible specific sets of relationships driven by people’s preferences?
In posing this question I’m getting ahead of myself. For the time being,
let’s just say that just as ‘dirt’ and ‘soil’ are classifications that, depending on
the circumstances, interests, and the choices of the classifier, we place onto
20 What’s in a name?
the generic stuff of the world in order to transform it from the undifferentiated background noise of daily life into something significant, something
worth paying attention to, so too the difference between ‘mountain’ and
‘hill’ may tell us little about some geological formation but, instead, may
tell us a great deal about the preferences and interests that inform the competing systems of definition used by various groups of people as they make
sense of their worlds so as to go about the business of living in them. After
all, as made plain in that movie about adding some height to that ‘hill’ in
Wales, it wasn’t really about the mountain at all, but, instead, it was all
about the identity of a group of people, in distinction from their dominant
neighbors, aiming to be something more significant than they might have
first appeared.
Because we seem not to have the luxury of getting away with no classifications whatsoever and experiencing reality ‘in the raw’—after all, in order
to talk about and relate to something we need to place it on our horizon by
giving it a slot in our vocabularies and thus placing it in our minds, in our
stories, and in our histories—classification, like cartography and surveying,
is hardly an innocent business; instead, it is tied up with issues of power and
identity. When we leave the realm of map-making and turn our attention to
the study of religion—that thing which many people believe to be concerned
with the deepest, most enduring issues of significance and meaning yet to be
considered by human beings—the problem of classification and definition
might seem, at first, to get even more complicated. But the hope is that we
start to see that the thorny issues involved in definition apply to all things
that we study—from cultures and literatures to mountains and hills. If so,
then considering in detail what is involved in coming up with a definition of
religion that is useful to the scholar interested in studying human cultures
will have implications for other areas of study as well.
And so, with this hope in mind, we leave behind the lofty heights of
not only Sagarmatha, but also Chomolungma, Himalayan Peak 15, Mont
Eve-rest, as well as Mount Ever-est to consider further some of the issues
involved in classification, for only once we classify, or define and thereby
name, some thing as a specific sort of something that’s in a specific sort of
relationship with other things (such as coming to know a part of the world
as ‘religion’), will we be able to get on with the work of studying it.
What’s in a name? 21
Example: fruit or vegetable?
Nix v. Hedden 149 U.S. 304 (1893)
US Supreme Court
Submitted: April 24, 1893
Decided: May 10, 1893
This was an action brought February 4, 1887, against the [tax] collector
of the port of New York to recover back duties paid under protest on
tomatoes imported by the plaintiff from the West Indies in the spring
of 1886, which the collector assessed under ‘Schedule G.—Provisions’
of the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883 . . ., imposing a duty on ‘vegetables in their natural state, or in salt or brine, not specially enumerated
or provided for in this act, ten percentum ad valorem’, and which the
plaintiffs contended came within the clause in the free list of the same
act, ‘Fruits, green, ripe, or dried, not specially enumerated or provided
for in this act’.
The case of the Nix family (a father and four sons), who at that time were
in the business of importing produce into the US, suing to recover taxes
that they’d previously paid under protest, is a good place to mull over a few
things about identity and classification—as well as the contests and practical
implications that are often implicit in any act of classification.
The case, which took six years to work its way to the US Supreme Court,
hinged on the seemingly simple questions of whether a tomato is a fruit or
a vegetable—an important matter for someone importing a lot of tomatoes
back then, given that the US’s 1883 Tarrif Act (a federal law outlining how
imported goods would or would not be taxed, all in an effort to give a
competitive edge to local products) placed a duty (that is, an import tax) on
vegetables but not fruits.
While the case might be interesting today for a variety of reasons—such
as how importing fruits and vegetables, great distances, was far more novel
then than it is today, what with the increasingly widespread use of refrigeration in the early to mid-twentieth century and the later development of far
more efficient forms of shipping—it could attract our attention, as scholars
of religion, for a few specific reasons: (i) it allows us to ask whether a tomato’s identity is in the tomato itself or is established by the set of relationships
that we, as people who use tomatoes, put in place and manage (that is, can
you tell what a tomato is just by looking at it really carefully?); (ii) it introduces us to the distinction between ordinary and technical language (that is,
what does a home cook vs. a botanist call it?); and (iii) it also introduces us
to the notion of a stipulative definition.
The problem of this case was that, as the judge, Associate Justice John
Gray (d. 1902), noted in his decision:
22 What’s in a name?
Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the
people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten
cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with,
or after the soup, fish, or meats which constitute the principal part of
the repast, and not, like fruits generally, as dessert.
The question, then, is what a tomato shall be considered with regard to its
status as an item that is traded and, when imported into the US back in the
late nineteenth century, taxed. Or, to rephrase it, my guess is that the judge
would be terribly mistaken if he thought that he had to make an existential
claim about the tomato’s very essence, one that would be relevant for all
situations in which a tomato was present. Instead, the decision was rather
more tactical: for the specific purposes of trade and tariff, what should we
(or at least the government) consider a tomato to be? Are dictionaries of
any help? Were there any technical definitions of these terms in the 1883
law? Should the way a botanist classifies the tomato (as a fruit, you’ll recall)
determine the outcome? And what about the way people ordinarily use
them—after all, surely no one thinks that they’re putting a slice of fruit on
their toasted BLT sandwich, do they?
You can easily find the whole decision online, along with all US Supreme
Court decisions; it’s very brief and easily read. But since you now know
enough about the facts of the case, I’d mull it over first before finding out
how Justice Gray finished the following sentence: ‘As an article of food
on our tables, whether baked or boiled, or forming the basis of soup, they
are . . .’. (And, knowing how the legal system works, it’s a decision that
could always be reconsidered and overturned, correct?) In doing so, keep in
mind that the issue, at least for us, might not be whether it’s really a fruit
or a vegetable but how it is that one might reason a tomato into being one
or the other. For if we can see how classifying something works in this case
then we might learn something about how it works in other cases as well—
such as the IRS deciding if something is a church or not.
Further considerations
The Nix v. Hedden decision from 1893 is such a wonderful example to
think with (in part because it’s so misleadingly simple), to demonstrate that
classification may be all about the classifiers and not especially about the
items being classified. Another good example can be found described in
D.G. Burnett’s fascinating 2010 book, Trying Leviathan. It concerns an
1818 New York state case, Maurice v. Judd, in which the status of the
whale was at question since, as readers may already be guessing, fish oil was
then taxable when the whaling ships came ashore; but, with new ways of
What’s in a name? 23
studying and classifying the natural world emerging at that time in Europe,
it was becoming apparent that whales might not be best understood as
really big fish but, rather, as mammals—as having far more in common
with us than with salmon or tuna. And mammal oil (if there even was such
a thing) certainly wasn’t taxable. Burnett’s book explores this one court
case in detail. That many readers today likely can’t unthink that a whale is
obviously a mammal makes Burnett’s book even better (as is often the case
when one does a little history and learns to see the present as more curious
than we at first thought), for, sooner or later, it turns their gaze back onto
themselves when they realize that, for the bulk of human history, a whale—
should someone have been lucky enough to actually see one (for this is long
before SeaWorld, after all, let alone nature shows on that thing we now
call TV)—was pretty obviously just a really big fish. Just ask the character
Ishmael in Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, Moby-Dick: ‘Be it known that,
waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that a whale
is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me’ (see chapter 32). That there
are many other examples of items in the world that seem ambiguous to us,
given how we generally tend to organize and thereby come to know our
world, should be obvious—examples which may challenge or defy what
some see to be common sense. Consider how a divorced person was once
considered taboo or even dangerous, given how the world then was mostly
divided between being either single and married, or how those who identify as transgendered today are un-understandable (and, yes, maybe even
seen as dangerous) to those who maintain that one must be either male or
female. So, if tomatoes and whales don’t do the trick, I’m confident that
you can come up with some instances of your own—examples where, when
we look at them closely, we end up learning more about the classifiers, and
their view of the world, than we might expect. (What about that court case
on whether the postures and exercises that we call yoga were inherently
religious or not [and thus whether yoga could be taught in a California
public school; it was decided in April 2015]? One of the expert witnesses at
the trial, a scholar of religion, argued that they were essentially religious, by
the way . . . .) For, after all, I’m sure that whales out there in the deep don’t
care much about whether they’re a fish or a mammal—they’re just doing
whatever it is that whales do.
24 What’s in a name?
Summary of vocabulary
Anthropology
Binary pair
Classification
Colonialism
Correspondence theory
Essentialism
Existentialism
Experience
History
Identity
Insider/outsider problem
Meaning
Myth
Native
Religion
Ritual
Stipulate
Taboo
Summary of scholars
Mary Douglas
Notes
2
The history of ‘religion’
Making the leap from mountains and tomatoes to cultures, this chapter
invites readers to consider not just religion as an aspect of wider cultural
practices, but the very fact that we think such things as religions exist—
that some of us even use the word ‘religion’ to name what appears to us as
a distinct zone in our social world—itself to be a cultural artifact that we
can study. We therefore begin by acquainting ourselves with the history
of the very concept ‘religion’, keeping in mind that knowing the history,
development, and limitations of our tools (such as our words) may come
in handy when we try to use them to name, organize, and move around
within our worlds.
Concepts are not given off by the objects of our interest. They neither
descend from the sky nor sprout out of the ground for our plucking.
Willi Braun (2000)
26 The history of ‘religion’
Like all items of culture, words and the concepts they are thought to convey
have a history (such as the classification of, and the various associations and
value judgments that we make when we hear, the name ‘Mount Everest’);
not only spelling and pronunciation but meanings and usages change
(sometimes dramatically) over time and place. So too, ‘religion’, and the
assumption that the world is neatly divided between religious and nonreligious spheres (that is, church/state), can be understood as a product of
historical development and not a brute fact of social life. Today, long after
the modern usage of the word ‘religion’ was first coined, it is no longer
obvious how it was understood in the past or how we ought to use it today.
In fact, it is not altogether clear that scholars should even continue to use
it when studying human behavior. After all, just because a group of people
use a concept as part of their own way of talking about themselves and the
rest of the world does not mean that scholars studying these people must
use it as well.
That many of the people a scholar might study certainly talk about their
specifically religious beliefs and their religious institutions should be obvious to anyone; however, that many of the people one might study do not
talk about their world in this manner whatsoever is equally obvious to
anyone who has done even just a little cross-cultural or historical work.
Therefore, contrary to other introductions that employ the term ‘religion’
as if it refers to a universal feature animating those social movements called
‘the world’s religions’—a term first coined in Europe not so long ago (on
this, see the work of Tomoko Masuzawa)—this introduction will be a little more cautious when it comes to making general claims about all human
beings. Instead, it will primarily concern itself with the history and use of
the idea of ‘religion’.
The English word ‘religion’ has equivalents in other modern languages,
e.g., in Germany the academic study of religion is known as Religions­
wissenschaft and in France it is known as les sciences religieuses. In
nineteenth-century Britain the academic study of religion was simply called
either the science of religion or comparative religion (or what some today
call either the academic or the critical study of religion) the latter name
emphasizing the cross-cultural nature of its data while the former emphasized the systematic and rational manner in which it was studied; F. Max
Müller, one of the founders of the field, referred to the newly emerging field
as the science of religion, following the model of what was then the newly
emerging cross-cultural field called the science of language, or philology—
what we today might simply term linguistics.
A quick comparison, therefore, reveals that languages influenced by
Latin and, later, European cultures, possess something equivalent to the
term ‘religion’. This means that for pre-colonial contact cultures, or in those
few that today remain unaffected first by Europe and now North American
languages, cultures, and economies, there was not a necessarily equivalent
term. For instance, consider the case of modern India; although ‘religion’
The history of ‘religion’ 27
is not a traditional concept there (that is, the ancient language of Sanskrit
long predates the arrival of Latin-influenced languages in that part of the
world that we today call India), the effects of British colonialism ensure
that contemporary English-speaking citizens of the modern nation-state of
India have no difficulty conceiving of what is called ‘Hinduism’ as their
‘religion’—although, historically speaking, that which world religions textbooks call ‘Hinduism’ can also just be understood as sanatana-dharma: a
Sanskrit term for the cosmic system of duties and obligations that affects
all aspects of samsara (which itself names the almost endless cycle of births
and rebirths). Although the uses and meanings of sanatana-dharma and
‘religion’ may indeed overlap to some extent, assuming that they are one
and the same—that ‘sanatana-dharma corresponds to religion’—is likely an
unwise move for the careful scholar to make.
Consider another case: even the Christian text known as the New
Testament is not much help since its language of composition—known as
koiné, or common, Greek—also predated Latin precursors to our modern term; the authors of the many texts that comprise the New Testament
therefore lacked the linguistic roots from which we today derive our word
‘religion’. So, although English translations routinely use ‘religion’ or
‘godliness’ to translate such ancient Greek terms as eusebia (as found in 1
Timothy 3:16 and 2 Timothy 3:5), or threskia (a term that referred to the
ceremonials of worship, as found in Acts 26:5 and James 1:26, 27), these
ancient Greek terms are much closer to the Sanskrit dharma, the Chinese
li, and the Latin pietas—all words having something to do with the quality one is thought to possess as a result of properly fulfilling sets of social
obligations, expectations, and ritual procedures, not only toward the gods
or the ancestors but also to one’s family, peers, superiors, servants, etc.
For instance, despite ‘piety’ today meaning an inner sentiment or affectation, to be pious in ancient Athens—what the ancient Greek philosopher
Socrates was accused of not being, as the story is told in Plato’s dialogue on
defining eusebia (piety), entitled Euthyphro (c. 380 bce)—meant properly
recognizing, and publicly signaling that you recognized, differences in social
status and privilege. This, of course, is the great irony of the tale told in the
Euthyphro: in this tale Socrates’ accuser is an impious young upstart and
Euthyphro (who is intent on instructing Socrates as the latter prepares for
his own trial) is an outright braggart (or so a reader might easily conclude);
by their behavior the ancient reader would have known that neither can
judge either eusebia or Socrates—because, unlike him, they’re both impious.
Or consider one final case, that of the Arabic term din (pronounced
‘deen’), which is today commonly translated as ‘religion’. According to the
authoritative Encyclopedia of Islam, the modern term/concept din seems to
have developed from the much earlier notion of a debt that must be settled.
Eventually, the concept develops such that we find the phrase yawm al-din,
or what we might translate as the ‘Day of Judgment’, when Allah (from
Arabic, translating simply as ‘the God’) gives direction to all human beings.
28 The history of ‘religion’
What we therefore find in din is—much like ancient senses of piety—a term
that once operated within a world of social exchanges, a world of social
rank and relationships (as in debts, whether monetary or social, owed by
one party to another), and a world of social rules and obligations (such
as the requirement to settle all debts in the proper fashion). It then moves
from the more narrow or mundane sense of a debt to be settled to being
a term that stands for the entire collection of required directives to which
one must submit—as in one’s submission to the will of Allah. Therefore,
it could be rather misleading to suggest that ‘din means religion’, as many
people do—especially if by ‘religion’ one means what so many people
in the English-speaking world do: ‘faith’, a unique type of inner experience, or ‘belief in God’. Instead, what we find in the example of din is an
Arabic term that connotes a social relationship translated by contemporary English speakers who assume that the word ‘religion’ has universal
significance (not unlike the IRS’s use of the word church perhaps?) and
therefore must have equivalents elsewhere in the world.
The danger that we as scholars run into when assuming that our terms
are universal is that much is lost in the translation. For instance, consider
a recent translation of the Qur’an’s famous sura (or chapter) 5:3: ‘Today
I have perfected your system of belief and bestowed My favours upon you
in full, and have chosen submission (al-Islam) as the creed for you.’ Or,
as phrased in another English translation: ‘The day I have perfected your
religion for you and completed My favour to you. I have chosen Islam
to be your faith.’ Both ‘system of belief’ and ‘creed’ in the first translation, and ‘religion’ and ‘faith’ in the second, are English renderings of
din—translations that nicely lock the Arabic social term within a world of
private sentiment (that is, belief or faith). Nothing could be further from
the complex social, transactional history of the ancient Arabic concept.
Moreover, knowing something of din’s etymology, or historical development, sheds important light on one’s understanding of Islam, given that
the notion of submission (as in submitting to the will and directives of
Allah) plays such a central role. It therefore seems that one should be careful not to conclude too quickly that din—not to mention dharma, eusebia,
and pietas—means religion. Meaning, it appears, is not such a simple matter
of looking for identities and correspondences.
So where does all of this leave us? Recognizing not only that a word’s
history holds no clue concerning how we ought to use it today—for, as
made clear in the glossary’s entry on ‘religion’, there’s nothing religious
about the ancient Latin roots of our modern word religion—but also that
we do not easily find synonyms in other cultures for the words/concepts
that we take for granted, scholars find a number of questions in need of
investigation: if a culture does not have the concept, can we study ‘their
religion’? Should scholarship only employ concepts local to the group under
study? If so, can one, for example, study someone’s ‘culture’ or their ‘DNA’
if they lack the words and the concepts? Or, despite its local nature, is the
The history of ‘religion’ 29
thing to which our word ‘religion’ points shared by all people, regardless
of their self-understandings and their vocabulary—much as Shakespeare
wrote in Romeo and Juliet: ‘What’s in a name?’ But then again, is using our
local term as if it were a universal signifier an act of cultural imperialism?
Can we avoid this or is all knowledge, such as making a claim about the
world, intertwined with an exercise in power (such as who gets to speak
and who doesn’t) . . .?
These are important questions for those who attempt to develop a crossculturally useful definition of the religion concept, distinguishable from its
popular or folk definition. After all, just as chemists develop a technical
vocabulary, driven by theories concerning how chemicals and molecules
interact, that prompts them to talk about ‘H2O’ instead of merely ‘water’,
or (as the scholar of Christian origins, Willi Braun, has pointed out in the
opening chapters to the Guide to the Study of Religion), just as astronomers use the term ‘crater’ to talk about something others might simply
call a ‘hole’, thereby bringing with their technical term a complex series of
assumptions and theories concerning the movement of physical objects in
space (and thus the cosmic origins of that indentation), so too scholars of
religion who aim to study religion as an aspect of the social world develop
technical categories capable of working with cross-cultural data, all to
accomplish the scholar’s own goals. ‘Concepts are not given off by the
objects of our interest’, writes Braun, ‘[t]hey neither descend from the sky
nor sprout out of the ground for our plucking.’ So, as with anthropologists
who study ‘culture’—yet another Latin-based term that is alien to many
of the world’s ‘cultures’—the challenge, then, is to work from the ground
up: to take contextually and historically specific words, and the concepts
that they each entail, and retool them for use in studying diverse historical
and geographic settings.
30 The history of ‘religion’
Example: ‘religion’ on the colonial frontier
As we have seen, the recurring denials of Hottentot religion can be
correlated with expanding boundaries of a contested frontier. Reports
about the Hottentots have demonstrated this ‘frontier hypothesis’ of
comparative religion: when a frontier opens, the enemy has no religion,
but when the frontier closes, and hegemony has been established, a
dominated, subjected people are discovered to have a religion that can
be inventoried and analyzed. Hottentot religion was invented, denied,
and reinvented in such a shifting frontier zone. Over a two-hundredyear period, the Hottentots, who lacked a religion between 1600 and
1654, acquired one after a European settlement had been established,
only to lose it between 1685 and 1700 as the colony expanded and to
regain it when new boundaries had been secured. But they lost it again
in the 1770s as the colony grew to encompass the entire Cape region. As
this correlation suggests, comparative religion during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries was a science situated in the conflicts of the
colonial frontier.
The above quotation comes from page 69 of David Chidester’s Savage
Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (1996),
a book that has rightly had considerable impact in the modern academic
study of religion. For what had long gone relatively unnoticed to those
writing histories of the field was that the beginnings of the study of religion
(much like many other fields in the modern university, such as anthropology) coincided with what Jonathan Z. Smith once called ‘an explosion of
data’ (in his essay, ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’), one that resulted from
those who were participating in a wide array of colonial projects writing
letters home, keeping diaries, writing memoirs, etc., all of which chronicled
the ‘new’ and the ‘strange’—at least as the ways of others around the globe
were judged back home in Europe. Instead of seeing comparative religion
as dating to people’s attempts to make sense of all this information the
story of the rise of the field, in the late nineteenth century, was usually
linked to a history of big ideas gradually unfolding in the minds of great
men—literally; it was pretty much all men who populated the usual stories of the field’s rise. Although Chidester was not the first to break from
this common tale, his study of how comparative religion was practiced in
southern Africa, in practical settings of contact and conquest, was among
the first to document, in rich detail using primary source documents from
the period, how calling something religious (or not, as the above quotation makes evident) was among the tools settlers and the military used not
just to make sense of the new peoples they encountered but also as a way
to manage and, in many cases, rule and dominate them. For here the term
not only indicated the newcomers’ recognition of something as familiar
or appealing to their imperial tastes, but that it also made clear to them
how these others were to be treated. Did they have religion or not? Was it
The history of ‘religion’ 31
instead mere heathen superstition? If they did conclude that the locals possessed religion of some form was it an evolutionarily under-developed form
of that which ‘we’ practiced or, instead, might it be a degraded version of
some earlier type?
The implication of all this was whether the peoples encountered on the
frontier were worthy humans like ‘we’ were. It’s worth considering that,
back in Europe, there were lively debates as to whether the inhabitants being
encountered when first trying to settle what was once known as the New
World (that is, North America) were even human! After all, the dominant
system by which Europeans of that time knew their world—the Christian
biblical story—made no mention of this land or these peoples. It wasn’t until
1537 that Pope Paul III pronounced for the first time that the native inhabitants of the continent were, in fact, human beings, and thus had rational
capabilities, souls, and thus were able to own property—and should themselves not be owned as slaves. Thus we can see what all was at stake in
determining whether a group had a religion or not—it meant the difference between being treated like an animal or a human being; though being
classified as the latter back then didn’t mean what it might mean today, of
course—the estimates today are that several million people on this continent
were killed in European expansion.
The example in this particular part of Chidester’s book concerns the
Hottentots (also known as the Khoikhoi—the former term is now seen
as offensive, in part because it was the colonial outsiders’ name for these
people), a nomadic group once living across southwestern Africa, and the
way in which they were understood (and then treated) by the Dutch, who
arrived, after the Portuguese had, to settle (or might we just say invade?)
this region in the mid-seventeenth century. (The first Khoikhoi–Dutch war
took place in 1659 and the second lasted from 1673–7.) Tracing successive
phases of contact between these two groups, each of which coincided with
either the Dutch expanding or settling the frontier’s border, Chidester concludes that the designation ‘religion’ was bestowed upon the local people
by the Europeans only when they were not seen as a threat. To rephrase,
Chidester argues that using this term to name certain of Khoikhoi claims
and behaviors was one of the tools (or might we just say weapons?) that the
Dutch employed to make sense of and thereby manage these others.
My hunch is that this obviously pronounced or extreme example of the
classification religion’s practical use in situations of contact and contest
isn’t as unique as it might at first appear—and thus not limited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For whether it means distinguishing (and,
in the process, prioritizing) religion from what might be called mere magic
and superstition, using the term either to gain some competitive advantage
over others (think of the so-called religious exemption someone might get
in order to avoid military service) or even as a way to criticize a group
with which one disagrees (such as how some today might assume that selfidentified religious people are unsophisticated, gullible, or childish), all of
32 The history of ‘religion’
these constitute more examples of how naming something as religion is
evidence of a contest taking place, where resources or status are at stake.
So what examples can you identify where, in possibly mundane, day-today settings, or maybe even from the day’s headlines, classifying something
as religious can be seen to have such practical effects?
Further considerations
If readers are paying attention to the news then they may have no trouble
thinking of other examples in which using the classifier ‘religion’ or ‘religious’ can be a handy designator for helping groups to reorganize how they
see and act in their world—and, in the process, reorganizing social relations
within that world, doing so in ways that are advantageous to some but
which come with consequences for others. For instance, consider the news
coming out of Bavaria as I write this. On June 1, 2018, a new law went
into effect in this southern German state which required Christian crosses
to be displayed in all public buildings—a Kreuzpflicht, or crucifix obligation. ‘The cross is a fundamental symbol of our Bavarian identity and way
of life,’ said the state’s Premier at a meeting the month before, as quoted
widely in the media at the time. ‘It stands for elementary values such as
charity, human dignity and tolerance.’ As also reported in the media, he
then nailed a cross to the wall of the lobby in the Chancellery. Now, the
so-called separation of church/state that is so well known to those familiar
with US law is not in effect in quite the same fashion in Germany (where,
for example, each state might approach these issues a little differently); for
example, it is not uncommon to find the government financing religious
education in the German public school system. However, such an obvious assertion of a Christian national identity raises red flags for some on
the way that religion can encroach on politics—unless, of course, the cross
isn’t a religious symbol at all. Consider the New York Times headline for
May 31, 2018: ‘Crosses Go Up in Public Offices. It’s Culture, Bavaria Says,
Not Religion’. As quoted at the start of the article, ‘“This is about culture,
not religion,” said the mayor [of the city of Deggendorf], Christian Moser,
adding that the separation of church and state was “a given”’. This strategy
is reminiscent of the strategy in a famous church/state Supreme Court case
in the US (Lynch v. Donnelly [1984]), in which the city of Pawtucket had
long erected a nativity scene each year (also called a crèche), which struck
some as undermining their rights not to have the city ‘respect the establishment of religion’ (quoting the First Amendment)—so they sued. Among the
city’s defenses was that, though the display had religious elements, it also
had many others (a wishing well, for example, and Santa Claus) and thus
this was merely an economic action, meant to (as an expert witness had
testified before a lower court), ‘help people to participate in the Christmas
spirit, brotherhood, peace, and let loose with their money’. Ironically,
Justice Blackmun, dissenting from the 5–4 majority that sided with the city,
The history of ‘religion’ 33
saw this last move as quite a problem, since, in order to win the case: ‘The
creche has been relegated to the role of a neutral harbinger of the holiday
season, useful for commercial purposes, but devoid of any inherent meaning and incapable of enhancing the religious tenor of a display of which it is
an integral part. The city has its victory—but it is a Pyrrhic [that is, empty]
one indeed’. So, like the Bavarian example, we see here how handy it can
be for some to rethink the limits of religion—a rethinking that comes with
implications, of course. The question is whether there are other examples.
34 The history of ‘religion’
Summary of vocabulary
Anthropology
Belief
Christianity
Church
Church/state
Classification
Colonialism
Comparative religion
Correspondence theory
Culture
Dharma
Din
Establishment Clause
Eusebia
Evolution
Experience
Faith
First Amendment to the US Constitution
Folk knowledge
Greek
Heathen
Hegemony
Hinduism
History
Identity
Islam
Li
Linguistics
Magic
Meaning
Modernity
Nation-state
Native
Pietas
Primary source
Private
Religion
Religionswissenschaft
Religious education (RE)
Ritual
Sanatana-dharma
Sanskrit
Superstition
Notes
The history of ‘religion’ 35
Theory
Translation
Utility
World religions
Summary of scholars
Willi Braun
Tomoko Masuzawa
F. Max Müller
Jonathan Z. Smith
3
The essentials of religion
As a first step in retooling our local concept religion, to make of it a
term that might be of technical use when scholars talk about the world
of human actions, we consider what, for some people, might be the most
common or sensible approach to defining anything, let alone religion:
essentialism, or the substantive approach that assumes an enduring identity, core, substance, or, simply put, essence lurks deep within objects,
making them what we say they are.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, Act II,
Scene ii (c. 1597)
38 The essentials of religion
A notable early attempt to develop a technical—rather than relying on a common or folk—definition of religion as a universal human feature was that of
the nineteenth-century anthropologist, Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917)
in his influential book, Primitive Culture (1871, 2 vols.; reprinted today as
Religion in Primitive Culture). As he wrote there:
A rudimentary definition of religion seems best to fall back at once on
this essential source . . . belief in Spiritual Beings.
In this classic, minimalist definition we see the still common emphasis on
religion as a private, intellectual activity (that is, religion equals believing in
this or that, as if it is all about what goes on between your two ears) rather
than an emphasis on, for example, the behavioral or the social components,
as in Émile Durkheim’s (1858–1917) emphasis on public ritual and social
institution in his still influential sociological study, The Elementary Forms
of Religious Life (1912). As stated in Durkheim’s often quoted definition:
religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred
things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church
all those who adhere to them. . . . In showing that the idea of religion
is inseparable from the idea of a Church, it conveys the notion that
religion must be an eminently collective thing.
Unlike Durkheim’s sense of religion as something eminently social that
you do with your body (making it public and, as such, observable), for
Tylor, religion is an eminently individual thing that you do with your
mind (making it private and so an item of experience).
In Tylor’s onetime popular definition we therefore find the remnants of
a philosophically idealist era in European history, when one’s membership
within certain groups was thought to be primarily dependent upon whether
one believed in something (for example, agreed with the claims made in a
creed or in a pledge of allegiance), rather than membership being the result
of collective behaviors, such as a group of soldiers saluting a flag or people standing in unison to sing a national anthem (as argued in Durkheim’s
work). In fact, this idealist presumption still persists today, insomuch as the
institutions some scholars of religion refer to as ‘the cumulative tradition’
(the mere externals of religious experience, they might say) are thought to
be a somewhat deadened (that is, unreflective, automatic, etc.) behavioral
expression of a prior, dynamic affectation often known as ‘faith’ or ‘belief’
(e.g., see Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s classic 1962 work, The Meaning and End
of Religion). We can easily find something like this distinction in popular
culture today—not to mention back during the Protestant Reformation—in
which people regularly distinguish between something they call spirituality, on the one hand, and on the other the institution of religion. ‘I’m not
The essentials of religion 39
religious,’ they say, ‘I’m spiritual’ (what is now called SBNR: spiritual but
not religious)—translation: ‘I do not participate in unthinking ritual and
pointless institution but, instead, participate in an inner, personal quest.’
(Yes, the judgmental nature of this claim is often part of what is being said.)
That such people did not come up with this way of thinking on their own,
let alone originate the particular path on which they say they are traveling,
indicates that they too are part of long established traditions and institutions
with rituals of their own—such as saying ‘I’m not religious, I’m spiritual’.
It’s just that such people are participating in a different and more than likely
competing tradition, requiring devices to distinguish it and, then, authorize
it over the others.
With its emphasis on the intellectual or cognitive component (along with
such other early scholars as Herbert Spencer [1820–1903] and James G.
Frazer [1854–1941], Tylor is numbered among a group today called the
intellectualists, a nineteenth-century anthropological tradition), Tylor’s
work offers an example of a classic definitional strategy: essentialism.
Because the social movements classified as religions struck such observers
as obviously having a number of different outward characteristics, many of
which were explained away as mere historical accidents (that is, the result of
specific cultural or geographic context, none of which were essential, however), they thought it unwise to define religion based on what they took to
be its merely secondary, external, and thus unnecessary or what they might
have termed its merely accidental aspects. Instead, like many others, Tylor
reasoned that one ought to identify ‘the deeper motive which underlies
them’. Belief in spiritual beings, he concluded, was just such a deeper and
thus universal motive; in fact, he concluded that it was the ‘essential source’
for all religions. Accordingly, his naturalistic theory of religion sought to
account for the universal belief in spiritual beings (a theory known as animism). We therefore refer to Tylor’s definition as essentialist (sometimes
also termed substantivist or monothetic): it identifies the one essential, fundamental, basic, and non-negotiable feature (or substance) without which
something cannot be what it is.
In other words, if, as the German Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto
(1869–1937) once argued in his influential book, The Idea of the Holy
(1917), that which sets religions apart is the participant’s feeling of awe
and fascination when in the presence of what Otto termed the mysterium
tremendum (the compelling yet repelling mystery of it all), then without
evidence of this sense of awe and fascination there is no religion. This feeling of utter awe (a complex combination of fear, trembling, fascination,
and attraction) was, for Otto, the essence of religion—something that could
only be apprehended by the participant. For the late eighteenth-century
German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher the essence was, similarly, ‘a
feeling of absolute dependence’; for the early twentieth-century Dutch phenomenologist of religion, Gerardus van der Leeuw, it was ‘power’; for the
early twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich it was ‘faith in an ultimate
40 The essentials of religion
concern’ (which he once defined, in an unhelpful circular fashion, as ‘a
concern about the truly ultimate’); for the late nineteenth-century psychologist of religion, William James, it was an experience peculiar to so-called
charismatic ‘religious geniuses’ that, once expressed, taught, reproduced,
and, finally, institutionalized, was prone to deteriorate; and for the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, it was the experience of the sacred—which
he defined as ‘not the profane’ (a rather less than useful definition, for it
begs us now to define profane).
Although Tylor’s classic definition differs significantly from all of these
others (insomuch as his anthropological, or etic, perspective aimed first to
describe and then to explain the cause of such beliefs, whereas the others
all presumed that the object of the belief existed independently of believers,
thus prompting their responses), all of these scholars went about the task
of definition in the same manner: the inductive method was used, whereby
one compares a number of empirical examples, looking for their underlying
similarity. We see here the common strategy (e.g., from the late nineteenth
century until today) of employing the comparative method to identify nonempirical similarity, such that certain types of all too obvious difference are
understood to be nonessential features of contingent history—an approach
characteristic of a number of scholars, from Frazer’s famous and influential multi-volume The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (first
edition 1890) to Mircea Eliade’s (1907–86) now classic work, Patterns in
Comparative Religion (1949). Today, this approach is most evident in the
work of scholars of religion who attempt to identify what they maintain to be
the deep and timeless similarities among the world’s religions—an effort that
generally goes by the name of religious pluralism or inter-religious dialogue
(e.g., Martin Marty and Diana Eck). Thus, the study of religion, at least as
carried out by some contemporary scholars, is an exercise in identifying what
is asserted by some to be a profoundly human, and thus deeply humane,
element—sometimes called the human spirit or human nature. Based on this
presumably shared item, feeling or value, mutual understanding across cultural and historical divides is believed to be possible; after all, studying ‘their’
sacred symbols, narrative or practices inevitably strikes a chord with ‘us’
(e.g., the cross-cultural comparative work of Wendy Doniger).
Much as with a light switch that can either be on or off—there’s no
such thing as a light being only partially on, right? (more on this later)—
essentialist definitions lead one to name something as religion if, and only
if, it possesses a certain quality or trait that the definer deems necessary
or required—sometimes called its substance, such that an essentialist
definition can also be known as a substantive definition. That just what
characterizes this essential quality differs (sometimes dramatically, as evidenced above) from one essentialist to another ought not to be overlooked.
A classic attempt to define something’s essence can be found throughout
the work of the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato (427–347 bce). Writing
in a dialogue style—somewhat akin to reading a play (but without stage
The essentials of religion 41
directions), in which different characters represent contrary viewpoints,
all of which collectively explore a topic, such as ‘What is justice?’—Plato’s
efforts seem to have been directed toward identifying that one quality without which something was not what you said it was. Of particular interest
to us is Plato’s already mentioned dialogue, the Euthyphro (believed by
scholars to have been written sometime in the late 300s bce). This dialogue
takes the form of a chance encounter between Plato’s teacher—and the main
character in his dialogues—Socrates (470–399 bce), and a younger character named Euthyphro, both of whom are about to enter the Athenian law
courts. Socrates is there to be prosecuted for being impious (the ancient
Greek term asebia); the charge against him is that he corrupts the minds of
the youth and invents new gods not condoned by the Athenian city-state, as
this charge is laid out in the dialogue that usually follows the Euthyphro in
modern editions, entitled the Apology (from the Greek apologia, meaning
to speak in defense of a position; that this is not at all what we mean by
an apology today is a good example of how words are historical artifacts
too, changing over time). Euthyphro, we learn, is there to prosecute his
own father for the murder of a farm laborer (or, to be frank, a slave) who
was himself a murderer. Given that charging one’s own father with a crime
meant that one risked being judged impious—in fact, Socrates is quite startled to hear Euthyphro say he was charging his own father with a crime, for
what child knows better than a father?—Socrates proceeds on the assumption that Euthyphro must indeed know what marks the distinction between
a truly pious and an impious act. Otherwise, why would Euthyphro perform
an action that dishonors his own father? Because of his own impending
trial for being impious, Socrates could use an expert’s opinion on what is
and what is not pious (or, as we’ve already seen, what in ancient Greek
was termed the quality of eusebia): ‘I think that I cannot do better than be
your disciple’, he says to Euthyphro. The short dialogue that follows, with
all its twists and turns, is thus begun with Socrates’ simple and seemingly
naïve—yet terribly persistent—effort to have Euthyphro arrive at a clear
and defensible definition (whether Socrates is read as a naïve and sincere
or a pompous, even sarcastic, dialogue partner is, of course, left up to each
reader to determine).
‘Tell me, then,’ asks Socrates, ‘what is piety and what is impiety?’
But, before proceeding, it is worth noting, as does Luther H. Martin
in his little book, Hellenistic Religions (1987), that what for us moderns
might be understood as ‘religion’, a seemingly obvious concept most often
distinguishable from such other social institutions as politics or economics
(as in my earlier example of a newspaper editor with a choice to make), the
ancient Greeks might have considered to be divisible into three rather distinct things: piety (eusebia), mystery (Greek myo, meaning to shut one’s eyes
out of fear or danger) and gnosis (from the Greek, meaning secret or esoteric knowledge; from which we today derive the term agnostic). Whereas
the first has already been discussed and will be elaborated below, the second
42 The essentials of religion
refers to ancient cults in which members were initiated into the mysterious
workings of the cosmic order (implying the relations between mortals and
immortals), and the third refers to a tradition in which one’s personal salvation was thought to depend upon gaining special, privileged knowledge (as
opposed to intellectual or philosophical knowledge; gnosis is therefore to be
distinguished from another Greek term, episteme, meaning rational knowledge, from which we get our philosophical term epistemology, the rational
study of knowledge systems). If one is interested in studying ‘ancient Greek
religion’—especially when using ‘religion’ in the fashion we’ve come to use
it today as a system of belief in gods and experiences associated with these
beliefs—one must therefore collect together beliefs and behaviors from
these three otherwise distinct ancient aspects of Greek society, as if they
were all somehow essentially interrelated. Not that this is wrong, but it is
hardly the way ancient Greeks themselves might have understood the way
their world was organized.
So this prompts a question: is there something being lost in so easily
assuming that our way of understanding the world is shared by everyone,
whether past or present?
Perhaps, for as already noted, in ancient Greek, the term eusebia (or
later, in Latin pietas) signified reverence, honor, and esteem—notably as
evident in social and legal relationships. They were not primarily concerned
with proper beliefs about invisible powers. Instead, examples would include
the proper relations between husband and wife, parent and child, master
and slave, soldiers and commanders, and in addition, between mortals and
the immortals. Of course a pious Greek would engage in the proper rituals
with regard to various gods and ceremonies but would also ensure that relations with social superiors, peers and inferiors were carried out according to
the rules of propriety (that is, social expectations). In Plato’s ancient Greek
society, the quality attributed to others known as eusebia therefore signified
a wide system of ordinary social practices concerning one’s relations with
many different sorts of others—relations that extend from the family to the
gods, from social inferiors to superiors.
Because we are told that philosophy, for Socrates, was the effort to obtain
self-knowledge in order to live the just and worthy life (as he is said to have
remarked, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’), then critical inquiry
into one’s actions and motivations was considered the basis for philosophical inquiry. Because one’s actions are rarely, if ever, completely private,
but instead are social in origin and implication (even thinking to yourself
could be considered social, not just because it is probably in response to a
situation but because the language and ideas didn’t spring from the ground
on their own), we can see not only the social role played by Socratic philosophical inquiry (e.g., the dialectical, or back-and-forth, question/answer
teaching method) but, more importantly for us, the intersection between
philosophical inquiry and claims to piety. In other words, since piety necessitates knowing, and then acting on, the right social relations, philosophy
The essentials of religion 43
(that is, public argumentation) can scrutinize those who claim to possess the
quality of piety. Such scrutiny is a critical activity since it examines claims
that present themselves as beyond examination (somewhat akin to the academic study of religion, perhaps?). For example, it can demonstrate that to
boast to have knowledge of piety (as does Euthyphro in Plato’s dialogue)
is to lack self-knowledge; such a boast would then, ironically, constitute an
act of impiety.
In the Euthyphro we have a number of such ironies that no doubt would
have been immediately evident to the ancient Greek reader: we have a young
man who boasts of having privileged knowledge of what is and what is
not pious, and he is bold enough not only to charge his own father with
a crime (as if he knows better) but also to set about instructing an older
man renowned for his own skills at critical inquiry (don’t forget, both his
father and Socrates are Euthyphro’s social superiors). And Socrates has
been charged with being impious by yet another young man (who, we’re
told, can’t even grow a decent beard). Issues that involve transgressing
rank, honor, and privilege should immediately come to the reader’s mind.
(Speaking of transgression, perhaps Mary Douglas’s insights into classification and taboo have some relevance here?) What is therefore of interest is
that a dialogue attempting to define the essence of eusebia is set within a
context ripe with conflicts over rank and power. For the sake of justice,
Euthyphro claims that he must prosecute his father—in spite of the fact that
the man is his father—rather than exercise the ‘proper’ and conventional
relations (entailing respect and esteem for one’s father). Socrates therefore
seems justified in inquiring if Euthyphro really is aware of just what constitutes piety. So Plato’s character Socrates sets about practicing his dialectical
method on Euthyphro, the very method of inquiry that has landed Socrates
in a lawsuit of his own.
To Socrates’ seemingly straightforward question, ‘Tell me, then, what is
piety and what is impiety?’, Euthyphro offers a variety of answers across
the dialogue, each of which Socrates critiques on various grounds, until
Euthyphro is led to repeating one of his previous yet inadequate definitions.
The various definitions offered by Euthyphro are as follows:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Piety means prosecuting the unjust individual; impiety is not to prosecute.
Piety is what is pleasing to the gods; impiety is displeasing to the gods.
Piety is what all the gods love; impiety is what they all hate.
Piety is service to the gods; impiety is no attention to the gods.
Piety is to know that one’s words and actions are acceptable to the gods.
Piety is the science of asking of the gods and giving to them.
Piety is the art of carrying on business between gods and human beings.
Piety is that which is loved by the gods (see 3 above).
When people are asked to define something, they often start by providing
an example of it. In the case of Euthyphro, to Socrates’ seemingly innocent
44 The essentials of religion
question, ‘What is piety?’, he first answers that prosecuting criminals is
pious (or ‘Doing what I am doing now’, as phrased by Eurthyphro in a
line from the dialogue that is difficult to read as anything but pompous).
But Socrates is unsatisfied, for this, he answers, is not a definition of piety.
If you were asked to define, for instance, ‘tree’, would it suffice for you to
answer, ‘Yes, a maple is a tree, so is an oak, and an aspen, and a redwood,
and also a willow’? There is a difference between offering a definition and
providing an example, no? (Do you recall the Internal Revenue Service
declining to define ‘church’ but, instead, offering examples of what they
meant, such as a mosque or a synagogue . . .?) So it is reasonable that someone might inquire about the criterion (or criteria, if more than one—more
on that later . . .) that you employed to narrow down the many things of
daily experience to just this or that. That criterion is part of your essentialist definition, for without satisfying it the thing is not what you say it is. If
the color red is essential to a stop sign then putting the word “Stop” on a
yellow sign just won’t work. Socrates is interested in that one thing that all
pious actions share—their essence—for, if he can identify what it is about
prosecuting criminals that makes it pious, then he can employ that criterion to classify other acts that share this trait—something that would be of
tremendous use in his own defense.
(Aside: do you see how definition and utility, or usefulness, are linked?
Socrates seeks to define piety because he needs to defend himself in court.
Thus, could we hazard a guess that, instead of being right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, definitions are more or less useful, all depending on
one’s goals? Could it therefore be that definitions are tactical tools that
allow one to get on with producing knowledge about the world—a knowledge that, instead of being innocent and objective, is intimately linked to
social interests of the definer?)
For our purposes, the key to this dialogue is Socrates’ seemingly simple
question that follows Euthyphro’s third attempt at a definition: ‘Is something pious because the gods love it or do they love it because it is pious?’ In
other words, what makes mere stuff (like Mary Douglas’s ‘matter’ that can
either be classified as ‘soil’ or ‘dirt’, depending on what you want to do with
it [interesting how definition, utility and interests have arisen yet again])
into specific things to which we give names and values: is it our actions
toward them that give them value and significance (e.g., loving them, despising them, needing them, ignoring them, etc.) or do we, instead, passively
recognize in them some inner quality or substance, beneath their surface—
some essence that prompts us to act accordingly toward them?
Case in point: is beauty, as some people say, ‘in the eye of the beholder’
(meaning that beauty is a function of each person’s taste or aesthetic sense)
or is it more than just skin deep? Does beauty reside deep within the object
of art itself, awaiting our careful recognition? As with Romeo’s identity,
in this chapter’s opening quotation, would it be the same regardless of his
name? As applied to ‘religion’, is there some inner essence shared by all
The essentials of religion 45
things that are religious, or is ‘religion’ a classification some of us give to
certain human (and thus observable) actions, acts that we select from a wide
array, giving them a label we use for a purpose and these purposes change
from person to person? Does religion have an essence or is it a function of
human behavior, needs, and interests?
Knowing that by the end of Plato’s text Euthyphro quite literally runs
off (either in frustration or embarrassment), leaving Socrates’ quest for the
essence of eusebia unfinished—‘Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry,
and must go now’—suggests that, despite Plato’s apparent preference for an
essentialist definition (something that is evident throughout his many dialogues), the search for an essence may be a hopeless affair. For, as already
indicated, there may be as many essences as there are essentialists—or, to
put it another way, there may be as many essences as there are interests that
drive the effort to nail down the world as if it were comprised of stable, uniform pieces. (Think here of lawyers all arguing over what a legal law really
means or readers disagreeing on the main point of a novel . . . .) So, perhaps
we ought to pay attention to these interests that apparently drive our efforts
to define and make generic aspects of the world into items of discourse.
46 The essentials of religion
Criticisms
So yes, there are indeed some problems entailed in an essentialist approach.
For example, consider that group of scholars already mentioned, a group
which predated the rise of functionalism: the intellectualists (known by this
name due to their presumption that all human beings, past and present,
shared certain shared intellectual traits, such as curiosity and a need to solve
problems). This group of nineteenth-century anthropologists (or perhaps we
should refer to them as the precursors to, or even the founders of, the field
today known as anthropology) were very interested in origins—to explain
something, they assumed, required one to account for its original state and,
then, its change over time. Let’s consider Tylor’s once well-known theory
of animism as our example, which we have already mentioned; to explain
why people today believe in what he termed spiritual beings, Tylor performed what we might call a thought experiment. He asked his readers to
imagine an early human being waking from what you and I commonly refer
to as a dream. However, unlike modern people, who have a fairly complex
understanding of the difference between being awake and asleep, let alone
the differences between our notions of subject and object, this ‘savage philosopher’, as Tylor imagined an early human being, was (like many of his
contemporaries also assumed) rather child-like and therefore not aware of
just what a dream was, let alone did that person possess what some today
consider a commonsense assumption about dreams being the site where subconscious needs are expressed symbolically (a widespread assumption that
we owe to the enduring influence of Sigmund Freud’s work). Despite the
very real differences that likely existed between us and our ancient relatives,
Tylor argued (in ways that many find very troublesome today, indeed)
that his hypothetical early humans were still much like us for they were
profoundly interested in accounting for unanticipated things in their environment (what we might refer to as anomalies). Being like us, they were
therefore curious problem solvers. It’s just that, for many scholars of Tylor’s
time, early humans were also thought to be unlike us inasmuch as they
were assumed to be evolutionarily earlier than us and did not therefore
have access to the sort of scientific methods and higher intellectual capabilities that we do. Nonetheless, using the rudimentary methods and skills that
were at hand, Tylor concludes that these so-called savage philosophers must
have arrived at a satisfactory explanation to account for the odd thing of
experiencing themselves elsewhere or why they were able to interact with
long-dead ancestors (all of which you and I know, inasmuch as we are moderns, to have been taking place in their dreams, of course). Concluding that
there must be something that can leave the body, even outlive the body—
perhaps we can simply call it a soul?—struck Tylor as a pretty sensible
way for such an early human being to solve this puzzle and account for
what must have appeared to them as such an odd experience. Therefore, for
Tylor, the natural cause of religion—the belief in spiritual beings, or, as he
The essentials of religion 47
called it, animism—could be explained by understanding its origin, and its
origin was, he speculated, based on our ancient ancestors solving puzzles by
using their inevitably faulty reasoning about how the natural world worked.
Of course, few scholars today would classify themselves as intellectualists
in quite this way (though the presumption of common cognitive mechanisms among human beings is now shared by many scholars), for there are
a number of problems with this form of scholarship. To name but one, consider Tylor’s conclusion: the hypothetical ‘savage philosopher’ explained his
experience as the result of his having a soul. As appealing as this theory may
be to some readers, we should ask a simple question: is Tylor’s theory of
animism correct?
To answer this, we need to determine a set of criteria so that we can
judge whether Tylor’s theory of animism is persuasive and accurate. But
here we run into a brick wall for, short of inventing time travel to allow us
to be present when his early human awoke from a dream, so that we could
observe this person and ask them questions (but in what language?), we
cannot really come up with a way to test Tylor’s theory, to demonstrate
it to be either right or wrong (something like listening to the bulb while
shaking it to test our hypothesis about it being burnt out). It is for this
reason that some came to question whether Tylor even had a theory, for
theories are, by definition, empirically testable (thus, for example, intelligent design, the view that a cosmic designer created the universe, is, for
scientists [especially those who identify with the positivist tradition], not
a theory whatsoever), as opposed to an untestable hunch, guess, or speculation, premised on the once common but now terribly problematic late
nineteenth-century assumption that early humans must have thought in a
simplistic manner, solving problems as do contemporary children (after all,
nineteenth-century scholars often referred to their idea of early humanity as
‘the childhood of the species’).
To make a long story short, the problem with explaining contemporary
events in terms of their origins is that the origin is long gone and remains
only as a product of modern speculations that cannot help but to project
contemporary assumptions backward in time, much as with Tylor’s rather
Victorian sense of what early humans must have been like (crude but dogged
problem solvers) or, to pick a more accessible example, like the way that old
movies depicting the future tend to look more like the time when the movies were made than the future they once thought they were depicting—after
all, the old Star Trek TV show (e.g., their clothing, hairstyles, language,
let alone the themes to the episodes, etc.) looks an awful lot like the 1960s
while the reboot tends to look like the 1980s—even though they were each
supposedly set in our distant future. As such, one guess might be as good as
any other because the standard against which one measures the guesses—
about some actual origin—cannot be retrieved.
Given just how troublesome it is to try to explain current events in light
of their origins—such as answering a question concerning why people
48 The essentials of religion
sometimes throw salt over their shoulders by saying, ‘Well, a long time
ago . . .’—one can see the appeal for some late nineteenth-century, and
many early twentieth-century, scholars to shift the ground considerably.
Instead of speculating on a long lost original essence or state of affairs,
they tried instead to account for the contemporary, observable purpose
something serves or the need it fulfills. The early twentieth-century anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski (who helped shift the field to its current
emphasis on detailed fieldwork) comes to mind; writing of scholars just a
generation before him, he said:
in historical science, no one could expect to be seriously treated if he
made any mystery of his sources and spoke of the past as if he knew it
by divination. In Ethnography [our sources] . . . are not embodied in
fixed, material documents, but in the behavior and in the memory of
living men.
Early functionalists, like Malinowski—who no doubt benefit greatly from
much earlier generations of scholars intent on explaining religion by means
of appeals to its historical origins (such as David Hume’s work in the eighteenth century)—made just this switch, seeing their intellectualist predecessors as doing something other than empirical science. This new focus on the
contemporary and the observable made functionalist theories testable, and,
as they argued, truly scientific.
The essentials of religion 49
Example: ‘he’s your father!’
Setting of the sitcom’s near final scene: Ray, who is middle-aged and
lives across the street with his wife, Debra, and their three young children, enters his parents’ home, by the back door, into the kitchen, where
his retired father, Frank, is seated alone at the table eating soup and
working on a jigsaw puzzle. Immediately prior to this, on a Saturday
morning while his father, unannounced, was starting to paint Ray and
Debra’s house, Ray and his adult brother Robert had, again, argued
with their father and then Ray suddenly fired him, for being uncooperative, bossy, and deciding to paint the house a color that Debra didn’t
want—though, upon later hearing this, she replied: ‘Wow—actually,
yellow would be kinda nice . . . . It’s sunny.’ So, after telling them what
he did, Ray’s always intruding mother, his long-suffering wife, and even
brother (who has his own issues from living in Ray’s shadow) all advise
him to go next door and apologize to his father, with Robert ending that
scene by commenting, in a low, accusatory voice: ‘He’s your father!’
Ray:(Enters the kitchen’s back door, somewhat sheepishly, trying to be
nonchalant) Listen. I’m sorry about before. Okay? So . . ., come
back over and we’ll do it yellow. Yellow’s okay. I talked Debra
into it. Okay . . .?
Frank: No.
R:
What do you mean no?
F:
I mean I’m not interested. I’m kind of busy right now.
R:Oh right, I see. You got soup. And a puzzle. Well, it doesn’t have
to be right now. Whenever you feel like it . . . . What, you’re eating
out of a pot ’cause you don’t like to clean a bowl?
F:
No, it’s better this way.
R:Oh. (Frank places a puzzle piece, pleased with himself) Hey, that’s
a keen eye you got there. (Ray reads the title of the puzzle on the
box’s cover) ‘The Death of General Stonewall Jackson’. You like
this one?
F:Very interesting figure in history. Considered the Confederacy’s
finest general. Shot by one of his own men. (Frank looks directly at
Ray for the first time, somewhat accusingly)
R:All right, will you stop? God, I can’t believe I invited you back.
I can’t believe I apologized to you even.
F:
Well you should apologize to me. I was right!
R:How are you right? How are you right?! It’s my house and you
wanted to paint it yellow! How is that right?
F:(Frank stands, raises his voice, angrily, speaking directly to Ray)
Because yellow covers better! It won’t fade as fast! And you got
white houses on either side of you! It makes your house pop a little!
And it goes with your trim and the friggin’ little daisies you got!
50 The essentials of religion
R:
Well, why didn’t you just say that?
F:
I shouldn’t have to say it!
R:
What?
F:Because if I say it’s yellow, that should be good enough for you!
I shouldn’t have to explain everything. I’m right!
Everybody Loves Raymond, ‘Frank Paints the House’,
season 5, episode 24 (2001)
I’m not sure whether others have the DVD of this old sitcom episode on
a shelf in their office, like I do, or maybe have access to it via a streaming
service, but it’s likely easy to find online, at least some of the episode’s
scenes, such as the one quoted above. I find it pretty handy for a couple
reasons—first off, it helps to get us thinking about the similarities between
our own social world and that of the ancient Greeks, despite the pretty
obvious differences. For this ancient notion of eusebia (or, for the ancient
Romans, pietas, let alone the ancient Indian notion of doing one’s dharma,
etc.) is often greeted by students encountering it for the first time as rather
strange and alien to them—which, in some ways, it certainly is, of course,
since it derives from a group of people removed from us in time by over
two thousand years and who might not place the same emphasis as we do
on the supposedly lone and rugged individual. But, if the right examples
are raised, it doesn’t take long to start to realize that it is actually rather
familiar since identity and value today might be just as tied to social relationships as they were then. For in class discussions it quickly becomes
apparent that, for many students, calling their parents by Mom’s or Dad’s
first name, or doing so with their professor—at least to their face—crosses
what many students may see to be a number of lines, and therefore makes
them feel rather uneasy. So the story of Ray pulling rank, as we say, on
his own father—despite Ray having some pretty good reasons to finally
stand up to him (let’s be honest, despite having a soft, even endearing
side, Frank is kind of mean)—nicely illustrates this rather old, but still
relevant, Confucian notion of filial piety: the lifelong respect toward a
parent expected of a son or daughter. Failing to exhibit such deference to
a social superior, like (but not limited to) a father or a mother, means that
one risks one’s place (and whatever privileges that may come with it) in
your wider social world—like Frank turning the tables by firing Ray at the
very end of that scene, after Ray apologizes and then agrees that Frank’s
in charge! As such, the titles we commonly use for people who occupy a
status other than our own (like me calling Russell Sr. ‘Dad’) are doing
significant social work—but doing it so efficiently, so subtly, that we tend
not to even notice.
So, lesson one: there may be some rather uniform issues of rank and
identity that operate cross-culturally, suggesting that the unfamiliar may
sometimes not be so strange after all. If so, what other examples could you
come up with where issues of rank, behavior, and identity are intertwined,
The essentials of religion 51
whether one is dealing with peers or those who are at very different places in
the social hierarchy? (Aside: we all live within social hierarchies, no?)
But there’s at least a second lesson here: for playing this episode in a
religious studies classroom, or including a discussion of it in a book meant
for a religious studies class, might strike some as being a bit odd (just as odd
as a chapter devoted to Mount Everest perhaps?). But my hunch is that if
we overcome our modern tendency to see religion as an interior dimension
of relevance only to a certain day of the week or only to certain ways of
talking and acting and, instead, see the actions that we now commonly associate with religion as being part of how human beings simply navigate and
negotiate their complex and ranked social worlds, then such an observer
might have no trouble seeing Ray’s trials and tribulations as a good place
to think through what it means to be pious. To rephrase: although I know
it’s based on a speculative fantasy on my part, my guess is that an ancient
person would easily conclude that Ray was being impious—no more or less
so than if he had failed to participate in the proper ceremonies with regard
to this or that god.
So, lesson two? All depending on how we define religion, some surprising things may start to count as data and thus constitute a place to study it.
If so, then how would you have to define religion in order to see Ray and
Frank as worthwhile to study? And what implicit (or should I call them
folk?) definitions must be up and running in order to see this example as
irrelevant to the field?
Further considerations
I’m guessing that, though members of our society seem to assume that it is
comprised of bold individuals who are free from social constraint (or ought
to be free from it), there are many instances where we can demonstrate that
one’s social status depends upon exhibiting proper behavior toward others
in your group, and doing so in the expected manner. The examples can be
elaborate and complex, of course, but they might also be quite mundane—
such as the way many readers in North America might slightly raise their
head while also quickly raising their eyebrows when walking past someone
they recognize—a gesture that expects the same thing returned, as a sign
of mutual recognition (not unlike how saying ‘How you doing?’ for many
English speakers is often greeted in reply with ‘How you doing?’). This sort
of casual nod is used in specific cases, when the social relationship is informal and, more than likely, not too deeply significant to both parties (that is,
you’d never pass by your mother or your boss and just do this, without talking, as you kept on walking). While the relationship between those silently
nodding as they pass is probably based on far more than this one gesture,
failing to offer this gesture in reply as the proper and expected response
would likely result in what we’d call a social slight toward the party who initiated the ritual. And now the relationship is at risk; one party feels ignored.
52 The essentials of religion
Whether we’d go so far as to call the one who failed to nod impious is open
to debate, of course, but it provides an example of the ordinary and oftenoverlooked mechanisms that members of social groups employ to manage
and maintain their place (that is, their status—even if that means they are
peers) within the group, relations that are constantly under construction
and thus hardly natural or inevitable. My hunch is there are plenty of other
examples—among them are surely examples of members at very different
social positions where the stakes may be far higher than in the case of failing
to return a nod. For instance, why do you almost always bring something
with you, like a bottle of wine, when invited over to someone else’s house to
eat, never even expecting that they’ll open it at dinner . . .?
The essentials of religion 53
Summary of vocabulary
Agnosticism
Animism
Anthropology
bce/ce
Belief
Cause
Charisma
Church
Classification
Cognitive science
Confucianism
Contingent
Cult
Description
Dialectic
Discourse
Emic/etic
Empirical
Essentialism
Eusebia
Experience
Explanation
Faith
Fieldwork
Folk knowledge
History
History of religion(s)
Human nature
Idealism
Induction
Intellectualism
Intelligent design
Inter-religious dialogue
Modernity
Monothetic/polythetic definitions
Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
Naturalistic theories of religion
Origins
Phenomenology
Philosophy
Positivism
Private
Profane
Notes
54 The essentials of religion
Psychology
Public
Religion
Ritual
Sacred
Society
Sociology
Soul
Spiritual but not religious (SBNR)
Spirituality
Taboo
Theology
Theory
Tradition
Translation
Utility
World religions
Summary of scholars
Wendy Doniger
Mary Douglas
Émile Durkheim
Diana L. Eck
Mircea Eliade
James G. Frazer
Sigmund Freud
David Hume
William James
Martin Marty
Rudolph Otto
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Herbert Spencer
Paul Tillich
Edward Burnett Tylor
Gerardus van der Leeuw
4
The functions of religion
Because of difficulties with essentialist approaches to definition—those that
define things in light of a singular, required trait—many opt instead to define
objects not by what they are said to be but by what they are observed to
do. Objects do not therefore have an essence, such scholars argue, but they
do play a role—they have a function and a purpose (whether psychological,
social, economic, etc.)—and that is something that a functionalist claims
that we can see, describe, and therefore study.
The early work of Tylor and Robertson Smith, among others, while
engaged in answering questions concerning the origin of religion, also
bore seeds of new questions. As formulated by those scholars who followed them, these questions were concerned less with the historical or
psychological origins of ritual than with its role and purpose in society—
in other words, ritual’s social function.
Catherine Bell (1997)
56 The functions of religion
With the essentialist approach in mind—an approach adopted by those
who presume that religions house a core experience or fundamental trait
that sets them apart from all other aspects of human behavior (such as the
way people claim religious faith or religious belief is somehow unique and
set apart—we can contrast it with the functionalist approach. Consider the
thing that appears in many classrooms: a lectern behind which the professor may stand while teaching. What is the difference between, say, a lectern
and a pulpit? Or, to put it another way, how do we know which name to
give to which object and how does the name that we give to it affect how
we relate to and value it? Is there some key feature that we can recognize
to distinguish between the two, such as color, height, weight, or the material out of which each is made? This does not seem likely, because the same
physical object could just as easily be identified as both, not to mention
the countless differences among those things that get to count as either a
lectern or a pulpit. So what makes a pulpit a pulpit, and not a lectern (not
to mention it not being a podium)?
For the functionalist scholar, there is no specific, essential feature that
unites all things we call ‘lecterns’ and thereby no one thing that distinguishes
them from those things known as ‘pulpits’. Instead, the context in which
something is found, the expectations placed upon it by its users, and, most
importantly perhaps, the purpose it serves, are what allow things to be
defined as a this and not a that. Functionalists, then, are scholars interested
in observing what something does (in what specific situation and for whom)
rather than what it is.
For early twentieth-century scholars, it was this shift from, as they might
have phrased it, speculating on universal, non-empirical qualities and affectations, as well as ahistorical origins, to observing the always contemporary
role of local, historical context and empirical effects that signified the development of what they considered to be a truly scientific (that is, rational,
historical, documentable, testable, etc.) study of religion, in distinction from
a well-meaning but, nonetheless theologically motivated study of religion’s
enduring value or groundless speculations on its pre-historic origins and
evolutionary development.
Today, functionalists who study religion owe much to the following
three writers in particular, each of whom helped to establish the modern
sense of three different approaches in the human sciences: political theory,
social theory, and psychological theory.
Karl Marx (1818–83), whose materialist political economy theorized
religion as a social pacifier that both deadened the oppressed people’s
sense of pain and alienation while simultaneously preventing them from
doing something about their lot in life since ultimate responsibility was
thought by them to reside with a being who existed outside history
and who would compensate them for this-worldly suffering and exploitation in the life to come. Religion, for a Marxist scholar, therefore
The functions of religion 57
functions to reproduce the status quo by distracting attention from the
actual source of conflict. A quick analogy might help: much as buying lottery tickets uses up financial resources that might otherwise have
been used to help one get out of a situation that requires such desperate gambles as buying lottery tickets that are most likely losers, so too
focusing energy and resources on religious rituals aimed at one’s status
in the next life only provides a momentary diversion, much as with
the hope that comes along with buying a lottery ticket—until someone
else’s winning numbers are announced, that is. For Marx, there were
better places to invest one’s energies than religion—working to change
those political and economic conditions that required many people to
hope for justice in the next life, rather than this one, was one such place.
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), whose sociological study of religion
has already been mentioned, understood intertwined sets of beliefs
and practices to enable individuals to form and periodically reform
their idea of a common social identity; unbeknownst to participants
themselves, for Durkheim the claims of religion were actually symbolically coded claims about the social group itself (which scholars need
to interpret properly), since the practices we call religious are none
other than members’ efforts to assemble and experience the group as
an empirical reality (for example, through performing common rituals
within sight of each other, group members visually experience a group
that, normally, exists only in their minds as a shared idea). The collection of narratives, actions and institutions that we call religion, for
a social theorist in Durkheim’s tradition, therefore functions to build
and retain a group identity that is always on the brink of breaking
down. (If you do not agree that social identities are fragile things, just
think for a moment about how important it is to mail that birthday
card to a relative, make that phone call to a parent, or, as already
described, make the proper sort of eye contact with a friend whom
you pass on the street—in fact, different forms of eye contact signify
different degrees of social familiarity. For sometimes we work hard to
avoid it! Fail to do any of these properly and one’s social relationships
will not last long.)
Sigmund Freud’s (1856–1939) early psychological studies led him to
liken public ritual to private obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD),
such as repeated hand washing, and to compare collective myths to the
psychological role dreams play in helping individuals to express otherwise repressed, anti-social desires in a public yet symbolic manner
that does not threaten their place within the group or the future of
the group itself. (Moral of the story: although it doesn’t resolve the
source of one’s conflicted feelings for authority figures, it’s easier to
rebel against a symbolic authority than the actual one, since there are
practical implications to rising up against the latter that don’t attend
58 The functions of religion
rebelling against the former.) In light of his work, some today argue
that religious ceremonies function to provide a safe venue for acting
out and thereby satisfying anti-social urges, yet doing so in a tightly
controlled, rule-governed, ritual setting so it does not get out of control
and actually threaten the group’s well-being, such as the ritual of sacrifice (whether merely symbolic, as in the Christian ritual of the eucharist [also known as communion], or actual), that we seem to find the
world over—a ritual that may very well prevent violence from spilling
over into all of social life by venting aggression on a symbolic victim
who cannot retaliate (perhaps somewhat like transferring your aggression for a parent and, instead, ‘taking it out’ on a younger sibling?)—a
theory of ritual violence closely associated with the work of the literary
critic René Girard (1923–2015).
Current scholarship is pressing such classic work in entirely new directions,
however, such as drawing on materialist scholarship and semiotic theory to
study the political function of myth and the workings of systems of authority (e.g., Bruce Lincoln); using a social theory to account for such things as
the beginnings of Christianity (e.g., Burton Mack, Willi Braun, and William
Arnal); drawing on economic models of how people choose among alternatives (such as converting from one religion to another, as studied by rational
choice social theorists such as Rodney Stark); studying religious non-affiliation
(Kim Knott, Linda Woodhead); and developing a theory of religion’s causes
based on the findings of cognitive psychology (e.g., Pascal Boyer).
For example, consider Bruce Lincoln’s work on the topic of authority.
Although a classically trained historian of religions, and thus carrying out
comparative work on a wide variety of groups and historical periods, some
of his more recent studies have concerned the ways in which authority is
generated and contested. Instead of seeing authority as an essential trait that
one either does or does not possess (much as how some scholars still view
this related thing they often call charisma), Lincoln examines (whether in
ancient literature or in recent news headlines) the practical conditions and
situations necessary for a group to treat a speaker or actor as authoritative,
along with the changes that contributed to a leader falling out of favor within
their group. In other words, given that we can understand him as a functionalist, authority, in Lincoln’s work, is a product of other, prior factors,
making it not an essential feature but a social (and thus changeable and contestable) phenomenon. One therefore does not possess, express, or project
authority, as we might popularly imagine, but instead, and as counterintuitive as it might at first sound, one is given authority by those over
whom one will exercise it. There may be no better example than a mutiny
by the sailors on an old sailing ship to make the case: their agreement to and
participation in a previous ranked order of power and privilege has been
withdrawn—maybe violently so—and the once authoritative captain has
little choice but to follow their lead.
The functions of religion 59
His functionalist approach is evident in other parts of Lincoln’s influential
work as well. For instance, consider just two brief examples: his work on
the role played by an ancient Sanskrit creation tale and, from a rather different historical period, his analysis of a moment of colonial contact.
First, in his 1986 book Myth, Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European
Themes of Creation and Destruction, Lincoln makes plain how creation
myths (what scholars call cosmogonies—tales on the origins of various
systems of order), inasmuch as he understands them to have been the products of an intelligentsia and thus educated but leisured class that were
popularly known as priests, function (on the redescriptive level) not only
to convey to and thereby to record for a population key organizational
information on their group but, in keeping with the above comments,
also to authorize a particular way in which their society is organized—a
way that’s to the benefit of specific members of the society. Using the tale
of Purusha as one among his examples—a cosmic being who, according
to the ancient Hindu text known as the Rig Veda, was sacrificed at the
beginning of time and from whom all creation therefore results—Lincoln
argues that the texts, when understood as historical artifacts created by
prior human beings for specific purposes (that is, those that are conducive
to the interests of the text’s authors), rationalize and thereby legitimize
ruling-class interests, making it no accident that, in this particular tale,
the elites are said to have derived from what remained of Purusha’s upper
and prioritized portions (after the cosmic sacrifice was performed, that is)
while the lower classes are said in the text to have resulted from, yes, its
lower and less valuable parts.
So, regardless of what participants may think the tale is about, Lincoln’s
interest in how society works prompts him to be interested in a function
they might not at first see.
And second, citing a seemingly unremarkable moment in the later history of British colonialism, Lincoln makes plain, in the opening to a chapter
entitled ‘The politics of myth’ (in his widely read 1989 book, Discourse and
the Construction of Society) how a tale that a Swazi king (a member of the
indigenous group in southern Africa) was able to tell, in the mid-1930s, concerning the importance of a particular tree (said by his councilors to have been
where the last independent Swazi king, prior to colonial rule, had once met
to debate certain topics) helped to preserve the land by preventing the British
from building a landing strip there. As Lincoln concludes:
Here, under the pressure of events, actors sought and found a story
from the past that could serve their interests in the present.
His point? It would be an error to think that tales about the past—whether
the recent or mythically remote past, whether the tale is wholly fabricated
or based in fact to some degree—are simply concerned with conveying
descriptive information about historical events (as those who tell such tales
60 The functions of religion
more than likely think); rather, they may be serving rhetorical purposes
in the present and thereby functioning socially and politically for those
who not only tell them but those who hear them as well. (Think here of an
older family member telling tales about ‘the good old days’ at some family
gathering—it’s not difficult to hear the tale as the teller’s coded criticism of
today’s younger generation.)
The functions of religion 61
Criticisms
Of course, just as there are difficulties with the essentialist approach to
definition (whether carried out from a theological or an anthropological
perspective), so too there are problems with functionalist approaches—
despite their current popularity. Among recent scholars of religion there
may be no better example of a critic of functionalism than the late Hans
Penner. Penner represents a group of contemporary scholars interested not
so much in what religion, religious narratives, or religious rituals mean
but, instead, in how things come to mean anything at all. He is therefore
not much interested in developing a theory of religion—as if religion was a
sui generis thing that required a special theory of its own either to interpret
its unique meaning or explain its peculiar function; rather, he argues that
scholars ought to turn their attention to developing a theory of meaningmaking that can be applied to, among other things, those institutions we
classify as religion.
Despite the fact that functionalism has now become the dominant
approach in the human sciences, Penner nonetheless argues that it is deeply
flawed, suffering from many of the same problems that plague essentialists. What has made functionalism so appealing to the last few generations
of scholars was their apparent consensus that the source or the object of
religious feeling defied explanation; because one could not get at the actual
origin or the actual inner sentiments that were assumed to be the source of
religious behavior, then—or so functionalists have argued—one has little
choice but to shift one’s focus and study the role played by the sentiments’
expressions or what phenomenologists might call their manifestations (that
is, the behaviors, the narratives, the symbols, etc.). Moreover, the role they
play is assumed to meet some previously existing needs—whether those
needs be sociological, psychological, political, economic, biological, etc.
According to Penner, this shift from intuiting essences to observing functions, a move away from non-empirical source toward empirical instance
instead, is no shift at all and the much celebrated gains of functionalism—
such as the presumption that functionalists study something observable
(that is, empirical), as opposed to the essentialist’s non-empirical, subjective
substance—are misleading or outright illusory.
Another issue that deserves mention is what some might refer to as
the functionalist’s naïve reliance on facts and the observation of empirical
things. For in its early years much was made of the move from studying intangible origins (recall Tylor’s unverifiable speculations on dreams)
to actually observable things in the present (such as later anthropologists doing fieldwork and writing ethnographies)—you’ll recall that it
was on the basis of just this move that functionalists claimed to be scientific. Yes one does not have to be a postmodernist to conclude that there
might be some problems with such an easy distinction between these two
approaches. Case in point: consider the work of the previously mentioned
62 The functions of religion
David Hume, the Scottish philosopher writing in the mid-eighteenth century. Among the topics for which he is still known today was his analysis
of causality, that is, our common notions of causes and effects. In fact, one
could argue that these notions are common because they are so necessary
for daily life to proceed at all—it’s how we make sense of things by understanding the relationships between them (that is, this makes that happen).
But Hume was able to argue that, despite the seemingly obvious nature of
an approaching billiard ball ‘causing’ the one struck to also begin moving,
the fact is that we are not actually witnessing a cause but, rather, inferring
it from having seen countless past instances of objects interacting (thereby
using induction to come to this conclusion)—meaning that causes are not,
as we generally assume, empirically observable facts. Instead, he concluded
that all that we actually observe are correlations of events, from which we
reason that this caused that. Attributing a cause is therefore a short form
for a speculative argument we are making about how we think the world
works rather than an innocent description of how it actually works.
The implication for functionalism? If it is chosen over other approaches
mainly because it is more empirical and thus scientific, then its preferred
status may be in jeopardy.
What’s more, even if causes are actually existing things, there may be
so many variables and thus causes, of which we’re not even aware, as to
make our claims about this or that being the cause—not unlike claims of
this or that function—rather dubious. That scholars have been unable to
settle on which of a phenomenon’s many functions constitutes the function
is thus another problem with functionalism. For there is no way to decide
whether, to pick but two examples, a psychological or a sociological function is more basic, for the advocates of each seem to argue that each of their
approaches are irreducible to those of their colleagues. Lacking a way of
deciding, scholars seem to have settled for what Penner characterizes as a
compromise position: the needs are now often assumed to be psycho-social
as well as biological—hence, the interest, in the last generation or two, in
representing the study of religion as a cross-disciplinary exercise that defied
the limits of any one academic discipline. Because—or so it is argued—
the expressions of the inner sentiment are many and the functions of these
expressions are varied, a variety of tools are required for their adequate
study (from anthropology to literary criticism), none of which are sufficient
on their own. Religion, it would seem, is a lot like love; to borrow the lyrics
from the Oscar-winning theme song to the 1955 movie of the same title: it
is a many-splendored thing. But, much as when, in the mid-1950s, China’s
Chairman Mao stated in a speech, ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend’ (a quotation used, later, by a surprisingly
wide variety of people), only to end up enforcing (by, in his case, the use
of mass violence) a rather strict party line in the following years, so too
despite the variety promised by the cross-disciplinary approach to the study
of religion’s functions, a rather narrow party line ends up being reproduced.
The functions of religion 63
So, despite either their apparently atheistic or at least agnostic viewpoints
(such as Ninian Smart’s advice that a scholar of religion’s tools should
always avoid posing or trying to answer truth questions—what he called
methodological agnosticism), functionalists nonetheless seem to presuppose
a basic theological belief held by the people whom scholars of religion study:
that there is a non-empirical source to the behaviors and institutions that
scholars study and that, because their methods require their object of study
to be observable, scholars must set aside questions concerning this source,
presuming it actually to exist but either to resist or confound their tools.
Much as the phenomenologist, in bracketing the truth of the objects they
study and, instead, describing only how the believer talks about their truth,
ironically authorizes the believer’s assumptions by leaving them untouched
(and thus protected), so too the functionalist, in setting aside the sentiment
and studying only the function played by its varied manifestations, further
legitimizes the believer’s assumptions by leaving them untouched (and thus
protected). It is as if the functionalist grants the believer the authority to
set the terms in which they are to be understood, merely complementing
their claims by adding some observations on innate needs fulfilled by the
believer’s sentiments—observations that somehow escaped the believers
themselves. If this is the case, then what we can end up with is a field in
which we study the adjective ‘religious’ but never the noun ‘religion’; that
is to say, we are able to study its manifestations (e.g., religious symbols,
religious ceremonies, religious sites, etc.) but when it comes to asking to
what the possessive adjective ‘its’ refers (that is, ‘its manifestations’), scholars must forever remain silent. We are therefore unable to answer a basic
question that might have been posed to us by Plato’s character Socrates:
what is it about religious beliefs, religious narratives, religious practices, and
religious institutions that they can all possess the same adjective? Simply
put, what makes them religious?
An example of this difficulty with functionalism can be found in the work
of Sigmund Freud; in the opening to his now famous 1907 essay, ‘Obsessive
Acts and Religious Practices’ (published in his Collected Papers [1950])
(which makes the case for understanding ritual and obsessive actions to
perform the same function for neurotics, though they may do it to different
degrees) he had the following to say about definition:
In place of a definition we must for the present be content with a
detailed description of these conditions, for it has not yet been possible
to demonstrate the essential feature which probably lies at the root of
the obsessional neurosis, though one seems to find indications of it at
every turn in clinical manifestations of the disorder.
On the one hand we seem to have this thing called ‘the disorder’ while, on
the other, its various manifestations. Freud (though a classic functionalist
who advocated for a reductionist approach) seems to presume that there is
64 The functions of religion
some essential reality beneath its empirical indicators, much as a traditional
literary critic assumes that behind, or beneath, the words on the page one
can discover both the meaning of a text and the intentions of an author—
both of which are obviously nonempirical and, because of this, thought
somehow to remain constant despite the sorts of historial changes and accidents that we all routinely recognize to happen to printed texts, the paper
on which print appears, etc. How, one might wonder, is such a position any
different from an essentialist scholar such as, say, Mircea Eliade, arguing
that, because ‘the sacred’ manifests itself in symbolic form, its study is not
exhausted by examining its merely secondary symbolic manifestations?
It could be argued by some that functionalists try to reduce religion to
non-religious causes, thereby failing to appreciate what others would characterize as the true meaning of religious belief. Of course, it is not difficult to
find this critique offered by those who wish to study religion either theologically or humanistically. Despite this criticism, for yet others, functionalists
represent a far too traditional viewpoint, ironically shared with essentialists,
by studying material expressions and not their immaterial source, dressing
their work up to look like something other than what it actually is.
The functions of religion 65
Example: ‘people started to come to her for healing’
All three women—Dhanam, Rosalind, and Nancy—repeated and
re-embodied orthodox versions of Mary along with their own, notably personal, Tamil ones. By becoming sorts of priestesses of the
goddess . . . they turned things upside down. To some extent, they participated in their own domination: they never completely escaped its confines as they used patriarchal concepts and symbolic systems that at times
relegated women (including themselves) to lower status than men. But
they enjoyed raised status, working with the limited tools they had to
counter their own and others’ suffering. And the forms of Mary that they
expressed through their possession were likewise disruptive: to orthodox
ideas about Mary; to the patriarchal hierarchy of the Roman Catholic
church that has shaped Mary’s institutionalized character and doctrine
over the ages; and to notions that low-caste . . . people, particularly
women, should remain contained, disempowered, and voiceless.
This quotation comes from the introduction to Kristin Bloomer’s 2018
book Possessed by the Virgin: Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, and Marian
Possession in South India—an ethnographic study of three women in
southern India (the Tamil region) who each claim to experience possession by the Virgin Mary. What interests Bloomer is not explaining the
origins of their possessions—though she does trace the history of people
in this region making these sorts of claims (a story that touches on colonialism, of course, since Roman Catholicism did not arrive in India all on
its own). Instead of delving into, say, the possible psychological causes
of someone claiming that a character from scripture had come into their
body (though this would surely be an interesting exercise) and rather than
simply accepting (or, perhaps, rejecting) that the women’s claims were in
fact true (as various Christian theological approaches to the topic might,
whether liberal or conservative), she follows a longstanding practice among
those scholars who do fieldwork by aiming mainly to describe accurately
what the women say for themselves about their own lives and experiences.
(Though, to be more precise, rather than spontaneously telling their insider
stories, people are usually answering the scholar’s questions, which are
prompted by the scholar’s own curiosities and assumptions, making the
descriptions contained in ethnographies more complex than they might
at first seem.) That this description needs to engage in translation should
be obvious—different languages are spoken, different assumptions about
the world are made, so that a scholar needs to be artful in their efforts to
bridge the varying distances between people in southeastern India and an
English reader somewhere else in the world.
But the book is not simply a description of Dhanam’s, Rosalind’s, and
Nancy’s backgrounds, current circumstances, claims, and actions; for it also
nicely exemplifies the now common functionalist approach that we see used
66 The functions of religion
all across the human sciences. As already noted, the issue to Bloomer is
not whether the women’s claims are correct or not (making the book a
good example of a scholar of religion suspending her judgment) but how,
given the workings of the worlds they each inhabit, the women’s claims are
understood by others (from their neighbors, family, and friends to the local
media as well as officials in the church) and thus the effects those claims
might have. To rephrase: the book is about the social function that making
claims about being possessed by the Virgin Mary might have in that part of
the world—when they’re made by women.
What Bloomer finds interesting, then, is how the lives of such people might
change if their claims are accepted—and not all such claims are, of course,
making a study of the possible reasons why someone might hear reports of
possession or healing as either legitimate or illegitimate quite interesting.
After all, the Roman Catholic church has long had offices that adjudicate
such claims, such as its Congregation for the Causes of Saints (based on a
prior office that dated to 1588), whose panel of (as it currently operates) six
medical experts determines (by two-thirds majority vote) whether claims of
healing used to argue for someone’s sainthood are authentic or not (that is,
can or cannot be explained naturalistically). And in the case of the women
she studies—as the above quotation makes clear—their status among their
peers changes; for, living in a part of the world in which women’s rights
and spheres/extent of influence might be seen as rather restricted (at least
based on what some readers of this book may take for granted), Bloomer
finds that their roles as healers significantly moderates (but does not totally
eliminate) social pressures that previously had been placed on them.
As an example of a functionalist work, the study therefore is not really
about the three women but, instead, uses their stories as a detailed case study
that helps the author to examine how day-to-day social life is governed and
regulated in a specific place among a specific group (women)—looking at
how social dominance and political marginality interact, how (despite our
assumption that they may be static things) they actually operate on a sliding scale, and some of the (sometimes subtle or even unnoticed) factors that
influence the movement from one end of the spectrum to the other. For the
status of women in this region as authenticated healers and thus a vessel for
the Virgin Mary can change much in their lives.
As noted earlier, sometimes unfamiliar situations can end up striking
us as more familiar than we may have thought—so although some or
even most readers may not identify with many aspects of this example,
I’m guessing that either from experience or from other subjects they’ve
studied elsewhere readers can come up with other examples of their own,
in which identity (whether gendered or perhaps racial, regional, economic,
generational, national, etc.) changes, amidst a series of hierarchical relations, all depending on how those around you respond to something new
or something unexpected you may say or do—making clear that identity
may itself not be an essence that we project outward but, rather, a social
The functions of religion 67
thing (that is, you are who others see you to be and treat you as being). For
if I’m right, then even though Bloomer’s book seems to be about religion in
southern India, it also has something fundamental to do with how social
life all over may be taking place—about the social function of our claims
and actions.
Further considerations
Functionalist approaches are so common now that it’s sometimes tough to
see an approach to the study of religion that isn’t functionalist—even theological approaches are often organized around the basic assumption that the
claims and actions named as religious serve some sort of purpose, whether
it is saving one’s soul or allowing one to experience some sort of deeply
meaningful moment. So the sort of functionalism that we see in the human
sciences, of which the academic study of religion is but one part, is easily
found—and not just among scholars. For if you find an article on religion
in the news or in a magazine there’s a relatively good chance that it too
constitutes a functionalist approach—or at least an article on something
with which readers are unfamiliar. For the tendency seems to be that with
things familiar we generally don’t seek to understand them in light of some
wider (and initially unseen) purpose that they might serve; instead, we usually take them for granted as an inevitable, maybe even necessary, element
of our social world, one whose very existence or purpose hardly needs to
be understood or explained. But when an anomaly comes along, something
that strikes us as being out of the ordinary or unexpected, something that
defies our expectations for how the world usually works, well, voilà, we
tend to set about trying to account for it, either in terms of its causes or,
being commonsense functionalists, the role it serves or need it fulfills. Case
in point: it isn’t difficult to find stories in the media, as well as in the work
of scholars, devoted to trying to explain why someone would ever even join
a group that we understand to be a cult—are they brainwashed, insecure,
uneducated, deluded, political radicals, etc.? But rarely might we find the
same sort of analysis as to why someone is a member of, say, the Church of
England or a Sikh—though, Sikh identity might attract the attention of those
who take it as unfamiliar and therefore alien (as would being a member of
the Church of England). My point? Explanatory approaches that look for
the generally unseen purpose something fills might themselves be a way that
people make sense of their worlds—if so, then what we choose to explain,
whether in terms of its causes or functions, might tell us much about the
people doing the explaining, how they understand the world and what they
take for granted. So I wonder if you can confirm this hypothesis—it amounts
to a bit of a scientific experiment in comparative analysis. Try finding news
articles about religions that the readers of newspapers or magazines might
see as strange and see if the writer, sooner or later, feels compelled to try
to explain, for his or her readers, why someone would be motivated to be
68 The functions of religion
a member. My prediction is that this move is probably not made in articles
about religions with which such readers are better acquainted—after all,
what ‘we’ do makes obvious sense to us, since we’re doing it, have always
done it, and therefore we’re not even questioning why. But my guess is that
others outside our group might find it really odd and curious, and in need
of study.
The functions of religion 69
Summary of vocabulary
Agnosticm
Ahistorical
Anomaly
Atheism
Author
Belief
Cause
Charisma
Christianity
Colonialism
Comparison
Counter-intuitive
Cross-/inter-disciplinary
Cult
Description
Empirical
Essentialism
Evolution
Experience
Expression
Faith
Functionalism
Hinduism
Human sciences
Humanities
Insider/outsider problem
Intention
Interpretation
Materialism
Meaning
Methodological agnosticism
Myth
Phenomenology
Political economy
Postmodernism
Psychology
Rational choice theory
Reductionism
Religion
Rhetoric
Ritual
Sacred
Sacrifice
Notes
70 The functions of religion
Sanskrit
Semiotics
Sociology
Sui generis
Theology
Translation
Summary of scholars
William E. Arnal
Pascal Boyer
Willi Braun
Émile Durkheim
Mircea Eliade
Sigmund Freud
Kim Knott
Bruce Lincoln
Burton Mack
Karl Marx
Hans Penner
Ninian Smart
Rodney Stark
Linda Woodhead
5
The resemblances among religions
With the essentialist and the functionalist approaches to defining an object
of study distinguished, we can consider a third approach that many scholars
think avoids some of the shortcomings of both. This approach is commonly
found in world religions textbooks today, and, according to those who
advocate for its use in scholarship, it’s already how we all come to know
things about the world in our ordinary, day-to-day lives. It’s known as the
family resemblance approach.
Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean
board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What
is common to them all?—Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called “games”’—but look and see whether
there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not
see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and
a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953)
72 The resemblances among religions
You will recall that, in the discussion on essentialism, you were told that a
light could either be on or off, and never partially on or partially off. So too
with essentialist definitions. In fact, the presumption that there is a distinct
insider perspective as opposed to an outsider view—as opposed to seeing
insides and outsides as continually changing and continually contested, all
depending on where you stand and in relation to whom—is itself a product
of an essentialist viewpoint. Although the light switch imagery works to
communicate the ‘either/or’ nature of this approach to definition (whether
defining who gets to count as a ‘patriotic citizen’ or who counts among ‘the
faithful’), surely some readers must have thought, ‘What about that dimmer switch in the dining room?’ Good point. In the study of definitions the
dimmer switch example would be called the family resemblance approach.
The family resemblance approach to definition—sometimes called polythetic definitions—is thought by some to enable them to steer a middle
path between essentialist and functionalist approaches. Although one of
the most useful recent examples of this approach would be the ‘dimension
theory of religion’ advanced by the Scottish phenomenologist of religion,
Ninian Smart, this approach is credited to the Austrian philosopher,
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), who, in trying to argue that there is
no one defining characteristic that makes something ‘language’, asked his
readers to stop and consider how it is that they actually go about the activities of classifying, sorting, and distinguishing their world into specific types
of things that they see as related in certain sorts of ways. If they did this, he
suggested, if they actually considered what it was that they did when they
went about the activity of naming and demarcating, they would see that all
members of a particular group more or less share a series of traits or characteristics. To put it another way, all members of a common group overlap
to varying degrees and in differing respects, just as no two members of
a family are exactly alike (even so-called identical twins differ in many
ways); instead, they more or less share a delimited series of characteristics
(such as name, hair color, temperament, height, favorite foods, blood type,
etc.). Further, despite some people’s best efforts to portray themselves as
authoritative, no family member constitutes the definitive instance of the
group—rather, all members share in the identity, to varying degrees. Group
membership, Wittgenstein argued, is never a matter of yes or no (as in the
essentialist approach) but always a matter of degree, a matter of ‘more or
less’, with the presence of absence of any one characteristic never being
the deciding factor. Anyone who has had a person marry into their family,
or who has married into another family, knows as much: it takes time to
become a member of a group. Only once a series of customs has gradually
been learned and mastered (Where do I sit at the dinner table? Which way
do I pass the potatoes? Do we say grace? When do I start eating? Can I ask
for more milk?), is one seen by others as sufficiently overlapping with those
who were in the group before you arrived, allowing you to be considered
one of them.
The resemblances among religions 73
To make his point, Wittgenstein uses the example of games, asking his
readers to consider the variety of activities we commonly know by this
name, challenging them to come up with the one essential trait that all
of these activities necessarily share (which, he argues, they do not). He
therefore concludes:
the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of
similarities overlapping and criss-crossing. . . . I can think of no better
expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’;
for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, color of eyes, gait, temperament, etc., etc., overlap and criss-cross
in the same way. And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.
The acts of classification and definition, for Wittgenstein, were therefore
activities of selection, of choice, on the part of the one doing the defining, not of merely passively recognizing qualities thought to reside in some
object that catches our attention (such as those who talk about the essence
of beauty, of justice, or, yes, of religion); instead, something was only
‘more or less’ this as opposed to that (hence the usefulness of the image
of the dimmer switch on the ceiling light—or think of Venn diagrams in
which circles overlap to varying degrees, largely or perhaps only minimally
sharing their domains). So, if, for the sake of argument, only two traits are
shared by a couple of objects, say those things that we call an apple and an
orange (for instance, they are both round and can be eaten), we, as definers
trying to know something about these items, have no choice but to make
a judgment call regarding whether these things are alike enough to be considered as the same—simply put, whether they are both fruit (and should
be shelved in the same place at the grocery store, perhaps). The issue, then
is whether we decide that they overlap enough to be instances of the same
thing. But, come to think of it, are only two shared traits enough? After all, I
can easily imagine round candies that would satisfy these two conditions yet
I’d likely not agree to calling them fruit as well. So perhaps we could have
greater precision if we went looking for three traits? Or four? What about
five . . .? Case in point: is Buddhism a religion, despite some of its forms
lacking any belief in a god (that common definition of religion so many
people still use)? Or what do we make of some Evangelical Protestants who
commonly assert that Roman Catholics are not Christians? They seem to
be saying that their Roman Catholic counterparts are not part of the family
that they themselves know as ‘Christian’, likely due to the latter group being
judged by the former as not sharing a sufficient number of key traits.
If we follow Wittgenstein, then it seems to fall to those who develop and
use classification systems—such as those who attempt to define religion—
not only to have what the anthropologist, Benson Saler, has termed a ‘proto­
typical definition’, but also to be prepared to make judgment calls when a
cultural artifact meets so few of their prototype’s characteristics that it is
74 The resemblances among religions
questionable whether the artifact can productively be called a religion. That
the prototype we use when we set about defining religion in this manner is
often confused with being the ideal case or the norm is certainly a trouble
of which scholars ought to be aware if they wish to avoid making but one
social movement the norm. It is just such a confusion between a working or
tentative prototype and an abstract ideal that has sometimes led European
and North American scholars to use certain types of Christianity or Islam as
the authoritative standard by which they measure the quality and legitimacy
of other social movements also known by others as Christian or Muslim.
(Think here of those early colonialists David Chidester studied, who determined that the southern African Khoikhoi had no religion because it lacked
features with which the Christian newcomers were themselves familiar.)
Contrary to essentialist and the functionalist scholars passively recognizing either some core feature or purpose/need served by a religion,
Wittgensteinian scholars of religion instead see themselves as actively constituting a cultural practice as religious insomuch as it does or does not match
the prototype which they understand as their starting point. Moreover, they
are prepared to continually adjust their prototype as they use it (what I earlier described as a working or tentative prototype), for it is merely a tool and
a starting place. That the family resemblance definition widens in the case of
more liberal scholars (either politically or theologically), and narrows in the
case of those who are more conservative, should not go unnoticed.
So what might a family resemblance definition of religion look like and do
such definitions also have shortcomings? Consider the following two examples, the first from the philosopher, William Alston, and the second from the
historian of religions, Bruce Lincoln. Alston, in the once well-known entry
on ‘Religion’ in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967), defines religion by
means of what he characterizes as nine ‘religion-making characteristics’:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Belief in supernatural beings (gods).
A distinction between sacred and profane objects.
Ritual acts focused on sacred objects.
A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods.
Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, sense of
guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred
objects and during the practice of ritual, and which are connected in
idea with the gods.
Prayer and other forms of communication with gods.
A worldview or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place
of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of
an overall purpose or point of the world and an indication of how the
individual fits into it.
A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the worldview.
A social group bound together by the above.
The resemblances among religions 75
Then, Bruce Lincoln, in his book Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion
after September 11 (2003), defines religion as follows: ‘A proper definition
must therefore be polythetic and flexible, allowing for wide variations and
attending, at a minimum, to these four domains’:
1
2
3
4
A discourse whose concerns transcend the human, temporal, and contingent, and thus claims for itself a similarly transcendent status . . . .
A set of practices whose goal is to produce a proper world and/or
proper human subjects, as defined by a religious discourse to which
these practices are connected . . . .
A community whose members construct their identity with reference to
a religious discourse and its attendant practices . . . .
An institution that regulates religious discourse, practice, and community, reproducing them over time and modifying them as necessary,
while asserting their eternal validity and transcendent value.
Although these two examples are hardly the same—Alston emphasizes
rather traditional aspects associated with religions (e.g., an emphasis on
belief) whereas Lincoln focuses on religion’s political role in establishing
authority and order—both definitions offer a series of characteristics, or
domains, that one would expect to find when looking for what each considers to be a religion. It is held that the advantage of this way of defining is
that it is thought to avoid reducing religion to some essential trait or function; for, as Lincoln—citing the work of the influential anthropologist Talal
Asad—warns: ‘Any definition that privileges one aspect, dimension, or component of the religious necessarily fails, for in so doing it normalizes some
specific traditions (or tendencies therein), while simultaneously dismissing
or stigmatizing others’.
76 The resemblances among religions
Criticisms
But, just as with the essentialist and the functionalist approaches, a few
criticisms are possible here as well. First, family resemblance approaches
often appear to be circular definitions (what we might call tautological or
repetitive); religion, for Alston, is defined in light of such words as ‘sacred’
and ‘profane’—words that are themselves generally defined in light of religion, suggesting that we already need to know something about religion in
order to understand the very words used to define religion—hardly a helpful
approach to defining something (as we’ve already seen in the case the IRS
tax guide for non-profits). For instance, Alston’s fifth point defines religions
as having ‘characteristically religious feelings’, and Lincoln’s definition
defines religions as being comprised of ‘religious discourses’—defining the
noun ‘religion’ by means of qualifiers that employ the adjective ‘religious’
likely does not help us too much either.
A second, related difficulty involves the role played by one’s prototype;
when one reads a family resemblance definition, it often seems to be no more
than a description of the thing one is defining—for example, it is not difficult
to see Christianity lurking behind Alston’s definition. It is as if the scholar
was looking at a religion, describing its main features, and then generalizing
from these to establish a definition of what one would expect other religions
to possess. As Benson Saler has made clear (in a book on defining religion
entitled Conceptualizing Religion [1993]), we have no choice but to employ
prototypes—after all, we never experience the concept of ‘table’, but, rather,
we seem to experience actual tables, one or more of which we seem to use
as the model for identifying those other things we classify as tables. But, as
I can imagine Socrates asking, precisely how did we know that the thing
we had first encountered—that which became our prototype—was either
a table or a religion? Did we recognize in it some deep, essential feature?
Or were we simply told by an authority figure (parent, teacher, etc.) that it
was a religion, thereby simply adopting this classification since childhood?
(Isn’t that probably how we, as little children, learned much of which we
now know, like being told over and over again that ‘the cow says moo’?)
How, for instance, did Alston know that Christianity was a religion and
that its features might also be found elsewhere? And what if something else
had constituted his prototype? What then would his definition look like and
how useful would it be to us in carrying out cross-cultural research?
This is the criticism developed in an article published in the British/US
academic journal Religion in 1996 by the British scholar of religion, Tim
Fitzgerald: despite the fact that the family resemblance approach is portrayed as more inclusive and therefore capable of recognizing the variety
of actual religions, as with Penner’s critique of functionalism, there is an
odd sense in which an essentialist definition yet remains at the very core
of the family of traits by which other things are identified as religions. For
Alston’s definition seems to be saying: Christianity is a religion; Christianity
The resemblances among religions 77
has these various components; therefore anything else that is a religion will
also have some or all of these components. In the midst of all this, the essentially religious identity of the thing we call Christianity is simply assumed
and thereby reinforced. Why it gets to count as a religion—rather than, say,
a mass socio-political movement—is never explored.
The problem is that, as will be identified with the insider/outsider problem, such an approach merely takes what one group of participants already
understands as a religion (what we might call their prototypical folk knowledge) and extends that (often in a rather vague manner) to other cases, as
if generalization was all that was required to turn folk knowledge into a
technical, scholarly theory. In so doing, the scholar implicitly authorizes
one among many (potentially competing) emic perspectives. After all, people the world over use a host of local and thus familiar concepts to name
and thereby distinguish the parts of their social worlds that strike them as
important, yet scholars would never think of using just any local concepts as
if they all named cross-cultural, human universals—such as adopting mana,
dharma, or taboo as if each named a universal or obvious trait of all human
communities. So why are some of us so willing to do this in the case of our
familiar word ‘religion’, especially if we, as scholars, don’t do any technical
retooling and, instead, simply use it in its common folk sense?
78 The resemblances among religions
Example: ‘not an easy task’
Spiritual Outreach Society v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
Submitted: November 15, 1990
Decided: February 27, 1991
In March 1979 SOS [the Spiritual Outreach Society] applied to the
Internal Revenue Service . . . for tax exemption by claiming it was
a church entitled to exemption under Sec. 501(c)(3). SOS later asked
appellee to treat the application as requesting the designation of a religious organization, as defined by Sec. 501(c)(3), rather than a church.
Appellee obliged and issued SOS notice that it would be given temporary
tax exempt status while the application process proceeded. After appellee issued a favorable ruling that SOS was a religious organization . . .,
SOS renewed its request to be classified as a church. Appellee issued a
final ruling that SOS was neither a church nor a publicly supported charity. SOS appealed this decision to the tax court, which affirmed appellee’s ruling on both issues. SOS then initiated this appeal.
So begins a 1991 US court case in which the members of a group called the
Spiritual Outreach Society (incorporated in the state of Missouri, back in
1978, as a non-profit) appealed a lower court’s decision that, though qualifying as a religious organization for tax purposes, it did not meet the bar—
or so the court had decided—for what could be defined as a church. As a
non-profit an organization is eligible for a variety of tax exemptions, and
so there’s something at stake for whether, for tax purposes, a group could
qualify as a church or just a religious organization. Having already been
granted the latter designation, SOS was looking to also be named as the
former—which makes sense, inasmuch as churches don’t pay property tax
in all 50 states, don’t have to pay income tax, and have certain protections
from having their accounts audited by the government. In return for the
advantages, the government requires churches not to intervene in political activity (dating to 1954’s so-called Johnson Amendment, named after
the then senator from Texas who would one day become president of the
United States).
Readers who recall an earlier example might see what’s coming: the problem of the government figuring out what, in general, distinguishes something
as a church and, as Socrates might have pressed Euthyphro, whether the
SOS, in particular, constituted an example of it.
Now, should a group of people not care about the tax exemptions
that many governments are willing to extend to those defined as a church
(exemptions that, from time to time, some people consider suspending) then
none of this really matters, of course. But for a variety of reasons people
do care—such as the desire to include a receipt, when submitting their own
The resemblances among religions 79
annual taxes, to signify the amount of offerings they gave for the year, an
amount they’d like to deduct from their own taxable income. This would
only be possible if the organization to which they were making the donations, and which therefore issued them the receipts, was properly registered
as a non-profit in general or, in our particular example, a church.
So, there’s a question to answer: is SOS a church—not in its essence but,
instead, for the purposes of taxation? (You may recall how similar this sort
of practical question is to the one the judge had to settle in the case of Nix.
v Hedden, but in that case it was a tomato’s identity for purposes of trade
and tariff . . . .)
The case we’re discussing here, like many such US legal decisions, can easily be found online, and it’s not long or difficult to read. So while I’ll leave
the specifics to each reader to find and consider for themselves, in doing so
keep in mind that this group looks an awful lot like a church, at least as
many people would probably conceive of it. For as the decision makes clear
when laying out the facts of the case, the group’s aim was ‘to spread the
message of God’s Love and Hope throughout the world; to bring all people
to an awareness of the similarities present in the world’s different religions
and of the fact that the different religions of the world are but alternative
pathways to a single goal—the one Supreme Being, God’, doing so through
owning a campground where people could gather and hear preachers and
inspiring concerts, publishing pamphlets, giving to the poor, etc. So why not
just call it a church?
One of the most interesting things about the court case is that, like the
earlier example of the IRS non-profit tax guide, it just comes right out and
makes plain that, when it comes to the idea of a church, ‘there is no ready
definition’. But, as the decision then goes on to state: ‘In a speech [from
1978], former [IRS] Commissioner Jerome Kurtz announced fourteen criteria which the Internal Revenue Service uses as a framework for its decisions.’
If you think that this sounds like a family resemblance definition you may be
right; ‘we view the fourteen criteria as a guide’, the decision goes on, ‘helpful
in deciding what constitutes a church’. (In fact, the IRS guide for non-profits,
referred to earlier, contains the same fourteen criteria in the glossary section
of the document since, as they state there: ‘Certain characteristics are generally attributed to churches’.) And, as we’d expect of a family resemblance
definition, they specify that ‘each criterion need not be met for an organization to be a church’. But then, we read the following: ‘Nonetheless, there are
certain of the criteria upon which we place a special emphasis’.
So, I’ll leave it to readers to find the decision, read it over, and—to
put some of the things we’ve learned in this chapter into practice—to discuss not only whether the IRS is using a family resemblance definition to
decide what counts as a church but also to consider what you make of
each of the fourteen criteria (why are that many needed?) and whether
the court applied them properly in deciding the case of SOS. I’m not sure
what Wittgenstein would have made of such a definition placing ‘special
80 The resemblances among religions
emphasis’ on any of its features, by the way. But even if you conclude that
it is not a prototypical example of a family resemblance definition, it does
constitute a helpful instance of, as Wittgenstein claimed, how we all commonly use this way of identifying things in day-to-day situations, whether
we know it or not.
Further considerations
Apart from looking into the history of tax exemptions to churches (which
would at least lead back to the fourth century ce when Roman Emperor
Constantine gave tax benefits to Christian clergy after his own conversion to Christianity), another great project would be to start looking into
how many nations around the globe currently provide tax exemptions to
churches (which amounts to a subsidy, right? Sometimes critics call it ‘tax
avoidance’—it makes sense that they would use a different term, no?). Also,
how do other nations tackle the problem of defining ‘church’? For defining it too specifically (for example, a building with an altar and a pulpit
where Baptists meet on Sunday morning to hear a sermon and sing hymns)
excludes all sorts of other people in today’s diverse world—which is a problem for many governments today, especially for those countries, like the US,
whose founding documents seek to keep some distance between religion
and the state. Britain provides tax exemptions (I’ve seen one estimate that
the Church of England brings in around £1 billion a year in nontaxable
donations from members) and, back in 2015, there was quite the debate in
Zimbabwe as to whether they should continue exempting churches from
certain taxes (they did).
The resemblances among religions 81
Summary of vocabulary
Anthropology
Belief
Buddhism
Christianity
Contingent
Dharma
Discourse
Emic/etic
Essentialism
Family resemblance
Folk knowledge
Functionalism
History of religion(s)
Insider/outsider problem
Islam
Mana
Monothetic/polythetic definitions
Phenomenology
Profane
Prototype
Reductionism
Ritual
Sacred
Taboo
Tautology
Transcendence
Worldview
Summary of scholars
Talal Asad
Bruce Lincoln
Hans Penner
Ninian Smart
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Notes
6
The public discourse on religion
Differences between the three approaches examined so far—the essentialist,
the functionalist, and the family resemblance—make evident that, on the
one hand, there are those who think that we can study religion by identifying private traits not readily available to our normal senses and, on the
other, there are those who think that, like all other aspects of human behavior, the things we call religions have public features that perform observable
functions. Given that we’re trying to determine how best to study religion
as an element of human history and culture, as opposed to treating it in a
theological manner, this common distinction between the private traits and
public actions deserves our attention.
People should always be as clear as possible as to the difference between
exploring the truth concerning religion and exploring the truth of religion.
Ninian Smart (1986)
84 The public discourse on religion
When it comes to defining religion, there are thus three common approaches:
one inductively browses through the group of things already known to be
religions, looking for an essentially shared feature that they all have in common; another sets about looking for the common function performed in
each religious practice or institution, see it as the defining purpose they all
serve; and the third, the family resemblance approach, assumes that a wide
variety of traits are more or less present and that the definer inevitably has
to make a judgment on the boundary cases.
If one takes the first route, then objects are defined by some key feature that
is internal to them, more often than not some non-empirical feature judged
to be sui generis (that is, self-caused, one of a kind, unique). For instance,
because there are innumerable observable differences among the members of
the group known as, say, ‘the British’, people interested in defining what it is
that they share in common—their ‘Britishness’, if you will, or what scholars
might call their British identity—often fall back on the assumption that what
really unites the members of this group is not some external feature (such as
where they live, how they dress, what they eat, or how they speak—for these
are all apt to change and the differences fly in the face of efforts to define the
group’s shared identity) but, rather, an internal idea of some sort, a feeling,
an attitude, perhaps called ‘the British experience’. This experience obviously
cannot be tasted, touched, smelled or heard (that is, it is non-empirical),
but, instead, only felt by the participants themselves and approximated
rather crudely by the uninitiated observer or outsider (as in the response one
sometimes hears in the midst of an argument: ‘You don’t know how I feel’).
Because for many people religion is assumed to refer to an invisible but all too
real interior world that is fully experienced only by the believer or the insider
(a point classically associated with Otto’s work), this essentialist approach is
still very popular, within and outside of the academy. In fact, as the example of ‘the British experience’ makes plain, the popularity of the essentialist
approach to defining social identity is not limited only to defining religion but
also to defining national, gendered, and ethnic identities as well (to name only
a few examples).
If the category ‘religion’ is to be used in the human sciences as a classification to name an aspect of what we think is our inter-subjective world—in
other words, the public and shared world that can be observed and studied,
regardless of one’s group membership or self-perception—then the essentialist approach is not very helpful, for it is premised on the priority of a
subjective, private world of affect and aesthetic appreciation that is presumed
to be unavailable to non-participants. Because the functionalist approach
focuses on the use to which something is put, it shifts attention to defining
something in light of an observable group of people, their needs, their actions,
and their practical interests. (Seeing these as all interconnected, thereby
requiring nuanced fieldwork to observe the system in its entirety, was a basic
assumption of what, in anthropology, was once called the social functionalist approach.) A number of scholars therefore argue that the functionalist
The public discourse on religion 85
approach holds more promise for the academic study of religion practiced
as part of a public discourse, in which it is financed, as with all public higher
education, by a diverse citizenry. That some scholars are still troubled by
the internal, non-observable nature of functionalists who talk about ‘needs’
as if they were internal things that inhabited all human beings, should not
be forgotten. But at least the switch to a functionalist approach attempts to
remake the study of religion into something that can take place as part of a
public discussion rather than premising it on insiders who claim some sort of
privileged knowledge or intuition about the topic.
But those who support a family resemblance approach see both of these
two options as limited, inasmuch as they both approach the act of definition
as if the object being defined was uniform and stable at all times and in all
places, and thus distinguishable in light of some particular substance or purpose. Instead, they’d argue that (if we think back to the idea of Britishness
or, perhaps instead, the IRS Commissioner’s speech that tried to define a
church) a host of factors may or may not be present among members of
that group and that all members of ‘the British’ share this loosely assembled collection of traits, but each possessing them in varying and unique
amounts. So, despite speaking English in the US and occasionally eating fish
and chips, people where I live are thought to so poorly overlap with the prototypical features associated with British identity that no one would mistake
someone from, say, California or Florida for a Brit.
(Aside: I’ve been to places in the world where people have assumed that I
was British merely because I spoke English—indicating that the list of traits
by which people identify others can sometimes be surprisingly limited,
something sometimes painfully evident whenever people are stereotyped
by others.)
At least when thinking of the US, where I live and teach, the topic of
religion and the public sphere—and, depending on the essence one selects,
it’s the sphere of the latter two approaches, despite their differences, for
they both assume that the things defined as religion are part of a world that
can be described and compared—immediately brings to mind the place of
religion in such public venues as politics and the courts (the places where
competing interests meet and are managed). Although the study of religion,
like many of the other organized disciplines within the modern university
(such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc.) first arose in Europe
in the late nineteenth century and came to North American universities
prior to World War I and, for a brief time, flourished at such schools as
the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard,
it was not until the late 1950s and early 1960s that departments of religious studies were established in most US public universities—institutions
that, because they are tax-supported, are required to meet certain obligations specified in federal law, such as the so-called ‘separation of church
and state’. The establishment and success of these departments in the public
university system, arising when they did, can be related to a number of
86 The public discourse on religion
factors: the increasing interest in Asian cultures brought on by such events
as the Korean and then Vietnam wars (or were they ‘police actions’ and
not wars? My point? Classification matters!); the way religion (and specifically, certain forms of Christianity) was used in US political discourse
during the height of the Cold War as a way to distinguish some posited ‘us’
from those ‘godless Communists’; the country-wide changes taking place
in the civil rights era, in which the balance of traditional power was slowly
beginning to change; and, given changes in US immigration policies in the
mid-1960s, the growing presence of new minority populations that came
from places other than Europe (which previously constituted the US’s main
source of immigration), bringing with them foods, clothes, names, and practices that must have struck many of those already settled into life in the US
as, well, exotic (maybe even dangerous and thus threatening?). So studying
the world’s religions caught on—a field in the US that, in the late 1950s,
could be described as useful for all sorts of reasons, such as the late Huston
Smith’s rationale, offered in the opening chapter to his early (and, though
the text and title have been revised, still in print) world religions textbook,
The Religions of Man:
The motives that impel us toward world understanding may be several. Recently I was taxied by bomber to the Air Command and Staff
College at the Maxwell Air Force base outside Montgomery, Alabama,
to lecture to a thousand selected officers on the religions of other
peoples . . . . What was their motivation? . . . [A]s a unit they were
concerned because someday they were likely to be dealing with the
peoples they were studying as allies, antagonists, or subjects of military occupation . . . . This is one reason for coming to know people.
Smith (one of the early US advocates of people gaining a working knowledge of the world’s religions) agreed then (back in 1958) that many other
motives might inspire the cross-cultural study of religion, but, again with
Chidester’s work on early colonial contact in mind, it may be revealing to
see the ease with which geo-politics intersects with a topic that many see
to be ethereal and spiritual.
Regardless of the motives, it seems reasonable to expect that, in such a
historical context, university classes would, sooner or later, begin to focus
increasing attention on describing other peoples around the globe and looking for cross-cultural similarities amidst what struck many observers, at least
on first glance, as the obvious differences—and, inasmuch as many scholars
then (maybe even now) assumed religion to be a fundamental feature of all
human groups, looking at ‘their’ religions was a good way to begin to do
this. After all, as already noted, the very origins of the field can easily be
linked to the same sort of rise in speculations about ‘other people’ among the
curious, even perplexed and possibly shocked, Europeans reading reports of
travelers, missionaries, and military officers who were part of their countries’
The public discourse on religion 87
colonial missions. For it’s rather tough to maintain your own sense of having
an utterly distinct and thus superior culture when you realize that certain
things you had taken for granted as being unique to yourself appear to be
practiced, with varying degrees of difference, worldwide. This presented a
problem, of course, to people who had seen those outside Europe as being
nothing but ‘uncivilized savages’ who had not known ‘the grace of God’.
Questions began to be asked: is our culture the same as all the others? Being
a tough proposition to entertain for our intellectual predecessors, it became
appealing simply to concede just a little and to assume that all human cultures developed—or better, evolved—but at differing rates, with one’s own
being nowhere but at the head of the line. This we saw in Tylor’s theory of
animism, drawing as it did on evolutionary assumptions to account for the
archaic origins of modern practices.
Jumping ahead to the mid-twentieth century, the effort to establish the
field in the US public university was given momentum by the US court system; for, given the system of government in the US, sooner or later public
disputes tend to end up in the courts—as we’ve already seen with the Nix
family and their imported tomatoes as well as the Spiritual Outreach Society
appealing the decision on whether they counted as a church. And so, with
increasing difference within the population—or at least new differences previously unknown by the majority of the population in the mid-twentieth
century—we find US courts in the late 1950s and early 1960s addressing a
variety of church/state issues.
To discuss the role of religion in US public discourse one must first understand the Supreme Court’s reading of the US Constitution, especially the Bill
of Rights (the name given to the first ten amendments, adopted by Congress
on December 15, 1791). The famous opening lines to the First Amendment
to the Constitution read as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .
Legal scholars distinguish between the First Amendment’s establishment
clause and its free exercise clause: the Amendment is interpreted to state
that the elected government cannot enforce, support, or encourage (that is,
‘establish’) a particular religion (or religion in general, some would argue),
nor does it have the right to limit its citizens’ religious choices and practices
(that is, the ‘free exercise’ of their religion).
Before proceeding, it is worth considering, for a moment, what emphasis
to place on the word ‘respecting’ in the establishment clause—does it mean
‘with regard to’, in which case its presence here is of little consequence,
or does it mean ‘to have regard for’, as in ‘to honor’, in which case it prevents government not simply from formally or officially establishing but
even seeming to favor religion or appearing to sanction the establishment of
a state-supported religion—as some other nations have, such as the Church
88 The public discourse on religion
of England with the Queen as its head along with being the head of government in the UK. As you can see, much therefore depends on how this one
word is interpreted.
Of interest to some is that, in the opening lines of the First Amendment, it
is made explicit that all citizens of the US have the absolute right to believe
in any or no religion whatsoever. This was a point upheld in an April 28,
2005, press conference by US President, George W. Bush, who, although
well known for often speaking publicly about the importance of his own
Evangelical Christian faith, said in reply to a reporter’s question concerning how religion was being used in US political discourse: ‘The great thing
about America is that you should be allowed to worship any way you want,
and if you choose not to worship, you’re equally as patriotic as somebody
who does worship.’ In practice, though, it is rather difficult to imagine an
atheist being elected president in the US, given how closely assumptions
about national identity, morality, and self-worth are currently linked to
one’s ability to claim a religious identity or membership in a (more than
likely dominant or accepted) religious community.
Although this once taken-for-granted, or at least dominant, view on
the separation of church/state is now being reconsidered by some within
the US—as evidenced not only by such federal programs as former
President George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative, but by the very fact
that the President apparently saw it as necessary to specify in his press
conference that one’s religious faith was not necessarily a measure of
one’s patriotism—his comments presuppose elements found in the majority decision in a landmark 1963 US Supreme Court case. This case—one
among several from that era that have had an enduring impact on life in
the US since then—concerned the School District of Abington Township,
in the state of Pennsylvania, which was being sued by the Schempp family whose children attended one of its schools; the outcome of this case,
which was eventually appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, helped
to change the way public schools operate in the US, and its effects are still
felt to this day, most notably when it comes to how delicately religion is
treated in US public elementary and high schools.
Aside: it might now make sense why, despite its over 100-year history in
Europe, and the common presence of what is called religious education (RE)
in public schools across Europe, the field known in many parts of the world
as religious studies, the critical study of religion, or comparative religion is
pretty much absent from public schools in the US. Though legal to teach—in
the proper fashion, of course—many school boards steer clear of it due to
the controversies it might stir up. For instance, it’s not difficult to find news
stories of parents upset that the school is teaching their children about other
people’s religions, given how fearful the parents seem to be that the classes
are intent on advocating and not merely describing.
In the case of Abington v. Schempp, a family successfully sued a public school board for one of its school’s daily opening exercises—which, as
The public discourse on religion 89
anyone who was a child in a public school at that time in US history would
tell you, routinely included such elements as reciting the Christian Lord’s
Prayer and readings from the Bible over a school’s public address system at
the start of each day (what is often called ‘opening exercises’). The Court
decided that, as a publicly funded institution charged with representing and
not excluding the members of a diverse, tax-paying citizenry (those who
made the school possible in the first place), the school board was infringing
on the rights of its students, not just by supporting a specific denominational
worldview but, more importantly perhaps, a generally religious worldview
in general. Therefore, the Constitution’s establishment clause was the topic
of concern to the Court.
Justice Clark, the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the decision in this
case, on behalf of the majority of judges (it was an 8 to 1 decision, with
only one Justice dissenting from the majority opinion), stated that, although
confessional instruction and religious indoctrination in publicly funded
schools were both unconstitutional (because they infringed on the First
Amendment’s restrictions on government ‘respecting the establishment of
religion’), one’s education, he famously went on to write (in a line often
quoted by scholars of religion at that time), ‘is not complete without a
study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship
to the advancement of civilization’. The majority of the Justices therefore
interpreted the First Amendment to state that, although the government
cannot force a student to be either religious or nonreligious, the government certainly can—and, or so Justice Clark seemed to argue, probably
should—support classes that study the history of particular religions, the
comparison of two or more religions, and the role of religion in human history, doing so in a fashion that, as Ninian Smart once noted, keep clearly
in mind ‘the difference between exploring the truth concerning [or about]
religion and exploring the truth of religion’. The descriptive who, what,
when, and where of religion was in bounds, the court ruled, but, at least
in public school (which includes public universities) advocating theological
claims concerning the truth of religion was not.
Court challenges concerning the place of religion in US public education
continue, of course. Most recently, efforts to admit into the high school
science curriculum alternative views on the creation of the universe have
landed members of school board in court. First, it was advocates for what
was known as creationism and then, more recently, it was those supporting
what is known as intelligent design—both counter evolutionary theory and
offer what their supporters believe to be a viable alternative. Using what is
known as the Lemon test, the US courts, however, have found that creationism, or creation science—an approach that advocates the biblical story of
creation as found in the Book of Genesis—is inherently a religious position
(the US Supreme Court case of Edwards v. Aguillard) and, since 1987, have
therefore outlawed it as an element of a science curriculum. And, in a federal court case from 2005 (also involving a school board in Pennsylvania
90 The public discourse on religion
[Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District]), intelligent design—an approach
that claims some forms of life are too complex to have evolved from more
basic components (what is called ‘irreducible complexity’), thus advocating
the need to assume a so-called intelligent designer to have created them fully
former—was concluded to be just a rebranded form of creationism and thus
it too was banned from science classes.
Basic to its decision was the Court’s distinction between religious instruction and instruction about religion—a distinction popular among scholars of
religion writing in the 1960s and 1970s (notably such writers as the already
cited Ninian Smart, who played an important role in the modern field in
both the UK and the US) who had the task of persuading their colleagues,
who were already studying religion in such long-established academic disciplines as anthropology, history, sociology, etc., that there also ought to be a
place in the modern university for the academic study of religion as a distinct
field (what, in North America, quickly came to be known as Departments
of Religious Studies—though ‘Department of Religion’ and ‘Department for
the Study of Religion’ are also names used by some schools). The academic
study of religion as practiced in a public context is, they argued, concerned
to study about religion and religions and not be a form of religious practice
(whether theologically liberal or conservative). Regardless of how it is practiced in the many private institutions found throughout the US—whether
that means elite or so-called Ivy League universities or small denominationally affiliated, liberal arts colleges—it was argued that the study of religion
in public institutions ought to follow the same rules of argumentation, rules
for the use of evidence, and ways of gathering data (what we might call
its ‘methods’) as other intellectual pursuits. And, in many institutions, this
argument won out.
So, we find ourselves today with not only three different ways of defining religion but also three different ways of studying religion: theological
studies of various sorts, housed in the US in private and denominationally supported schools, which is aimed at articulating, in a systematic and
rational manner, the principles of the participant’s viewpoint (whether
that viewpoint is mainline or marginal, whether theologically liberal or
conservative); humanistic studies that, after comparative work uncovers
what some consider to be deep and abiding similarities, understand diverse
participant viewpoints to share universal values that are not necessarily
apparent even to the participants; and those carried out in the broad field
sometimes known as the human sciences, where all claims concerning the
existence of such things as deep essences, self-evident meanings, and universal values are understood to constitute an instance of data—whether
that be claims concerning the existence of souls or even human nature. But
despite these very real differences, one thing seems to be shared by each
approach: they all presume the difference between participants and nonparticipants, whether that be those who are saved and those who are not,
or those who practice religion and those who study it. In two words, they
all presume the difference between insiders and outsiders.
The public discourse on religion 91
Example: public Muslim cemeteries in France
I also prevailed on José Pinto to take me on a tour of the Muslim
Cemetery in Bobigny [a suburb of Paris], a singular entity in France
that challenges . . . the notion of the laïcité of public space. He took me
in through the old entrance of the public cemetery, which is subtly but
clearly Islamic, with small signs in Arabic. The gateway once included
calligraphic mosaics, but they were painted over in an effort to make the
Islamic character of the space less evident. The gate gives onto a courtyard with a mosque at the end, which is still used for Friday worship
and for prayers for the dead. This entrance has no indication in French
that the road leads to a cemetery. Most people use the main entrance,
which is directly off the road through town and leads to a parking lot
then to the graves, bypassing the mosque entirely. Pinto explained that
the construction of the new entrance was in response to complaints
about the presence of the mosque in a public cemetery.
The above quotation comes from chapter 3, entitled ‘Regulating Islam’, of
John Bowen’s 2007 book, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam,
the State, and Public Space. The location he describes is easily found on
Google Maps or Google Street View, and enterprising web searchers will
find the old entrance as you enter the northern end of the cemetery along
Rue Arago (as well as the plain entrance to the south). This small cemetery
is interesting to Bowen, an anthropologist at the Washington University, in
St. Louis, because it constitutes a site where these slippery notions of private
and public bump up against each other, in a way that requires some artful
compromise if social life is to continue in a relatively civil fashion.
Important to understanding the example is both the above-mentioned
French legal notion of laïcité as well as the recent controversies in France
(and other European countries, not to mention in North America as well)
over the place of such things as Islamic head coverings in the public domain.
Concerning the former, the first article of France’s 1958 constitution reads
as follows:
La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale.
Elle assure l’égalité devant la loi de tous les citoyens sans distinction
d’origine, de race ou de religion.
Or, in English we might translate it as follows:
France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic.
It shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction
of origin, race or religion.
But the notion of secularism in France is somewhat different than somewhere like the US, for in the case of the latter (a nation widely celebrated
92 The public discourse on religion
in its national mythology as a country of immigrants) it is assumed that the
public space is, in some ways, diverse (think of how often we see the use of
such compound identifiers as, say, Italian-American, signaling the diversity
and blending of identities in US social life or how sociologists of religion
sometimes refer to the US’s ‘religious marketplace’ where believers can shop
for a faith), whereas in France the ideal is that the public space is far more
uniform than this and thus, in their public dealings and in their public life,
all French citizens are equally and uniformly French—with no markers of
distinction among them; calling someone, for instance, Italian-French would
therefore make little sense to many there.
But what happens when, for example, a large influx of people takes
place, originating from some of France’s onetime colonial possessions,
resulting in, for instance, French-speaking Muslims coming to the largely
Roman Catholic country, in search of jobs and opportunities? Moreover,
what happens when ways of, for the sake of argument, dressing that were
seen as ordinary and thus accepted in one region of the world find their way
to Paris—such as women, in some cases, opting to cover their heads (with
a veil, or niqāb) or even their entire bodies (by wearing a burqa) when in
public—a practice that conveys socially significant information, from some
seeing it as a sign of modesty or even piety to others seeing it as oppressive
of women’s rights. Now, to one degree or another, we see such practices
across all cultures and, at times, across genders—from devout Jewish men
covering their heads with a kippah (also known as a yarmulke) to an Amish
woman wearing a bonnet. And often it is utterly uncontroversial. But in the
case of France over the past few decades, their prior national sense of what
it means for the public space to be secular, on the one hand, and, on the
other, recently arrived practices among immigrants that strike some locals
as improperly introducing religious identities (that is, Islam) into the seemingly secular (that is, French) public sphere has the effect of undermining
not just the longstanding presumption among some scholars that at least
liberal democratic societies would inevitably become more secular (the socalled secularization thesis) but also what some say it means to be a French
citizen, for it apparently exhibits—or some there would conclude—divided
loyalties; this has therefore created a situation in which the nation-state,
in 2010, intervened by outlawing headscarves (so-called face coverings) in
public, by a vote of 246–1 (with 100 abstentions). A fine and ‘citizenship
education’ awaits those convicted of breaking it, with even heavier penalties
for those forcing another to cover their face.
While this wider set of issues is certainly worth exploring, I’ll return to
the Bowen’s example of a burial site, for now, with that background in
mind, it should be clear that, as a publicly funded cemetery, the French
notion of secularism would presumably prevent (potentially divisive) religious symbols from appearing on the public graves. But this is a specifically
Muslim public cemetery—a fact that seems to undermine the French notion
of laïcité. But, come to think of it, the fact that it is just accepted as normal
The public discourse on religion 93
that Roman Catholic monks and nuns routinely appear in public all across
France while wearing their religious uniforms (termed vestments or, in the
case of nuns, habits, which might include a veil or, in more traditional
moments, the large starched hat called a cornette), and that many people
all over France also wear crosses on necklaces without anyone being troubled by their public expression of a religious identity, starts to help us to
see the issue as far more complicated than it might have first appeared.
Perhaps it was because of this complexity that the case of Paris’s public
Muslim cemetery—which is there today due to its long history with the
nearby Hôpital Avicienne (Avicenna Hospital; it was established in 1935
and originally known as the French Muslim Hospital)—was ingeniously
solved by local authorities by their understanding of the seven thousand
or so graves themselves being private space, in distinction from the spaces
between and around the graves, which came to be seen as public, inasmuch
as that space is owned by the municipality. This meant that religious symbols could appear on graves so long as they did not invade the public space
(that is, so long as anything like a religious marker on the gravesite stayed
vertical, within the imagined private space of the grave itself, and did not,
for example, lean over outside that space). Bowen calls this a flexible use of
the notions of public and private property—a solution that doesn’t satisfy
everyone, of course, for he reports that angry letters to the editor are still
written about this compromise; it strikes me as an excellent example of how
we continually define and redefine what counts as private or public all in
our efforts to manage daily life.
Further considerations
Whether or not the example of laïcité in France is worth exploring in more
detail, do any other examples come to mind where the seemingly bright line
separating private from public is a little more blurred than we might at first
think—perhaps indicating that this classificatory distinction is just as much
a tool as any other set of paired concepts (for example, soil vs. dirt)? The
privacy of a typical teenager’s room comes to mind—privacy that results
not from the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign that might be hung there but, instead,
from the parents agreeing among themselves not to enter (a decision that no
doubt helps moderate inevitable differences and tensions within any family, as children grow older and gain increasing autonomy from their once
authoritative parents); for they more than likely actually own the room and
much of its contents (starting with that closed door). Or what about the
privacy of our activities online and the data about us that online vendors
and services have—is it a commodity to be bought and sold like any other
or, rather, is it private and just our possession? Anyone paying attention to
the news knows not just about data breaches but also about how nations
pass laws to create (or sometimes limit) the online privacy that some of
us may just take for granted. And if this distinction between private and
94 The public discourse on religion
public is actually rather blurry and negotiable, then what might that mean
for how we understand the academic study of religion, at least when taught
in public schools, and the fact that we see it as different from theological
approaches? Are there other ways of ensuring there’s a distinction between
the two approaches? For the way that the two are distinguished in the US
(that is, citing the First Amendment and making much of the fact that only
certain approaches are eligible for tax support) is rather alien to Europe,
for example, where the US’s constitutional separation of church and state
(a separation that is much more vague in practice than in theory, as the
court’s Lemon test makes plain) is not present. For throughout Europe the
faculty members who engage in what we in the US refer to as religious studies are often (though not always) employed by theological faculties, though
they are generally understood as engaged in an entirely different pursuit
from some of their peers. So how else might one make this distinction, without relying on stable notions of private and public—and what, if anything,
is gained from making this distinction?
The public discourse on religion 95
Summary of vocabulary
Abington v. Schempp
Amish
Animism
Anthropology
Atheism
Christianity
Church/state
Classification
Colonialism
Comparative religion
Comparison
Creationism/creation science
Culture
Description
Essentialism
Establishment clause
Evolution
Experience
Faith
Faith-Based Initiative
Family resemblance
Fieldwork
First Amendment to the US Constitution
Free exercise clause
Functionalism
History
Human sciences
Humanities
Induction
Intelligent design
Interpretation
Islam
Laïcité
Lemon test
Nation-state
Private
Psychology
Public
Religion
Religious education (RE)
Secular
Secularization thesis
Sociology
Notes
96 The public discourse on religion
Sui generis
Theology
Worldview
Summary of scholars
Rudolph Otto
Huston Smith
Edward Burnett Tylor
7
Religion and the insider/outsider
problem
It is clear that there are implications for our studies if we presume, as so
many do, religion to be an inner trait, sentiment, belief, or experience that
is first felt and only then expressed in some secondary manner. For in this
case, the actual nature of religion always eludes the uninitiated observer’s
grasp—since they are left with what some have called its secondary aspects
or its mere externals—making the academic study of religion an impossibility (since we can never really get at its actual source). Implicit here is the
distinction between how participants understand this thing we call religion
and how non-participants understand it, suggesting that in order to study
religion we need to develop some tools to distinguish these two viewpoints
from each other.
As we say in German, können is not kennen, we might say in English to
can, that is to be cunning, is not to ken, that is to know; and it would
then become clear at once that the most eloquent speaker and the most
gifted poet, with all their command of words and skillful mastery of
expression, would have but little to say if asked what language really is!
The same applies to religion.
F. Max Müller (1893)
98 Religion and the insider/outsider problem
The commonly described distinction between studying about religion and
studies that are religious (or theological) brings to mind what is commonly
called the insider/outsider problem—an issue present, you may recall, in
Andrew Scott Waugh’s efforts to use only local names for the mountains
he identified during his early mapping of India (although, in naming Peak
15 after Colonel Everest, he hardly followed his own rule). Because much
of the original work on the insider/outsider problem was done in fields
outside the academic study of religion, it is only fitting to open a discussion
of the insider/outsider problem with reference to the work carried out in
the field of linguistics.
From linguists, anthropologists and then scholars of religion borrowed
two technical terms—emic and etic. These two terms roughly correspond
to experience-near and experience-distant, terms used by the US anthroplogist, Clifford Geertz, to suggest the continuum that may exist between those
experiences that are familiar and those with which one has trouble identifying. Like experience-near and experience-distant, emic and etic are concepts
that are commonly used when tackling the study of meaning systems outside of one’s own, whether they are language systems, cultures, economies,
or religions. Although both words are derived from the same Greek root
(phonema, meaning sound, hence our words phonograph and telephone),
the term phonemic designates the sounds themselves (or what are called
phonemes, the smallest units of meaningful sound in any language system)
whereas the term phonetic specifies the symbols and the organizational
systems that scholars devise to represent and then compare the manner in
which the basic phonemic units of language systems are pronounced and
strung together in complex relationships that are commonly known as
words or sentences. To the proficient users of any language (the linguistic
insiders who possess the emic perspective), studying these systems (the etic
perspective) may or may not be an interesting topic; after all, speakers are
involved in using, articulating and developing a language for certain practical purposes and likely have little interest in developing a theory of human
language as a general phenomenon or a systematic study of how their discrete units of sounds are produced and how this compares to the production
of sounds in other languages. To these language users (also termed native
informants, participants, or actors) the varied ways of producing a unit of
sound that they understand to be significant (or, say, producing any symbol or action that they understand as meaningful and worth remembering)
might all just appear to be self-evident, ordinary, and thus uninteresting—
after all, readers likely don’t think twice about what their diaphragm, lips,
tongue, and teeth are all doing when they make the sound represented by
the symbol ‘T’. But to a novice, such as a non-Spanish speaker trying to
master the trilled (or rolling) ‘R’ sound that is used in Spanish but not in
many other languages, to the speech pathologist trying to help a Spanish
stroke patient regain their speech, or the theorist of human-language-ingeneral or human-culture-in-general, the ways in which subtle distinctions
Religion and the insider/outsider problem 99
in performance and meaning are produced by speakers or social actors, and
the ways in which these subtle distinctions are understood to be significant
by those who receive them, can be intriguing and crucially important.
Before continuing, an important point must be made: much like speakers,
as they are talking, not giving much of a thought to how they actually go
about producing a particular sound, and just as so-called believers are more
than likely not walking around explicitly thinking about their beliefs, it
seems likely that insiders do not actually have a viewpoint, as much as they
simply go about their business, fully immersed in their particular meaning/
behavior world (just as readers of this very page are fully immersed in
the rules of English grammar, or much as with the implicit assumptions
of people replacing light bulbs and starting car engines). Therefore, the emic
or insider perspective might better be understood as the outsider’s attempt to
reproduce as faithfully as possible—in a word, to describe—what might be
considered to be the informant’s own descriptions of his or her production
of sounds, behavior, beliefs, meanings, institutions, etc., should they offer
such an account. I say ‘what might be considered’ because in many fields
there is no insider’s view against which to compare our descriptions, to see
if we got them right, for many of the people we study are long gone and all
that remains are difficult-to-interpret artifacts recovered by archeologists.
(Question: is this artifact a toy or an idol? What will people long in our
future make of what they find left over from our culture? Will a Barbie doll,
which will surely not degrade very quickly, be understood as an idol? Once
again, classification matters!) But more than this: even when the insider
is present, such as a native informant being studied by an anthropologist
doing fieldwork, often they go about their daily lives in such a way that they
are not consciously considering the motivation, meaning, and implications
of their actions—all of which no doubt interests the observer who busily
asks them questions about these things, ensuring that the answers provided
by the participant (once they are translated, that is) are in fact a product
of the non-participant’s curiosities. For instance, as just indicated above,
although readers of these words are likely more than capable of answering
questions about the significance of their ability to decipher the scribbles on
this page by means of their knowledge of the English language’s alphabet
and its grammar, yet in the midst of this decoding they likely are not much
thinking about their language abilities or the implications of being literate.
Instead, like most all social actors, they are unreflectively immersed in their
world. If this is the case, then the etic perspective is the observer’s subsequent attempt to take the descriptive information they’ve assembled (emic)
and to organize, systematize and compare—in a word, to redescribe—it in
terms of a system of the scholar’s own making (such as the cross-culturally
useful phonetic alphabet, which assigns local symbols to sounds made crossculturally or the scholarly definition of the technical term myth that is used
to distinguish and sort the many types of narratives people tell and perform). What should be clear, then, is that the emic and the etic perspective
100 Religion and the insider/outsider problem
are deeply intertwined—perhaps the model of a conversation helps to make
this point, such as the anthropologist posing questions, reflective of her own
assumptions, and her informant doing his best to answer them (even if these
particular issues had never really dawned on him before). Which raises a
question: in such a case, are we really getting some pristine or unique insider’s
viewpoint with his answers?
So, despite what some might think, the emic perspective does not exist
apart from the non-participant’s curiosity (to rephrase: without outsiders
I’m not sure there would even be an insider viewpoint); insider disclosures
about such things as the causes, meaning, and implications of their social
world are therefore solicited by the queries of the curious non-participant
who is familiar with a different world and therefore curious about this or
that new sound, belief, action, and institution, etc. (This is a point basic
to much of Jonathan Z. Smith’s work: gains in knowledge come about by
means of the curiosity that results when we inevitably learn that the world
does not always work as we think [might we say guess? Or perhaps hypothesize?] it does.) It is therefore crucial not to confuse the emic perspective
with the so-called insider’s own actual viewpoint, as if our descriptive work
somehow allows us to leave our own bodies and read other people’s minds
(mind-reading attempts can sometimes be quite common among scholars
studying other people, somewhat like Tylor thought he could conjure up the
ancient ‘savage philosopher’s’ own thoughts); for, as in the case of language,
language users are extremely proficient at speaking their language, at making this or that sound (that is, the phonemes of which a spoken language is
constituted) in a manner that is distinct from other sounds (for example, it
is crucial, in English, to produce the proper phoneme so as to distinguish
the vowels in such words as ‘fit’ and ‘fat’, especially when trying to compliment someone by saying, ‘You look particularly fit today’), but such people
are often hardly interested in, first, reflecting upon how it is that they do
it and, then, comparing their techniques to those of other language users
so as to answer questions about the feature of language in general as a
human phenomenon. By even attempting to re-produce, rather than simply
produce, a sound faithfully, the linguist has already acknowledged that she
or he is a student of the language under study (could we call this studies
about language?) and is not to be confused with merely being a speaker of
the language or even someone trying to learn to speak the language (that is,
someone trying to learn to master the art and thereby reproduce the various
phonemes properly).
It would seem, then, that the insider/outsider problem—phrased simply,
the question of whether, and if so, then to what extent, non-participants can
study others (a topic to which the British scholar, Kim Knott, has contributed
a great deal)—involves a complex continuum of positions and viewpoints.
If we add to this the problem of who gets to count as an insider—such as
English-language users who distinguish between ‘the Queen’s English’ or socalled ‘proper English’, on the one hand, and other so-called degraded forms
Religion and the insider/outsider problem 101
of English (as in the vernacular, or common speech)—it is clear that there
are insiders and then there are insiders! So who gets to be the insider—those
who are in power, perhaps? As anthropologists who do fieldwork found
out a generation or two ago, one cannot simply presume that talking to
the senior males of the village exhausts all of the information to be gained
from studying a group, for there are many subgroups in any society, and it
is highly likely that not all share the same perspective and interests. Case in
point: for anyone keeping abreast of the news since the attacks of September
11, 2001—in which politicians and commentators worldwide, on all political sides, have debated which form of Islam is the ‘true faith’ and which
forms are ‘deviant’ and ‘fanatical’—it should be obvious that the stakes in
the insider/outsider debate can be quite high and are all too real.
Therefore, instead of simply assuming that there is a stable and selfevident insider and a clearly distinguishable outsider viewpoint, or instead
of trying to judge which of a group’s many forms is its supposedly authentic
heart, the pristine original, and its authoritative form, the questions that
some scholars have now begun to ask are: which of the many viewpoints
is to be authorized? Based on whose criteria? How does this authorization take place? Is the quality or accuracy of etic scholarship to be judged
by the informant’s criteria? (In other words, is ‘Mount Everest’ illegitimate
because it is not a local name?) Do people doing some behavior or holding
some belief set the terms by means of which their behaviors and beliefs are
to be understood? Or is the informant (as an anthropologist might name
the insider) to be judged by the conclusions reached by the observer? Does
scholarship operate apart from the concerns and interests of insiders or is
it intimately connected to their lives? What if the insider disagrees with
the scholar’s conclusions—as has begun to happen worldwide now that the
writings of scholars are easily available to many of the people on whom they
write? Is the goal of scholarship on human behavior, beliefs, and institutions
to have the people whom we are studying agree with our conclusions and
generalizations, or is it instead the goal of gaining new knowledge by developing logical, scientific theories concerning why it is that humans do this or
that in the first place, regardless of what people report their own motives to
be? Simply put, to whom do scholars of human behavior answer and what
is the purpose of their work? All this is entailed in current discussions of the
insider/outsider problem—a topic that touches directly on the many current
debates over this thing called cultural appropriation.
In arguing for a theory of religion in general, especially when carrying
out this type of research from within a public university (which is funded
through the tax dollars of an obviously diverse citizenry, comprised of all
sorts of theistic viewpoints, as well as those of agnostics and atheists alike),
it was maintained that no one religious viewpoint could come to dominate,
for we are not attempting to develop a Christian theory of religion, a Jewish
theory of religion, a Hindu theory of religion, a Muslim theory of religion,
or a Buddhist theory of religion—though no doubt theologians in each of
102 Religion and the insider/outsider problem
these social movements will likely wish to develop their own views on this
topic. Instead, much like those who study phonetics, scholars of religion
seek to develop criteria and tools from outside each of these particular social
systems so as to compare them or their elements, and then to develop a
theory capable of explaining the possible reasons for the similarities and
differences that their comparisons bring to light. Etic scholarship therefore
ought not to be constrained by the way in which the people one studies say
they act or think. Instead, it should be constrained by the rules that govern
all rational, comparative, scientific analyses that are found throughout the
modern university.
To explore the insider/outsider problem a little more, consider the following example, which might arise in the study of those mass social movements
that we commonly call religions: the problem of evil. Commonly called
theodicy, this is the theological challenge of justifying one’s belief in an allpowerful, all-good god (also called a deity) despite events in the observable,
natural world (everything from disease and crime to natural disasters) that
suggest otherwise. This has been a longstanding problem for some theologians who subscribe to belief in a monotheistic god (the belief that there is
only one god). Therefore, any scholar of religion interested in studying the
history of a particular type of theology, or current theological debates, might
wish to survey, among the many other topics, what people are saying about
the problem of evil. But in carrying out such a study, are scholars of religion
studying evil, studying the problem of evil, or studying, first of all, specific
groups of people who believe evil exists and, second of all, their attempts
to deal with the apparent conflicts between this and other of their beliefs?
Simply put, is the category ‘theodicy’ emic or etic? To rephrase, for whom
is the problem of evil a problem? The scholar of religion or the theologian?
The scholarly model we might wish to draw upon in answering this question is that of Émile Durkheim. For Durkheim, participants’ claims about
such things as gods or the origins of the universe were understood as coded
statements about the social order itself. Adopting a naturalistic approach,
he understood claims about God to be a way in which participants projected
outside themselves their sense of the group’s own needs, making religion—
or, more specifically, mythic narratives and public ritual performances—but
two among the many sites at which society, which exists nowhere but in the
minds of its members, continually renews itself. Therefore, what for insiders counts as talk about God, God’s wishes, and God’s judgment is, when
described by the sociologist, symbolically coded talk about society, society’s
wishes, and society’s judgments. Although contemporary social theorists no
longer employ Durkheim’s understanding of society as being a monolithic
whole, and instead assume that the thing once simply called ‘society’ is, in
fact, comprised of a host of subgroups, with overlapping memberships, that
conflict and complement each other in a variety of ways, they would more
than likely agree with Durkheim: upon analysis, religious discourse turns
out to be the language of social life. Religion is reduced to society.
Religion and the insider/outsider problem 103
But what has this got to do with theodicy?
In order for the problem of evil even to be a problem, to be something
worth puzzling over—that is, to be an item of discourse—one needs a few
assumptions up and running, assumptions that are part of the participant’s
world but not necessarily part of the non-participant scholar’s world. In
fact, not all people identified as religious participants might even have the
assumptions necessary for the problem of evil to appear to be a problem
worth discussing. Christians, of course, have certainly been preoccupied
with this topic for centuries, but not necessarily everyone designated as religious develops theodicies. So, right off the bat, we need to entertain that only
some of the people we study develop rational systems we might call theodicies (and, moreover, what are we missing if we think one group’s talk of, say,
sin, is the same as another group’s talk of evil?)—suggesting that, because
the term ‘theodicy’ may have limited cross-cultural use, it is hardly an etic
category that will be of use in our work as scholars of religion. (Come to
think of it, what about myth, ritual, canon, scripture, priest, temple, etc.—
are they of cross-cultural use to us? Recall how the Internal Revenue Service
tried to repurpose ‘church’ as a cross-cultural designator . . .?)
For those who do develop them, theodicies presuppose a belief that such
a thing as evil exists and, second, it must be understood to be in conflict
with some other way in which things could be working out. If, instead,
one presumed that the universe was itself a random outcome of countless
unintentional events (and notice I did not say ‘actions’, so as not to imply
some agent doing something for a reason and an intended outcome), then
it might not make much sense to talk about evil. Sure, given one’s own
set of interests (such as wanting to live a long life) one might still deeply
lament this or that outcome but the outcome’s conflict with one’s own
hopes and dreams would hardly constitute an instance of what we commonly designate as evil. Things could still be judged unexpected, shocking,
even horrific, but such value judgments would always be understood to
operate in relation to a specific observer’s point of view, making shock
an item in the eye of the beholder (that is, it is a function of his or her
expectations) rather than the name given to some essential, inner value the
thing has always possessed. In this case, there is no evil, for things could
not have been otherwise—in other words, conflicts, gaps, and disappointments, some great and some trivial, are part of the very fabric of historical
existence (as an existentialist might say). Therefore, although deeply frustrated people may remain, there is no problem of evil.
To study the problem of evil, to try to solve the problem posed by the existence of evil, therefore means one assumes that things ought to be otherwise,
that things ought to make sense, that things ought to work out according to
a certain sort of pattern. The problem, then, is that they often (generally?)
do not. Failing to assume that things ought to make sense, one can develop
ways to study other people’s assumptions about how things ought to work,
along with studying their attempts to explain the discrepancies between
104 Religion and the insider/outsider problem
their hopes and dreams, on the one hand, and the ways things apparently
turn out at the end of the day, on the other.
This means that theodicy is an item of a particular sort of emic discourse—
often, an economically and intellectually elite emic discourse, for it is likely
that most people, when confronted with a shocking and unexpected turn of
events, do not bring to bear an elaborate, rational system to account for the
event in light of a belief in a powerful, good God. Instead, they likely bear up
under the circumstances as best they can, concerned in the short term with
profoundly practical and everyday concerns. Later, if they happen to have
the luxury of acquiring some sort of physical or intellectual distance from
the event (making them an outsider to their own, earlier status as an insider
to the experience), they might reflect on such things as the meaning of the
event—something they determine by placing it in relation to assumptions
they routinely employ while going about their daily life.
Of course, non-participant scholars who adopt the cross-cultural, etic
viewpoint, and who happen to be interested in this topic, will surely wish
to describe all of this, in great detail, and will likely wish to compare different attempts to grapple with the issue, and in the process examine how
participants distinguish between better and worse attempts to address
the perceived problem. But scholars will more than likely not be content
with accomplishing just this descriptive work. Instead, they might eventually wish to account for why people think the universe ought to work in
this or that fashion, and why they opt for belief in a powerful being as
a way to answer their questions concerning why things don’t go in their
favor more often. Perhaps, like Durkheim, they’ll employ a social theory
in their explanation, concluding that theodicies are actually coded social
language, a technique for justifying not the ways of God but the ways of
the social group. Or perhaps they’ll draw upon work carried out in a field
such as cognitive sciences, seeing theodicies instead as ways in which social
actors articulate and systematize their efforts to deal with what we once
might have termed cognitive dissonance—a term used for the discomfort,
and sometimes profound anxiety, that results from having experiences that
conflict with one’s conceptual framework.
Regardless of which etic framework one adopts to study not the problem of evil, but what we might now call the discourse on evil, it should
be clear that, although they might overlap greatly on the descriptive level,
participant and non-participant discourses vary greatly after the work of
description has ended and explanation and analysis have begun.
Religion and the insider/outsider problem 105
Example: under the academic microscope
We tell ourselves (and others, particularly our colleagues in ‘harder’ disciplines) that we study our texts from the outside, in the approved manner of the head, like sages, cool and objective, while we deal with the
religious affairs of the heart, if we deal with them at all, from the inside,
like hunters, with passion and commitment. We maintain an objective
interest in one sort of religion and a subjective faith in another. For
historians of religions, the ‘objective’ religion may be obviously other—
Hinduism or Islam—but even if we are dealing with our ‘own’ tradition
we are prey to a kind of schizophrenia in artificially defining it as ‘other’
for the duration of the period in which we have it under the academic
microscope. That our stock in trade is ideas about gods rather than
ideas about electrons or phonemes is not supposed to bother anyone.
The same basic rules should apply; the mental computer follows the
same synapses, and we merely change the software to very soft software.
But in making such assertions, in attempting to play the game of
objectivity with the Big Boys on the playing fields of the harder sciences,
we often tend to play down the more subtle but equally genuine sort
of objectivity that good scholars of religion can and do bring to their
discipline, a critical judgment that allows them to be critical even of
their own faith claims. And leaning over backwards is not always the
best posture in which to conduct a class; it is a posture in which one
can easily be knocked over by any well aimed blow from the opposition. Moreover, this pressure often makes scholars of religion deny that
they care about religion, which is untrue; we do care, which is why we
have chosen this profession, instead of becoming lawyers and making
lots of money.
The above quotation comes from what was once a much-cited 1986
essay by the well-known University of Chicago scholar of Hinduism, Wendy
Doniger (an essay that later became a chapter in one of her own books).
I selected it because it may nicely capture the position in which many students
find themselves when studying religion in an academic, comparative, or what
some now call a critical manner—especially newcomers to the field who are
sorting through some issues for the very first time. For they may feel pulled
between two competing approaches: one new and taking place in the classroom and the other probably far more established and occupying other parts
of (maybe even much of) their lives. While it would be incorrect to assume
that all students feel torn in this way (after all, not all students identify with
those things that many of us call religion—for some they are not really relevant at all while for others they may be opposed, maybe virulently so), it
would also be an oversight not to explicitly address the tension that some
students surely experience when taking classes in the study of religion. So the
example for this chapter, which Doniger’s quotation helps us to get at, are
106 Religion and the insider/outsider problem
readers of this very book; for as we near the close of this little volume it might
be worthwhile to invite readers to reflect on their own experience reading it or
their experiences of the class that might have used it: what did you expect the
study of religion to be—almost everyone just assumes it’s a descriptive course
on world religions? How has the book met or defied those expectations?
Have the approaches opened new doors, and thus made new things possible to ask or know? Were questions you want answered answered or were
they not even asked? For if you had been waiting to find out the right way
to define religion, or which religion is best, or what religion really ought to
mean in your life, well, you may still be waiting for those answers—or, come
to think of it, you may have been pleased to learn that the game could be
played in an entirely different way: studying religion without ever assuming
one had to be religious to do so.
Doniger nicely puts on the table the longstanding oppositions between
being objective and subjective, talking about religion as an outsider might
or as an insider does—or what she characterizes as being either a sage or a
hunter. But in order to occupy one of these positions, and to thereby see them
as being at odds with each other, you’ve likely got to make a few assumptions, such as about what a rational discourse on a topic entails or what
religion really is. Is it possible ever to be so removed from a situation that
you’re truly objective? Is disinterest what characterizes those approaches
and methods that we call science? Does religion defy this sort of rational
investigation? Is something lost if it is studied as nothing more or less than
human beings doing things?
If you’re betting that I’m not going to answer those questions, well,
you’re right, for answering any of them, just as with taking a stand on the
oppositions that Doniger offers us, requires that we take that term ‘religion’
and use it in a particular sort of way. And this book has not been an introduction to the right way of using the term but, rather, to some of the things
involved in how scholars use it. That not everyone addressed in the book
would agree with each other should be obvious by now, and that there are
pros and cons to any way of using the term should be pretty evident as well.
But we do use it—at least many of us on the planet today use it, whether
our ancestors did or not; for though the word has very specific Latin origins,
and though not all languages and cultures trace themselves to those who
once used the word, the people who do have had tremendous influence on
the globe and so along with their military and traders came a vocabulary
and a way of dividing up and talking about the world. That we’re all deeply
invested in the worlds that we come to know by means of these ideas is
pretty obvious—people are sometimes willing to fight and die over things
that are likely of far less consequence, if we’re being honest. So inviting
someone who takes for granted that this is soil and that is dirt—not to mention that this is religious and that is not—is something that can sometimes
have far wider ramifications that a writer, like me, or an instructor in a class
had not anticipated.
Religion and the insider/outsider problem 107
So, is Doniger correct? Do you care about religion? If so, what does
that mean? How does it impact how you study it? In fact, why might
one even want to talk about religion rather than just being religious? Or
are you even persuaded that there’s a difference and that religion, let alone
our habit of calling something religion, is something that can be studied—
whether or not you’d characterize that work as objective?
Further considerations
Debates over whether anything can be studied truly objectively have raged
for the past few generations among scholars, with a variety of sides in that
argument being staked out, such that today, although it might be difficult to
find someone who thought that any subject matter could be studied dispassionately, it might also be tough to find someone on the other end of that
debate who claimed that all scholarship is merely a form of self-interested
autobiography. In other words, many would agree that the study of X is
somehow different from merely being X—for example, it is probably not
controversial to say that one does not have to be Japanese to study either
Japanese or Japan. But does being an insider add something to your work
(or, on the contrary, limit it in some way)? Are there other examples where
this tension can be explored, places where the stakes might be a bit lower
than in the case of religion, examples where what we learn could be applied
back to the study of religion, to help us sort out what the scholar’s own
position (and, yes, passions) have to do with all this?
108 Religion and the insider/outsider problem
Summary of vocabulary
Agent
Agnosticism
Anthropology
Appropriation
Atheism
Belief
Buddhism
Canon
Cause
Christianity
Church
Classification
Cognitive science
Comparison
Culture
Description
Discourse
Emic/etic
Essentialism
Existentialism
Experience
Fieldwork
Greek
Hinduism
Insider/outsider problem
Islam
Judaism
Linguistics
Meaning
Myth
Native
Naturalistic theories of religion
Origins
Redescription
Reductionism
Ritual
Society
Theism
Theodicy
Theology
Theory
Translation
Notes
Religion and the insider/outsider problem 109
Summary of scholars
Wendy Doniger
Émile Durkheim
Clifford Geertz
Kim Knott
Jonathan Z. Smith
Edward Burnett Tylor
8
Religion and classification
It should by now be apparent that all three common approaches to
definition—essentialist, functionalist, and family resemblance—have problems associated with them. But don’t despair; for if definition is a human
action used to make the world knowable and thinkable, then one shouldn’t
be surprised to find that the very tools we use to define things have limitations of their own. After all, even multi-purpose Swiss Army knives,
complete with can openers and corkscrews, can’t be used for everything.
Why? Because despite doing their best to anticipate eventual needs, their
designers are not all-knowing and their tools (being historical inventions
themselves) inevitably fall short because the ever-changing interests of the
tool’s users continually evade the designer’s knowledge. So if tools are
devised to accomplish interests, but if those interests are forever in motion,
then the devices that we use to make the world knowable (those things
that we commonly call concepts, categories, systems of classification, etc.)
must continually be re-tooled (somewhat like the extra day inserted into
a leap year helping to make our calendars work)—and sometimes even
discarded (like the now disused term ‘primitive’)—all depending on our
ever-changing interests, and curiosities. So if the category ‘religion’ is your
tool then how will you define it and what are you going to do with it? And
are there any others using it in the same way—people you might be able to
call colleagues . . .?
[W]hile there is a staggering amount of data, phenomena, of human
experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture
or another, by one criterion or another, as religion—there is no data
for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is
created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of
comparison and generalization. Religion has no existence apart from
the academy.
Jonathan Z. Smith (1982)
112 Religion and classification
Keeping in mind the relationship—suggested from the outset of this book
by Mary Douglas’s comments on ‘soil’ and ‘dirt’—between classifiers,
their system of classification, and that which they are classifying, we can
see why a number of contemporary scholars have found the essentialist
approach to be unproductive inasmuch as it presumes a common identity,
or essence (that predates and outlives the observer), to underlie a thing’s
many varied manifestations—the presumption that motivated an earlier
scholarly movement known as the phenomenology of religion (e.g., see the
Dutch scholar, Gerardus van der Leeuw’s classic 1933 work, Religion in
Essence and Manifestation). Instead, classification is now seen by some to
be an inherently and inescapably political activity—something apparent to
some members of the United Nations when, not long after the attacks of
September 11, 2001, and during debates on developing a means to define
and then combat what they called terrorism, they made a point of arguing
that groups considered ‘terrorists’ by one nation might just as easily be conceived as ‘freedom fighters’ by another—all depending on how closely the
group’s goals do or do not at least complement (or possibly reinforce and
achieve) those of the classifier. (This might explain why there is currently
no agreed-upon definition of terrorism among the UN’s member states.) So,
just as studies of the politics of scholarship have recently appeared throughout the human sciences, so too the study of religion is being re-conceived as
a site constituted by choice and practical interests rather than one based on
sympathetic spiritual insight (see, for instance, the work of William Arnal,
Talal Asad, Willi Braun, Bruce Lincoln, and Tomoko Masuzawa).
But as we have seen, functionalist and family resemblance approaches
to defining religion can also be judged to be insufficient. Does that mean
that, as so many scholars before us have concluded, religion cannot be
defined—that, as someone like Rudolf Otto might have concluded, due
to its complexity and subjectivity, it can only be experienced and insufficiently expressed? If so, then how can one study it rather than just feel it?
As many scholars have asked, if religion is an interior, private disposition,
is the academic study of religion even possible?
If identifying the shortcomings of various approaches to definition
prompts readers to throw their hands up in frustration—as if they were
awaiting the correct definition to be revealed to them at the close of this
book, much like learning that the butler did it by the end of a mystery
novel—then they may have missed the point of the book’s opening discussion of Douglas’s work on classification. For instance, take the cognitive
scientist and linguist, George Lakoff, who is well known for his work on
classification. In a book entitled Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things:
What Categories Reveal about the Mind (1987; the title of the book
refers to the manner in which things are classified in traditional Dyirbal,
one of the indigenous languages of Australia), Lakoff cites the late philosopher of science, Stephen Jay Gould’s discussion of the difficulties in
settling on how best to classify that animal commonly known as a ‘zebra’.
Religion and classification 113
Biologists, we learn, generally classify living things either cladistically
(that is, cladists classify biological organisms in terms of their shared,
and thus evolutionarily inherited, traits—somewhat like an essentialist)
or phenetically (that is, pheneticists classify biological organisms in terms
of their shared form, function, and role—somewhat like a functionalist).
Depending on which of these two different systems of classification the
biologist uses, the three species of zebra end up being classified in rather
different ways, with one of the three having more in common—as judged
by the cladistic system—with horses than with the other two species of
zebra. Thus, something doesn’t even end up being counted as a zebra, all
depending on how you name it and to what you think it is related.
The moral of this story of classification? If we presume, as Lakoff suggests, that there is one and only one proper way to classify the items of the
world (a folk assumption that he thinks we commonly make in day-to-day
life, but which might be rather mistaken), then clearly, when it comes to
classifying those black and white striped creatures found in Africa, and in
zoos throughout the world, we’ve got a big problem on our hands. For we
now need to come up with a way to judge which classification system is the
best to determine what zebras really are. But to do that, we need to employ
yet another classification system, with internal criteria of its own, to judge
‘better’ from ‘worse’ ways to, for instance, classify zebras. Moreover, if we
understand language itself to be a classification system (that is, what gets to
count as a letter, a word, a sentence, a text? And what gets to count as a correct meaning?), then even in speaking the sounds that combine to form this
word ‘zebra’ we find ourselves stuck in the midst of classifications systems
not of our making (neither you nor I invented English, after all), without
which we might not be able to form a thought, much less get on with living
our lives, get from point A to B, let alone be interested enough in striped
animals so that we worry over how to classify them.
Perhaps, Lakoff says, the folk view that sees classification to be based in
a singular correspondence between name and identity—an approach that
assumes that zebras really are just one thing and thus that there is some
definitive classification system capable of expressing it, if we could only find
it—is itself the problem. What if, as Mary Douglas’s work suggests, all we
have are various groups of classifiers inventing and using a variety of systems that assist their members to achieve a variety of practical outcomes of
importance to each group—much like coming up with a way to store books
in a manner that makes them easily retrievable (should this be your interest) or grouping people in a manner that enables the distribution of goods
(should this be your interest)? Instead of an essentialist view of classification, what if the systems we use to distinguish a this from a that are seen as
themselves being practical human products, as inventions and tools that we
make, use, fine-tune, and, sometimes, discard (after all, few scholars today
study ‘the heathens’, though scholars long ago took it for granted that there
were such people and that they needed to be studied). If that was the case,
114 Religion and classification
then would the difficulties of each approach to defining religion prompt us
to give up the search for a definition altogether? Or, instead, would these
difficulties each be seen merely as the unavoidable flaws that all human
products inevitably have?
For those who think that religion names some essential thing existing
out there in the world, or deep within the human heart—much like those
who think that the things we call ‘zebras’ have some essential trait that
really distinguishes them from the things we call ‘horses’ (which themselves
have some trait that really distinguishes them from ‘donkeys’)—then the
problem with the difficulties that we have identified with various attempts
at definition is that none are perfect. But for those who see classification
systems—such as religion/culture or sacred/profane, citizen/foreigner,
familiar/strange, not to mention soil/dirt—as artifacts from human social
worlds, artifacts that have a shelf-life and are bound to be obsolete some
day, then these difficulties are not problems at all.
Due to the breadth of his own work and its international influence, the
late Jonathan Z. Smith is, perhaps, the best-known representative of a recent
development among scholars of religion who take seriously that the category
‘religion’—both the word and the various concepts that are attached to it—
is their tool and that it does not necessarily identify a universal affectation
lurking deep within human nature, and that there is therefore no one correct way to define it. Instead of siding with another famous Smith (Wilfred
Cantwell Smith) and arguing that ‘religion’ is the sadly inadequate word
outsiders use to name an inner faith that they can’t really study in any sufficient manner (because we’re studying it only by means of observing its
various expressions, such as ritual, symbols, traditions, narratives, etc.), for
J. Z. Smith ‘religion’ is understood as a linguistic, conceptual tool that some
people (scholars included!) happen to use in making sense of the worlds
in which they find themselves; its definition is therefore intimately linked
to their interests—whether their interests are intellectual and theoretical or
whether they are practical and political. (Could one press this further and see
all interests as practical? Marxist scholars think so, collapsing the common
distinction between theory and practice, and calling it all praxis instead.)
In Smith’s already quoted words, from the opening to his influential
collection of essays, Imagining Religion (1982):
[W]hile there is a staggering amount of data, phenomena, of human
experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture
or another, by one criterion or another, as religious—there is no data
for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It
is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts
of comparison and generalization. Religion has no existence apart
from the academy. For this reason, the student of religion . . . must be
relentlessly self-conscious. Indeed, this self-consciousness constitutes
his primary expertise, his foremost object of study.
Religion and classification 115
His point? As I read Smith he seems to be saying that, prior to exposure
either to European missionaries, explorers, or scholars, people the world
over were not necessarily religious, whether or not they thought that powerful, eternal beings existed and governed human affairs (to rely on a common
definition of religion). That is, unlike the hypothetical newspaper editor,
cited at the outset of this book, who had to decide if a story went into the
religion or the local politics section of a newspaper, they did not use this
particular term to group together and name specific items in their social
worlds (certain beliefs, behaviors and institutions), in distinction from other
elements of their social world. Moreover, historically speaking, because
European Christians first came up with the term as a self-descriptor, they
did not originally use it to talk about other people’s beliefs, behaviors, and
institutions, for only they were religious and all others were heathens, sinners, or superstitious. In its early uses, ‘religion’ was hardly a term that
signified cross-cultural commonalities thought to be shared by all humans.
To paraphrase Smith, ‘religion’ is a product of an interest in comparison
and generalization brought about by means of an experience of how difference
and similarity are interrelated.
In focusing attention on our category ‘religion’, we must therefore be
careful not to presume that the word is merely the historical tip of a constant iceberg that defies history, for then we might find ourselves saying, as
did earlier scholars (e.g., Mircea Eliade), that those untouched by European
colonialism and its interest to distinguish the sacred from the profane, the
religious from the political, lived in an idyllic world that was homogeneously sacred. Such a Romantic nostalgia strikes me as unproductive for it
fails to examine the manner in which such peoples divided up and named
their own worlds, so that they could come to know those worlds and act
within them. Furthermore, this failure causes us to be uninterested in how
other people establish their own relationships of similarity and difference
akin to our soil/dirt or us/them. Sure, they may have assumed that nonhuman agents could affect their worlds, they may have performed behaviors
of relevance to these beliefs, and yes, they likely had views on how the universe came about and where it was going—but they did not call these things
religion and, most importantly, they did not necessarily link these beliefs
and behaviors together, seeing them all as somehow exhibiting an identity
that made them separable from a host of other daily, mundane actions necessary for life to go on. So, calling those things ‘religious’, ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’,
in distinction from other sorts of things, may well be our act of classification, how we make the world knowable to us—an act performed by curious
outsiders who, by means of sets of tools and concepts they inherit from their
teachers, set about to satisfy curiosities about the relationships (or lack of)
between themselves and others. The classification ‘religion’—both the word
and the many different things it can mean—may therefore be one of the
lenses that we commonly use to know our generic surroundings as a world
comprised of significant relationships, identities, and values. Such devices
116 Religion and classification
can be very useful, all depending on our goals, but we’d be terribly mistaken
to think that the world as we come to know it through each is the world as
it really is.
Therefore, contrary to Max Weber (1864–1920), who famously opened
his now classic book, The Sociology of Religion (1922), by stating that
exhaustive description must come before any attempt to define religion—
‘Thus the final and definitive concept cannot stand at the beginning of the
investigation, but must come at the end’—some scholars no longer see
classification to be concerned with linking a historical and therefore material word to an ahistorical and purely ideal quality identified only after
all empirical cases have been considered. Instead, classification—like all
human activities—is now understood by many as a tactical, provisional
activity, directed not by inductive observation followed by generalization
but, instead, by deductive scholarly theories and prior social interests that
are in need of constant disclosure and close examination. In this way, classification ensures that some generic thing (such as what Mary Douglas
termed ‘matter’ [a word that seems to presuppose an atomic view of reality], what we might more informally call ‘stuff’, or what I just referred to as
our generic surroundings) stands out as an object worthy of our attention;
come to think of it, without a prior definition of religion Weber would
not have had anything to describe, for how would he have known what to
include in his investigation? To paraphrase Jonathan Z. Smith, writing in
the Afterword, classification therefore provides scholars with some elbow
room to get on with the work of disciplined inquiry which is itself prompted
by their curiosity concerning how the world does and does not conform to
their expectations.
It is therefore fitting to end this brief introduction to some of the tools used
when studying religion with the words of the scholar of Hinduism, Brian K.
Smith, who, in his book Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion
(1989), offers a rather different view of definition from that of Weber—one
that is nicely in line with that of J.Z. Smith: ‘To define’, he writes,
is not to finish, but to start. To define is not to confine but to create something and . . . eventually redefine. To define, finally, is not
to destroy but to construct for the purpose of useful reflection. . . . In
fact, we have definitions, hazy and inarticulate as they might be, for
every object about which we know something. . . . Let us, then, define
our concept of definition as a tentative classification of a phenomenon
which allows us to begin an analysis of the phenomenon so defined.
Classification systems, then, do not have to be seen as illuminating some
deep, essential or necessary trait—whether we are defining mountains, soil,
zebras, or religions. Instead, they are our own tactical and always provisional tools that provide us with a little wiggle room so that we can get
on with the production of knowledge and action in the world. After all, as
Religion and classification 117
pointed out time and again by J.Z. Smith, because all knowledge is based
upon classification systems, we ought to be interested in where our ordinary
classifications come from and how they work; for, as he states in the conclusion to his 2000 essay entitled ‘Classification’ (published in the Guide to the
Study of Religion), ‘the rejection of classificatory interest is . . . a rejection
of thought’.
So, to answer the question posed at the outset of this book—‘What is
the study of religion?’—we can now say that, at least for some scholars,
it is the disciplined inquiry of but one aspect of human cultural practices—
an aspect identified, for the purposes of our study, by the definition we
as scholars choose to use, a definition that suits our purposes and our
curiosities. What unites us into this collective group—signified by the
possessive pronoun ‘our’, as in ‘our purposes’—is not only our shared
curiosities, common tools, and agreed-upon standards of argumentation,
but also the common institutional setting that draws us together, and to
which our labors contribute. This setting is, for many of us, the public
research university, an institution that has profound bearing on what ends
up counting as the academic studying of religion.
Perhaps, then, we should conclude by revising our original question,
for ‘What is the study of religion?’ might best be answered by first asking,
‘Where is the study of religion being practiced, by whom, and for what
purposes?’. For, depending on its context and the interests that drive it, the
study of religion can be very different things—something like the generic
stuff of the world just as easily being understood as either soil or dirt.
118 Religion and classification
Example: the world religions paradigm
Although regularly mentioned in scholarly tracts as well as in nonscholarly media, world religions is not a technical term. There has been little
critical discussion of the concept or its history; nor is there an established definition agreed upon by religion specialists. The term itself
originated in certain academic contexts of the nineteenth century, and it
was indeed a matter of considerable scholarly debate among European
scientists and theologians then, but those arguments are now largely
forgotten and further obscured by contemporary usage, which appears
to take little account of past concerns. It is therefore best to understand
that the meaning of this term at present is largely determined by conventional practice rather than by any scholarly consensus or rigorous
analytic considerations.
For those who take for granted that the world is divided into world religions (but how many are there . . .?), the above quotation may be a little
startling—and how better to end this little book’s main chapters than by
tackling head-on the complexities in such a common and, yes, taken-forgranted classification as world religions?
The above quotation comes from Tomoko Masuzawa, a professor at
the University of Michigan; she is among a small group of scholars who
today focus their attention on the history of the tools that scholars of religions use—and the relations of those tools to far wider social and political
issues. Her book, The Invention of World Religions, or How European
Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (2005)—on
which the above-quoted encyclopedia entry was based—was a study of the
origins of this way of dividing up the world, a scheme to which we have now
become so accustomed that it’s almost impossible to unthink it and thereby
entertain that, just a little over 100 years ago (that is, in the late nineteenth
century, at the height of the colonial project), this was an entirely novel way
for European scholars to organize the peoples of the world.
In fact, originally the term made sense only in light of a pair of concepts (as we’d expect): world or what was also called universal religions, on
the one hand, and national or ethnic religions, on the other. These largely
Christian scholars, of that time period, were thus developing a way to manage all of this new information about the world that was coming back to
Europe, dividing (and, yes, ranking) religions into those that stayed with
what scholars took to be the in-group of a religion’s origins (thereby seeing
religions as kinship-based) as opposed to those that, in the assessment of the
scholars, successfully moved. It might make sense, then, why Christianity
and Buddhism counted, for some of those early scholars, as the only two universal, or world, religions, since, or so they understood it, all other religions
of which they were then aware were still closely associated with the people
or region of each religion’s origins. (That the history and accomplishments
Religion and classification 119
of Islam, which had by then moved dramatically, not just across what we
today call the Middle East but also across North Africa, into Asia, and even
into southern Europe, was ignored by these early writers might make sense,
given longstanding competitions between Christianity and Islam in Europe,
providing an incentive, perhaps, to underplay Muslim gains.)
But what is interesting is that, over time, the world religions designation has grown significantly (and has outgrown its opposed term, national
religion), such that today talk of ‘ethnic religions’ sounds terribly dated,
even archaic, while it is now rather easy to find world religions maps online
which suggest that everyone on the planet is somehow classifiable as having
a world religion—even those who report having no religion (the so-called
Nones) are also studied by scholars of religion, almost as if it too is a world
religions option. So, while other historical terms strike our ears as out of
date, this one late nineteenth-century term keeps gaining speed—something
that is profoundly evident if you look at a historical collection of world religions textbooks, for they keep gaining chapters inasmuch as new members
are continually admitted to the family.
But now we’ve reached a point where two distinct camps of scholars are
critical of this way of dividing up and organizing the world—those who,
on the one side, criticize its so-called Western bias and now argue for more
things to be admitted, so that, for example, indigenous religions around the
globe gain admission and are studied as seriously as we now study something
like Judaism or Hinduism, and those on the other side who maintain that,
whether the family is expanded or contracted, it is still problematic to
classify and manage human populations by means of this category. For
this latter group, no matter how seemingly pluralistic an expanded world
religions family may seem, it is inevitably based on a Christian prototype
(example, do ‘they’ have belief in god, a scripture, a notion of heaven and
hell, etc.), which, in using an insider’s understanding of Christianity as its
model thereby authorizes that one religion as exemplary of all. Moreover,
the common way in which world religions are thought to embody public
expressions of prior things called religious beliefs and experiences suggests to such critics that this designation plays a role in idealizing human
beings, as if bodies and behaviors were somehow secondary to inner states
and dispositions—an approach that they see to have profoundly practical
effects on how we understand people, their interests, histories, and their
current situations. Add to this Masuzawa’s point that the term today is
largely driven by nontechnical interests—making it a common designation people use to understand their social world (not unlike how some use
the term cult or even ‘Abrahamic religions’ as if it groups three religions
together in a unique manner)—and it indicates why, for some scholars,
our common practice of assuming the globe necessarily is divided between
6 or 8 or 10, etc., world religions is a questionable holdover from a much
earlier era. However, as Suzanne Owen has recently concluded, ‘the World
Religions paradigm is still growing vigorously in primary and secondary
120 Religion and classification
schools and thus continues to inform the non-specialists who inhabit the
media and political arenas’.
Further considerations
An interesting project would be to go looking through popular literature—
newspapers and news sites, magazines, etc.—to find how, though first
developed by scholars, the world religions designation is used outside the
university today (looking to find what is excluded from the category and
how its use is indicative of ways the writers take their worlds to work), let
alone doing a historical study of how it was used in the past. Case in point:
the encyclopedia article from which the above Masuzawa quotation was
taken is the second edition of that resource; the first, which was published
in just 1987, not only had no article for world religions but the term itself
appeared nowhere in its detailed index. So, in less than twenty years the
term represented an important enough debate to warrant a detailed discussion in an article of its own plus fourteen sub-entries in the index. With that
change in mind, what would it be like to read an even earlier resource, such
as Cornelius P. Tiele’s once famous entry, ‘Religion’, in the ninth edition
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1885), or maybe Stanley Cook’s entry,
‘Religion’, in James Hastings’s once famous Encyclopaedia of Religion
and Ethics (published between 1908 and 1927), and the even more recent
entry on religion by William Alston in 1967’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
What would reading those entries as an anthropologist might—as providing
insight into some unfamiliar group of people—tell us about how our own
group understands its world to be organized? And how would looking for
its popular use today—in newspapers, magazines, online, or in movies and
on television—tell us much the same?
Religion and classification 121
Summary of vocabulary
Abrahamic religions
Agent
Ahistorical
Belief
Buddhism
Christianity
Classification
Cognitive science
Colonialism
Comparison
Correspondence theory
Cult
Culture
Deduction
Description
Essentialism
Experience
Faith
Family resemblance
Folk knowledge
Functionalism
Hinduism
History
Holy
Human nature
Human sciences
Identity
Indigenous
Induction
Islam
Judaism
Linguistics
Materialism
Nones
Phenomenology
Primitive
Profane
Prototype
Religion
Romanticism
Sacred
Tradition
World religions
Notes
122 Religion and classification
Summary of scholars
William E. Arnal
Talal Asad
Willi Braun
Mary Douglas
Mircea Eliade
Bruce Lincoln
Tomoko Masuzawa
Rudolph Otto
Jonathan Z. Smith
Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Gerardus van der Leeuw
Max Weber
Afterword
If concepts, categories, and systems of classification are tools that we devise
and use for purposes, then what about such things as a college course’s
syllabus or a book such as this? Would they not also be understood as historical artifacts rather than things that spring from the ground overnight,
like a mushroom? Taking the study of human behavior seriously means
understanding scholarship itself to be but one more human practice, yet
another way of trying to make the world knowable. And the following brief
essay and commentary, offered together as an afterword to the book, might
be helpful in getting readers to start applying the critical skills discussed in
the volume to far more than just our habit of naming some things in the
world as religion.
Too often, we treat the texts we teach as self-evidently important, and
we expect our students to take our word for it.
K. Merinda Simmons (2014)
The necessary lie
Duplicity in the disciplines
Jonathan Z. Smith∗
George Bernard Shaw once made a wisecrack that I think defines the academic
disciplines as social entities: ‘I may be doing it wrong but I’m doing it in
the proper and customary manner’. This raises at least two questions that I
would like to examine. First is the white lie, which comes up when we are
self-conscious about speaking in a nondisciplinary fashion about our subject. Second is disciplinary lying, which is part of the process of initiating
somebody into a discipline. Indeed, disciplinary lying may be the marker of
what it is to belong to a discipline.
The white lie
We lie, it seems to me, in a number of ways. We sometimes cheerfully call
the lie words such as ‘generalization’ or ‘simplification’, but that’s not
really what we’re doing. We’re really lying, and lying in a relatively deep
fashion, when we consistently disguise, in our introductory courses, what
is problematic about our work. For example, we traditionally screen from
our students the hard work that results in the production of exemplary
texts, which we treat as found objects. We hide consistently the immense
editorial efforts that have conjecturally established so many of the texts
we routinely present to our students as classics, not to speak of the labors
of translation that enable many of them to read these texts. Then we read
them with our students as if each word were directly revelatory, regardless of the fact that the majority of the words are not in the language in
which the text was written. In fact, we have a curious strategy of when and
how we decide to display some of this hard work. For example, Chinese
or Japanese texts in translation read like Yiddish—every third word is
∗ These informal remarks were originally presented at the University of Chicago’s Center for
Learning and Teaching in 1988 and were subsequently included in the pamphlet, Teaching
at Chicago: A Collection of Readings and Practical Advice for Beginning Teachers, Diane M.
Enerson (ed.) (Chicago Teaching Program, University of Chicago). It is reproduced here with
the permission of the late author’s estate.
The necessary lie 125
followed by some indecipherable foreign word in parentheses as if this
would in some way enhance understanding. We are really reminding our
students that this is foreign and hard to understand. In Shakespeare, we
display an enormous glossary material, implying that this, too, is a foreign language that, nevertheless, can be mastered with effort. Yet the King
James Bible, another Elizabethan text, is characteristically taught in God
knows how many humanities courses across the country with never a single footnote indicating that the language, while simpler than the language
of Shakespeare, is just as foreign and just as difficult. One would like them
to note, for example, that the word ‘let’ often means to stop somebody
from doing something, and the word ‘prevent’ at times means to let them
go ahead and do it. One gets odd moral conclusions by reading the King
James Bible without such footnotes, and yet our mutual lie is that it is
infinitely accessible while Shakespeare is accessible with difficulty; foreign
texts remain inaccessible.
Moreover, we conceal from our students the fields-specific, time-bound
judgments that make objects exemplary. We display them as if they are selfevidently significant and allow the students to feel guilty when they do not
feel this self-evidence. We rarely do what some German critics have called
a reception history of the object in front of us, examining why or how the
object became in some way exemplary of humankind in a particular discipline. Thus, when we deal with a figure like Plato, we rarely reflect on the
fact that, after all, the dialogue that was Plato for the Western world for
most of its history (that is, The Timaeus) is no longer read. Jefferson and
other wise people despised The Republic thoroughly, finding it an absolutely impenetrable document. They thought Cicero—today all but dropped
from the canon—was the place one went in order to think about democratic
institutions. That is, we don’t introduce our students to the fact that the artifacts that we examine are scarcely blooming with self-evidence. We conceal
the revisionary histories of the objects we examine. If they’re written works,
we conceal their drafting and their changes. If they’re scientific objects, we
conceal the history of failed experiments and the history of sheer serendipity. That is to say, we convey to our students a specious perfection of the
object and a specious necessity to the history of that object.
When we conceal from our students our hard work, that which is
actually the way we earn our bread and butter, we produce a number of
consequences. I remember testifying once before the California state legislature and facing a legislator who wanted to know why professors should
be paid to read novels, when the legislator himself read novels on the train
every day. Well, that was the price of our disguising the work that goes into
things. There are, I think, more serious educational consequences. If we
present the work as perfect or as work without a revisionary history, then
we present a work that no student could hope to emulate. Indeed it serves,
if it serves at all, as a standard for how far below that standard the student
falls. If we present the material without displaying the effort that goes with
126 Afterword
it, students tend to conclude that things are true or false, or alternatively,
that it’s entirely a matter of their opinion whether the object is exemplary.
In that case, what we have is a contrast between his or her feelings and my
feelings. Thus, in the name of simplification, what we really end up doing is
mystifying the objects we teach at the introductory level.
Similarly, still in the name of simplification, we treat theory as if it were
fact. We treat difficult, complex, controversial, theoretical entities as if they
were self-evident parts of the universe that we inhabit. Students coming out
of introductory courses in the humanities know that there is such a thing as
an author’s intention, and they regularly and effortlessly recover it from the
text they are looking at. Students in introductory social sciences know that
there is such a thing as a society that functions, and they effortlessly observe
it doing so. Students in introductory sciences are wedded without their
knowing it to a tradition of induction from naked facts, in what Nietzsche
called ‘the myth of the immaculate perception’. Indeed, I’ve often argued
when teaching in the social science Core that, if I could only have the first
week of Chemistry 101, my job would be infinitely easier because at least we
would have raised the possibility that one wears eyeglasses when one gazes
at these naked facts.
Despite the proud claim that we make over and over again that we teach
the how rather than the what of the disciplines, we, in fact, do not; it is the
theoretical conclusion that our students underline in their books. I spend a
half hour with each of my students looking at what they’ve underlined, and
they’ve always underlined the punch line and never anything that might be
called the process that led up to it. That is to say, theoretical entities have
been reduced to naked facts. The process of discussion often becomes one
of show and tell for these unproblematic, now self-evident conclusions. In
other words, we have skillfully concealed from our students the power of
the remark once made by a mathematician, ‘I have my results, but I do not
know yet how I am to arrive at them’. Even a false generosity with respect
to method conceals the process when we present this method one week, that
method another week, allowing none of them to have the kind of monomaniacal power or imperialism that a good method has when we’re honest
about it. Without the experience of riding hell bent for leather on one’s
presuppositions, one is allowed to feel that methods have really no consequences and no entailments. Since none of them is ever allowed to have any
power, none of them is ever subjected to any interesting cost accounting.
Another way we end up reducing our students to the notion of a subject
being all opinion (and we’re very angry when they assert that to us) is the
way that introductory courses, whether seminar or lecture, whether of a
large field of study or a small field of study, are never introductions. They
are always surveys. They may be shorter surveys or longer surveys, quicker
surveys or slower surveys, but nothing is allowed to be truly troublesome.
It suggests that one might think that a freshman seminar devoted to a single
work is probably a far better introduction than our vaunted Core. That is
The necessary lie 127
to say, one really ought to be able to work on a limited number of exemplary objects and to answer all the various sorts of questions that one might
come up with. Though I don’t like a lot of the framework, Jeff Robinson
has a book, Radical Literary Education, about a classroom experiment
in which he takes the introductory English class through a reading of a
Wordsworth ode for an entire semester at Colorado State. They’re into a
complex unpacking and unfolding of the enterprise. I’m not terribly thrilled
with the message he’d like you to get from this; nonetheless, the strategy, it
seems to me, is one worth looking at.
Disciplinary lying
The self-justified white lie is done in the name of our students, in the name
of simplifying, of generalizing, of speaking to a wide and a diverse audience.
However, one also has to look at the place in which lying becomes built
into the structure of things, in which it becomes that which constitutes a
discipline as a discipline over and against other disciplines. Here, at least
in principle, we lose the excuses that go with the introductory course. One
would presume a student who had been through a program of rigorous
disciplinary lying would emerge at the conclusion of his or her baccalaureate experience with some measure of sophistication. Yet, when I used to
do something called the dean’s seminar in which we talked about the disciplines as seniors graduated, I was struck by their lack of the sense of the
conventionality that governs what we do. These seniors still sought the costless method, the cost-less theory, even at the end of two to three years of
allegedly depth study in a field.
Fields are taken not only as self-evident but as singular, without real
understanding that what’s a style for one is not a style for another. Take
a simple example in my own field. If I want to publish an article in one of
two general journals in the field of religion—History of Religion and The
Journal of the American Academy of Religion—I have to at least redo the
notes. History of Religion does the so-called humanities-style notes and
The Journal of the American Academy of Religion does the so-called social
science-style notes. It’s not just that it’s inconvenient; what I am doing is
fundamentally altered by which of those two styles I accept. In the humanities, the footnote is exegetical, and you will accept what I say on the basis
of my exegesis of that particular passage. On the other hand, when I read
something that says, ‘Lévi-Strauss 1970–83’, I’m supposed to find the one
sentence in a four-volume work that justifies the paragraph I have just read.
That’s a very different understanding of how you justify your work. That
really is an authority model, which has very little to do with any claim to
exegesis. Yet, one never talks about such differences with students.
I discovered a stunning example of disciplinary lying in a book by the
now late Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, Surely You Are Joking,
Mr. Feynman!, written for no other purpose that I can determine but to
128 Afterword
make money. He writes, rather cockily, that he finds world travel a rather
dull way of spending a vacation, so instead he travels to another discipline.
He spent one summer working in the biology laboratories at Cal Tech,
and, according to his report, his results were significant enough to interest
James Watson and have him invited to give a set of seminars to biologists at
Harvard. Yet when he wrote up his results and sent them to a friend in biology, his friend laughed at Feynman. As he recalls, ‘It wasn’t in the standard
form that biologists use, first procedures and so forth. I spent a lot of time
explaining things that all the biologists knew. Edgar made a shortened version, but now I couldn’t understand it. I don’t think they ever published it.
I learned a lot of things in biology. I got better at pronouncing the words,
knowing what not to include in a paper or seminar and detecting weak
technique in an experiment’.
Now, that’s really, when you stop to think about it, a rather remarkable paragraph. Consider how much Feynman is signaling when he uses the
phrase, ‘It wasn’t in the standard form that biologists use’. Feynman tells us
that he did get some sense of the language domain of the field—how to pronounce the words; he did learn something of the tacit conventions—what
not to say, what was not needed to say; he learned something about what
counted as appropriate according to the conventions of the fields. What he
could not recognize was the fictive modes of accepted disciplinary discourse.
As a result, we have a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, when he writes
up an experiment, is laughed at by his biological colleagues; when they write
it up ‘properly’, he is incapable of understanding his own work.
This is what lying in the disciplines is all about. It is constructed very
much as an initiatory process. As some of you may know, among the southwestern Amerindians, as well as among a number of other people, initiation
consists of an act of unmasking. Certain figures wear masks and are called
gods. When you reach the age of maturity, the elders take you to the other
side, the figures take off their masks and show you, ‘hah, hah, hah, it’s
just good old Uncle Joe’, as if you hadn’t recognized that earlier. At least
the convention is ‘now we unmask’. A great deal of what a discipline does
is initiating its neophytes, pulling rugs out from under things you thought
you knew and unmasking things you thought were clear. The initiated use
another kind of language, forming a set of those who are in on the joke.
When we talk about disciplinary instruction, we’re talking about creating a corporate entity arrived at through an initiation that proceeds through
a rigorous sequence. Within some of the sciences, in theory at least, that
sequence is carefully arranged. It’s carefully structured from elementary
school to postdoctoral work as one endless and lengthy series of unmasking
what you thought you knew. The ideal, often quoted in books on science
and education, is the breathless individual who, when Oppenheimer was
at the Institute for Advanced Research at Princeton, was asked, ‘What is
it like to study with Oppenheimer?’ and who responded, ‘It’s wonderful.
Everything we knew about physics last week isn’t true’. Well, this is what it
The necessary lie 129
means to be an initiated member of a discipline. The science you learned in
elementary school is no good when you get to high school, which is no good
when you get to the first year in college, which is no good by the second year
of college, and so forth.
What, however, happens to the person who doesn’t stay the course?
This notion of the delayed payoff is problematic. My son came home very
depressed from high school chemistry because he said he ‘got an experiment
wrong’. I told him that you can’t get an experiment wrong. An experiment
is trying to find out something. You put your two things together, and you
found out something. He said, ‘No, no, no, it wasn’t the way it was supposed to come out’. Well, then it wasn’t an experiment. If he performed
the same experiment in college, they could show him twenty-eight more
variables that went into the results, and he would have understood that he
didn’t get it wrong. If that is his only experience with science, he’ll never
have that particular idea unmasked.
In most of the fields that we teach, there is no such even rudimentary
recognition of sequence or corporate responsibility. Too often the sequence
listed in the course catalogue is only political, requiring one course with
each professor in a department. The majority of concentration programs, or
for that matter graduate programs, don’t acknowledge the underlying initiatory sense that what we knew for sure yesterday we now know as somewhat
problematic.
Though I think there is something to disciplinary lying, I think there
is very little to justify introductory lying. In the case of the introductory
courses, we produce incredibly mysterious objects because the students have
not seen the legerdemain by which the object has appeared. The students
sense that they are not in on the joke, that there is something that they don’t
get, so they reduce the experience to ‘Well, it’s his or her opinion’. On the
other hand, disciplinary lying—the conventions within a discipline—enables
me to get moving. You have to allow me some measure of monomania if
I am to get anywhere. I can’t do my work when I have to stop and entertain every other opinion under the sun. This is why such work must always
be done in a corporate setting, so that the monomanias mutually abrade
against, so that they relativize each other; so that the students, the initiates,
are let in on the joke. I had an old teacher who, when you said something
you thought was very smart, would say, ‘That’s an exaggeration in the
direction of truth’. I have always thought that was the best definition I have
ever heard of the academic enterprise.
Honesty is the best pedagogy
K. Merinda Simmons∗
When I teach my Introduction to Religious Studies class, I always require
my students to read a very short essay by J.Z. Smith, ‘The necessary lie:
duplicity in the disciplines’. In it, Smith brings attention to the way in which
we lie to our students. Yes, according to him, we’re not simplifying for
pragmatic purposes or forcing our syllabus and lectures to conform to the
constraints of the academic calendar. We’re outright lying ‘when we consistently disguise, in our introductory courses, what is problematic about
our work’.
Smith talks about disciplinary lying as well, the sort that happens when
we take fields of study to be ‘self-evident’ and ‘singular’—a kind of lying
that, he suggests, is like a process of initiation inasmuch as disciplinary
training is a sequence of revealing what’s behind the things students thought
they knew. Thus, being an initiate means recognizing that the skills you
learn in elementary school are not the ones you learn in high school, which
are themselves obsolete once you hit college, etc.
I want to emphasize here the lying that he sees happening at the introductory level. By ‘what is problematic about our work’, Smith is referring
specifically to our elision—in the name of pedagogical practicality—of the
editorial moves, translations, and other kinds of interventions that go into
the texts we treat as exemplary or as ‘found objects’ that just naturally
appeared in the shapes and manners in which we read them. Shakespearean
works, Smith points out, are accompanied by copious notes and glossaries,
while the King James Bible is often completely unannotated even though it,
too, is an Elizabethan text. Too often, we treat the texts we teach as selfevidently important, and we expect our students to take our word for it.
I find this essay useful in thinking about what kinds of topics and questions I might be able to raise in the introductory classroom. I’ve heard on
many occasions instructors bemoan the content-based limits of intro-level
courses, the complaint typically being along the lines of our inability to
∗ This brief commentary originally appeared as a blog post on May 27, 2014, posted at: http://
practicumreligionblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/honesty-is-best-pedagogy.html (accessed June
5, 2018); it is lightly revised and used here by permission of the author.
Honesty is the best pedagogy 131
teach theory to students coming to a topic for the first time. Our students
just won’t ‘get it’, we think. This anxiety is certainly not exclusive to religious studies teachers, but it does have a particular edge for those of us who
do not want to see our introduction courses transmogrify into surveys of
world religions. But following Smith, I’d suggest that we can introduce critical thinking skills without tossing the entirety of Durkheim’s Elementary
Forms at them. All we have to do is show our hand. And that means taking
the steps we take toward deeming something worth study—and indeed
taking our students themselves—more seriously.
For instance, I talk with my students about the various terms that scholars have translated to read as ‘religion’—terms which, by and large, refer
to performing proper understandings of social rank and place rather than
to holding deep convictions and beliefs inside oneself. They quickly see the
dilemma. A translation is not a simple trade of one word for another. When
we use a word, we cannot help but bring to the table our own relationships to and associative meanings of it. Thus, ‘religion’ for my students is
quite a different thing from some of the terms it substitutes and the ideas to
which they refer. To press the point, we talk about idiomatic and colloquial
expressions that differ between region in the US. In no time at all, they see
the problematics of trying to say to someone not from the South, ‘I’ll just
swaney!’ or explaining that something is ‘catawampus’.
And in those moments, as far as I’m concerned, my students are engaging
in theory. They allow themselves to be curious, and that is the springboard
to any sophisticated mode of inquiry, to my mind. Eventually the great and
powerful Oz of ‘religious belief’ becomes a much more mundane thing. It’s
just that for Dorothy, it was the punch line. For our students, it should be
the starting point.
Glossary
Each time a technical term is first used in any of the preceding chapters/
examples it is printed in bolded text, signaling that it is defined and discussed in greater detail in this section of the book. Note: variations on the
term are sometimes identified in the main chapters, such that the adjectival
form in the text is bolded while the noun form appears in this glossary.
In addition, within each of the following definitions some other technical
terms are printed in bolded text, since they too are defined in this alphabetically arranged section. Finally, the names of relevant scholars whose works
are discussed within this definition section are also bolded; discussions of
their works are found in the next section of the book.
Abington v. Schempp (1963) still famous US Supreme Court case in which
parents (the Schempp family) sued their local public school board, in
Pennsylvania (Abington Township, just north of Philadelphia), over a
school’s practice of reading a Bible passage and saying the Christian
Lord’s Prayer as part of its routine opening exercises each morning. The
court decided, in an 8–1 decision, that the students’ First Amendment
rights (that is, not to have the government ‘respect the establishment of
religion’) had been contravened; since then, the practice has been seen
as unconstitutional. So-called school prayer or Bible study are both still
legal in US public schools, however (as long as they are not organized
or sponsored by state employees or expected of all students), such as
students gathering on their own, often around a flagpole before classes,
to pray, or an authorized student club meeting before or after school,
and using school facilities, to engage in Bible study. This decision had
ramifications on the rebirth of the academic study of religion in the US,
taking place at about the same time, with many scholars from that era
citing the majority decision’s recommendation that, given its historical role, studying the Bible as a work of literature (something that is
certainly legal in US public schools) might be considered an important
part of any education. To this day the decision is seen as controversial
among some groups within the US, such as those who conclude that
‘taking God out of schools’ has played a role in what they characterize
as a moral decline in the country.
134 Glossary
Abrahamic religions a designation, gaining prominence in the latter half of
the twentieth century, that is used to name and thereby group together
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, inasmuch as they are all understood to
share historical influences and therefore significant commonalties (such
as the important role in each of the so-called patriarch Abraham, as well
as the narratives contained in the Hebrew Bible). As argued by the contemporary scholar of Judaism and Islam, Aaron Hughes (in his book by
the same name), the term is today often employed by scholars but, given
that its use can be shown to deemphasize certain differences among the
three, it is now regarded by many as a term of use only to those participating in inter-religious dialogue as opposed to the academic study of
religion. See also Judeo-Christian.
Agent term commonly used to refer to a being assumed to be intentional,
that is, a being who acts, has motivations that inspires such actions, and
can therefore be held accountable for these motives and actions. Human
beings are therefore thought to possess the quality known as agency.
The term is also sometimes used to describe non-intentional things, such
as a ‘chemical agent’, which nonetheless are thought to be able to cause
certain outcomes. A traditional way of defining religion is that it is a
system in which agency is attributed to super- or non-human powers
(e.g., gods, ancestors, spirits, etc.).
Agnosticism term coined in the nineteenth century by combining the
Greek gnosis (meaning esoteric or secret forms of knowledge) with the
prefix a- which often denotes the negative form of a word; a philosophical position that admits to having no privileged knowledge concerning
whether God or the gods exist; a position of theological neutrality to
be distinguished from atheism and theism. Methodological agnosticism
(a term associated with the work of Ninian Smart) is the name given
to the neutral position some scholars of religion argue one should take
when studying religion. This implies that, regardless of one’s personal
viewpoint, as a scholar one employs tools (that is, methods) that avoid
asking normative questions of truth. See insider/outsider problem.
Ahistorical adding the prefix a- to the start of a word in English will often
denote the opposite of the term, resulting in this case in a word signifying
something that is thought not to have a history, such as something that
is claimed to be necessary or transcendent and therefore not contingent
or immanent. See also history.
Amish one of a variety of contemporary groups (along with Mennonites,
Hutterites, Quakers, etc.) who trace themselves to various dissenting
and Anabaptist movements (meaning ‘baptize again’, as in supporting the practice of adult baptism) from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Europe (which were then persecuted harshly, prompting wide migrations around the world), as part of Christianity’s so-called Radical
Reformation against the Roman Catholic church. Named after the
Swiss minister Jakob Ammann (born 1644), today this movement is
Glossary 135
known for its members’ very simple way of life and style of dress as
well as strict avoidance of many modern conveniences (such as opting
for horse and buggy rather than automobiles).
Animism [Latin anima, meaning life, soul] a term popularized by the
late nineteenth-century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor to name
the belief he thought to be held by evolutionarily early people (what
Tylor would have named as ‘primitive’ or ‘tribes very low in the scale
of humanity’) concerning natural phenomena (e.g., trees, the ocean,
people, etc.) possessing spirits or souls. This term, and his theory of animism, was developed to help answer the question: ‘What is the origin
of religion?’ making Tylor an early example of a scholar developing a
naturalistic theory of religion.
Anomaly [Greek anomalia, unequal or uneven] an event or situation that
defies expectation or is abnormal; something irregular that deviates
from and thus fails to meet a rule. Classifying something as anomalous,
at least for such a scholar as Mary Douglas, can therefore be a key indicator concerning the presence of a rule system that has failed to work
in all cases.
Anthropology [Greek anthropos, meaning human being + Greek logos,
meaning the systematic study of] the modern, comparative and crosscultural science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of
humankind. Practiced as a component of the human sciences, the academic study of religion is considered distinct from the discipline known
as anthropology though religious studies (as it is known in North
America) could be said to be anthropological in its outlook (or what
is sometimes termed ‘anthropocentric’: centered on the study of human
behavior); that is, when practiced as something other than theology, the
study of religion is focused on human beings and their practices and
does not study the gods and their will; see human sciences.
Anthropomorphism [Greek anthropos, meaning human being + Greek
morphé, meaning shape or form] as in personification, to ascribe a
human form or human qualities and traits to non-human things; prosopopoeia [from the Greek, prosopopoiia, to make a mask or face] is a
related term, naming the poetic technique of having a dead or imaginary
person speak, as well as the technique of giving human qualities to inanimate objects such as mountains or the sea. ‘The sea was angry’ could
be considered an anthropomorphic claim; seeing faces in the moon, or
faces in the patterns found in wood grains, could also be considered
evidence of anthropomorphism. Central to David Hume’s early theory
of religion, a modern theory of anthropomorphism is that of the anthropologist and cognitivist, Stewart Guthrie, who argues in his book, Faces
in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (1993), that humans—among
many other species—possess brains that are ‘hard wired’ to project onto
the world the traits that they perceive themselves to possess, all in an
136 Glossary
effort to make sense of, and thereby navigate, an otherwise unknown
environment. For Guthrie, much as with Hume, religion (the widespread belief that the universe is a living agent that cares for human
beings) is but one instance of this anthropomorphic strategy.
Anxiety [from a Latin term meaning anguish or solitude] in the work
of Sigmund Freud this term identifies the byproduct that accumulates
within a person’s psyche when they fail to act on natural impulses (such
as various ways in which we each desire self-gratification). Given that
not all such desires can be satisfied (due to the social requirements and
expectations of the groups in which we live and on which we each
depend), such theorists conclude that all human beings show signs of
anxiety, to one degree or another. Mental as well as social health is
then argued to rely upon people finding ways of expressing and thereby
venting this accumulated anxiety that do not threaten the well-being of
the group or the individual’s place within it. One way, such scholars
conclude, is through practicing rituals, inasmuch as these controlled,
rule-oriented behaviors provide a routinized structure in which anxiety
can be worked out.
Appropriation [Latin appropriare, to make something your own], to
take possession of something that was not originally your own, used
today when discussing how dominant cultures make use of practices or
systems originating among marginal populations. This issue revolves
around whether all culture is a system of influence and borrowing or,
instead, whether some groups ought to retain possession of their traits
and practices and which are therefore stolen (rather than simply saying
they were adopted) by those in more powerful positions.
Atheism a term that combines the Greek theos, meaning god + the negative prefix a- which often denotes the negative form of a word; the
philosophical position that denies the existence of God or the gods; to
be distinguished from theism and agnosticism.
Author [Latin auctor, one who produces, creates, even parents] term used
widely today to name the one who writes a text and thus the one whose
meanings and intentions can be accessed by what some call ‘a close
reading of the text’. The so-called mid-twentieth-century ‘death of the
author’ movement in literary criticism has examined the assumptions
necessary to attribute a text’s meaning to an author, concluding that,
although texts were surely written by writers, the idea of the author is a
product of the reader’s imagination. See intention.
bce/ce Unlike the explicitly Christian calendrical system known to most
people in North America and Europe and which is based on the Gregorian
calendar—with bc standing for ‘before Christ’ (in the English version,
based on the older acn, which is Latin for ante Christum natum, meaning ‘before the birth of Christ’) and ad (standing for the Latin phrase
anno Domini, ‘year of Lord’, short for anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi,
meaning ‘in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ’)—bce and ce are favored
Glossary 137
by some scholars, especially those who study other cultures which have
their own entirely different calendrical/dating systems (e.g., the Islamic
calendar begins in what readers of this book might call the year 622,
when the first fully integrated Muslim community was founded in the
Arabian city of Medina). Although this alternate dating system uses precisely the same numbers, their initials stand for ‘before the Common Era’
and ‘Common Era’, referring to the adoption of a common calendar in
the ancient Greco-Roman world. Scholars often adopt this alternative
notation to avoid the explicitly theological assumptions of the so-called
Western dating system, which roughly revolves around the time when
Christians traditionally believe Jesus to have been born.
Belief [a term that dates to the late Middle Ages] now central to the study
of religion where, in distinction from faith, it names a more rational
than affective state in which one claims confidence in one’s position.
It is, however, commonly used in distinction from claiming to know
something, such that the word ‘believe’ can be used as not just an alternative to knowledge but as its competitor, such that one might continue to hold a position, despite evidence to the contrary, because of
one’s beliefs. In liberal democracies the term plays a key role, given its
emphasis on the individual believer, and can therefore become a term of
legal consequence, such as one’s so-called freedom of belief—a freedom
significantly different, some would point out, from the freedom to act
or organize. See conscience, sincerity.
Binary pair [from Latin] a set of related terms that are mutually defining,
such as right/wrong, up/down, hot/cold, light/dark, us/them, in/out, on/
off, etc. Most recently the term refers to the 1 and 0 binary language
of computer programming, whereby the most basic binary pair can be
arranged in four ways (1/0, 0/1, 0/0, and 1/1), allowing a programmer
to signify four different things by means of these two items arranged in
different ways. Each item in a binary pair therefore defines the other
item (that is, neither element of such a pair has an essential meaning),
inasmuch as 1 or 0 can each be ascribed any meaning so long as they
are always the opposite of each other. If, for example, sacred/secular or
private/public are each approached as a binary pair then each item in the
pair is empty and takes on meaning only inasmuch as it is opposed to
some other situation, implying that nothing can be private unless other
things are not considered private while nothing can be sacred unless a
system of rules sets something apart from the so-called secular realm.
Buddhism the name given to a collection of beliefs, practices and institutions that developed from (sometimes said to be in reaction to) Hindu/
Indian institutions and that revolve around the importance placed upon
the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, thought to have lived
and taught in northwestern India between the sixth and fifth centuries
bce. Gautama is known by the honorary title of ‘the Buddha’ (which,
in the language of Pali, means ‘awakened one’). The Buddha is said to
138 Glossary
have awoken to the true nature of reality, thereby experiencing nirvana
(to extinguish one’s presumption of having a distinct, enduring self).
His teachings involve understanding that all appearances are misleading and that impermanence, or change, is the basis of all reality. Several
dominant branches of Buddhism exist today and it has distinctive
shapes in different geographic locations (such as in southeast Asia as
opposed to Tibet, China, Japan, Europe and North America). Studies of
Buddhism will often begin by narrating the life of Gautama (given that
it illustrates certain key ideas that come to symbolize basic Buddhist
doctrines), and then focus on its critique of Hinduism’s caste system
as well as the doctrines known as the Four Noble Truths (credited to
Gautama’s first teaching after attaining enlightenment) and the Noble
Eightfold Path (entailing a systematic behavioral system of detachment
or mindfulness). Although ‘Buddhism’ is an outsider’s term (coined
under the earlier European presumption that this Asian mass movement is centered on the worship of the Buddha, just as Christianity was
understood by them to be centered on the worship of the Christ), a
more apt term for this tradition may be ‘the Middle Path’ (between the
two extremes of craving and complete renunciation).
Canon [Greek, for rule, and then from Latin, for church law] term used
to name a closed set of texts, to which no others may be added. The
Bible, for instance, is a canonical collection of what were originally
separate texts (of a variety of different genres, from letters to law/ritual
prescriptions) that, through early church meetings and debates (sometimes disputes), was settled upon as an authorized set (that is, the canon
is closed). Given that debates over what would be allowed into such
collections happen sometime after the component texts were first written, circulated, and read (sometimes centuries later), scholars generally
understand canonical collections to reflect the interests of those who
did the collecting and ordering, suggesting that, for those interested in
the historic beginnings of social movements, non-canonical texts (those
that the subsequent collectors excluded from membership, for various
reasons) could be even more useful today; for their absence reflects later
concerns and does not undermine the fact that they too had been in
circulation from far earlier occasions.
Cause [derived from late Middle Ages Old French] names the source of
an effect, the action or circumstance claimed to have had some result
or consequence. Though widely assumed to be a matter of fact, David
Hume famously argued causes were actually inferences and not empirically observable situations.
ce
see bce/ce.
Charisma [a term from the Greek (meaning divine gift)] favored by Max
Weber and others, to name an powerful, infectious, and thus efficacious
charm possessed by some authoritative social actors which needed to be
taken into account when offering explanations for their influence on others.
Glossary 139
Christianity the name given to a collection of beliefs, practices, and institutions that developed from out of the ancient Jewish, as well as the
Greco-Roman, world of antiquity. Focused on the life and teachings of
a turn-of-the-era Jew named Jesus of Nazareth, it began as an oppositional movement that was persecuted and, by the early fourth century ce,
it had become tolerated throughout the Roman empire. Its teachings,
found in its scripture called the Bible (from the Greek for paper, scroll,
or book), include much of the previously existing Jewish scripture,
including the Torah, along with the New Testament comprising the
Gospels (from the Greek for ‘good news’), which present various narrations of the life and significance of Jesus (including his resurrection from
the dead after being executed by the Roman authorities), along with the
Epistles (Latin epistola, meaning letter), comprising communications
between early Christian leaders (such as the influential early converts
from Judaism to Christianity and its most important early missionary,
Paul [or Saul] of Tarsus) and various isolated early Christian communities or house churches. Jesus, considered early on to be the messiah
(‘anointed one of the Lord’, a Hebrew designation originally of relevance to Jewish tradition) was soon understood by his followers to have
been ‘the son of God’, and later in Christian doctrine is understood to
have been one of three aspects of God (the trinity, also including God
the Father and the Holy Spirit). The honorary title of ‘Christ’ (from
khristos) derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew mashiah;
Christians are therefore followers of the one believed to be the Messiah.
Currently, Christianity involves three major sub-types, some of which
differ significantly from the others on issues of doctrine and ritual:
Roman Catholicism, Protestantism (which contains a large number of
sub-types), and Greek Orthodoxy.
Church [derived from Old English and earlier from precursors to German
(possibly even Greek)] a term with cognates all across European languages, for the meeting place where Christians carry out their worship
ceremonies. Churches typically have an altar at the front and pulpit from
which a member of the clergy would deliver a sermon (types of pulpits
can vary widely, from subtle and small to large and ornate) along with
benches or pews for members to sit and often an area for a choir. Given
the predominance of Christians in some places it is sometimes used to
name the entire family of religious meeting places, such that a mosque
or synagogue are sometimes thought to be instances of churches (such
as for the US’s Internal Revenue Service). In US history there is the use
of such terms as churched or churching, used to name the manner in
which one is brought to or initiated into a religious community (specifically Christianity, as in ‘the churching of America’ to name increases in
church affiliation and attendance).
Church/state a dichotomy whose origins date to about seventeenthcentury Europe, commonly used today in the United States to stand for
140 Glossary
the legally mandated separation between the workings of any church or
religious group and the state; this notion of separation is traced to the
First Amendment of the US Constitution. Commonly, US political theorists and legal scholars refer to the ‘wall of separation’ between church
and state, although this widely used phrasing is not in the Constitution.
Instead, it derives from phrasing found in a letter written by Thomas
Jefferson (1743–1826) while he served as the third president of the
United States (1801–9).
Classification [from Latin, a group of division of the military, and then later
French, for group, as in a group of students] to name something but,
more specifically, to name it as part of a group or system of relations to
other items, such that an identity is derived from a series of controlled
relationships of similarity and difference. Often done by implementing
a taxonomy (a ranked classificatory scheme, such as arranging all elements of the natural world into kingdom, phylum, class, order, family,
genus, and species), classification could be argued to be the basis for
all knowledge, inasmuch as even the most mundane claims about the
world (example: ‘My mug is full’) depends upon the speakers ability to
identify and arrange items (me and mugs) as well as states (fullness and
the ability to possess something) in terms of their distinction from other
items (you and everything that is not a mug) and states (to be empty, or
even less than full).
Cognitive science the systematic study of the precise nature of different
mental tasks and forms of cognition, and the operations of the mind/brain;
this study uses elements of psychology, computer science, philosophy,
and linguistics. In recent years, it has proved one of the more active and
organized sub-specialties in the academic study of religion, focusing specifically on the study of ritual. Unlike some popular forays into the interface between religion and cognitive studies, such scholarly work seeks not
to isolate the part of the brain that experiences God or the sacred (such
as the so-called ‘god gene’); instead, as in the work of Pascal Boyer, they
apply findings from cognitive psychology to develop a naturalistic theory
of religious beliefs and behaviors.
Colonialism the economic or political control or governing influence of
one nation-state over another (a dependent country, territory, or people);
also, the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over another outside of its
boundaries to facilitate economic domination over the latter’s resources
and labor usually to the benefit of the controlling country. Although
not limited to European nations, the rapid expansion of their influence all across the globe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
today attracts a great deal of attention among scholars and has led to
the development of a new field known as postcolonial studies, which
focuses on the implications of, and local reactions to, the colonial era.
Comparative religion a systematic study of the commonalities and differences among the religions of the world; this study seeks to establish a
Glossary 141
set of principles and categories that can be used systematically to understand the universal and particular features of religions (in the plural)
and to determine whether they are sub-types of religion (in the singular).
Although today the notion of comparative religion is sometimes limited
to the work carried out in world religions courses and textbooks, during the field’s formative period in the late nineteenth century (especially
in Britain), comparative religion was the name often given to the entire
field, today called religious studies, the study of religion or sometimes
the academic or the critical study of religion. See history of religions.
Comparison [Latin comparare, to liken things to one another] the act of
placing two or more items alongside one another (that is, to juxtapose),
after having described each, in an attempt to identify their similarities
or differences. Historically, it was the method favored by early scholars
of religion (in the late nineteenth century, when the field was sometimes known as comparative religion) but then used mainly to identify similarities, in search of either the common source or essence of
religion. Today, comparison is just as likely an exercise to determine
the differences by which we distinguish items from each other, such
as claiming that this person is Dutch while that person is Danish. In
addition, scholars now recognize that the comparison of any two items
requires a third (but often unstated) element: the way in which they
will be compared (nationality, in the just-used example), indicating that
items in the world do not naturally compare themselves but, instead,
comparison is always the result of the comparativist’s prior choices and
curiosities (whether explicit or not).
Confucianism name given by European scholars to a group of Chinese
schools of thought associated with the teachings of such writers as
Confucius (551–479 bce), Mencius (372–289 bce), and Hsun-tzu
(298–238 bce). These traditions focus upon developing proper forms
of social and political behavior. During the Chinese Han dynasty
(206 bce–220 ce), these schools became official state orthodoxy, and
a authoritative collection of texts and temples were established; see li.
Conscience [Latin conscientia, shared knowledge] term that, in the later
Middle Ages, comes to signify in Europe an interior disposition that
was the presumed center of moral knowledge. Each person is eventually
assumed to have their own conscience, or inner voice, therefore closely
linking this to the developing idea of the self. Also linked to emerging systems of governance during this time period, such that dissenters
eventually can choose to retain their dissent with their conscience and
not act on it as opposed to acting it out in practice and risking severe
punishment (thus we get the modern notion of being a conscientious
objector). See belief, sincerity.
Contingent see necessary.
Correspondence theory a common approach to understanding how truth
and meaning-making works, and thus how definition works; the truth of
142 Glossary
some claim (or what we might better call a proposition, such as ‘The sky
is blue’) is thought to be determined by whether or not the claim fits, or
corresponds, to some observable set of facts. The truth of language (for
example, the words strung together in a sentence) is therefore thought
to have a direct relationship with an observable, stable reality and the
judgment ‘true’ is therefore a confirmation of this relationship. This correspondence theory (also called a referential theory insomuch as words
are thought to gain their meaning insomuch as they refer to real things
in the world) applies equally well to the production of meaning, since it
is commonly thought that a word—say, the word ‘blue’, as in the proposition ‘The sky is blue’—refers or corresponds to some quality a thing
possesses—in this case, the quality of blueness possessed by the sky. Or,
to phrase it another way, among the sky’s many observable characteristics is one that is of particular interest to us right now, its color. I look
up, confirm it is blue and thus judge the proposition ‘The sky is blue’ to
be true and the word ‘blue’ to be meaningful; see meaning, positivism.
Counter-intuitive to go against so-called common sense or what someone
might claim to know intuitively and thus without needing evidence or
practical examples. See anomaly.
Creationism/creation science see intelligent design.
Critical though commonly meaning required, highly advisable, or even necessary and mandated (as in, ‘It is critical that the flooding be prevented’)
in the human sciences the term often also means something other than
the other common usage, that is, to criticize, as in to find fault with
something. Instead, to be a critic or to be critical (sometimes used as a
term to describe this academic field, as in the critical study of religion)
signifies an approach to the material that we study that does not simply
adopt local understandings and use them as if they were normative.
Instead, as in the earlier ‘historical critical method’, which once named
an approach to the study of biblical materials that aimed to read those
texts as human artifacts produced in specific times and places by specific
authors (rather than as conveying ahistorical theological truth), the term
critical implies a so-called critical distance between the scholar and the
materials under examination (see the insider/outsider problem)—a gap
between the study of and the advocacy for. In more technical uses, it can
also name a specific sort of approach, as in the field of critical theory,
which usually names an early to mid-twentieth-century philosophical
and political project, sometimes also called the Frankfurt School of
thought—a Marxist approach to doing social theory that characterized
a group of scholars, first in Europe and then elsewhere (example, such
authors as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse).
Scholars of religion in this tradition are likely more comfortable making normative judgments at certain points in their work, inasmuch as
themes of justice and emancipation often characterize work in the critical theory/Frankfurt tradition.
Glossary 143
Cross-/inter-disciplinary studies that have gained prominence over the past
two or three academic generations, in which the item(s) being examined
are presumed to be complex and therefore to surpass the competencies
of any one academic approach (or what is now commonly termed a discipline, from Latin for instruction, training, even self-control, but also
to tame and thereby make sense of some domain under study). In the
study of religion the field (significantly not called a discipline by some)
is often claimed to surpass traditional (and supposedly limited) disciplinary boundaries, such that, for instance, a sociological or economic
approach is needed but is not exhaustive of the item(s) being studied,
which might also invite a psychological approach, a literary approach,
a political approach, etc.
Cult [Latin cultus, meaning care, cultivation, and by extension, a system
of ritual] originally a merely descriptive term for the ritual component
attached to any social group, as in the phrase ‘the cult of the saints’
(implying routines of Roman Catholic devotion focused on Christian
saints), it is today a term most often used today in popular culture to
name marginal groups considered by members of dominant groups to
be deviant and thus dangerous (somewhat akin to the pejorative term
‘fanatic’ and ‘fanaticism’). In the sociology of religion, ‘cult’ is classically used as a technical term, in distinction from both ‘church’ (or
‘denomination’) and ‘sect’, to signify differing groups’ varying degrees
of social integration. Traced to the work of the German sociologist,
Max Weber, ‘church’ and ‘sect’ were technical terms he used to identify
what he took to be significant differences among religions, the former
meaning a religion into which one was born whereas the latter named
one in which membership was the result of a conscious decision. This
pair of terms was then reformulated by the German theologian, Ernst
Troeltsch (1865–1923)—such as his book, The Social Teaching of the
Christian Churches—‘church’ was distinguished from ‘sect’ in terms of
the latter being a group in greater tension with the dominant social
world whereas the former are a group that more easily accommodates
itself and, thereby, lives in greater harmony with the wider social world.
For Troeltsch, ‘mysticism’ was the term he used for a third, far more private and individualized variation that likely did not lead to any form of
social organization. In the early 1930s, the sociologist Howard Becker
termed this latter group ‘cult’. The modern, popular use of the term
to name groups that deviate too far from accepted conventions can be
understood to develop from these uses. See new religious movements.
Culture [adaptation of Latin cultura, meaning cultivation, to tend, hence
involving the notion of domestication] that portion of thought and
behavior used by social groups that is learned and capable of being
taught to others; culture can include: language, customs, worldviews,
moral/ethical values, and religions. For those who believe that religion
(or at least some elements of it, such as so-called religious experience)
144 Glossary
is somehow set apart from all other aspects of the historical world
(making religion sui generis), the concept of culture is sometimes set
apart from that of religion and they are thought to interact in specific
ways—hence the ‘and’ that joins the popular designation ‘culture and
religion’, a phrase found in the work of many scholars of religion. For
yet others who are more anthropologically inclined, and who therefore
see religious practices as but a sub-set of cultural behaviors, that can be
explained in precisely the same manner as all other cultural attributes, it
would be more appropriate to talk about ‘religion in culture’.
Deduction a process of reasoning in which the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises presented so that the conclusion cannot be false
if the premises are true. Deductive logic is a form of argumentation in
which one begins with acknowledged general premises and then reasons
from these to specific cases, such as the three-part form of reasoning
known as the syllogism in which the major premise (All people are mortal) is followed by a minor premise (Judy is a person), which logically
leads to a specific conclusion (Judy is mortal). The role of inductive
reasoning to establish the major premise of a syllogism ensures that
deduction and induction are intimately connected forms of reasoning.
Description though commonly used to name a stage in scholarship whereby
the so-called facts and observable features of a situation are first recorded
and conveyed faithfully and accurately, to be followed by some sort
of analysis (such as interpretation [see hermeneutics] or comparison),
many today see the act of description, though still an important stage in
our work, as already informed by scholarly assumptions, theories, and
interests (such as the choice of what to describe and what to ignore). As
such, the work of describing what someone does or says is no longer as
neutral or disinterested as it was once seen by some scholars. See also
redescription, stipulate.
Dharma [Sanskrit] term in Hinduism that generally means one’s various
duties and obligations to all others in a universal, ranked world; see
sanatana-dharma.
Dialectic traditionally understood as the question/answer teaching style
used by Plato’s character Socrates; in later European philosophy it
stands for a progressive series in which the opposition between a thesis
statement (‘The sky is blue’) and its opposite, the antithesis (‘The sky
is not blue’), is resolved by means of a synthesis (‘The sky is partially
blue’) which itself comes to be understood as but a new proposition
(that is, thesis) which has its opposite that can again be resolved by
means of a synthesis.
Din Arabic term (pronounced ‘deen’) found in Islam that is often translated into English as ‘religion’. It is thought that the term dates to a
much earlier idea of an actual debt that must be settled on a specific
date, which in turn led to such other meanings and usages as: the idea
of following an established series of customs for settling debts; the act of
Glossary 145
guiding someone in a prescribed direction to carry out required action;
the act of judging whether such a prescription has been followed properly; and, finally, visiting retribution upon one who has failed to follow
the required prescriptions. If this etymology is persuasive, then the link
from the earlier notion of an actual debt to the later notion of the manner in which Allah judges human beings can be understood as a rather
sensible development of the concept. See also eusebia, li and pietas.
Discourse most simply, the communication of thought by words/conversation; a discourse could therefore be likened to a conversation or, more
technically, to a teaching or a systematic exploration of a topic; many
scholars now use the term to refer to any number of fields or disciplines,
the formal discussion of a subject in speech or writing, or, following the
French postmodern scholar, Michel Foucault (1926–84), even the series
of material as well as intellectual conditions, practices, institutions,
architecture, and conventions that make specific types of thought and
action possible (such as the discourse of the academy or the discourse
of medicine).
Emic/etic terms derived from the suffixes of the words ‘phonemic’ and
‘phonetic’; the former refers to any unit of sound significant to the users
of a particular language (each such unit of sound is known by scholar
of linguistics as a phoneme) and the latter refers to the system of crossculturally useful notations that represent each of these vocal sounds
(as in the phonetic alphabet found in the front of most dictionaries
and used as a pronunciation guide); derived from the same Greek root,
‘phonemic’ designates the complex sounds themselves whereas ‘phonetic’ specifies the signs and systems scholars devise to represent and
then compare the manner in which the basic phonemic units of a language are produced and pronounced. Adopted by anthropologists, and
later by scholars of religion, the terms emic and etic come to stand for
the participant’s (emic) and the non-participant’s (etic) viewpoints. See
insider/outsider problem.
Empirical term used to name something that can be observed or perceived
with one of the five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing.
Essentialism an approach to definition that maintains that membership
within a class or group is based on possessing a finite list of characteristics or traits, all of which an entity must necessarily possess to be
considered a member of the group, as opposed to the merely accidental
or contingent characteristics a thing might or might not possess (sometimes also known as the substantive approach). An essentialist view of
religion asserts that there are many different characteristics to be found
among religions, but argues that these characteristics are merely secondary and superficial; instead, there are a small number of primary
characteristics, possibly only one (its so-called essence or substance),
that encompass all the religions of the world within one category; see
existentialism, family resemblance, and functionalism.
146 Glossary
Establishment clause a clause contained in the First Amendment of the
US Constitution that prohibits Congress from ‘respecting an establishment of religion’. Many read this clause as meaning that Congress is
not allowed to create a national religion, give preference to one religion
over another, or prefer a religious over a secular outlook, but others
argue that there is ambiguity in the clause itself concerning its use and
implementation.
Ethnic [Greek ethnikos, and later from Latin, of a people, sometimes considered an alien people; a group or tribe thought to be related in some
fashion; related to the late Middle Ages term race, as in a group presumed to have a common lineage] term widely used today to identify
what are thought to be distinct subgroups within the broader human
species. Debates continue on the nature of ethnic identity, whether, for
example, it is a biologically inherited trait (as was once presumed in socalled race science—a field whose scientific status is now understood as
highly questionable) or, instead, a socially created identity that results
from comparison and classification of human beings in light of a specific
set of criteria chosen by those doing the classification. In support of the
latter, it is not difficult to find dominant groups who fail to understand
themselves as having an ethnicity (for example, ‘ethnic food’ generally
names unfamiliar food) while they attribute an ethnic identity to others, much as those who are in more dominant positions might maintain
that only other, non-dominant or marginal people have an accent when
they speak.
Ethnography [Greek ethnos + grapho = people/group writing] a text
written by an outsider that describes the beliefs, practices, and institutions of members of another group. Today, after having done fieldwork, anthropologists will often produce an ethnography on the people
among whom they have lived and studied.
Eusebia ancient Greek term for the quality one was thought to possess
if one properly negotiated the various social expectations and duties
required based upon such factors as one’s social rank, gender, birth
order, generation, occupation, etc. Often translated as ‘piety’ (from the
Latin pietas), it is not to be confused with the modern sense of ‘religion’, insomuch as the quality of eusebia resulted from one’s proper
behaviors toward the gods (such as performing a ritual in the prescribed
manner at the appropriate time and place) but also from those behaviors involving one’s social superiors, equals, and inferiors. Therefore,
piety in the Greco-Roman world was a fundamentally social, and not a
faith, designation. See din and pietas.
Evolution theory developed in the nineteenth century by such scholars as
Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin (1809–82) to explain biological
change in a population from generation to generation by such processes
as random mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift. The much
criticized theory known in the nineteenth century as social Darwinism
Glossary 147
names a school of thought that applied this biological theory to account
for cultural and racial changes over time and place (assuming a uniform, linear development from so-called lower or primitive cultures
to so-called higher or civilized cultures). Today, teaching evolutionary
biological theory in public schools is controversial in some areas of the
US due to the manner in which it is understood by some Christians
to contradict a literal reading of the creation of the world as found in
the Bible’s book of Genesis. Although so-called creationism, creation
science, and what is now known as intelligent design, have all been
proposed as an alternative to evolutionary theory, and in some cases
are taught alongside it in public schools, so far no non-Christian views
on the creation of the universe (such as the Hindu view whereby the
god Brahma periodically creates a new universe from raw material
that remains after the god Shiva destroys the previous one, which had
decayed to the point of utter corruption) have gained sufficient support
in the US to prompt them also to be taught in the public school system
as competitors to evolutionary theory.
Existentialism although it can be traced to earlier influences, it is primarily
understood today as a mid-twentieth-century European philosophical
movement, much associated with post-World War II French intellectuals (philosophers, literary critics, authors, playwrights, etc.), that takes
as its starting point the priority of the individual along with the assumption that, in the words of one of the best-known representatives of the
movement, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), ‘existence precedes essence’—
that is, historical human beings come before, and are thus the makers of, qualities and values. As Sartre also observes, human beings are
therefore ‘condemned to be free’—that is, as agents they have no choice
but to be accountable for their own actions, desires, and the values they
produce. Existentialism, then, can be understood to be in opposition
to essentialist approaches to the study of culture and meaning, though
there have been theological existentialists.
Experience many humanistic scholars of religion argue that religion is
grounded in a unique type of experience, conceived as an inner, personal sentiment that can only be expressed publicly by means of symbolic actions (e.g., language, ritual, etc.) that are themselves derivative
and thus flawed copies of the original (a position represented by the
work of William James). As made evident by the British literary critic,
Raymond Williams, in his book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture
and Society (1976), there are two senses of the term experience, distinguishable in English literature from around the late eighteenth century:
historically related to the word ‘experiment’, its first sense can denote
the accumulation of empirical facts and the results of such an accumulation, such as one having ‘work experience’ (Williams terms this sense
‘experience past’); the other, which he describes as ‘experience present’,
denotes a form of ever present consciousness that resides within the
148 Glossary
individual and to which one appeals when making judgments concerning the authenticity of a person. It is this latter sense of experience present, understood as a subjective quality, that is most often found in the
study of religion, insomuch as the outward behaviors and institutions
are assumed merely to reflect an inner disposition that is beyond words.
See phenomenology.
Explanation a stage in scholarship whereby one tries to identify the cause
of some effect, such as what accounts for the existence of religion or
what might be the source of some similarity or difference apparent as
a result of comparision. Such work is likely reductionistic, inasmuch as
it tries to explain the origins or function of religion in the light of some
non-religious factor(s). It can be distinguished from interpretation (see
hermeneutics).
Expression [from Latin, to press out or to project outward] common term
used today to name either a phrase (such as ‘a German expression’) or
a look someone might offer (‘a facial expression’), both based on the
assumption of people possessing an inner identity that is only secondarily conveyed outward, into the public space, by means of language
or some other symbol system. Often used in the study of religion as
synonymous with the term ‘manifestation’, assuming that religious symbols, narrative, or practices are a secondary instance of a prior and
causal sentiment, often called belief, conscience, faith, or experience.
See phenomenology.
Faith [Latin fides, meaning trust, confidence, reliance] a term today commonly used alongside ‘religion’, sometimes assumed to be the essential
element to the religious life; sometime in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
Europe seems to be the first time we find ‘faith’ used as a synonym for
‘religion’. In the modern sense, faith (as in Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s
notion of ‘faith in transcendence’) is often juxtaposed to the social or
institutional sense of religion (what W.C. Smith termed the ‘accumulated tradition’), as in the distinction between ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’
when the latter is assumed to denote the merely secondary, external, institutional, or ritual elements whereas the former denotes what is assumed
to be the personal and core element that is merely symbolized or manifested in the institution. Given the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers’
efforts to criticize, and eventually to replace, the institutions and authority of Roman Catholicism, prioritizing faith over religious institution,
and criticizing the latter for the manner in which it unnecessarily stifles
the former, remains a common anti-Catholic, or pro-Protestant, form of
argumentation.
Faith-Based Initiative a program created early in President George W.
Bush’s first administration (2000–4) that financially supports community service organizations that are run by local religious organizations. The relevance/controversy of this initiative is that, in the past,
the US federal government has avoided supporting religiously identified
Glossary 149
organizations that carry out social services (such as operating day cares,
food banks, homeless shelters, programs for alcoholics, etc.) due to the
understood separation of church and state in the First Amendment of
the US Constitution.
Family resemblance an approach to defining something, first described
by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, that presupposes that no one
characteristic is possessed by all members of a group but, instead, that a
series of traits must be present, each to varying degrees, among the members of a group. See essentialism, functionalism, polythetic definitions.
Fieldwork term that gained popularity in the early and mid-twentieth
century when the academic field of anthropology made its functionalist turn and began to prioritize work on studying living human communities as opposed to the prior intellectualist emphasis on origins.
Spending a significant period of time living among a group one studies
(‘in the field’), thereby learning languages and customs, thus became
(and today remains) the main credentialing or authenticating mark in
modern anthropology, resulting in the idea of the scholar straddling the
position of both insider and outside by working to become an adept
participant-observer. See also ethnography, insider/outsider problem.
First Amendment to the US Constitution an amendment ratified in 1791
as a part of the Bill of Rights that prohibited Congress from interfering
with the freedom of religion, speech, assembly or petition. ‘Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of
the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances’.
Folk knowledge [from folc, Old English for common people] term used to
distinguish how a group of people might talk among themselves about
something in the world from the manner in which scholars, using a
technical language, could talk about the same item. A descriptive phase
of one’s work would, presumably, aim to reproduce the participant’s
commonsense way of acting or understandings in a manner in which
they would recognize it, but, in subsequent stages, scholarship translates this information into new vocabulary given that it now serves
different purposes. For example, while we may drink water a chemist studies H2O. The distinction between folk and technical approaches
can appear to be ranked, as if one is superior to the other, but, rather,
should merely be used to signify the different purposes and interests of
the groups in question.
Free exercise clause portion of the First Amendment of the US Constitution
that denies Congress the right to prohibit the ‘free exercise’ of religion.
What exactly constitutes free exercise is unclear, however, and therefore
open to debate. Congress does have the power to limit certain practices
whether they are religious or not. A recent example of the debate is
found in a 1992 US Supreme Court case over whether a city council in
150 Glossary
Florida could use their animal cruelty laws to curtail animal sacrifice
as practiced by members of a Santeria group (Santeria, ‘the way of the
saints’, is a Caribbean tradition that combines elements of African and
Roman Catholic religious practices). See establishment clause.
Functionalism the view that, rather than some internal quality, things are
defined by what they do and can be studied in terms of the purposes
that they serve or the needs that they fulfill. Functionalists can study the
social, political, or psychological role played by, for example, a myth
or a ritual, examining how it functions either for the individual or how
it contributes to maintaining an overall social structure into which the
individual is placed. See essentialism, family resemblance.
Greek [Graecus, the name applied by the Romans to the people called by
themselves Hellenes] the Christian text commonly known as the New
Testament was written in a script known as common or koiné (pronounced ‘coin-ay’) Greek. It is important to note that words/concepts
that were once prominent in the Hellenistic world of early Christianity,
and therefore used in the production of these texts, eventually were
translated into Latin, and then into the many languages that today
comprise the text known as the Bible.
Heathen [from Old English for not just rural but also unfarmed land, as
in the heath, possibly related to the flora known as ‘the heather’] term
used to name those who live not just outside a dominant, developed
community but also apart from a dominant way of life. Once popular
to name those Christians assumed to be unsaved. The term is sometimes
used as if it simply describes a group of other people but the pejorative
or judgmental nature of the term, and the social consequences of using
it, cannot be overlooked.
Hegemony [Greek hegemonia, going first or in the lead] word derives from
a term to describe one ancient Greek city-state’s dominance that today
is used in critical social theory to name a dominant system of thought
and social organization—sometimes of such dominance that even opposition to it serves its purposes by taking specific, non-threatening forms.
See ideology.
Hermeneutics [Greek hermeneutikos, meaning translator or interpreter]
the precise history of the term is unknown, though some trace it to the
name of the Greek god Hermes (known by the Romans as Mercury)
who served as a messenger for the gods; others trace it to Hermes
Trismegistus, the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, said
to have been the founder of alchemy and other such secret sciences. In
any case, hermeneutics is that branch of study that deals with interpretation, both the act of interpretation as well as the academic study of the
methods and theories of interpretation. Often associated with the interpretation of scripture, as in the long history of hermeneutics in the field
of biblical studies, hermeneutics presupposes that the object of study
must be understood for its meaning and that this meaning can only be
Glossary 151
adequately understood if it is interpreted and translated in precise and
correct ways. See also explanation, phenomenology of religion, positivism, and reductionism.
Hinduism [Sanskrit sindhu, meaning river, especially the body of water
known today as the Indus River (in northeastern India), hence the
region of the Indus, which today also names the entire nation-state of
India] the name given to the mass social movement found originally
in the sub-continent that is today known as India and dates to up to
1,500 years prior to the turn of the era; those who practice Hinduism
refer to it as sanatana-dharma; it is a term for indigenous Indian religions, and is characterized by a diverse array of belief systems, practices, institutions, and texts. It is believed to have had its origin in the
ancient Indo-Aryan Vedic culture, though this thesis is open to scholarly debate. Texts in Hinduism are separated into two categories: shruti
(inspired [revealed scripture]) and smriti (remembered [epic literature]).
The Veda, a body of texts recited by ritual specialists (brahmins) is considered shruti, whereas the Bhagavad Gita is considered to be smriti.
Other smriti texts are the major epics: the Ramayana and the massive
text known as the Mahabharata. Some of the commonly known deities are Vishnu, Brahma, Kali, Ganesha, Shiva, and Krishna. Studies
of Hinduism will often focus on the role played by the dharma system
(social system of duties and obligations), the caste system (similar to
a class system but inherited), beliefs in karma (social actions result in
future reactions), atman (the name for one’s soul or self) and samsara
(the term for the almost limitless cosmic system of rebirths), and the
central role of brahmins (a caste of ritual specialists).
History [Latin historia, meaning narrative, account, tale, story] by ‘history’ we today mean at least two things: (1) a narrative (that is, a tale
with a beginning, middle, and end) about the accumulated, chronological past that either demonstrates development over time or established
lineage and (2) a more general usage that refers to the world of cause/
effect in which unanticipated events intermingle with the intentions of
agents. Saying that something is ‘an element of the historical world’
therefore implies that the present is the result of a series of past plans
as well as accidents, which were themselves the results of yet other
past plans and accidents. To say that something is ‘historical’ therefore
means that it is contingent, that is, depends on prior things happening
and therefore could have been otherwise.
History of religion(s) although it may imply one studying the historical
development of the world’s religions, the term history of religions most
often names an academic discipline or approach thought by its practitioners to be distinct from other approaches to the study of religion
(in North America it is often associated with scholars trained at the
University of Chicago). In the German tradition, the field is known as
Religionswissenschaft, or the systematic, rational study (Wissenschaft)
152 Glossary
of religion, although turn-of-the-century generations of German scholars were part of what was then called the Religionsgeschichtliche
Schule (the history of religions school of thought). This tradition was
concerned with tracing the development of religion from its earliest
stages to its modern form as well as turning methods previously used
to study the scriptures of ‘others’ onto the texts of Christianity (known
as the historical critical method, which approached the study of texts
much like an archeologist might study artifacts: identifying and then
sifting through their various compositional layers of a text, in an effort
to understand the worlds of their various composers and their original
audience). Although the North American field is indebted to these two
traditions, no adequate English translation of Religionswissenschaft
and Religionsgeschichte was apparent, hence the term religious studies
was coined. For yet others, the term history of religions was preferred,
insomuch as it emphasized the historical (that is, empirical, contingent) nature of the scholars of religion’s data, in contradistinction
from theological approaches to the same material. It is in perhaps this
sense that the term is used in the name for the field’s only international
scholarly association, the International Association for the History of
Religions (IAHR). For some, notably those influenced by the work of
Mircea Eliade, history of religions came to designate a hermeneutical
and phenomenological approach to the material, which gathered data
by means of cross-cultural comparison yet assumed that all religious
artifacts, symbols, behaviors and beliefs contained a common, deeply
meaningful element that ought not to be merely reduced to their psychological or social elements. Perhaps for this reason one might place
great significance on whether ‘religion’ appears in the singular (that is,
history of religion, which names the study of a cross-culturally stable,
analytic concept) or in the plural (history of religions, which names a
variety of different and thus empirically distinct instances). See comparative religion.
Holy [from old Germanic, possibly sharing roots with the modern word
health] term used as a qualifier (e.g., Holy Spirit, holy ground) that is
generally used as synonymous with sacred; perhaps originally linked
to the idea of something being whole and undivided or unblemished.
Sometimes used by scholars with a definite article and thus as a noun
(the Holy, similar to uses for ‘the sacred’) to signify what they believe
to be an essential or universal characteristic that animates all religions.
Human nature a concept—sometimes termed the human spirit, the human
condition, the human heart, or the human experience—that asserts all
human beings hold some essential characteristic(s) that is universal and
thus not bound by any notions of time or space. All human beings, from
the beginning of time and spanning the entire present world, are therefore said to share such characteristics, making these traits the defining
element, or essence, of the human species as a group separable from
Glossary 153
all others. Some scholars of religion argue that religion, or religious
experience, is the preeminent or fundamental aspect to this presumed
human nature.
Human sciences those academic studies of minds, texts, social institutions,
political organization, and economic activity that seek to develop theories that explain human behavior rather than offer an interpretation of,
or appreciation for, the meaning of the behavior or its various artifacts
(such as texts, art, architecture, etc.). This classification of work carried
out in the modern university provides an alternative to the traditional
division of social sciences versus humanities insomuch as ‘the human
sciences’ groups together fields previously studied separately in either
of these other divisions, understanding all elements of human social life
to be subject to the tools of observation, analysis, generalization, and
explanation. Practiced as part of the human sciences, the study of religion seeks not to discover the meaning of religiosity but its causes and
practical implications.
Humanities an organizational title given to that area of the modern university that usually includes such academic disciplines as the study of literatures, languages, theater, philosophy, history—all of which are often
presumed to study various expressions of the enduring human spirit
as it is manifested in the conscious, intentional, and most importantly
meaningful, actions of agents in different historical periods and regions.
Once taken out of theological studies, the academic study of religion is
often placed within humanities divisions of the university because its
presumed object of study—religious experience—is often held to be a
key ingredient to human nature. See social sciences.
Idealism a philosophical viewpoint that prioritizes mind or spirit over
matter or the physical world, the latter thought to derive from the
former; to be distinguished from materialism.
Identity [Latin idem, denoting the same, a word still used in citations to
indicate a quotation that derives from the same place as the previous
one] term used to name that which is thought to define and distinguish
a person, group, or thing from others: its identity. Whether this trait or
feature is an essential or necessary item or something that is accidental
or contingent (that is, arbitrary or merely the result of conditioning or
learning), that is used for a variety of possible reasons, is where the
debate on identity has remained for some time. For example, is Japanese
identity based on an essential feature common to all those who are
Japanese or, instead, are those who are defined as Japanese united by a
collection of arbitrary traits that, if seen differently, would prompt us to
conclude that the group was not as uniform as it at first appeared? See
also family resemblance.
Ideology first coined in late eighteenth-century France, the term stood
originally for the systematic study of ideas, or science of ideas, but
soon came to stand in for both a complete system of ideas, or what we
154 Glossary
sometimes term a worldview, as well as an incorrect or false system of
ideas (the former a more descriptive use of the term whereas the latter
is a more normative use of the term). The term obtained its best-known
and most critical usage in the work of Karl Marx, where it was used to
name the system of ‘false consciousness’ within which oppressed people
labored. Today the term retains this critical edge, though it is also used
in a more neutral fashion. See hegemony.
Immanent see transcendent.
Indigenous [Latin, to be born from within] common term today to name
those whose ancestors predated colonial arrivals on a variety of land
masses around the globe. Given modern theories of human origins and
migration, which trace our common ancestry to Africa, all inhabitants
of the other continents arrived from somewhere else, though some can
claim predecessors having lived there for far greater lengths of time than
others. Whether that gives them unique rights to the land is among the
debates involving those who are today classified by either governments
or themselves as indigenous peoples. Compared to the earlier and generally pejorative term primitive or native (though so-called primitivism
movements in art, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
sought to revalue the term), the term indigenous, as in indigenous religions, has what many maintain to be a more positive connotation. See
also native.
Induction any form of reasoning in which a general conclusion is supported by the premises, but does not necessarily follow from them;
inductive logic begins with the observation of specific cases and reasons to general conclusions based on this series of discrete observations.
Classical scientific method, which prioritized observation and description, was thought to proceed inductively, in that a general conclusion
(for example, about the law of gravity) followed from a series of experiments (such as repeatedly dropping an object and observing its behavior).
Inductive conclusions are only as sound as the number of instances that
support them (that is, how many spotted dogs must one see before one
is confident in concluding: ‘All dogs are spotted’?), leading one to see
that induction does not provide certain, but instead probable, knowledge; distinguished from deductive logic.
Inference to derive a conclusion from something known or assumed to
be the case, knowledge which was itself gained by means of either
induction or deduction.
Insider/outsider problem although termed a problem it is likely better
understood as the situation in which people sometimes find themselves
when challenged to understand others, since a translation is not to be
confused with a word-for-word transcription. Instead, there are times
when the gap between participants and non-participants is apparent
and, in the case of scholars, the observer is challenged to devise ways
either to overcome it or account for it. See emic/etic.
Glossary 155
Intellectualism the name given to a late nineteenth-century scholarly movement in which it was not only presumed that all human beings were comparable problem solvers (though what they understood as evolutionarily
early humans were assumed to lack the capabilities of modern people)
but also that contemporary data could be understood best in light of its
origins. F. Max Müller, E.B. Tylor and Herbert Spencer would be examples of earlier scholars who we’d place within this school of thought.
Intelligent design the term most recently given to what proponents (many
of whom are in the US) see as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
A view on origins that claims that some elements of the natural world
are too complex to have derived from simpler prior components (the
bacterial flagellum or the mammal eye are often cited as examples).
Instead, it is claimed that a so-called intelligent designer must have
existed who made such things, fully formed, for the purposes they are
today seen to serve. Advocates of this position are careful not to call this
hypothetical designer God, given that the US Supreme Court has ruled,
the case of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), that creationism or creation
science are religious and thus not allowed into the public school’s science curriculum. In a federal court decision from 2005, Kitzmiller v.
Dover Area School District, the judge found that intelligent design was
not science (inasmuch as its claims were not testable) and thus was
merely a rebranded form of creation science, disallowing it from public school classes and thereby disciplining the School Board for having
advocated for its use in science classes.
Intention quality said to be possessed by agents; ability to have motivations, goals, and desires that direct one’s actions. Traditional literary
critics approached the study of texts in the effort to recover the original
intentions of their authors, though a number of contemporary scholars
now question the direct linkage once generally assumed to exist between
the meaning of a text and the intention of its author.
Interpretation see hermeneutics.
Inter-religious dialogue following the colonial age of Christian missionizing, in which the conversion of so-called ‘heathens’ was the goal, a more
theologically and politically liberal movement began within Christianity
in which some differences that came to be seen as merely secondary
were put aside in favor of a search for more fundamental, essential,
similarities among the world’s religions. Mutual understanding, respect,
and appreciation therefore took over from a previous era’s attempt to
judge and convert. As practiced by some (particularly by humanists),
the academic study of religion is seen as one component of the effort to
identify and nurture such supposedly shared commonalities. For those
who see the study of religion as part of the human sciences, such versions
of the field are indistinguishable from liberal theology.
Islam in Arabic meaning literally ‘submission’ (and one who submits is
known as a Muslim), the name given to a collection of beliefs, practices
156 Glossary
and institutions that date to the sixth and seventh centuries ce, originating in the Arabian peninsula, which place importance on the role
played by the Prophet Muhammad who is believed to have received,
by means of recitations granted to him by an angel, the word of Allah
(Arabic, ‘the God’) which is contained in their scripture, known as
the Qur’an (sometimes written in English as ‘Koran’). These revelations, which occurred in the area outside of the city of Mecca (today
considered the central geographic site of Islam, toward which devout
Muslims worldwide face when praying each day and to which they aim
to make a pilgrimage at some point in their adult life), were eventually transcribed and today comprise the Qur’an’s 114 suras, or chapter
divisions, each of which have a number of verses. Merging indigenous Arabian cultural practices and beliefs with elements of Jewish
and Christian belief, Muslims (those who submit to the will of Allah)
understand Muhammad to have been the last in a long line of prophetic
figures (stretching from Abraham to Jesus); he is understood to have
been the ‘seal of the prophets’ (as in a stamp to close an envelope), all
of whom conveyed the divine word, law, and instructions of Allah.
After establishing the first Muslim community in the nearby city of
Medina, Islam spread successfully throughout much of what was then
the known world, stretching across North Africa, Europe, and well
into Asia. Today it can be found all throughout the world. Early on in
its development, disagreements over such things as leadership succession led to a division, leaving two main sub-types: Sunni and Shi’ite (a
third sub-type, Sufism, is considered the mystical aspect of Islam)—all
of which have their own sub-types, often based on differing traditions
of legal and textual interpretation.
Judaism the name given to a collection of beliefs, practices, and institutions
that date at least to several hundred years prior to the turn of the era
(though much further according to some members) and whose significant historical events transpired in the area of the world now known as
the Middle East; although today considered a religious designation, to
some it has always been merely an ethnic designation and—especially
since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948—for yet others it designates a national identity (sometimes designating all three at once).
The terms ‘Jew’, ‘Jewish’ and ‘Judaism’ derive from the ancient Hebrew
y’hudi which is itself a derivative of the proper name Y’hudah or Judah,
which means ‘celebrated’ and was the name of the fourth son of one of
the group’s ancient patriarchs, Jacob, as well as the name for the familial
line (that is, tribe) that is said to have descended from him. Although
one might talk of ancient Hebrew religion (involving twelve ancestral
tribes, a distinctive role for the members of a priestly tribe, the centrality of temple worship, the ritual of priestly animal sacrifice, a period of
enslavement in ancient Egypt, and a belief in a divine mandate to settle
‘the promised land’), after the Exilic period (in which it is held that, for
Glossary 157
much of the sixth century bce, Hebrews were conquered by the ancient
Babylonian empire [specifically, a group called the Chaldeans] and forcibly removed from their land) the centrality of textual interpretation,
the role of the rabbi (Hebrew: master) and the place of the synagogue
(Greek: assembly, as a translation for the late Hebrew, keneseth) came
to supplant the prior place of the temple and priests. Along with legal
traditions and traditions of rabbinic commentary, the main scripture is
known as TANAKH, an acronym standing for the letters that signify the
three main bodies of work that constitute what is sometimes called the
Hebrew Bible: Torah (the Law, which comprises the first five books of
the Hebrew Bible), Neviim (the writings attributed to the Prophets), and
Ketuvim ‘the writings’ (such as the more poetic book of Psalms that is
attributed to the patriarch and one-time Hebrew king, David). Today,
Jews are found worldwide, and the modern state of Israel (the so-called
‘promised land’) plays a particularly important role in the social identity
for many Jews.
Judeo-Christian a term, gaining prominence in the first half of the twentieth century, that named and thereby grouped together Judaism and
Christianity, inasmuch as the latter was seen to have developed directly
from the former (thereby retaining and sharing significant themes).
Although the term signifies their close historical relationship for some,
for others it selects certain forms of each that can be argued to bear
close relationship, thereby excluding forms of both that differ dramatically (not to mention minimizing what some would characterize as a
long history of Christian antisemitism). Though often used by scholars,
the term is regarded by many as evidence of inter-religious dialogue
taking place as opposed to the academic study of religion. See also
Abrahamic religions.
Laïcité [French for the laity, that is, non-clergy] modern French term
commonly translated as secularism; however, the particular type of
secularism in place in the nation of France can be understood to differ from other modern liberal democracies, for instead of arguing that
religion is always present and that the public space must therefore be
neutral (thereby treating them all, along with those who have no religion, equally), their approach is that public space must be entirely free
of it. So any expression in France’s public space that lends the impression of an identity that might compete with one’s French identity is
disallowed. With its roots in the French Revolution (1789–99) and its
strong critique of the place of Roman Catholicism in day-to-day life, it
has come under reconsideration by some in light of recent immigrants
to France, such as those from its former colonial possessions who happen to be Muslim. For, exhibiting their religious identity in ways little
different from how Roman Catholic priests and nuns have done so for
centuries (example, by style of dress)—but being criticized for doing so
in ways priests and nuns are not—the French notion of secularism has
158 Glossary
been shown to favor Christianity inasmuch as it is taken for granted as
a necessary element of being French. See secularism.
Lemon test name of a three part test developed in US courts to determine
whether the presence of religion in some government action is or is not
constitutional. Named after one of two parties in the case of Lemon v.
Kurtzman (1971)—in which the issue was whether it was legal for the
state of Pennsylvania to reimburse private (in this case Roman Catholic)
school boards for classroom resources or even teachers’ salaries—the
test, which is still in use today, inquires if the government’s action:
had a primarily secular intention; was aimed at achieving a primarily secular effect; and ensured that the entanglement of church/state
was not excessive. (Any one of these tests is enough to decide a case,
so all three conditions are not required to be met.) This approach to
defining the secular is in stark contrast to the French notion of laïcité,
given that, in the US, it is assumed that church and state are, by definition, entangled (the US Congress opens with prayer, after all, and the
armed forces employ chaplains of all various denominations and religions); the question for the courts, as per the Lemon test, is whether it
is ‘excessive’—obviously a subjective judgment, thereby providing the
courts with significant wiggle room.
Li Chinese term, associated with Confucianism, that names the rules
of propriety (or proper form) associated with carrying out ritual and
which influence all social interaction. See eusebia and pietas.
Liberal democracy a type of government in which all citizens are presumed
to be the equal building blocks of the state, in which elections determine
the formation of government, and which is also characterized by what
participants call free markets and the rule of law.
Liminal [Latin limen, threshold] describes what ritual studies scholars
terms the middle phase in a rite of passage: separation from ones former identity; an ambiguous stage in which one is neither what one once
was nor are yet what one will become; and finally a stage in which
one incorporates into one’s new identity. This middle or liminal stage
is therefore an ambiguous position that borders on all other identities
while allowing transition from and between them.
Linguistics [Latin lingua, meaning tongue] the cross-cultural and comparative science of language as a human phenomenon, including phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and historical
linguistics. In the late nineteenth century, when the cross-cultural study
of languages was developing (once called comparative philology), it
served as a model for the development of the early science of religion.
Neither field was concerned about simply studying this or that language,
this or that religion, but with studying language and religion as universal
human phenomena (regardless of which particular language one spoke
or which specific religion one practiced), thereby necessitating the development of general theories of language and general theories of religion.
Glossary 159
Lived religion along with such related terms as religion on the ground,
embodied religion, and material religion, this term signifies a movement
among scholars, over the past decades, influenced originally by some
historians’ turn toward what was once called social history: an attempt
to write non-elite histories, chronicling the lives of lower or working
classes and marginalized populations—groups lacking routine access to
the cultural products of their time that later scholar often examine in
their work. Case in point: if one is non-literate then one leaves behind
no engravings or texts, so scholars relying only on archival work will
be unable to comment on such groups. The lived religion movement
therefore usually focuses on non-elite segments of a population, presuming that there is some degree of increased authenticity to studying
how religion ‘is actually practiced’ by a group rather than how it is ideally described at such sites as formal doctrinal statements written by the
elites of any given movement.
Magic term with Latin and, before that, Greek precursors that is used
today both popularly and among scholars, with the latter group (at
least in the late nineteenth century) being very interested to distinguish
it from religion (inasmuch as both could be understood to be concerned
with, among other things, influencing or manipulating events from a
distance through cause/effect relationships different from day-to-day
life (e.g., incantations, intercessory prayer, etc.). Among the intellectualists some speculated that magic formed an earlier stage in the eventual
development of religion. Even the later sociologist, Émile Durkhiem,
was interested in distinguishing religion from magic when he famously
concluded that ‘there is no church of magic’ (that is, for him magic was
not a social phenomenon). Today, though it is still used by scholars as
a term to name a distinct set of claims and actions deserving of study,
some would instead see it as a pejorative or at least rhetorical term
whereby groups attempt to distinguish claims they see as alien and illegitimate (called by them magic) from those that are familiar and seen to
be authoritative (understood as religious). See superstition.
Mana [Maori term, among indigenous Polynesian peoples in what we now
call New Zealand, used to name power, status, or authority, ranging
from forces of nature to what some might term the sacred] term which
entered English through colonial explorations in the mid-nineteenth
century; adopted by some early scholars of religion who were intent
on identifying the evolutionary origins of religion. Though there were,
at that time, many contenders (example, the theory of animism), some
argued that the contemporary sense of mana that was found among the
local inhabitants of New Zealand constituted such an archaic starting
point for what we today has developed into religion. Such scholarship,
however, was premised on what are now seen to be faulty assumptions
about the development of human beings over time as well as the presumption that some races are lower or more primitive than others.
160 Glossary
Material religion term that has gained popularity in the second half of
the twentieth century, following developments in such other fields as
anthropology and history; given the longstanding emphasis on studying texts (themselves a material artifact, of course), but seen as the
secondary site where prior authors’ private intentions and meanings
were encoded, some scholars now emphasize the study of very different artifacts, those not necessarily identified with so-called high or elite
culture (in the way that literary/writing can be, in many cultures of
time periods). The move toward studying so-called material religion is
therefore part of an effort to write histories or ethnographies that take
popular culture more seriously. Critics of this movement have claimed
that it can be a rebranded form of phenomenology of religion, given
that material items are studied but only inasmuch as they are thought to
embody (that is, manifest) prior, intangible meanings—an ironically
idealist focus given the movement’s supposedly materialist aims. See
also lived religion.
Materialism a philosophical viewpoint that prioritizes matter or the physical world over mind or spirit, the latter being derived from the former;
to be distinguished from philosophical idealism.
Meaning common term used today in folk or popular discourse but, in
a technical sense, it is generally used in two different ways by scholars. First, much as in the popular usage, many use it to name what
is assumed to be a pre-linguistic feature that is conveyed by means of
a sign system, such as language, from one person or item to another
(for example, a sentence can mean something just as can a person).
Second, it is used to name a post-linguistic product that is created, as
opposed to merely being carried, by means of language’s rules. For the
first approach, meaning is often assumed to be a private and individual
matter that is only subsequently expressed (as in projected or pushed
outward) in public while, for the second approach, it is considered to be
a public phenomenon that exists only inasmuch as speakers and listeners, or writers and readers, collaborate within the same set of symbolic
rules. See also hermeneutics.
Metaphysics [Greek meta-, meaning after, following + physiké, meaning nature and the world of production] the Greek phrase, ta meta ta
physika, meant literally ‘that which is after the physics’, implying early
cataloguing/placement of an untitled text by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 bce) after another of his works, entitled
Physics, that dealt with the natural world or, what he termed, Being
that is endowed with motion (that is, self-determination, motivation,
or will [that is, agency], something not possessed by art). The untitled
text that followed Physics in early collections of Aristotle’s works dealt
with questions of origin and first principles; it traditionally went by the
name of Metaphysics. What was therefore originally a term of sequential classification comes today to stand for that branch of philosophy
Glossary 161
that addresses questions of being, reality, existence, the origins of the
universe, etc. Today the prefix ‘meta-’ is often used to signify theoretical work, or work that examines assumptions that operate behind
scholarship, as in the difference between developing a theory of religion
as opposed to studying theories of religion themselves: meta-theory.
See positivism.
Methodological agnosticism see agnosticism.
Modernity although commonly used as a synonym for ‘contemporary’
or ‘current’, such terms as ‘modern’, ‘modernism’, and ‘modernity’ are
used as technical terms to name a period in European, and later North
American, history that could be said to develop from sometime in the
seventeenth until the late twentieth century, characterized by certain
intellectual, governmental, legal, economic, social, artistic, and architectural movements. Given the different usages of the terms modern,
modernism, and modernity, a precise definition is difficult to provide;
it generally denotes a period whose climax comes in the late nineteenth
and early to mid-twentieth century, characterized by assumptions concerning how meaning and representation function as well as how social
organization ought to take place. The rise of the scientific method,
realist painting (based on perspective), the correspondence theory of
meaning, industrialist and capitalist economies, and the nation-state all
represent moments in the development of modernity. Contrary to postmodernism, understood as a mid- to late twentieth-century European
movement associated with an emphasis on disjunction, difference, perspective, context, and the gap between a signifer (such as a red octagon
with white trim and the letter S, T, O and P written inside it) and that
which it is presumed to signify (come to a stop), modernism is associated with a confidence concerning the direct links between intentions,
words, and meanings.
Monothetic/polythetic definitions deriving from Greek for either one,
alone (mono—) or many, much (poly—) that are ‘capable of placing’, as
in one-placement and many-placements. Monothetic definitions, which
can be essentialist or functionalist, presume a limited set of necessary
characteristics or purposes whereas polythetic (or what might also be
termed multi-factoral) definitions identify a range of traits or functions,
none of which is sufficient in order for the object to qualify as a member
of a class. See family resemblance.
Mosque [Arabic term, masjid, adapted by various European languages,
notably the French mosquée] place where Muslims meet to pray (usually segregated by gender), including an open prayer hall with an indentation in one wall, indicating the direction of Mecca (called the mihrab),
and often with an adjacent minaret—the tower from which people are
called to pray five times daily by the muezzin who recites the adhan
(which includes: ‘Allah is great. There is no god but Allah. Muhammad
is the messenger of Allah’.) This statement of faith (called the Shahada)
162 Glossary
also constitutes the first of the so-called Five Pillars of Islam (the set of
basic doctrines and practices of a devout Muslim).
Muslim see Islam.
Mysterium tremendum et fascinans Latin phrase coined by the German
Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto to name the awe-some (fascinating,
full of awe) mystery that, he argued in his German work on comparative theology, Das Heilige (1917; translated as The Idea of the Holy,
1923), was the object common to all forms of religious experience.
Myth [Greek mythos, meaning word, story or narrative] term whose
current popular understanding can be traced back to an argument of
Plato’s in his ancient Greek dialogue entitled The Republic; ‘myth’
today, at least in popular discourse, often designates fanciful, false, or
fictional narratives that are to be distinguished from historical narrative or rational discourses (Greek, logos). Sometimes used instead to
refer to narratives that are transmitted orally and tell of supernatural
beings that can accomplish deeds that humans cannot, with the origins
myth (known as a cosmogony [the origin/genesis of a system of order])
sometimes proposed as the prototypical example. For idealist scholars,
myth, conceived as the expression of certain modes of thought, was
traditionally understood to come before, and thus inspire, ritual. ‘Myth’
as a classification is now often used by functionalist scholars of religion
to refer to any narrative that is used by a group of people to satisfy any
basic need that a society or an individual may have.
Nation-state [Latin natio, meaning stock or race, ‘that which has been
born’; as in native + Latin status, meaning position, the manner of
standing, one’s condition, as in the condition of a region or place) the
name given to modern, large-scale social units that combine the earlier
sense of an ethnic or ancestral group (a nation, clan, or tribe) with the
more recent political sense of a group organized around legal principles (such as those who possess citizenship not as a birthright but as
an identity adopted by means of legal procedures). Often, nationalism,
understood as an expression of one’s political identity, is distinguished
from patriotism with only the latter being understood as positive. This
distinction is spurious for it is apparent that the same behavior (singing songs, marching, displaying flags and military hardware, engaging
in nationalist rhetorics, presumptions that God is on one’s side during
a time of war, etc.) when practiced by one’s enemies is classified as
nationalistic whereas when practiced by one’s own group or one’s allies
it constitutes benign patriotism.
Native [Latin nativus, from birth, inherent, to be born with] in later Middle
Ages the term comes to be associated with being from a particular place
as well as being born into a condition of subservience, even bondage or
slavery. Eventually, the term is applied to the local inhabitants of what
Europeans called ‘the New World,’ in which Europeans see themselves
as newly ruling. See also indigenous.
Glossary 163
Naturalistic theories of religion as opposed to theological approaches to
the study of religion that presume that the basis of religion is to be
found in a supernatural source (such as God, the gods, etc.), naturalistic
approaches presuppose that those beliefs, behaviors or institutions classified as ‘religious’ are in fact mundane elements of the so-called natural
world—that is, the historical, cultural world. In this sense, ‘natural’
does not necessarily carry the connotation of ‘inevitable’ or ‘the way
it ought to be’ but, instead, is linked to an earlier sense of ‘natural
science’ in that it is the systematic study of the empirical (observable
with one of the five senses) world. Of course this is to be distinguished
from what was once called ‘natural religion’—the category used for
those who infer the existence of God from the observation of the natural world, such as the so-called design argument (that is, the complex
workings of the natural world betray the existence of a design and a
design necessitates the existence of a designer, much as the complex
workings of a watch found on an isolated beach signifies the existence
of a designer [or so first argued by the Christian theologian William
Paley (1743–1805)]; contemporary intelligent design efforts to undermine evolutionary theory presume this very argument). Although early
contributors to a naturalistic approach to religion can be dated to several centuries ago—notably the Scottish philosopher David Hume’s
book, A Natural History of Religion (1757)—they began to flourish in
the late nineteenth century and today involve the work of, among others, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, political economists,
and cognitive scientists.
Necessary as used in philosophy, necessary is opposed to contingent; the
former signifies something that is inevitable or required, by strictest
definition, whereas the latter signifies something that may or may not
be the case, depending on a variety of other, prior factors. For example,
it is a biological necessity that human beings require oxygen in order
to live; however, continuing to live is contingent upon breathing, eating, sleeping, etc. Sometimes necessary is distinguished from sufficient,
as in a necessary cause versus a sufficient cause: the former signifies a
prior factor that is required should certain results come about (such as
the need for professors to publish their research in order to be awarded
tenure), whereas the latter signifies a prior factor that alone will lead to
the desired results (that is, publishing research alone is not sufficient to
be tenured, for teaching well is also required).
New religious movements (NRM) preferred term among scholars, such
as sociologist or psychologists of religion, to name what previous generations of scholars, let alone contemporary mass media, might have
simply termed cults. Non-normative classification that identifies some
movements based on their relative newness, at least as compared to
those religions with which the public are general familiar (the so-called
world religions). Scholars who study NRMs might count among them
164 Glossary
a wide variety of groups, all of which likely occupy some degree of
marginal position as compared to well-established religions, though
some NRMs might be quite large and relatively popular as compared
to others that are rather small. How something classed as a NRM later
gets reclassified as a world religion is an interesting question with no
clear answer.
Nones a recent term developed to name those who, on polls, reply that they
have no religion (by answering None or None of the Above). Pollsters
and scholars alike have therefore begun, in recent years, to treat the
so-called Nones as a relatively coherent group, inquiring of their voting
patterns, buying habits, etc. That some people report having no religion
does not necessarily mean that they are atheists or agnostics, of course;
it could, instead, either be a protest over the manner in which such polls
frame their questions about religion (for instance, what could be seen as
limited or biased options presented for those taking the poll) or could
be evidence of the person’s criticism for so-called organized religion, as
is seen in the equally recent spiritual but not religious (SBNR) movement, which defines spirituality as an inner experience of some sort that
is in opposition to the mere outward (and potentially empty and nonessential) rituals and institutions of religion.
Normative [Latin norma, rule] word used to name a judgmental disposition that establishes or asserts an expected standard, or norm, that
something not just does (a description) or should (a recommendation)
but ought to (a command), and therefore must, meet. Sometimes held
to be synonymous with ‘prescriptive’ (as in to enforce a rule or required
mode of action, such as strictly following a doctor’s prescription), the
study of religion aims to avoid posing or answering normative questions, seeking not to inquire, for instance, which religion is best, because
answering it requires elevating one among many criteria used by a variety of insiders and then using it as if it is the uncontested norm against
which all religious are to be compared and assessed. Instead, the study
of religion is non-evaluatively comparative, looking merely for crosscultural similarities and differences that can might be explained in a
naturalistic manner. See methodological agnosticism.
Orientalism a term that has traditionally named a scholarly discipline, at
its height in nineteenth-century Europe, that takes as its subject matter
the study of the Arab world (the so-called Orient or what was once commonly known as ‘Mystic East’), its history, language, and contemporary
customs, religion, and politics. It is this sense of the term that we today
find in the name for the University of London’s well-known School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), founded in 1916. More critically,
‘Orientalism’ now often stands for a particular attitude toward what
scholars term ‘the Other’; in this sense, most famously examined in a
book by this title by the Columbia University literary critic Edward
Said (1935–2003), Orientalism names a widespread strategy whereby
Glossary 165
groups create a sense of themselves as distinct from others by generating
powerfully negative and easily reproduced caricatures and stereotypes
of those from whom they see themselves to differ. In Said’s analysis
(Orientalism [1978]), the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century preoccupation among Europeans intent on studying ‘the Orient’—learning its
languages, mapping it, studying its culture, and writing novels about its
mystery and danger—functioned to create a representation of the Arab
‘Other’ that reflected not actual traits in this part of the world, but,
instead, functioned to reinforce a sense of superiority and order at home
in Europe. Given that today the term ‘Orient’ no longer refers to the socalled Middle East (and such modern countries as Egypt, Israel, Syria,
etc.) but to parts of Asia (e.g., China, Japan, Korea, etc.), it should be
evident that this term is plastic and can be applied to whomever the
apparent in-group sees as different from themselves and thus unknown.
Origins [Latin originem, to begin, start, or arise, as in one’s family descent
or ancestry] signifies the start but in rather absolute terms, as characterized by an origins myth, for instance (such as the biblical Book of
Genesis’s opening: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth . . .’), technically called a cosmogony (such tales are found crossculturally). These discourses are often seen by scholars as ahistorical,
given that they attempt to narrate a time before time or before people
(such as the storytellers themselves), making authoritative claims as to
the definitive start of some group or phenomenon. Origins discourses
can therefore be distinguished from discourses on beginnings (a distinction made by the late Edward Said in his book Beginnings: Intention
and Method [1985]) whereby only the latter are seen as historical and
thus the results of prior natural causes, etc. From the point of view
of this latter approach, origins discourses are seen as rhetorical rather
than factual or descriptive and thus ways in which current social actors
do things in the present by leading listeners to believe that things have
always been done in this way.
Phenomenology [Greek phainomenon, to appear] the descriptive and systematic study of that which appears or that which presents itself; to
be distinguished from ontology [Greek ontos, being], the philosophical
study of being or ultimate reality, as well as metaphysics. Although
first developed in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy (notably the work of the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl
[1859–1938]), early on scholars of religion adapted phenomenological
methods to develop a technique for studying claims, symbols, practices, and institutions that seemed to defy rational explanation (such
as belief in an afterlife or rebirth). The term ‘phenomenology of religion’ is credited to the Dutch scholar, P.D. [Pierre Daniel] Chantepie
de la Saussaye (1848–1920). This approach avoids assessing the truth
or reality of such claims (because their truth is thought to reside in the
subject’s interior sentiments), studying instead what is assumed to be
166 Glossary
the public forms taken (that is, that which appears to the observer’s
sense) by what is often termed a symbol’s essence or a text’s meaning.
Phenomenologists of religion, many of whom would also be termed
comparativists, therefore suspend judgment (that is, are methodologically agnostic; see agnosticism]) and work to describe what appears
to them rather than judging it or criticizing it. They are therefore well
known for advocating empathy as well as the bracketing (or setting
aside) of assumptions and preconceived notions when one confronts
unfamiliar data. Phenomenolgocial method therefore presupposes both
the objectivity of observers as well as their ability to identify with the
experiences and meanings of the people they study. See experience, hermeneutics, lived religion, positivism, reductionism.
Philosophy [Greek, philo + sophia, the love of wisdom], though today
it names a specific academic field or department, in prior times it was
often used as more broadly synonymous with all efforts to gain wisdom,
hence the name of higher education’s highest degree that people across
all fields can earn: the PhD (doctor of philosophy). But naming an academic discipline, it is often divided into a series of subfields or regional
areas, such as analytic philosophy (much associated with Britain and
the US), Continental philosophy (to name approaches adopted across
Europe over the past centuries), as well as epistemology (the study of
the conditions of knowledge itself), moral philosophy, the philosophy
of religion, etc. De-colonizing philosophy, as with a number of academic fields, is a challenge inasmuch as it can, for many, be mainly
concerned with European and North American scholarship, though
there are now significant efforts to engage in a cross-cultural philosophy in general, and in philosophy of religion in particular; for systematic efforts to study, for example, the conditions that allow actors to
make claims about the world can be found across cultures and across
historical periods.
Pietas the Latin term, from which we derive the English word ‘piety’,
that is commonly (although perhaps misleadingly) translated by many
people today as ‘religion’. In the classical world, ‘piety’, like eusebia
and din, denoted a quality that resulted when one fulfilled one’s social
obligations and duties, which involved everything from properly performing rituals toward the gods to treating one’s superiors, peers, and
inferiors properly—that is, according to custom and the accepted rule
of propriety (see li). The common assumption today, prevalent in the
Euro–North American world and especially within the Christian tradition, that ‘religion’ denotes an inner faith or experience therefore interiorizes or privatizes that which, in antiquity and in other cultures, was
considered a public trait linked to observable behaviors one would or
would not perform satisfactorily.
Political economy the systematic study (science) of the manner in which
systems that govern power and privilege are interconnected with systems
Glossary 167
that govern patterns of exchange and the valuation of goods; the earlier
name for what is today often referred to simply as economics.
Polythetic definitions see monothetic/polythetic definitions.
Positivism although for some ‘positivism’ is used along with ‘reductionistic’ to name an attitude toward the study of culture that—at least
for those who fall in the theological, hermeneutic, and humanistic
traditions—is seen as overly reliant on the effort to reduce the meaning
of a participant’s testimony to observable, and thus predictable, facts,
more properly it is termed ‘logical positivism’—a term derived originally from the work of the early French social theorist, Auguste Comte
(1798–1857), and which refers to an originally Austrian and German
philosophical school of thought (which exerted great influence in North
America as well) that dates to the early decades of the twentieth century. Members of the so-called ‘Vienna Circle’ of philosophers developed a system of rules for establishing which propositions were and
were not meaningful and thus the proper topic of scientific discourse;
their system thereby classified many of the traditional topics addressed
within the field known as metaphysics (e.g., does God exist?) as meaningless. Their ‘verifiablity principle’ ensured that only those propositions that could conceivably be tested empirically or logically, and
thereby found either to correspond to some observable state of affairs
in the natural world or to obey the rules of logic (that is, were verifiable), were meaningful—all others were classified as nonsensical or, as
in the case of statements on morality, merely emotive. Experience and
the use of human reason to organize experience and generalize from
experience, were, therefore, the only basis for knowledge, and facts
were understood to be independent of human consciousness and intention, thereby ensuring that objectivity was an attainable goal. Reaching
the peak of their influence by the mid-twentieth century, it was realized
that logical positivists’ criterion of verifiability itself did not obey their
own rules (the rule itself did not correspond to any empirically observable fact); this presented an empirical and logical problem that could
not be overcome—although the philosopher of science, Karl Popper
(1902–94), revised this principle as the falsifiability criterion, whereby
scientific propositions were those that could, conceivably, be empirically tested and, at least potentially, disproved. Until such a time as a
proposition was disproved (such as ‘All dogs have four legs’), it could
be used ‘as if’ it was true, recognizing that one can never arrive at certain knowledge based on induction. Although few scholars of religion
would today classify themselves as positivists in the earlier sense of the
term, the goal of distinguishing participant claims from claims about
participants—relying, to varying degrees, on the distinction between
values and facts—yet remains for many scholars of religion.
Postmodernism contrary to modernism, postmodernism denotes a skeptical
attitude that follows on the heels of a confidence that was characteristic
168 Glossary
of pre-World War I Europe, the site of the rise of industrialization, the
establishment of the nation-state, and capitalism. Influenced by existentialism, postmodernism first takes hold in such areas as architecture and
art, where disjunction is used to draw attention to the manufactured
nature of all items of culture; because uniformity, such as windows on
a building all being aligned with each other, is not natural or inevitable,
but, instead, actively constructed, postmodernists draw attention to this
constructive activity in a way previously unseen in art, architecture, etc.
Contrary to realist art, then, postmodern works draw the viewer’s eye to
the composition of the artwork, aspects that had previously been overlooked. In literature and philosophy, postmodernism comes to name a
movement that problematizes the previous attitude toward the inherent links between intentions, words, and meanings; meaning-making
therefore comes to be seen as an ongoing activity with direct relevance
for context, such that postmodernists are often criticized as relativists.
Post-secular term used today to name a modern socio-political condition
in which some scholars argue that the traditional notions of sacred vs.
secular no longer apply or are actually breaking down and failing; a
reorganized condition of daily life in which previous distinctions and
strictly demarcated social zones no longer hold. The widely acknowledged failure of the secularization thesis is therefore seen by some as
evidence that such ways of categorizing contemporary social life are
insufficient. See secular.
Prescribe [Latin prae + scriber = to write beforehand] term today used
to indicate a rule or normative way in which to do something (that is,
to be prescriptive), thus a directive or authoritative claim that must be
followed, as in the early modern usage to indicate a physician’s orders.
To be distinguished from ‘proscribe’, meaning to limit something, condemn, or denounce. See also describe.
Primary source term used to name a main object of study or datum that
distinguishes it from a secondary source, which would be an item that
itself discusses some primary source. For example, a scholar studying
the Upanishads as a primary source (ancient Sanskrit philosophical
texts central to Hinduism) might also consult various Sanskrit commentaries on these texts, in which an array of writers from various time
periods (whether they were themselves Hindu or not) attempt to interpret or comment on these texts for themselves. In this case, the subsequent commentaries would be considered secondary sources. That a
secondary source could itself be the main focus for scholars, making it
their primary source, should be obvious, thus indicating that primary
and secondary sources are terms that operate on a sliding scale.
Primitive [Latin primus, first] term used to denote a source and then the
first inhabitants of a place but, once evolutionary theory is applied (that
is, what we now know as the problematic theory of social Darwinism),
in the later nineteenth century, to how all social groups were thought
Glossary 169
to develop over time, the term takes a pejorative turn and names not
just the earlier people but those thought to have been the most unsophisticated and under-developed people, groups identified as existing
still today, as if time forgot them, and which were thought by earlier
European scholars to represent an early stage in the common development exhibited by all human communities. It should be evident that the
assumptions driving the use of this term are no longer in fashion among
the vast majority of scholars and are easily critiqued today; nonetheless,
scholars still opt for a variety of other terms (though now no longer
driven by a social Darwinist theory) to name groups that they continue
to see as different from their own, opting for such terms as primal,
tribal, small-scale, native, or indigenous.
Private [Latin privatus, not part of or owned/controlled by the state, unofficial, individual or personal, set apart from governing authorities]
term used today to denote a zone that is separate from the public, with
private/public forming a classic example of a binary pair. In this case,
privacy is understood as a social product whereby a group decides what
will exceed its knowledge or grasp—though groups can always suspend
such rules, such as the police entering a domestic dwelling with no warrant so long as their entry meets a specific series of requires (invited in,
reason to believe a crime is being committed, in pursuit of someone to
be arrested, etc.). Seen in this way, privacy becomes a social phenomenon open to debate, such as governments debating what constitutes
online privacy in the digital age.
Profane [Latin profanus, from pro + fanus, meaning before, as in outside
or in front of, the temple] considered the opposite of sacred; that which
was not admitted into the temple, or done while in the temple, which
extends to notions of not consecrated, ritually unclean, polluted, or
improper (as in ‘profanity’ used to signify improper speech).
Prototype The original or model on which something is based or formed;
something that serves to illustrate the typical qualities of a class or
group. For so-called Western scholars, Christianity is often unconsciously the prototypical religion, providing the model by which one
judges other religions. Although Islam is not the worship of the Prophet
Muhammad, the name by which it was once known in Europe—
‘Mohammedanism’—and even the name by which ‘the middle path’
is commonly now known—‘Buddhism’—provide a useful illustration
of how earlier European scholars used their knowledge of the centrality of Jesus Christ in something familiar to themselves, as the model
for naming and thereby comprehending things that were new and thus
unknown. That prototypes are necessary for cognition is not argued by
contemporary scholars; instead, as argued by the anthropologist Benson
Saler, what is argued is that prototypes are not to be understood or
used as ideal cases. Rather, they are working models that require adjustment when new information is acquired. The selection of features to be
170 Glossary
included in family resemblance definitions are generally thought to arise
from a prototype with which one happens to be familiar.
Psychology the systematic study (science) of the mind or of mental states
and processes; psychology of religion is but one among a number of
subfields of the academic study of religion.
Public [Latin, publicus, of the people] see private.
Public intellectual term used increasingly across the later twentieth century
to name scholars who address their work to wider audiences beyond
their colleagues and students. Today, one would associate the term with
scholars who make a point of appearing in mass media, commenting on
or interpreting current affairs.
Q [German Quelle, meaning source or origin] ‘Q’ is the shorthand scholars use to name a document hypothesized to have existed and been
in distribution among members of the earliest groups that eventually
become known as Christianity. Based on the study of the so-called
synoptic Gospels (syn-optic = with one eye, implying to view together;
a term given in the late eighteenth century to the first three Gospels:
Matthew, Mark, and Luke)—which possess similar narrative structure
and content, though which differ on significant details of the story of
Jesus’ life, teachings, and resurrection—historians and literary theorists hypothesized that one or another of the three existed first and that
subsequent authors must have had access to the earliest, from which
they borrowed material. For those who argue for the priority of the
Gospel of Mark—and there are those who argue for the priority of
Matthew—those passages that do not appear whatsoever in the text
of Mark (which is by far the shortest Gospel) and which are common
to Matthew and Luke (many of which are ‘sayings’ of Jesus, such as
the Sermon on the Mount’s Beatitudes [‘Blessed are the poor . . .’]) are
thought to have derived from a separate document, also in circulation
at the time but no longer in existence. Scholars who advocate this ‘two
source hypothesis’, therefore, attempt, through their analysis of the
texts in existence, to reconstruct Q.
Rational choice theory a modern form of social theory applied to the study
of religion, and derived from theories of economics that attempted to
account for the means by which consumers made their selections among
alternatives. Rational choice theory, favored by a number of US sociologists of religion, such as Rodney Stark, argues that such things as
church membership are based on a series of sensible decisions made by
participants, based on their assessment of costs and benefits (or gains
and losses). For those benefits that cannot be had immediately (or in this
life, such as justice), a series of compensators are drawn upon that make
up for the lack of the primary goal.
Redescription term closely associated with the work of Jonathan Z. Smith,
used by him in place of reduction, inasmuch as use of the latter generally presumes the existence of more basic, causal units from which
Glossary 171
secondary phenomena result. Instead of presuming such a reduction
when scholars claim to explain A as the effect of a more real or more
fundamental B, Smith opted to see scholarship as a mode of translation, often using Émile Durkheim’s work as an instance, whereby Smith
understood him to have translated the language of religion into the language of sociology, thereby taking the initial descriptions of how religious people might talk about their own world, when queried, and then
redescribing that initial description but doing so now by means of the
language of social theory. See description.
Reductionism an approach to the creation of new knowledge that
attempts to account for one level of phenomena in terms of a more
basic series of propositions, much as observations from the world of
biology (such as monitoring the growth rate of cells) can be explained
by reducing them to the language of chemistry, which in turn can be
reduced to the theories of physics. In the study of religion, reductionism is often criticized for ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’;
in other words, those who presume that religion is sui generis argue
that reducing religion to, for example, sociology, and thereby explaining it completely as a sociological phenomenon, misses the irreducibly
religious character of the belief, act, symbol, or institution. Although
religion undoubtedly has a social dimension, as Ninian Smart would
have argued, it cannot completely be reduced to sociology—or psychology, or political economy, for that matter. For yet others who consider
religion to be a thoroughly human institution, there is no choice but to
study it by means of reductionistic, naturalistic theories derived from
such domains as psychology, sociology, etc. In fact, even scholars who
favor non-reductionistic approaches have little choice but to reduce,
since their cross-cultural work necessarily must use comparative categories, such as Mircea Eliade’s use of ‘the sacred’, by means of which
the language of participants is reduced to the language of the analyst.
See hermeneutics, phenomenology, positivism.
Religion the precise etymology (or historical derivation) of the modern word
religion is unknown. There are, however, several possible roots from
which the term derives. Most commonly, the ancient Latin words religere
(to be careful, mindful) and religare (to bind together) are cited as possible precursors. Whereas the Roman writer Cicero (106–43 bce) favored
the first option, the later Christian writer Lactantius (250–325 ce)
favored the latter. In his book, The Meaning and End of Religion
(1962), Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who is among the more noted scholars
to have investigated the category’s history, suggests that both streams—
one emphasizing the private disposition to be mindful whereas the other
emphasizes the more objective sense of social processes that build identity—
may have coalesced into the Latin religio. Jonathan Z. Smith, also among
the scholars to have devoted attention to this problem, observes in an
essay entitled ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’ (in Mark C. Taylor [ed.],
172 Glossary
Critical Terms for Religious Studies [1998]) that in Roman and early
Christian Latin literature the nouns religio and religiones, as well as the
adjective religiosus and the adverb religios, were all employed mainly
with reference to, in his words, ‘careful performance of ritual obligations’—as in the modern sense of, in his words, a ‘conscientious repetitive action such as “She reads the morning newspaper religiously”’. If
this is chosen as our origin for the modern term, then there is some
irony in the fact that today it is often used to refer to an inner sentiment,
affectation (e.g., religious experience and faith) rather than within the
context of ritual (that is, routinized behavior and participation in social
institutions). As J.Z. Smith has pointed out, the fact that ethics and etiquette books immediately precede books on religion in the US Library
of Congress catalog system may carry with it this earlier sense of religion as a form of carefully performed behavior. Regardless of which
etymology one chooses, the term ‘religion’ remains troublesome for
those who presuppose some universal essence to lie beneath the term—
whether that essence is, as W.C. Smith argued, ‘faith in transcendence’
(in distinction from the outer, ‘cumulative tradition’, as he phrased it)
or whether it is some more specific item, such as famously argued by
the Swiss Protestant theologian, Karl Barth (1886–1968), who criticized
‘religion’ (that is, what he understood as inessential outward ritual and
institution) as sinful (inasmuch as it was human beings trying to know
God—whether those human beings were or were not Christian), as
opposed to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ (which, he believed,
was bestowed upon humans by God). That this approach has little, if
anything, in common with the naturalistic, academic study of religion
should be clear to the reader. See also religions, world religions.
Religions plural form of the singular religion that sometimes is used to
distinguish the discrete historical, regional, or traditional instances of
religion from that which they are assumed to share in common. In fact,
in their effort to be more empirical in their work, some scholars will not
even refer to religion in the singular and, instead, only make reference
to specific religions.
Religionswissenschaft a German term that roughly translates as the science of religion (Wissenschaft = systematic study of). See comparative
religion and history of religions.
Religious education (RE) although it could signify indoctrination, and
thus initiation, into a particular religion or religious community, RE
can also mean what is practiced in a variety of European countries,
where the academic study of religion is taken to be a place where future
public school teachers can be trained to instruct students on the descriptive facts of the world religions. These two senses are therefore rather
distinct from one another. RE, in the latter sense, is seen in such countries as an important element in training future citizens (among the purposes of tax-supported education programs). Given how controversial
Glossary 173
discussions around religion in general or some religions in particular
can strike some, notably in the US, RE is not a universal element of all
liberal democracies’ public education.
Rhetoric [Greek, from terms for speaker, speech, or words] specifically,
the art of doing things with words but, more broadly, the act of shaping situations or expectations for effect. Narrowly, the instance of a
rhetorical question exemplifies how some questions can be posed with
no intent that they be answered, since just asking them has already had
the speaker’s desired effect (such as aggressively and argumentatively
asking someone ‘Are you stupid?!’). Rhetoric, then, is a term that can
more generally name how it is that people fashion things to achieve
desired outcomes (not just questions but perhaps their style of dress
or perhaps the design of buildings or even the way they classify and
thereby arrange the items in their world). Although often opposed to
the assumption that words can instead have substance and thus meaning rather than just being decorative, this position itself could be considered rhetorical in support of a certain way of seeing the way we
make and legitimize certain meanings.
Ritual a system of actions that, according to their practitioners, is used
by a group of people to interact with the cosmos and/or directly relate
to superhuman beings; these actions may consist of worship, sacrifice,
prayer, etc. Commonly understood as any set of actions that is supposed to facilitate interaction between humans and superhuman beings.
For materialist scholars, ritual is often presumed to predate myth insomuch as routinized behaviors are thought to provide the physical and
cognitive conditions in which meaning systems (and hence mythic narratives) can take place. Scholars study ritual behaviors in terms of their
psychological, sociological, political, even their economic causes and
implications. That some behaviors one might classify as a ‘habit’ (for
instance, regularly brushing one’s teeth) could just as easily be classified
as a ‘ritual’ suggests that there is a great deal at stake in how one classifies behaviors as well as in the particular theory of behavior that one
uses to guide one’s classifications.
Romanticism late eighteenth-century philosophical and literary/artistic/
musical movement in Europe which, reacting to the Enlightenment of
the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, advocated for the individual, subjectivity, and feeling/inspiration, placing value on natural
settings and a glorification of past exploits.
Sacred [Latin sacer, meaning set apart, dedicated, distinguished, as in set
apart from the public or mundane world]; to be distinguished from
profane. Although widely used as an adjective (e.g., sacred texts) ‘the
Sacred’ was a term of choice for Mircea Eliade, used to describe that
which is shared in common among all religions and that which manifests
itself in varied forms throughout the symbols of the world’s religions:
the experience of the Sacred. Akin to other essentialists who name the
174 Glossary
object of this experience as the Holy (Rudolf Otto) or Power (Gerardus
van der Leeuw), or even religious experience (William James).
Sacrifice [Latin, to make sacred] thought by early scholars of religion to
constitute an archaic and thus evolutionarily early religious form, in
which animals were literally killed (as a stand in or representative of
something else), portions of which were offered to the gods while other
parts were cooked and sometimes distributed within the group in a
strictly followed fashion, today a wide variety of theories of sacrifice
can be found, which range from trying to understand the actual practice
(sometimes also known as blood-letting) to the widely present rhetoric of sacrifice, such as the quotation of the biblical John 15:13 that
can be found inscribed at war memorials in some countries or in some
Christian churches: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friends’.
Sanatana-dharma a compound Sanskrit term meaning the eternal or cosmic system of duties (dharma = system of social obligations, as in people ‘doing their dharma’), implying a universal moral order comprised
of countless beings all diligently carrying out their proper social and
ritual action; it is the term used by some practitioners of Hinduism to
refer to their cultural practices as unchanging and divinely sanctioned.
Sanskrit an ancient Indo-European language that began on the Indian
subcontinent; somewhat like Latin once functioned in the Roman
Catholic church, it is today the ritual language used in the sacred texts
of Hinduism and some of the texts of Buddhism.
Scripture [Latin scriber, to write, but also scriptura, something written
or specifically a writing from the Bible] though traditionally and more
narrowly used to signify the entirety of, or even just a passage from, the
Christian canon (the closed set of separate narratives, poems, laws, and
letters, that, taken together, constitute the Bible) today it is often used
as a cross-culturally applicable term for any set of texts seen by a group
as being especially authoritative or set apart, that is, sacred. Thus, one
might understand not just the Hebrew (in Judaism) or Christian bibles
as being scripture but also the Qur’an (in Islam), the Rig Veda (in
Hinduism), etc. Using the term in this manner can reflect an element of
some scholar’s way of defining religion inasmuch as it may see certain
elements as more or less likely to be present for something to count as a
religion, such as an authoritative text.
Secular [Latin saecularis, pertaining to a time or time period] eventually,
in the later Middle Ages, the term comes to be associated not just with
historical time (as opposed to God’s time) but also with those who lived
and worked outside the walls and thus rules of religious orders (that
is, where monks and nuns carried out their work); thus so-called secular clergy or secular priests were those who worked in local parishes.
Eventually, this distinction between types of religious officials in the
Roman Catholic church came to be associated with today’s sacred/secular
Glossary 175
distinction whereby the latter was assumed to be free of, and potentially opposed to, the former. Secularism, then, names a broad model of
social organization and governance in which religion is understood to
be either set apart from the rest of social and political life or constrained
in some manner by governments (though, more correctly, we should
say secularisms, since there are a variety of models in practice). See also
laïcité, post-secular.
Secularization thesis a theory shared by a wide array of scholars in the midtwentieth century in which it was assumed that, eventually, religious
involvement and identification would decline and that industrialized
societies would become more secular. This approach presupposed, as did
a number of functionalist approaches of the time, that because religion
served a specific purpose, should this role be played by something else
or should the conditions requiring this purpose be changed, then there
would be no need for religion anymore. For instance, if the members of
the working class in a society better aligned themselves with those who
controlled access to capital, thereby gaining access to (at least some of) it
for themselves (such as factories implementing profit-sharing or employeeowned plans that incentivize their workers’ labor), then a Marxist scholar
might predict that religious affiliation in that group would decline, since
the role they understood religion to play would no longer be relevant.
This, however, seems not to have happened (the Iranian Revolution of
1978–9 is often used as an early example of the so-called return or resurgence of religion in the later twentieth century), ensuring that those who
continue to advocate for one version of another of the secularization
thesis now have a rather more difficult time persuading their peers.
Semiotics the systematic study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative systems of behavior; a theory of how signs come to be meaningful, based upon linguistic theory which assumes that meaning is not
an essential quality expressed by symbols but, instead, the result of relationships established and managed by means of structures (such as a
grammar or the rules of a game). See structuralism.
Sincerity [Latin, for purity or completeness] the term used today to name
someone whose motives are considered to be pure; the quality of truthfulness, purity, or truthful and genuine, such as someone offering a
sincere apology or signing a letter ‘Sincerely yours . . .’. In US law it
is now commonly used as a marker of legitimate religious belief, that
is, the court values when ‘sincerely held belief’ is cited as the cause for
someone’s actions or inactions (such as a prisoner requesting privileges
in a prison system), but it has no set of standard criteria (such as the
Lemon test) to determine which beliefs count as sincere and which do
not, opting instead for such things as frequency of attendance at worship ceremonies, length of time the beliefs have been held, as if these are
somehow indicative of the authenticity of a claim someone might make.
See belief, conscience.
176 Glossary
Social sciences an organizational title given to that area of the modern
university that usually includes such academic disciplines as economics,
sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science; in distinction from the humanities, the social sciences seek to generate testable
theories, often on a model similar to the way knowledge is gained in
the so-called ‘hard sciences’ (e.g., chemistry, physics, etc.). Since the
social sciences study the actions and motivations of conscious subjects,
they are sometimes known as the ‘soft sciences’, since their findings are
sometimes critiqued as more interpretive and thus open to debate than
the work carried out in other sciences. Because many in the academic
study of religion understand their object of study to refer to an inner
experience of tremendous meaning to the participant, this field is most
often placed within the humanities, though it is occasionally found in
social sciences divisions of the university. See human sciences.
Society [Latin societas, union of peers, group, community, implying an
organization of allies] term commonly used for a group of people who
understand themselves to share something in common (whether traits,
practices, or aspirations), such that, to whatever degree, they feel some
form of affinity for one another. Usually used to name larger-scale associative units but could also name small-scale units, such as the family.
Scholars may fine-tune this now popular, even commonsense understanding to instead signify the set of practices in which people engage
that produce in them these feelings of affinity, seeing this thing called
society not as primary or self-evident but, rather, as a secondary effect
of these prior and often overlooked actions, such as engaging in routinized behaviors (that is, rituals, such as repeatedly facing a flag and
singing a national anthem as a child) that assist in creating a sense of
membership in and identification with a common cause.
Sociology [Latin socius, meaning companion + logos, meaning word,
speech, discourse, reason] the science or the study of the origin, development, organization, and functioning of human society; the science of
the fundamental laws of social relations and institutions. The sociology
of religion is but one subfield of the academic study of religion.
Soul [Old English, from assorted other roots, that which animates a person] a common term in English for the part of a person (and, perhaps,
other animals as well, though this is open to debate among some)
thought to outlive the body; earlier scholars might have talked about
‘the ghost in the machine’ to name the way they considered animating
soul and inanimate matter to combine to form a person. Coupled with
this notion of a soul, for many who use the term, are such specifically
Christian assumptions of its life after death, its eventual judgment, and
thus ideas of either Heaven or Hell where the soul is said to reside after
death. Should these ideas necessarily be associated with the term then it
is questionable whether the term can serve as a cross-disciplinary term,
as some try to use it, thereby aiming to subsume other culture’s beliefs
Glossary 177
about the afterlife. For although beliefs concerning bodies being constituted of, and animated by, ahistorical essences are found worldwide,
Spiritual but not religious (SBNR) see Nones.
Spirituality see Nones
Stipulate to demand or establish conditions ahead of time, as in a contractual agreement; in the study of religion it can be used to distinguish among types of definitions: those that are descriptive, in which
the definition is presumed to match/identify traits observed in things
already known to be religions versus a stipulative definition that preestablishes the characteristics that the definer wishes to examine and
thereby predetermines as constituting religion.
Structuralism developing from out of the context of the structural functionalist approach, once dominant in cultural anthropology, structuralism
names an approach to the study of meaning systems (such as language or
culture) much associated with the ground-breaking work of the French
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009). Structural functionalists used a biological metaphor to understand social systems, seeing
them as comprised of discrete and empirically observable units, such as:
kinship systems, systems that govern the exchange of goods, systems to
govern the payment of debts, and rituals (such as rites of passage from
one status to another)—all of which could be observed by the ethnographer (one who writes about another group of people). In playing their
various roles and each fulfilling their separate function, they collectively
contributed to the overall well-being of the unit. Contrary to this position, structuralists argue that the structure is not in the external world
but, instead, is in the human mind itself. Through studying paired oppositions that occur in such things as rituals or myths (such as up/down,
in/out, male/female, light/dark, cooked/raw, sacred/profane, etc.), LéviStrauss argued that scholars could decode (what others might have called
interpret) the means by which groups of people set about ordering their
worlds, classifying its components, establishing their relationships, and
in the process making the world sensible and inhabitable. In this regard,
structuralism owes much to the Swiss scholar, Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857–1913), whose early work in linguistics and semiotics provided the
basis for a critique of the correspondence theory of meaning. Saussure
argued that, for example, the symbol ‘i’ means what it does because it is
placed in relation to the symbols ‘h’ and ‘j’ (when understood in terms of
this thing we know as ‘the alphabet’) or in relation to, say, the symbols
‘f’ and ‘t’, as in the thing we know as the word ‘fit’. And ‘fit’ has meaning
because it is in relation to ‘fat’; in other words, meaning is not an essential trait (that is, ‘i’ does not correspond to some i-ness); instead, meaning is the result of a series of relations of similarity and difference that is
established by an overall structure which is itself contingent.
Sui generis [from Latin, designates a thing that belongs to its own kind;
peculiar; unique; self-caused] this term has been used to designate the
178 Glossary
claim that religion or religious experience is of a kind wholly unique
and thus irreducible. If religion is sui generis then it is a thing of a kind
incomparable with any other social institution or practice and therefore
cannot be explained using a naturalistic theory of religion. Arguments
for the unique nature of religion were successfully used in the 1950s
and 1960s to help establish autonomous Departments of Religious
Studies—insomuch as the studies of anthropologists or sociologists, to
name but two, were thought to overlook and obscure the irreducible
element (or essence): religious experience. See reductionism.
Superstition [Latin superstitio, a foretelling of the future or respect, even
fear, of the gods] once used by earlier scholars of religion to name
what they considered to be a development (and thus inferior) phase in
the history of religion, today it is widely understood by scholars as a
practically useful rhetorical term groups that allows speakers and writers to name and thereby dismiss what they see as similar or competing
belief systems.
Synagogue [Greek synagogue, place to gather people together] term used
to name the place of worship for Jewish people (segregated by gender in
orthodox groups), though the ancient Hebrew term keneset might also
be used (the latter is also the name of the national legislature in Israel)
as well as the Yiddish shul (related to the German Schule, from which
English derived ‘school’). Synagogues typically contain an ark, where
one finds copies of the Hebrew Torah scroll stored (Torah = the first five
books of the Hebrew Bible, also known collectively as the Pentateuch),
a lamp that is kept burning, and the bimah or platform on which the
Torah is unrolled and read.
Taboo [Tongan (the Polynesian language spoken on the the island of
Tonga)] term that first entered English via Captain James Cook’s voyages in the later eighteenth century. Variants of the term were used by
people throughout this region to denote something that was specially
marked, or set apart, thus translated commonly in English as sacred,
and thus as naming something that was presumably venerated and
respected, even feared. In English, the term eventually comes to name
a condition of something being forbidden or out of bounds. See also
mana and totem.
Tautology [Greek tautos + logos = tautologia, repetition, explain by
merely saying over again] saying something again but in different words,
somewhat akin to the notion of a circular definition that defines something in light of itself, such as Paul Tillich’s famous definition: ‘in true
faith an ultimate concern is a concern about the truly ultimate’ (chpt. 1,
Dynamics of Faith [1957]). To say something is tautological is usually
a critique that identifies unnecessary repetition that fails to illuminate.
Theism [Greek theos, meaning god] a philosophical position to name a
family of belief systems that presuppose the existence of God or gods;
sub-types could include such belief systems as monotheism (belief in
Glossary 179
one God) or polytheism (belief in many gods); to be distinguished from
agnosticism and atheism.
Theodicy [Greek theos + diké, meaning the justice of god] term coined
by the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716) to
name the problem of justifying belief in the goodness of an all-powerful
divine being in light of routine empirical observations of what could be
called evil in the world. Traditionally, the problem has been divided by
European philosophers into three propositions that, it is argued, cannot
all be held simultaneously (what is called a trilemma, as opposed to a
mere dilemma): (1) God is all-powerful (omnipotent); (2) God is all-loving
(omnibenificient); (3) evil exists. Solving the problem of evil therefore
requires one either to forsake one proposition in favor of the other two
(e.g., evil exists because God is not all-powerful) or to adapt one or
more propositions such that the trilemma is avoided (e.g., although it
seems like evil to us, to God it is not). Theistic philosophers have also
worked to develop ways to distinguish among types of evil that need to
be addressed, such as moral evils, for which an intentional agent can
be held accountable (and the evil thus explained as the result of free
will) and natural evils, such as earthquakes (which do not appear to be
the result of an intentional agent’s actions). Although this is largely a
Christian philosophical issue, Max Weber argued that the Hindu doctrine of karma (the cosmic law of actions and reactions, in which past
deeds are thought to influence one’s future rebirth status) was but one
more attempt to address the problem of evil.
Theology [Greek theos, meaning god + logos, meaning word, speech, discourse, reason] taken from the Greek, this term designates the academic
discussion and study of God or the gods; ‘theology’ is commonly used
today to signify the systematic study of Christian dogmas and doctrines,
as carried out by a member of the group, but can be applied to any
articulate and systematic discourse by members of a particular religion
concerning their own tradition’s meaning or proper practice or their
tradition’s view of others. It is to be distinguished from an anthropological approach to the study of religion in which human behaviors, not
the actions of the gods, are the object of study.
Theory [Greek theoria, meaning to look at, implying to observe, to consider, to speculate upon] a term that presupposes a distinction between
reflection upon principles and causes as opposed to a form of practice;
sometimes used as synonymous with philosophy, viewpoint, or speculation, it can, however, be defined in a technical, scientific manner to
signify a series of logically related and testable propositions that aim
to account for a certain state of affairs in the observable world. Metatheory (see metaphysics) generally signifies rational reflection upon the
principles that underlie theoretical work. For Marxist scholars (some of
whom are members of a school of thought known as critical theory),
the apparent separation between theory and practice is problematic,
180 Glossary
for they hold that theory too is a form of practical labor, and theory
relies on practice which is itself directed by theory; they therefore often
employ the term ‘praxis’ to signify the correlation of, and dialectical
relationship between, these two seemingly distinct domains.
Totem [Ojibwa origins] adopted into English during the colonial era of
contact with the indigenous peoples in the so-called New World (what
we now call North America); term originally used to name the set-apart
animal that served as a representative of, and point of identification for,
members of a specific (sometimes kinship-based) society. The term was
then used by some early scholars of religion in their effort to identify
what they believed to be the evolutionarily earliest forms of religion,
from which today’s versions developed. For in some instances they held
that current indigenous practices had preserved ancient customs and
social forms (an approach to understanding others that is today seen as
highly problematic). In the hands of a sociologist like Émile Durkheim,
the totem is theorized as the always-present tangible emblem of the
group (whether in the form of an animal or not), useful to members
given that the groups of which they claim membership are non-empirical
and therefore only exist in their minds as sets of rules and symbolic
associations they make. Thus we can explain the reasons not only for
indigenous totems in the so-called New World but also the modern
emblems on the sweaters of many sports teams (that is, team mascots),
nation-states identifying with such symbols as, in the case of the US, the
bald eagle, and even the carefully designed logos of corporations.
Tradition [Latin traditio, to hand down or to pass something on, as well
as to surrender] the name given to the collection of what are sometimes seen as authoritative past practices that often are claimed to
determine present action. In legal theory it would be comparable to
precedent [from Latin, to go before, as in to precede something or someone]. Often ‘tradition’ or ‘the weight of tradition’ is cited as the answer
to questions concerning why someone did something a certain way,
though such an answer is hardly an explanation for the action, since an
explanation would try to determine why past practices were authoritative rather than simply assert that they are (since many past practices
are not authoritative at all). In the study of religion the term ‘religious
tradition’ has, across the twentieth century, become increasingly popular, in part due to the influence of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who, in the
second half of the century, popularized the distinction between faith, on
the one hand, and its various secondary, public expressions, which constituted the so-called cumulative tradition of each religion (its practices,
institutions, laws, symbols, creeds, etc.).
Transcendent [Latin transcendere, combining both trans, to go beyond
or overcome something + scandere, to climb something] to exceed or
surpass some sort of limitation or condition; in distinction from immanence (denoting an interior and therefore limited state), transcendence
Glossary 181
names a state in which something goes beyond measure or expectation;
commonly associated with the reported experience of being carried
away or utterly freed.
Translation [Latin translatus, to move from one place to another or
carry over] the act of aiming for an equivalence when saying or writing something in one language that had already been said or written in
another. The thing being ‘carried over’ from one medium to another,
or so many might observe, is the meaning. But those more familiar
with the challenges of translating recognize that a stable meaning is
not being conveyed (in other words, language does not simply carry or
convey meaning) for, instead, the rules of each language make different
sorts of meanings possible (much like different games are constituted
by their differing sets of rules—change the rules and the game changes).
So if the rules of language create meaning, then the challenge of translation is to understand the meaning entailed in one language’s statement
and to then try to create something similar, though still different, in
another, given that the differences between the source and target systems more than likely prevent a one-to-one correspondence between
any two statements.
Utility [Latin utilis, to be usable] names the quality of being of use to
someone for some purpose. As proposed in this volume, it may be more
helpful to think of definitions, inasmuch as they are tools that scholars
(among others) use to go about their work, as more or less useful rather
than right/wrong, true/false, or good/bad. Rather, given one’s goals
and interests, a definition of religion as, for instance, belief in spiritual
beings (made famous by E.B. Tylor) may or may not be useful to you.
Such a utilitarian approach to definition may therefore assist in clarifying
the role that definitions play in our work.
World religions although taken for granted today, this term came to
prominence only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
and is today used to organize information for what are arguably the
most popular courses and classroom resources in the study of religion.
However, as made evident by such scholars as Jonathan Z. Smith and
Tomoko Masuzawa, prior to the rise of this term, and the assumption
that a diverse collection of beliefs, behaviors, and institutions across the
globe share a specific number of similarities, making them all members
of the same family, one might expect to find Europeans using the term
‘world religion’ (note the use of the singular), referring to Christianity
as ‘the true religion’ that spans the world—a designation that implicitly contained a theological judgment concerning its superiority. Earlier
designations grouped the information in terms of: ours and theirs,
such as ‘we’ being Christian and ‘they’ being ‘heathens’ (those outside
the city, who inhabit the heaths, that is, rural areas); religions were
also distinguished based on those that were revealed (those claiming
divine revelation as their source) as opposed to those that were natural
182 Glossary
(in which people inferred the existence of god[s]); later, there were those
that were national, as in those that were limited to a specific ethnic
group, as opposed to those that successfully spread to other regions
(making them, as noted above, a world religion). Once the plural term
‘world religions’ arises, the number of traditions included within the
family starts out rather small but steadily grows over time, such that
today one can easily find a fairly long list of world religions, which
includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc. The movement for
inter-religious dialogue is based on the assumption of cross-cultural
similarities among members of this family.
Worldview term popular among some scholars as the wider category of
which religion is but one instance; contrary to those who see religion
as sui generis, ‘worldview’ is a term used by some of those who understand religion to be but one among many means whereby human beings
construct a coherent environment in which to carry out a meaningful
existence by drawing/building on a series of common assumptions,
tales, behaviors, and institutions—all of which enable them to organize and thereby experience their world as having order, sense, purpose,
direction, etc. According to Clifford Geertz, in his well-known article,
‘Religion as a Cultural System’, a worldview is ‘the picture [a group
has] . . . of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order’. Ninian Smart is among the best examples of
a scholar of religion who argued that religion, along with such other
systems as Marxism, constitutes a worldview. See ideology.
Scholars
As with the technical terms, the first time in each chapter, or accompanying
example, that a relevant scholar’s work is discussed that person’s name
is printed in bold text, signaling that a further discussion of this person’s
work, along with sample quotations, can be found in this section of the
book. Also, just as in the chapters, technical terms used in this section are
also bolded, so that readers can find definitions of these words in the previous
section of the book.
William E. Arnal
Trained as a scholar of Christian origins and specializing in the study of
‘Q’—which stands for the German word for source or origin, Quelle, used
to name a source document comprised of sayings of Jesus that scholars
theorize must have existed in the earliest years of the social movement that
comes to be known as Christianity—William Arnal’s interest in Marxist
social theory has led him to write considerably further afield than many
scholars who work on early Christianity. Arnal carried out his doctoral work at the University of Toronto, under the direction of John
Kloppenborg, the internationally noted Q specialist, earning his PhD in
1997, with his dissertation winning the Governor General’s Gold Medal.
He is widely published in the field’s leading periodicals and has held academic appointments at New York University, the University of Manitoba,
and is currently Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University
of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. Arnal has served as Vice-President of
the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR) and as
the English-language editor for Canada’s primary academic journal in the
field, Studies in Religion.
Arnal on religion
Unlike those who classify themselves as New Testament scholars, Arnal
is among a group of scholars who study the texts and the context of early
Christianity in order to shed light not on the meaning these texts might
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have had for their early writers or for their modern readers but, rather,
on the Hellenistic social world from out of which Christianity began.
Hence, as a scholar of Christian origins, Arnal employs social theory to
help account for the shape taken by the early community and its spread.
Although trained in the traditional tools of languages and textual criticism,
it is his interest in theory that has led Arnal to work more broadly in the
study of religion; his interest in the political implications of the category
‘religion’ itself prompts one to think of him as a meta-theorist. While being
among the leaders of a new generation of specialists in early Christianity,
Arnal has also developed a readership among those who are not necessarily
specialists in Christian origins. More than likely it is the enduring theological presumption of the privileged place occupied by Christianity in the
history of the world that prompts few scholars of early Christianity to consider themselves to be contributing to the wider field of religious studies.
In fact, in many university curricula the designation ‘history of religions’
(or ‘world religions’) is applied only to those who study religions outside
of the so-called Western religions—those ‘others’ not identified with either
Judaism (prominent for its role in the beginnings of early Christianity)
and Christianity. We see here the remnants of the Christian (generally
Protestant) seminary model on which the academic study of religion was
originally founded. Countering this longstanding theological trend, Arnal’s
interest in social theory and critique guarantees that, despite working on
a specific data domain (that is, the texts of early Christianity), his work
constitutes an application of more general theories regarding how groups
contest identity and resources. A suitable example is his latest book, The
Symbolic Jesus (2005), which applies political and discourse analysis to
modern scholarly representations of Jesus’ Jewish identity, in an effort not
to recover the authentic Jesus (as generally carried out in research on the
historical Jesus) but, instead, to investigate one instance of how symbolic
representations are employed as a strategy whereby contesting groups
reproduce themselves.
[O]ur definitions of religion, especially insofar as they assume a privatized and cognitive character behind religion (as in religious belief),
simply reflect (and assume as normative) the West’s distinctive historical feature of the secularized state. Religion, precisely, is not social, not
coercive, is individual, is belief-oriented and so on, because in our day
and age there are certain apparently free-standing cultural institutions,
such as the Church, which are excluded from the political state. Thus,
Asad notes, it is no coincidence that it is the period after the ‘Wars of
Religion’ in the seventeenth century that saw the first universalist definitions of religion; and those definitions of ‘Natural Religion’, of course,
stressed the propositional—as opposed to political or institutional—
character of religion as a function of their historical context. . . . The
concept of religion is a way of demarcating a certain socio-political
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reality that is only problematized with the advent of modernity in which
the state at least claims to eschew culture per se.
‘Definition’, in Guide to the Study of Religion (2000)
[T]here is no such thing as religion in the world. Of course this may
be said of any taxon, but in the case of ‘religion’, the formulation of
the category has more to do with the normative interests of modernity
than with the intellectual or theoretical motives of students of religion.
‘Religion’ is an artificial agglomeration of specific social behaviors,
whose basis of distinction from other social behaviors is a function of
the specific characteristics of modernity.
‘The Segregation of Social Desire: “Religion” and
Disney World’, in Journal of the American
Academy of Religion (2001)
Talal Asad
Talal Asad, a postcolonial theorist and anthropologist, is among a generation
of scholars deeply influenced by—and who has significantly furthered—the
work of such scholars as the French intellectual, Michel Foucault (1926–84),
and the American (though born in Jerusalem and raised in Cairo, Egypt,
and Palestine) scholar of comparative literature, Edward Said (1935–2003).
Moreover, he is part of a recent trend in anthropology—best exemplified in the
work of James Clifford—in which the object of focus has turned from the socalled native to the means by which the ethnographer (one who writes [Greek:
graphé] about another group of people [Greek: ethnos]) comes to know the
native—that is, the ethnographer’s tools, questions, categories, assumptions,
etc. Like Foucault, Said—whose groundbreaking book Orientalism (1978)
was among the first to introduce some of Foucault’s early work to the North
American readership—was interested in the intersection between systems of
knowledge (such as classification systems) and systems of control (as in ways
of asserting political power and influence). Thus, Foucault’s thoughts concerning the complex interrelations between knowledge/power were worked out by
Said with regard to the manner in which early modern Europeans developed
a way of understanding themselves and their worlds in relation to what they
understood themselves not to be—defined in relation to politically useful stereotypes about the so-called ‘Orient’, the name once applied by Europeans
to the world of Arab language and culture. Working in this tradition, Asad
is an essayist whose work explores the ways in which systems of knowledge
and systems of discipline interact to produce specific ways of talking about,
and thereby organizing, the world. Of the many classifications used by our
own culture to enable us to know something about the world in which we
live, Asad is perhaps best known for his focus upon the distinction between
the sacred and the secular and the manner in which this distinction helps to
make possible a specific sort of social identity: the modern nation-state.
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Asad on religion
Like Tomoko Masuzawa, Asad could be considered a meta-theorist of
religion—or, better put, an archaeologist or anthropologist of the category
‘religion’. His interests revolve not so much around studying the behaviors
and institutions of religious people ‘in the field’, as an anthropologist of religion might once have done, but, instead, they involve studying the manner
in which the modern, European distinction between what is considered the
sacred and the secular helps to make certain sorts of social and political
worlds possible and thereby knowable—in other words, how generic things
in the world become items of significance and thus of discourse. As such, Asad
is among a relatively small group of scholars currently working on the history and implications of the classification ‘religion’ itself. His work therefore
does not endeavor to arrive at a more adequate definition of religion conceived as a universal element of human minds or cultures; rather, it inquires
into the implications of dividing the world up in just that way, examining
what sort of social life is made possible by the apparently intuitive ability
some people in the world think they have for distinguishing a religious from
a political event, or a private from a public action. Tracing the history of the
category religion to the European world, his work therefore also involves
paying close attention to the manner in which this category is developed
and exported, through colonialism, along with other aspects of Euro–North
American culture and how it is applied to others in the world who do not
necessarily employ it in their acts of self-classification. Although Asad does
not advocate a pre-linguistic moment when reality in itself could once have
been experienced—prior to limiting classifications systems, much as someone like Rudolf Otto might have argued—he nonetheless draws attention to
the practical work invariably carried out by all knowledge/power systems.
In what follows I want to examine the ways in which the theoretical
search for an essence of religion invites us to separate it conceptually
form the domain of power. I shall do this by exploring a universalist definition of religion offered by an eminent anthropologist: Clifford
Geertz’s ‘Religion as a Cultural System’. My intention . . . is to try to
identify some of the historical shifts that have produced our concept of
religion as the concept of a transhistorical essence—and Geertz’s article
is merely my starting point. . . . My argument is that there cannot be a
universal definition of religion, not only because its constituent elements
and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is
itself the historical product of discursive processes.
Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of
Power in Christianity and Islam (1993)
What interests me in particular is the attempt to construct categories of
the secular and the religious in terms of which modern living is required to
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take place, and nonmodern peoples are invited to assess their adequacy.
For representations of ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’ in modern and
modernizing states mediate people’s identities, help shape their sensibilities, and guarantee their experiences.
Formations of the Secular: Christianity,
Islam, Modernity (2003)
Catherine Bell (1953–2008)
Born in New York City, Catherine Bell was a philosophy and religion double major in her undergraduate degree (earned in 1975 at Manhattanville
College, just north of New York City), eventually earning both her MA
(1976) and PhD (in 1983) in the history of religions from the University of
Chicago’s Divinity School (with interests that ranged from Chinese religions
and popular religion to the study of ritual). Her dissertation was entitled,
Medieval Taoist Ritual Mastery: A Study in Practice, Text and Rite. After
briefly working in Japan and holding a post-doctoral fellowship in Taiwan
in order to study Chinese language, she returned to the US as a professor
at Santa Clara University in 1985, where she worked until 2005 (serving
as the Director of Asian Studies from 1999–2002 and Department chair in
Religious Studies from 2000–5). Bell taught a variety of courses, including the introduction to the study of religion, ritual studies, Asian religions,
and even on such topics as magic, science, and religion. She was diagnosed
with multiple sclerosis toward the end of her life, taking early retirement in
2005 and, sadly, passed away at the age of 55 in 2008. Among her more
important works are Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992) and Ritual:
Perspectives and Dimensions (1997) and the edited collection, Teaching
Ritual (2007).
Bell on religion
Her focus on ritual set Bell apart from many other scholars of religion at the
time, given the field’s longstanding tendency to focus mainly on texts (such
as myths or scriptures), whether producing, copying, or reading and interpreting them. And, given the equally long scholarly tradition of seeing ritual
as merely being a secondary medium in which the meaning of myths were
performed, ritual studies have generally not received the same attention as
textual studies (in part because texts, as material artifacts, can sometimes
survive, given the right conditions, for great lengths of time, providing subsequent scholars with data). However, given her interest in methods and
theories, her attention to ritual helped to interest more in paying greater
attention to bodies as sites for study, along with the institutions and rules
in which the movements that we know as rituals come to be distinguished
from other sorts of actions.
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I was raised by scholars who thought it was very, very important to
have a definition of religion out on the table as a methodological point
of clarity, and yet when I went to study Chinese materials I found the
definitions got in the way, a bit. You needed to suspend some of the
defining, a bit. So I have a working definition but I don’t take it so seriously that I don’t let other things come across the transom; I guess my
notion [of religion] is basically: ideals, conviction, and practices related
to the sense of a reality other than the quotidian, the day-to-day . . . .
[W]atching Chinese peasants just light their incense, and in some sense
the ancestor, is almost quotidian, almost part of the day-to-day. I really
downplay the language of some great divide between sacred and profane; I do think, though, that it doesn’t need to be supernatural beings;
but it can be a realm of presence, a dimension that just takes what we
see around us and makes us interpret it differently and that becomes my
guideline for religion . . . . It allows a lot in.
American Scholars of Religion Video Project, interview
recorded April 15, 2002 and posted online at
Fairfield University’s Digital Commons
Ritual should be analyzed and understood in its real context, which is
the full spectrum of ways of acting within any given culture, not some
a priori category of action totally independent of other forms of action.
Only in this context can the theorist-observer attempt to understand
how and why people choose to differentiate some activities from others.
From this perspective, the focus is less a matter of clear and autonomous rites than the methods, traditions and strategies of ‘ritualization’.
Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (1997)
Pascal Boyer
Originally trained in Paris and then at Cambridge University, Pascal Boyer
currently teaches in both the Departments of Psychology and Anthropology
at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. While his earlier work was
carried out in cultural anthropology, his main area of interest is how human
memory works—how ideas are acquired, stored, and transmitted—both
within individuals as well as in those collections of individuals that we know
as cultures. As with many who today are part of the cognitive science of religion (a relatively young field but one that has produced a surprising amount
of research over the past decade), his work, which is based on the assumption that human minds have evolved over time to function as they currently
do, combines traditional anthropological fieldwork with laboratory experiments, in an effort to develop explanatory theories of religion’s origins and
function, as opposed to interpretations of its meaning (as in hermeneutical
studies). Although hardly the only naturalistic way to explain the causes
and functions of religion, those scholars of religion who are today grouped
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together under the banner of cognitive theory have certainly proved to be
among the most organized and ambitious of those working toward a theory
of religion. Drawing upon findings from recent cognitive psychology (notably such fields as early childhood studies), linguistics, and theories of mind,
a loosely knit group of scholars of religion, philosophers, psychologists, and
anthropologists—working both in Europe and North America—have, since
the early 1990s, rather quickly developed a coherent, collaborative research
project. Although once primarily associated with the ground-breaking, cowritten work of E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley (such as their
Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition to Culture [1990] or their more
recent Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural
Forms [2002]), today a variety of new, and largely young, scholars are now
associated with what has become one of the most active and intellectually
rigorous subfields within the modern study of religion. Currently, the model
offered by Boyer has had the most impact among cognitivists (though the
fieldwork-based theory of the Irish anthropologist, Harvey Whitehouse, has
grown increasingly influential as well).
Boyer on religion
Boyer argues that human beings’ minds are wired in such a way that a
slightly counter-intuitive idea (about, say, what an agent can and cannot do)
is particularly appealing to human memory systems. Deviate too far from
our evolutionarily derived commonsense, or intuitive, expectations concerning such things as agency, and such novel ideas cannot compete very well in
what is a pretty competitive economy of ideas and sensations circulating in
the brain (that is, they are easily forgotten and thus not retained, much less
transmitted). As Boyer argues in such books as The Naturalness of Religious
Ideas (1994) and Religion Explained (2001), beliefs in the existence of beings
who are very similar to how human beings see themselves (as in their appearance, the extent to which they can act, etc.) but who, for instance, do not
die, know everything, and are not limited by the usual constraints of a body,
are very appealing to our memory systems, thus making ideas about such
beings easily remembered, which gives such ideas a considerable competitive
advantage over other ideas when it comes to their transmission from one
mind to another. To borrow from another anthropologist, Dan Sperber, who
uses an epidemiological metaphor (as used in Explaining Culture [1996]),
Boyer theorizes that these minimally counter-intuitive ideas stand out just
enough to make them catchy. The underlying assumption, here, of course,
is that, at the end of the day, those things that we study when we examine
culture can be reduced to sets of ideas retained in, and transmitted between,
human minds—ideas such as whether it is worthwhile to memorize and
recite a particular set of texts, let alone memorize and retain the specificity
of the character set in which it is encoded. Therefore, among the most basic
ways of accounting for cross-cultural similarities, including those beliefs and
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practices we commonly call religion, is to account for the origination and
transmission of these ideas, especially those ideas that fit the minimal requirements of being modestly counter-intuitive.
Why do people have religious ideas at all? And why those religious ideas?
These should be crucial questions for cultural anthropology; indeed,
they are among the questions an uninformed outsider would assume
are central to anthropological inquiry. As it happens, the problem is
generally ignored in the discipline, though this neglect is a relatively
recent phenomenon. The founders of modern anthropology had precise
explanations for the appearance of religious notions. These hypotheses,
however unsatisfactory, were at least a springboard for more refined
speculations. Modern anthropology, by and large, is much less daring
in its approach to religious representations.
The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive
Theory of Religion (1994)
It is . . . a hallmark of the ‘modern mind’—the mind that we have
had for millennia—that we entertain plans, conjectures, speculate on
the possible as well as the actual. Among the millions of messages
exchanged, some are attention-grabbing because they violate intuitions
about objects and beings in our environment. These counter-intuitive
descriptions have a certain staying power, as memory experiments suggest. They certainly provide the stuff that good stories are made of.
They may mention islands that float adrift or mountains that digest
food or animals that talk. These are generally taken as fiction though
the boundary between a fictional story and an account of personal
experience is often difficult to trace. Some of these themes are particularly salient because they are about agents. This opens up a rich domain
of possible inferences.
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins
of Religious Thought (2001)
Willi Braun
After receiving his PhD in 1993 from the University of Toronto, in Christian
origins, then holding a postdoctoral fellowship there and after that working
briefly at Bishop’s University, in Quebec, Braun spent the rest of his career
at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, where he taught undergraduate
students while also supervising doctoral students in a broad range of areas,
all generally focused on religion in the ancient world. His interests range
from social theories of origins and the socio-political function of myth and
rhetoric, to theories of history as well as an emphasis on studying the tools
scholars use when they go about studying religion. He was the longtime coeditor of the scholarly journal Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
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as well as being past president of both the North American Association for
the Study of Religion (NAASR) and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies
(CSBS). Braun has exerted a significant though subtle influence on the modern study of religion through his collaborative relationships and patient
engagement with international scholars from a broad range of specialties.
Braun on religion
Braun is among a small group of textual specialists in one data domain who
also have far wider interests in the field itself (a rare combination), exemplified by his own work in Christian origins (consider his first book, Feasting and
Social Rhetoric in Luke 14 [1995; reissued in 2005]—a detailed study that
combines the analysis of New Testament texts with work on Greco-Roman
social practices of the time) combined with his now close identification with
work on methods and theories that scholars from all specialties use when
going about their studies (which, in part, resulted from the significant role
he played editing the above-mentioned international journal as well as his
involvement in a number of field-wide projects, such as co-editing the Guide
to the Study of Religion [2000]). For Braun, religion is a mundane element
of human communities that can be studied in the same fashion as any other
social practice, something evident from his long participation in a collaborative scholarly working group whose aim was to redescribe the beginnings of
Christianity, doing so as scholars and social theorists would rather than as
might early participants of the groups themselves (as recorded in those texts
known as the New Testament as well as in the various documents from that
era that were not included in the canon). The basic premise of such work is
that insiders have rather different motives and goals, when telling tales of
their own group’s origins, than do non-participants (notably scholars)—a fact
evident both when listening to elder family members compete among themselves when each telling their version of the family’s past (their myths) as
well as when reading different or alternative versions of any one nation’s
history. Given that religion is a contingent, human institution like any other,
scholars such as Braun reason that explaining the establishment of a group
(such as those we today refer to as the earliest Christians) requires scholars
to take group members’ own origins narratives not as neutral statements
of historical fact (as we sometimes do) but, rather, as strategic attempts at
persuading listeners to join the speaker’s cause.
The rhetoric of Luke 14 also raises a cautioning hand in the face of the
‘canonical’ view that Luke is a gospel for ‘the poor’ . . . . Although ‘the
poor’ evidently are near the centre of Luke’s beneficent concern, to what
extent are they also rhetorical levers, an item of ‘symbolic discourse’, in
a ‘high stakes’ attempt to destabilize, reconfigure and ultimately control
the orientation and dispositional patters of the elite?
Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14 (1995)
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By ‘anthropocentric’ I mean something like the following, loosely paraphrased from my prologue to the Guide itself: There is no religion init-self apart from people who do things that both those who do them
and scholars of religion call ‘religious’, though with different meanings of the term ‘religious’. In that sense, religion does not exist; all
that exists for our study are people who do things that we classify
as ‘religious’. This entails that the proper object of study consists of
the ‘religious’ behaviors of people, a study that consists of description
and explanation in general anthropocentric terms. Thus, even when
we study objects that in the religious doings of religious people represent themselves as artifacts from the world of the gods, it is people
who make this representation. For example, as I tell my students who
come into my course on the New Testament and other early Christian
writings, even when we study the Bible—the ‘word of god’—we shall
be studying the human motives and means for representing texts (or
anything else) as divine rather than human and the historical, social
effects of these representations.
‘The Blessed Curse of Thought: Theorizing Religion
in the Classroom’ (2001)
Wendy Doniger
Originally trained as a dancer, Wendy Doniger completed her undergraduate work at Radcliffe College in 1962 and completed two doctoral
degrees, at Harvard and Oxford Universities, specializing in Sanskrit and
Indian studies (what is sometimes called Oriental studies). She has held
teaching positions at Harvard, Oxford, the University of London, and UC
Berkeley and has taught at the University of Chicago since 1978, where
she is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History
of Religions, in the Divinity School, as well as holding appointments in
the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations as well as
the Committee of Social Thought. In 1985 she was the president of the
American Academy of Religion (AAR), the field’s primary professional
association in North America. She has written extensively (publishing earlier in her career under the surname O’Flaherty) on the religions of India,
in particular the study of ancient Hindu myths but she has also translated
into English a number of key ancient Hindu texts (including the Rig Veda
as well as the Kamasutra) along with modern works of scholarship (such
as the multi-volume French work of Yves Bonnefoy, Mythologies [1981]).
Her interest in cross-cultural, comparative work extends well beyond the
myths of India; her general interest in such topics as gender, sexuality,
and personal/social identity enables her to do comparative work in a wide
range of historical periods and cultural settings, evident especially in her
later works.
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Doniger on religion
Although as a comparativist the themes of difference and similarity (what
could also be termed the particular and the universal, the strange and the
familiar, or the far and the near, as in Clifford Geertz’s sense of experiencedistant and experience-near; see emic/etic) circulate through much of Doniger’s
work, difference tends eventually to take a back seat in her effort to illuminate
a deeper degree of similarity that persists despite differences in context and
content. For example, in myths—a particular type of narrative that she holds
to function similarly to a number of other narrative types, such as legend,
folklore, etc.—she finds specifically religious and thus universal questions of
deeply held belief and human meaning raised, suggesting a uniformity beneath
myths’ variable contents and different themes. She presumes that there are
levels of human experience that come before such things as the changing
conventions of language, culture, and history—making such pre-linguistic
experiences, she argues, the basis upon which our shared human nature is
based. Scholarship on myths that avoids reducing them to something other
than the expression of such pre-cultural meanings (that is, scholarship such as
Freud’s reduction of myth to a social mechanism used by groups to vent, in
a harmless manner, socially dangerous anxieties), can therefore recover, and
in the process nurture, this shared humanity as it is expressed in the religious
imagination of humankind (somewhat akin to Mircea Eliade’s notion of a
‘creative hermeneutics’ that, as he argued, could lead to a new humanism). As
such, Doniger’s body of work provides an excellent example of a humanistic
approach to the study of religion—one that invests much energy in describing the specificity of, and thus differences among, the various objects under
study, attempts to avoid reproducing a specific theological viewpoint, yet one
that nonetheless attempts to recover their shared, deeper meaning (rather than
simply their social, psychological, or economic function).
[A] myth is not so much a true story as a story on which truth is based,
a story which people may infuse with their truth.
Other People’s Myths: The Cave of Echoes (1988)
It is customary in scholarly approaches to myth to begin with a definition. I have always resisted this, for I am less interested in dictating
what a myth is (more precisely, what it is not, for definitions are usually
exclusivist) than in exploring what myth does (and in trying to demonstrate as inclusive a range of functions as possible). Defining myth
requires building up the sorts of boundaries and barriers that I have
always avoided. . . . The key game of cross-cultural comparison lies
in selecting the sorts of questions that might transcend any particular
culture. Some people think that there are no such questions, but some
think, as I do, that worthwhile cross-cultural questions can be asked.
The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (1998)
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Mary Douglas (1921–2007)
Born Margaret Mary Tew in Italy (while her British parents were on their
way back to Burma, where her father worked in the Indian Civil Service for
the British government), Mary Douglas was one of the twentieth century’s
most influential anthropologists and scholars of classification systems and
institutions. She obtained her PhD from Oxford University in 1951, has carried out fieldwork in, among other places, the Congo, and has held teaching
positions in both the UK and the US. Although she is also known for her
work on how institutions function, and, in more recent years, she turned
her attention to studying biblical texts as literature, Douglas is perhaps still
best known for her influential 1966 book, Purity and Danger, which was
a cross-cultural study of ritual systems of cleanliness, pollution, and taboo
(a term that entered English in the late eighteenth century, as a result of
Captain James Cook’s travels in the Polynesian islands, meaning ‘specially
marked’, as in set apart, forbidden, or even consecrated).
Douglas on religion
Assuming that systems of purity or cleanliness, rather than being primarily
concerned with establishing hygienic conditions, functioned instead to put
into practice a system of order on an otherwise non-ordered world, Douglas
studied systems of allowable and disallowable behaviors—such as the
famous dietary codes as found in the Hebrew Bible’s books of Deuteronomy
and Leviticus. Her conclusions, well in line with developments at this time
in such other fields as linguistics and semiotics, concerned the manner in
which relationships articulated by means of human symbol systems helped
to establish meaningful conditions in which human life could take place.
Religion, for Douglas, was therefore the name given to but one collection
of beliefs, behaviors and institutions that helped to orient and regulate
social life, ensuring that certain behaviors could be understood as meaningful, memorable, and thus repeatable. Her early work on dietary codes
was therefore but one occasion to demonstrate how human communities
actively constitute their environments. It also provided an opportunity to
examine what happens when human map-making inevitably fails, for, as a
human system that reflects contingent preferences, this map-making activity is presumed never to be entirely adequate. Thus, reality continually
presents cases unanticipated in our classification systems, puzzling cases
that cannot but be understood as anomalies. This in turn ensures that all
well-functioning classification systems require such categories as taboo
(reserved for objects or actions that defy or conflate the usual categories,
such as a bird with feathers that cannot fly). It is for this reason that all
classification systems are understood as provisional and tactical, for in
their application they are continually being reinvented and thus under
construction.
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If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt,
we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is
a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered
relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique,
isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far
as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements. . . .
Defilement is never an isolated event. It cannot occur except in view
of a systematic ordering of ideas. Hence any piecemeal interpretation of
the pollution rules of another culture is bound to fail. For the only way
in which pollution ideas make sense is in reference to a total structure
of thought whose key-stone, boundaries, margins, and internal lines are
held in relation by rituals of separation.
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts
of Pollution and Taboo (1966)
Daniel Dubuisson
Of a group of scholars who, over the past twenty years or so, have
given significant attention to the practical uses for the category of religion, Daniel Dubuisson stands out as being one of the few in France
to contribute to this still growing body of work. For while many of
the other contributors to this now active sub-discipline carry out their
work in either Britain (consider the work of Timothy Fitzgerald, Richard
King, Malory Nye, and Suzanne Owen) or North America (for instance,
Tomoko Masuzawa), few scholars in other settings are as active a contributor as is Dubuisson (though, among this small, international group,
Teemu Taira in Finland certainly also comes to mind). Dubuisson—
formerly the Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique’s Institut des sciences humaines et sociales (at the Université
Charles de Gaulle in Lille, France)—was awarded his doctorat ès lettres
in 1983 and works in a broad range of areas, but has made his mark by
focusing tightly on the work that scholarly categories do, for the people
who use them, allowing them to shape and organize the world in particular
sorts of ways.
Dubuisson on religion
When Dubuisson writes on religion (or such other topics as those things
classified as magical) he is pretty much always writing on our idea of religion and the very word religion itself, aiming to shed light on what he might
call our peculiar habit of thinking that part of the world of human actions
and associations ought to go by this name. So it is fair to say that he does
not have a theory of religion, as some other scholars might, but, instead, a
theory of the category religion or a theory of the category magic—that is,
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a socio-political theory of the work being done when we see a domain of
human affairs as being somehow unique and distinctly set apart from all
others (such as is often claimed when someone asserts that religion is sui
generis). Though seen as a scholar of religion it might therefore be more
correct to rename him as a political theorist (given his focus on the political
implications of how we divide and name our world) or just simply a scholar
of classification systems, since his interest is not in studying religion as much
as studying those of us who call certain things religious and the practical
effects of arranging our world in just that manner.
This ideal definition [of religion] advances a psychological and profoundly individual vision. It reduces religion to an interior sentiment
that is inevitably born of the experience of transcendence, whether the
latter be called God, the sacred, the beyond, power, mystery, or the
like . . . . [I]t completely disregards (as if this disregard were sui generis
to it) the diversity of cultures, the uniqueness of other human beings,
and, with the same carelessness, the formidable work of history.
The Western Construction of Religion: Myths,
Knowledge, and Ideology (2003)
Magic, in the West, has become what Christianity first and then later
science wanted it to be—that is, a sort of evil, primitive double, next to
which it is easy to attribute to Religion the most prestigious and valued
moral and spiritual qualities (which are also those of civilization). For
every fault of the one it was easy to find a corresponding positive quality of the other, as if the two phenomena existed absolutely and had
never ceased to represent the two faces—the one, luminous, and the
other, obscure—of the same anthropological coin. In fact, in this new
and original configuration, religion always collects positive characteristics (moral, elevated, disinterested, spiritual, ordered, learned), whereas
magic always appears as a caricature with inverse negative characteristics (prosaic, popular, naïve, incoherent, confusing, ignorant, rudimentary, egoistic, mysterious, maleficent . . .). Each time one experiences
the feeling that religion gets support from magic in order to raise itself
even higher, into another world.
Religion and Magic in Western Culture (2016)
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
There may be no more influential figure in the study of religion than the late
nineteenth-century French scholar, Émile Durkheim—considered to be one
of the founders of the modern academic discipline of sociology. Although
not all scholars today study religion sociologically, along with the political
economist Karl Marx and the social psychologist Sigmund Freud, Durkheim
is certainly among a very small group of writers who have had a tremendous
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impact on the modern field. Prior to scholars such as Durkheim, the nowtaken-for-granted role that society plays in shaping individual consciousness
and behavior was not so apparent to scholars. For this reason, his 1897
sociological study of the causes of European suicide helped considerably
to legitimize sociology as a science. In that work, Durkheim argued that,
unlike previous studies that argued that suicide resulted from individual
decision or malady, the suicide rate was inversely correlated to the cohesiveness of a person’s social group; that is, the higher rates of suicide among
Protestants, as opposed to Roman Catholics and Jews, could be explained
as a result of the former group’s emphasis on the lone individual as opposed
to the greater sense of social unity evident in the latter two (of which Jews
were, for Durkheim, the strongest example since their communities in
Europe were, historically speaking, set apart and, of strict necessity, much
more self-reliant and cohesive). This leads to a crucial sociological insight
contributed by Durkheim, one that is still provocative of thought: religion,
he concluded, functioned as a ‘prophylactic’ against suicide not because of
what it does or does not preach or teach to its adherents (in other words, not
because of its content) but, instead, because of the role its all-consuming rituals and institutions play in bringing individuals together as a group, thereby
providing them with not only a sense of belonging but also a sense of what
it is to be a particular sort of individual.
Durkheim on religion
Durkheim’s explanatory theory of religion, to be distinguished from an
interpretive approach that investigates what religion means, provides an
excellent example of scholarship that reduces theological claims to science—
in his case, to the language of sociology. In Durkheim’s analysis, the rituals
and institutions of religion are fundamental sites where social groups are
formed; in the midst of the common behaviors (rituals) and heightened emotions characteristic of large social groups (what Durkheim termed ‘collective
effervescence’, the so-called crowd phenomenon that can be found today
anywhere from family celebrations to sporting events and nationalistic celebrations), the individual directly experiences the group and him-/herself
as a member. It is at such times that otherwise scattered members experience themselves as a group for, in reality, the group exists nowhere but in
the minds of its isolated members. Accordingly, they have no place and
no time to experience (and thereby re-create) the group but during those
ritual occasions when the members assemble, engage in the so-called sacred
rituals (whose value of sacredness is, for Durkheim, simply the product of
the group’s collective behavior and thus focus, not an expression of some
inner quality in an act or an object), and leave confident of their identity.
Durkheim therefore concludes that religion is the name given to a collection of social behaviors and social institutions; God-talk is, in fact, group
members symbolically talking about an ideal sense of the group itself.
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This analysis of the social function of la vie religieuse (the religious life,
as he phrased it), then, is rather different from prior and subsequent
essentialist scholars, either theologically essentialist or, as in the intellectualists, naturalistically essentialist. In fact, the speculations on timeless
origins (such as E.B. Tylor’s work on the origins of animism) would strike
a Durkheimian scholar as untestable (since time travel does not exist) and
therefore unscientific.
If religion protects man against the desire for self-destruction, it is not
that it preaches the respect for his own person to him with arguments
sui generis; but because it is a society. What constitutes this society is
the existence of a certain number of beliefs and practices common to all
the faithful, traditional and thus obligatory. The more numerous and
strong these collective states of mind are, the stronger the integration
of the religious community, and also the greater its preservative value.
The details of dogmas and rites are secondary. The essential thing is that
they be capable of supporting a sufficiently intense collective life. And
because the Protestant church has less consistency than the others it has
less moderating effect upon suicide.
Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897)
Primitive classifications are therefore not singular or exceptional, having no analogy with those employed by more civilized peoples; on the
contrary, they seem to be connected, with no break in continuity, to
the first scientific classifications. In fact, however different they may
be in certain respects from the latter, they nevertheless have all their
essential characteristics. . . . Their object is not to facilitate action,
but to advance understanding, to make intelligible the relations which
exist between things. Given certain concepts which are considered fundamental, the mind feels the need to connect to them the ideas which
it forms about other things. Such classifications are thus intended,
above all, to connect ideas, to unify knowledge; as such, they may
be said without inexactitude to be scientific, and to constitute a first
philosophy of nature.
Primitive Classification (1903; co-written
with Marcel Mauss)
A society can neither create nor recreate itself without creating some
kind of ideal by the same stroke. This creation is not a sort of optional
extra step by which society, being already made, merely adds finishing touches; it is the act by which society makes itself, and remakes
itself, periodically. . . . A society is not constituted simply by the mass
of individuals who comprise it, the ground they occupy, the things they
use, or the movements they make, but above all by the idea it has of
itself. . . . Therefore, the collective ideal that religion expresses is far
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from being due to some vague capacity innate to the individual; rather,
it is in the school of collective life that the individual is able to conceive
of the ideal.
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
Diana L. Eck
Diana Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at
Harvard University, graduated from Harvard University with her PhD
in 1976. Although her early work was devoted to religion in India, she
has increasingly devoted her attention to issues of religious pluralism,
advocating tolerance, mutual understanding, and acceptance of difference by means of inter-religious dialogue, especially as these all manifest
themselves in contemporary US politics. She has been active in the United
Methodist Church, the World Council of Churches and, since 1991, has
been the Director of the Pluralism Project. This collaborative project,
funded initially through the Lilly Endowment and now also funded by the
Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, coordinates a network of sixty local
affiliates, involving approximately 100 scholars working on affiliated projects that chronicle the changing shape of religious diversity both in the US
and elsewhere in the world.
Eck on religion
As with others in both the liberal theological and humanistic traditions, Eck
understands religion to concern a domain of personal experience of deep
meaning and significance thought to be uniformly shared by people despite
their different historical, geographic, and cultural locations. Her preference
for such terms as ‘experience’ and ‘faith’ indicates the priority her work
gives to understanding religion as an inner sentiment that defies categorization and which is expressed publicly in such historically conditioned forms
as narrative (myth), practice (ritual), and institutional systems (traditions)—
all of which are often considered static by many of their participants but
which are, Eck argues, the constantly changing and growing outer form of a
uniform inner faith. Thus, acts of categorization (such as the attention given
to distinguishing denominations from each other, let alone the distinction
between different religions and between religion and other aspects of daily
life) are themselves part of the difficulty to be overcome, along with overcoming differences among the merely secondary manifestations of this faith.
Tolerance is a deceptive virtue. I do not wish to belittle tolerance, but
simply to recognize that it is not a real response to the challenging facts
of difference. Tolerance can enable coexistence, but it is certainly no
way to be good neighbors. In fact, tolerance often stands in the way of
engagement. If as a Christian I tolerate my Muslim neighbor, I am not
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therefore required to understand her, to seek out what she has to say,
to hear about her hopes and dreams, to hear what it meant to her when
the words ‘In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate’ were
whispered into the ear of her newborn child.
Encountering God: A Spiritual Journal from
Bozeman to Banaras (1993)
America’s religious diversity is here to stay, and the most interesting and
important phase of our nation’s history lies ahead. The very principles
on which America was founded will be tested for their strength and
vision in the new religious America. And the opportunity to create a
positive multireligious society out of the fabric of a democracy, without
the chauvinism and religious triumphalism that have marred human
history, is now ours.
A New Religious America: How a ‘Christian Country’
Has Become the World’s Most Religiously
Diverse Nation (2001)
Mircea Eliade (1907–86)
Throughout much of the mid- to late twentieth century there was no more
influential scholar of religion than Mircea Eliade, the Romanian expatriate. After attaining some fame in Romania as a novelist after World War I,
Eliade spent the World War II years abroad, and wrote books in the late
1940s and early 1950s for which he would later become famous throughout the world—volumes on comparative religion, shamanism, and yoga.
In the late 1950s he held a brief visiting appointment at the University of
Chicago’s Divinity School and, following the unexpected death of the program’s then chair (the well-known German sociologist of religion, Joachim
Wach), Eliade stayed on and, along with the scholar of Japanese religions,
Joseph Kitagawa, played a central role in leading Chicago’s program to
a place it continues to hold as one of the field’s most important graduate
programs. Eliade was classically trained as a comparativist and is today
best known for his efforts to establish what at Chicago is called ‘history
of religions’ as an autonomous, academic discipline, distinct from anthropological, psychological, or sociological studies of religion. His largely
successful approach to accomplishing this, adopted by others both before
and after him, was to argue for the sui generis nature of religion, thereby
requiring distinct methods for its study and distinct institutional locations
for carrying out this research. Because of the unique character of religious
phenomena (each being the site where ‘the sacred’ manifests itself), along
with his views that religion was at its essence concerned with establishing
meaning in otherwise potentially meaningless human lives and societies,
Eliade was also known for his advocacy of what he termed a total hermeneutics (that is, the study of religion being a complete interpretive science
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of human beings, what might be called ‘the Queen of the Sciences’, a term
once reserved for theology), what he also called the new humanism; the
historian of religions, by studying symbolic expressions of what they held
to be deeply meaningful existential situations common to all peoples, was
able to re-experience in their own life—and thereby become the interpreters of and guardians for—the meaning that these symbols, narratives, and
practices once had for archaic peoples long ago. Apart from a tremendously
impressive amount of writing and editing (including his role, toward the
end of his life, as the editor-in-chief of what has become the field’s primary reference work, The Encyclopedia of Religion [1987]), Eliade is also
known today for the manner in which, after his death in 1986, his life
(some of its details were made public through his four published volumes
of journals and his two-volume autobiography) and his extensive body of
work have generated a substantial body of critical secondary literature,
concerned with re-examining his arguments in favor of religion’s irreducible character as well the way in which—like many European intellectuals
who matured between the two World Wars—his personal politics may
have impacted his scholarship.
Eliade on religion
Eliade argued that an essential component of all human beings was their
need to make their worlds meaningful, which was carried out through
their interconnected systems of symbols, myths, and rituals—all of which
provided human beings with orientation in an otherwise chaotic world of
historical existence (which implies a linear movement from a known past to
an utterly unknown, and therefore terrifying, future). One could say, then,
that the human condition, according to Eliade, was coming to grips with
what he termed the ‘terrors of history’. Hence Eliade’s interest in studying
tales of cycles and returns (the myth of the eternal return), belief systems
involving rebirth, geography and architecture oriented toward a center (as
in a central tent pole), and rituals that marked a point as the center of the
village or the world (Latin: axis mundi, the central pivot point of the world
or the entire universe). What he termed Homo religiosus (Latin, religious
man) was best exemplified, he believed, in archaic or primitive peoples,
since for them—unlike modern, secular people—the cosmos was entirely
sacred; nonetheless, even secular people have no choice but to create meaning, so they too shared this (sometimes suppressed) aspect with their archaic
counterparts, making them also attuned to the times and locations where
meaning ruptured into the otherwise ambiguous historical world, thereby
providing humans with a point of reference, a center point. Such points—
what he termed hierophanies (from Greek hiero, meaning holy; a showing
or a manifestation of the Sacred)—could be anything, from a rock to a tree,
from the moon, to the tides or a mountain, even movies and literature, not
to mention the so-called traditional elements of religion such as pilgrimage,
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worship, fasting, etc. The collection of symbols, narratives, practices, and
institutions we call religion were, for Eliade, the preeminent site where
meaning-making took place, ensuring that he saw any approach to the study
of religion that was not hermeneutical (such as the explanatory analysis of
reductionists) to be highly problematic for it ‘explained away’ the very thing
he thought to be of most importance; because such meanings are camouflaged, only the careful interpreter could uncover them.
[A] religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped
at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To
try to grasp the essence of such a phenomenon by means of physiology,
psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is
false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it—the element
of the sacred. . . . Because religion is human it must for that very reason
be something social, something linguistic, something economic—you
cannot think of man apart from language and society. But it would be
hopeless to try and explain religion in terms of any one of those basic
functions which are really no more than another way of saying that man
is. It would be as futile as thinking you could explain Madame Bovary
by a list of social, economic, and political facts; however true, they do
not affect it as a work of literature.
Patterns in Comparative Religion (1949)
The sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a wholly different
order from ‘natural’ realities. . . . The first possible definition of the
sacred is that it is the opposite of the profane. Man becomes aware of
the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly
different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of
the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophany. . . . It could be
said that the history of religions—from the most primitive to the most
highly developed—is constituted by a great number of hierophanies, by
manifestations of sacred realities.
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (1959)
For the historian of religions the fact that a myth or a ritual is always
historically conditioned does not explain away the very existence of
such a myth or ritual. In other words, the historicity of a religious experience does not tell us what a religious experience ultimately is. We
know that we can grasp the sacred only though manifestations which
are always historically conditioned. But the study of these historically
conditioned expressions does not give us the answer to the question:
What is the sacred? What does a religious experience actually mean?
‘The “Origins” of Religion’, in The Quest:
History and Meaning in Religion (1969)
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James G. Frazer (1854–1941)
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, and educated at the University of Glasgow with
a second baccalaureate at Trinity College at Cambridge, James Frazer is a
noteworthy British anthropologist and historian and is among a group of
late nineteenth-century scholars known as intellectualists (a group generally interested in using evolutionary theory to study early humans in light
of their mental abilities). He was also concerned with studying cultural
phenomena through the lens of the comparative method, assuming that
collecting descriptive information on many variations of, for instance, a particular institution, would help to shed light on the origins of the institution.
Looking solely within one culture was therefore not sufficient to explain
the origins and role of actions or beliefs. Instead of doing fieldwork himself, Frazer (like all early anthropologists) relied on the letters, journals, and
manuscripts from missionaries, explorers, and military personnel (indicating the intimate, though sometimes unrecognized, link between European
colonial expansion, on the one hand, and gains in scientific knowledge, on
the other). Frazer wrote, in his highly influential book The Golden Bough,
about the behaviors of the participants in a Hellenistic ritual and then
compared their actions to that of modern ‘primitives’. The Golden Bough
examined an ancient ritual that is said to take place in the city of Aricia, near
Rome. The ritual involves a priest whose duty it was to guard the grove near
Lake Nemi. If a slave happened to escape from his master and kill the priest,
he would win his freedom but also take on the responsibility of guarding
the grove. Frazer was fascinated by this story for its insights into what he
called the ‘primitive mind’. Through his research Frazer hoped to shed light
on the current behaviors of those involved in ‘primitive’ religions by using
his method of comparative studies. Frazer’s thesis (similar to that fellow
intellectualist E.B. Tylor’s) was that the mental capacities of humankind
developed in the same evolutionary way as did the human body. Further,
Frazer hypothesized that magic was the behavioral predecessor of religion
just as religion was the intellectual predecessor of science, therefore, modern
‘primitives’ could have much in common with the classical Hellenistic mind.
Frazer has played a major role in the study of religion through his impact
on modern scholars. Although The Golden Bough grew into a vast, multivolume work that few people might read in its entirety today, it is one of the
first scholarly books that consistently employed the comparative method.
Frazer on religion
Throughout The Golden Bough, Frazer builds a theory of magic (the effort
to manipulate, in a non-physical manner, objects in the historical world)
and its role in the eventual formation of religion, and subsequently what we
today know as science. For Frazer, magic (the attempt to manipulate events
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in the natural world) can be divided into the two categories of homeopathic
and contagious magic, both of which are contained under the heading of
sympathetic magic. Sympathetic magic is based upon what Frazer refers
to as the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contact. Homeopathic magic
is understood by the magician to function under the Law of Similarity.
The magician uses his magic to produce certain situations by mimicking
their behaviors. An example would be a magician who pours water on the
ground to induce rain, or someone who manipulates a doll expecting the
same actions to be performed on the actual person. Contagious magic, on
the other hand, is based on the Law of Contact. Frazer believed that magicians who used this kind of magic believed that items had great associations
with one another, and even after the items had been separated from their
source they could still have an effect on each other. The example that Frazer
gives for this type of magic is when a portion of a person’s body is severed;
there remains the belief that the body part still has a connection to the body
such that if something is done to the part the person will feel the results
regardless of the physical distance from the estranged hand, foot, hair, etc.
By classifying and studying magic in this way, Frazer aimed for his work to
be applicable to many different cultures, all of which were thought to use
these various types of magic. Moreover, he argued that magic was the evolutionary precursor to religion (which involved the belief that supernatural
beings could be persuaded to influence events in the world), and that all
cultures that now have religion must have had a previous period of magic.
Furthermore, Frazer argued that societies that now possess science must
have gone through previous periods of religion and magic. By applying the
biological evolutionary theory to the study of societies Frazer was also able
to hypothesize about some of the ‘primitive’ groups with whom nineteenthcentury European travelers had come into contact. In fact, Frazer believed
that the Australian Aborigines could be understood by means of his theory. Along with many of his peers, Frazer believed that they were the most
primitive culture in existence at that time; they were thought to have been
virtually frozen in time, and therefore to have no form of religion whatsoever (given earlier, largely Christian-influenced definitions of religion as
‘belief in a God and an afterlife’; of course this view has largely been discredited), thereby relying exclusively on magic in their attempts to influence
the world around them.
Along with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, savage man has a different, and probably still older, conception in which
we may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law or the view
of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency. The germ of which I speak is
involved in that sympathetic magic, as it may be called, which plays a
large part in most systems of superstition. . . . In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a
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false science as well as an abortive art. Regarded as a system of natural
law, that is, as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence
of events throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic;
regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to
compass their ends, it may be called Practical Magic.
Wherever sympathetic magic occurs in its pure unadulterated form,
it assumes that in nature one event follows another necessarily and
invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.
Thus its fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and firm,
in the order and uniformity of nature.
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic
and Religion (1890)
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
Although no longer considered at the forefront of theoretical developments in the field of psychology, Sigmund Freud nonetheless remains
important as the father of psychoanalysis. Along with the work of Karl
Marx and Émile Durkheim, his research on the interactions between individual and group has contributed to a field today known as social theory.
Born in 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (today a region in the Czech Republic),
his family later moved to Vienna, the city where he would spend almost
the rest of his life. Trained as a medical doctor with an interest in neurology, he was forced to abandon the medical profession when his method
of treating patients by means of hypnosis was deemed unscientific by his
colleagues. Wanting to develop a more scientific approach to the study
of the mind, he applied principles from the natural sciences, especially
physics, yet he concluded that the complexities of the mind required more
sophisticated and comprehensive explanations. To develop such theories,
he studied, among other things, his patients’ reports of their dreams. Freud
theorized that human minds not only have a conscious component but
also an unconscious aspect, the content of which manifests itself when
the conscious mind is not in control, such as in dreams, fantasies, and
most importantly, in neuroses (that is, abnormal behaviors such as those
classified as obsessive compulsive disorders or uncontrollable fears of
such things as water or public places). His psychoanalytic theory names
the individual components of the human psyche as: the id (Latin for ‘it’
meaning the unconscious and uncontrollable primal instincts), the superego (Latin for ‘I above’ meaning those social influences from the outside
world that are imposed upon the human personality from birth [making
toilet training a fascinating moment for some Freudians to study since it is
among the earliest moments when the social group forcibly imposes its will
on the young individual]), and the ego (Latin for ‘I’ meaning the mediator
between the superego and the id). For Freud, the inevitable competition
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between what he termed the pleasure principle (embodied by the id’s drive
for self-gratification) and the reality principle (embodied by the superego’s
self-policing activities) was the primary cause of neuroses in the human
psyche. Society, with its rules and laws, was one of the main sources of
censure; repression of the pleasure principle/id—which he deemed to be
instinctual, primal, and the source of uncontrollable though natural urges
and desire—was therefore the basis of social life. Because all humans are
both biological individuals with natural needs and desires as well as actors
in society, Freud concluded that each human needed to engage in repression
and thus possessed some form of neurosis.
Freud on religion
Although Freud’s theory initially dealt with the individual, he eventually
included society in his studies, such that myth functioned on the social level
as dreaming did for the individual. Freud argued that a culture’s myths,
fairy tales, art, legends, rituals, etc., were manifestations of society’s collective psyche; religion being a site where socially dangerous urges and
desires could be expressed in socially harmless ways. Freud therefore identified religion as one of the main sites of conflict and repression for human
beings. He explained that religion was an illusion, something we wish to
be true, which helped humans to cope with feelings of helplessness, weakness, and the inability to gratify the self in all instances—much like the
fantasies we know as dreams help the individual to cope with antisocial
desires which can therefore not be acted upon in reality. Freud’s theory of
religion especially applied to the Judeo-Christian worldview that consists
of a patriarchal god-figure. For Freud this ‘father-figure’ god represents
a childlike faith in the biological father’s ability to protect us. Therefore,
religion functions as a protective device to help humans cope with a hostile physical reality which daily frustrates their natural desires. Yet, at the
same time, we experience a love/hate relationship with our ‘father-figure’
because their nurturing and protective capacity also places rules and limitations upon the id. Much as humans are conflicted in their feelings toward
authority figures, so too they are conflicted toward their gods—which are,
he concluded, merely symbols of actual authority figures. It should therefore be clear that Freud’s theory understands religion in a non-sui generis
manner; his work shifts the focus from identifying some essential core element to studying religion’s function as a coping mechanism for individuals
living within social groups.
In view of these resemblances and analogies one might venture to regard
the obsessional neurosis as a pathological counterpart to the formation
of a religion, to describe this neurosis as a private religious system,
and religion as a universal obsessional neurosis. The essential resemblance would lie in the fundamental renunciation of the satisfaction
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of inherent instincts, and the chief difference in the nature of these
instincts, which in the neurosis are exclusively sexual, but in religion
are of egoistic origin.
‘Obsessive Acts and Religious Practice’ (1907)
That the effect of religious consolations may be likened to that of a
narcotic is well illustrated by what is happening in America. There they
are now trying obviously under the influence of petticoat government—
to deprive people of all stimulants, intoxicants, and other pleasureproducing substances, and instead, by way of compensation, are surfeiting them with piety. This is another experience as to whose outcome
we need not feel curious.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Religion is an attempt to master the sensory world in which we are situated by means of the wishful world which we have developed within us
as a result of biological and psychological necessities.
New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis (1933)
Clifford Geertz (1926–2006)
Clifford Geertz is among the best known and most influential US anthropologists of the mid- to late twentieth century. Geertz is known especially
among scholars of religion for his often utilized definition of religion as,
in his famous words, ‘a cultural system’. Having obtained his PhD from
Harvard University in 1956—after serving in the US Navy during the last
years of World War II—Geertz held academic positions at the University
of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, Oxford University, and
Princeton University’s prestigious Institute for Advanced Studies. His early
studies of Javanese culture (Java is an island that is part of the Indonesian
archipelago and which contains the country’s capital, Jakarta) were followed by repeated fieldwork—now generally understood as a requirement
for producing legitimate anthropological knowledge. Geertz spent time in
such other places as Bali and Morocco, ensuring that his work has been
particularly well known to some scholars of modern Islam. Unlike his
anthropological predecessors who were intent on explaining the natural
causes of elements of culture, Geertz is today associated with an anthropological tradition known as symbolic anthropology, which is concerned
with studying the meaning (as opposed to either the origins or the causes)
that beliefs, behaviors, institutions, and symbols have for the members of
a culture—which is itself seen by those who follow Geertz as an elaborate,
interconnected system of symbols. As such, Geertz is part of the hermeneutic and phenomenological traditions of scholarship—traditions with a
long and still active history in the humanistic study of religion. That is, to
study a culture adequately, one must understand fully the meaning that a
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system of symbols and actions has for a group of cultural actors; this understanding presupposes correct interpretation on the part of the observer. In a
classic example Geertz borrowed from the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle
(1900–76), he cites an observer—inevitably disconnected from the ‘local
knowledge’ possessed by a group of cultural participants—witnessing what
might be called a ‘wink’. Yet, this observer is incapable of distinguishing
a meaningless twitch from a sly wink from what could even be an elaborate parody of a wink (in which the secrecy sometimes communicated by a
wink is undermined by being broadcast to the entire group). For those who
possess this knowledge, this seemingly subtle body movement could mean
anything from an attempt to lessen the bite of a criticism to a recognition
that someone was ‘in on the joke’, to a sexual advance. To understand the
meaning of the wink—and therefore to understand the manner in which
shared sets of interconnected ideas and symbols (that is, cultures) make
our worlds inhabitable by making them meaningful and therefore sensible
to us—required what Geertz famously described as ‘thick description’ of
culture’s interconnected symbols and the changing contexts in which they
operate. A merely ‘thin description’ of the behavior known as ‘a wink’ was
therefore hardly sufficient to understand it.
Geertz on religion
For scholars of religion, Geertz’s best-known work is surely his 1966 essay
‘Religion as a Cultural System’. This long essay is in fact simply a definition
of religion accompanied by a detailed commentary. As promised by the title
of the essay, Geertz defined religion as a system of meaningful symbols that
function to establish interior dispositions (what he termed ‘moods and motivations’) which assisted people to build what some might call a worldview
which was understood to be authentic and authoritative. Despite his interest
in studying the meaning of these symbols as experienced by the participants, Geertz nonetheless clearly advocated an anthropological approach
to the study of religion as a human institution, a sub-system within culture as a whole. This having been said, he nonetheless assumed, along with
many contemporary scholars of religion, that what we call religion constituted an inner world—not necessarily one of faith, as advocated by various
theologians, but one of affectations and sentiments (that is, ‘moods and
motivations’). Geertz is also known for his two notions of experience-near
and experience-distant (coined by the Viennese psychoanalyst, Heinz Kohut
[1913–81], they are roughly comparable to the technical terms emic/etic).
Because non-participants do not necessarily share these inner moods and
motivations (signified by the terms above) it is incorrect to assume a strict
division between the participant and the non-participant; instead, somewhat
akin to a family resemblance approach to definition, he argued that people
are more or less familiar/estranged from various experiences and situations.
The goal of anthropological fieldwork is therefore to find analogies and
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points of contact to assist the observer, who does not share the mood and
for whom some symbolic activity (such as a wink) may appear insignificant,
with transforming a new and therefore experience-distant moment, symbol
or situation into one that is near, familiar, and therefore understandable.
This exercise is premised on the assumed basis of the commonality of the
human condition and the universality of religion—a presumption for which
Geertz has been strongly critiqued by the anthropologist Talal Asad.
Religion is sociologically interesting not because, as vulgar positivism
would have it, it describes the social order (which, in so far as it does,
it does not only very obliquely but very incompletely), but because, like
environment, political power, wealth, jural [legal] obligations, personal
affection, a sense of beauty, it shapes it. . . . For an anthropologist, the
importance of religion lies in its capacity to serve, for an individual or for
a group, as a source of general, yet distinctive, conceptions of the world,
the self, and the relations between them, on the one hand—its model
of aspect—and of rooted, no less distinctive ‘mental’ dispositions—its
model for aspect—on the other. From these cultural functions flow, in
turn, its social and psychological ones.
‘Religion as a Cultural System’ (1966; reprinted in
The Interpretation of Cultures:
Selected Essays [1973])
An experience-near concept is, roughly, one that someone—a patient, a
subject, in our case an informant—might himself naturally and effortlessly use to define what he or his fellows see, feel, think, imagine, and
so on, and which he would readily understand when similarly applied
by others. An experience-distant concept is one that specialists of one
sort or another—an analyst, an experimenter, an ethnographer, even
a priest or an ideologist—employ to forward their scientific, philosophical, or practical aims. ‘Love’ is an experience-near concept, ‘object
cathexis’ [Greek kathexis, meaning a holding] is an experience-distant
one. ‘Social stratification’ and perhaps for most people in the world even
‘religion’ (and certainly ‘religious system’) are experience-distant; ‘caste’
and ‘nirvana’ are experience-near, at least for Hindus and Buddhists.
‘“From the Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of
Anthropological Understanding’ (1974; reprinted in
Local Knowledge: Further Essays in
Interpretive Anthropology [1983])
Eddie S. Glaude
Recent President of the American Academy of Religion (AAR, 2016–17),
Eddie Glaude is Professor of Religious Studies at Princeton University
and (founding) chair of Princeton’s Center for African American Studies.
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Glaude, who is from Moss Point, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast, earned
his undergraduate degree in political science in 1989 (with a minor in
religion) from Morehouse College in Atlanta (founded in 1867, it is a
noted historically black men’s college in the US), while later earning an
MA in African American studies from Temple University (1992) and his
PhD in the study of religion from Princeton (1996). His research interests
include American pragmatist philosophy (in particular the writings of John
Dewey [1859–1952]), African American religious history, and its place in
American public life. He currently hosts a podcast, AAS 21 (the title refers
to carrying out African American studies in the twenty-first century), and
has become a prominent public intellectual, contributing opinion pieces to
such magazines/sites as Time and the Huffington Post while also regularly
contributing to television news and opinion shows. He is the author of
such books as Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early NineteenthCentury Black America (2000), In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and
the Politics of Black America (2007), Democracy in Black: How Race
Still Enslaves the American Soul (2016), and An Uncommon Faith: A
Pragmatic Approach to the Study of African American Religion (2018), as
well as co-editing, with Cornell West, African American Religious Studies:
An Anthology (2003).
Glaude on religion
Working in a tradition indebted to the influential US scholar, Cornell West,
Glaude’s early interest in the study of religion (having obtained an MA
in African American studies) was linked to West’s invitation, extended at
a conference that they were both attending early in Glaude’s career, for
Glaude to come to Princeton to pursue doctoral studies with him. Glaude’s
aim, then, was to consider how thinking more about African American religious communities could assist people today to reimagine how politics is
carried out and spoken about in the US—such as his dissertation (and eventual first book) which examined how a narrative framework provided by the
idea of Israel as a ‘chosen people’ was used by African American authors
across the nineteenth century to provide a way of thinking about their situation and organizing to address it. His interests, then, had much to do with
the relationship between what he would describe as black Christianity and
black politics in the US, though his work now has progressed to address far
wider concerns at the intersection of race and power in the US.
The language of nation in early nineteenth-century black political rhetoric derives, at least in part, form this rearticulation of the ideology of
chosenness. African Americans reread the American version of Exodus
to account for their circumstances in the United States. They became
the nation of Israel, the chosen people of God. As such, the ritualization of the story of African American political culture represented a set
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of common interests arrayed against particular interests: their natural
right of liberty and equality against the racial order of American society.
Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early
Nineteenth-Century Black America (2000)
One of the things that I do in my work is that I make a distinction
between African American religious life and African American religion. . . . There’s this assumption that African American religious life . . .
is absolutely critical to the overall circumstance of Black communities
in this country. . . . That Black civil society, . . . schools, insurance companies, social organizations . . ., a range of organizations in some ways
had their beginnings in African American religious institutions, particularly African American churches. And in some ways Black churches
were the cornerstone of Black life in the country, having everything to
do with the pervasiveness of the impact of slavery. Christian churches
were the primary sites that African Americans created for themselves to
imagine themselves differently, to be able to imagine a sense of self apart
from the relation of domination that was slavery. But it’s really important to understand that African American religious life isn’t reducible
to African American Christianity; that African American Christianity is
just one dimension of a broad and complex and varied religious landscape . . . . There’s a whole tradition of conjure that defines the African
American religious landscape . . .; so conjure is one feature where you
have a range of knowledge about the world as such and how one can
use that knowledge to heal and to harm. It is a religious system, it’s a
theological system, in some ways, that informed and shaped the lifeworld of slave. . . . And you have, of course, traditional African religions that are still evident and prevalent in African American slave
communities, so you have the Yoruba tradition . . .; the African gods
did not die across the Atlantic; they made their way to the United States,
they made their way to the New World. . . . You also have Islam; you
have African Americans who emerge who are rooted in the Muslim tradition, and we have the archives showing records of African Americans
praying five times a day, even in the context of slavery.
Interview with the Brainwaves Video Anthology,
available online (2016)
David Hume (1711–76)
The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, was born in Edinburgh, studied at
the University of Edinburgh, and, upon graduation in 1725, intended to
practice law. However, his interest in philosophy, political theory, history,
and literature soon became his focus. While in France in the mid-1730s, he
wrote his A Treatise of Human Nature, and throughout the late 1730s and
early 1740s he wrote on such topics as moral theory and politics. Denied
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an academic position at the University of Edinburgh in 1745 (due to his
growing reputation as a skeptic), Hume took a position as the secretary to
a British Army general, traveling throughout France, and, over the course
of the next decade, published books for which he is still famous today:
Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry
concerning the Principles of Morals. Hume held positions as a librarian and
had an appointment at the British embassy in Paris, though he resigned from
his government position in 1769.
Hume on religion
Although still studied by philosophers and political theorists, in the academic study of religion Hume is, perhaps, best known as the author of
two works that contributed much to establishing the basis for a naturalistic theory of religion: A Natural History of Religion (1757) as well as his
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779; written in the dialogical style,
somewhat similar to a dialogue by Plato, in which speakers representing distinct philosophical viewpoints investigate a topic). Hume made a break with
a theological approach to the study of religion, asking not what it meant to
be religious or inquiring in the proper way of being religious but, instead,
enquiring into the causes of religious beliefs. Although his work was carried out early in the history of this alternative approach—evidenced in such
things as Hume’s apparent assumption that a creator obviously exists—he
stands out from his contemporaries for his interest in explaining the natural causes of human knowledge about God. Observing that religious belief
is not universal (and that even when it is found it differs dramatically),
Hume reasons that the cause of such beliefs cannot be something innate or
essential to human nature; instead, he argues that beliefs in supernatural
powers must themselves be caused by something more basic. He finds this
basis in what he terms the ‘hopes and fears’ of human beings who have no
choice but to live in a world in which the future is unknown and the actual
causes of events are often unknown. Speculating on the experiences of early
human beings interacting with a sometimes threatening natural world he
concludes that the belief in a powerful, superhuman being controlling events
is a device human beings have long used (much as anthropomorphism is
such a device) to make sense of their inhospitable environments. Religion,
thus, is not basic to human nature; instead, Hume helps to lay the basis for
a naturalistic approach by arguing that knowledge about the gods can be
explained by reducing it to ‘hopes and fears’.
We are placed in this world, as in a great theatre, where the true springs
and causes of every event are entirely concealed from us; nor have we
either sufficient wisdom to foresee, or power to prevent those ills, with
which we are continually threatened. We hang in perpetual suspense
between life and death, health and sickness, plenty and want; which
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are distributed amongst the human species by secret and unknown
causes, whose operation is oft unexpected, and always unaccountable.
These unknown causes, then, become the constant object of our hope
and fear.
There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings
like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with
which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately
conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds;
and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or goodwill to every things, that hurts or pleases
us. . . . No wonder, then, that mankind, being placed in such an absolute ignorance of causes, and being at the same time so anxious concerning their future fortune, should immediately acknowledge a dependence
on invisible powers, possessed of sentiment and knowledge.
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
William James (1842–1910)
Older brother to the famous US novelist Henry James, William James
attained fame of his own, in North America as well as Europe, as a psychologist and as an early theorist of religion. Educated as a young man in
Europe, James received his medical degree from Harvard in 1869, taught
anatomy and physiology there, established an experimental psychology lab,
was the first to teach psychology in a US university (1875), and within a
few years was also lecturing in philosophy. By the time he was invited, for
1901/2, to Edinburgh University, Scotland, to deliver its famous lecture
series (established in 1888 by Lord Gifford, the Gifford Lectures continue to
this day to ‘promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term—in other words, the knowledge of God’), James had
already become a noted philosopher of religion, publishing in 1897 a collection of ten essays entitled The Will to Believe (some dating to the late 1870s
on such topics as morality and faith). Topics that had preoccupied him up
until this point became the topic of his Gifford Lectures, published the following year under the title, The Varieties of Religious Experience. Drawing
on his work in psychology, James focused on the various types of religious
experience that, according to him, predated any expression of religion as
found in narrative, behavior, and institution. Unlike the early naturalistic
theorists of his time, James makes clear in these still very famous lectures
that religious experience is not a mistaken apprehension of some element
in the natural world, distorted by consciousness, but is, instead, a unique
sort of experience not to be dismissed or explained away; the theology in
these lectures is therefore most evident as is his defense of religious faith—
found in his earlier writings—from the explanations of what was at that
time called medical materialism. Today, James is also remembered as an
early advocate of pragmatism—the philosophical view, prominent among
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some US philosophers, that, according to James’s interpretation, beliefs are
tested by the observation of their consequences.
James on religion
James is perhaps best known today for his famous definition of religion,
found in his 1901/2 Gifford Lectures, which makes clear that he was concerned to study religion as a subjective, individual phenomenon, rather
than as part of a social system. In fact, for James social life was part of
a secondary, external world in which one’s primary feelings and experiences were expressed, always inadequately and to the detriment of the
feeling itself (as evidenced in the common phrase, ‘I can’t quite put it into
words’). Accordingly, the religious person in her or his solitude—and most
importantly, the so-called ‘religious genius’ whose experiences initiate and
animate followers and, eventually, entire social movements called religions—
ought to be the proper object of focus when studying religion, for everything else is merely ‘second-hand religion’, as James the idealist would
phrase it. James goes on to distinguish between two types of religious experience (and thus systems built upon these experiences): the ‘healthy-minded’
(those optimists whose outlooks exclude considering the existence of evil)
and the ‘sick-souled’ (those whose outlooks take into account the reality of
evil). Although the former works to a point, James concludes that only the
latter is capable of adequately providing a basis for existing in the world,
since evil must be confronted and accounted for. In addressing mysticism
James makes evident his pragmatic bent, noting that mystical experiences
are to be judged not medically (in terms of, for example, delusional states)
but in terms of their results; ‘mystical states’, he concludes, ‘may, interpreted in one way or another, be after all the truest of insights into the
meaning of life.’
Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of
individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves
to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the
relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out
of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies,
and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. In these lectures, however, as I have already said, the immediate personal experience will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly consider theology or
ecclesiasticism at all.
The word ‘religion’, as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and
produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough
to ‘organize’ themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with
corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of
dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally
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innocent thing; so that when we hear the word ‘religion’ nowadays,
we think inevitably of some ‘church’ or other; and to some persons the
word ‘church’ suggests so much hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness
and tenacity of superstition that in a wholesale undiscerning way they
glory in saying that they are ‘down’ on religion altogether. Even we who
belong to churches do not exempt other churches than our own from
the general condemnation. But in this course of lectures ecclesiastical
institutions hardly concern us at all. The religious experience which we
are studying is that which lives itself out within the private breast.
Knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself. . . . If religion be a
function by which either God’s cause or man’s cause is to be really
advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is a better
servant than he who merely knows about it, however much. Knowledge
about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its
dynamic currents passing through your being, is another. For this reason, the science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion;
and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a
point comes when she must drop the purely theoretical attitude, and
either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith.
Lectures 14, 15, and Conclusion in The Varieties of Religious
Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902)
Kim Knott
Having worked at the University of Leeds from 1982 to 2012, and carried
out her earlier work in the study of Hinduism and new religious movements,
Kim Knott is now a member of the Department of Politics, Philosophy
and Religion at Lancaster University, in England, and leads the Centre for
Research and Evidence on Security Threat, which devotes itself to examining how ideas, beliefs, and values are transmitted—though her longstanding
interests have concerned such topics of sacred place, secularism, religious
diversity, immigration, and inter-religious dialogue, carried out in such
research areas as the present of Asian religions in the UK. Among her
books are: Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction (1998), My Sweet Lord:
The Hare Krishna Movement (1986), The Location of Religion: A Spatial
Analysis (2005) and Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred:
Representation and Change (2013).
Knott on religion
Her current work addresses how religion as well as those socio-political
frameworks that we today call the secular (and even what some term the
post-secular) are arranged and the roles they each play in wider public conversations (as in media and politics). Accordingly, she is interested in both
religion but also the context in which we come to know things as religious
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vs. secular, aiming to, as she has phrased it, break open the secular so as
to explore the boundary between religion and non-religion and the way
other so-called non-religious deeply held beliefs and values contribute to
establishing and contesting people’s worldviews.
If you go into a library or bookshop with the intention of finding
out about Hinduism, to which section do you go? To ‘Sociology’ for
books on the social system of the Hindus? To ‘Art and Architecture’
to learn about the fabulous temples, carvings, and paintings in which
Hindu mythology is depicted? To ‘Languages’ for books on Sanskrit
and other Indian languages? To ‘Anthropology’ for information about
village India, its society and culture? Although you might well find useful sources in all these locations, you would probably go first to the
‘Religion’ section, because in Western countries Hinduism is considered
to be a religious system much like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and
Buddhism . . . . [But] my question is: ‘Do people who practise Hinduism
see it in the same way as those who study it?’ For the sake of ease, I
shall refer to these two groups as devotees and scholars, although it will
soon become apparent that the picture is more complex than is implied
by this distinction.
Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction (1998)
The majority of books written about religions are written by those who
participate in them. There are numerous publishing houses associated
with religious institutions; many groups have in-house newsletters and
journals. In all of these, people of faith share with their co-religionists
accounts of religious experience, religious ideas, responses to scripture,
and thoughts about religious behaviours, ethics, and the public demonstration of their faith. In addition, most religions have a class of scholars
who reflect on, speak and write about their doctrinal, philosophical,
legal or textual traditions, and many interpret them according to the
needs of the time, or codify them so that they may be remembered and
used in the future. Those who comprise such classes of scholars (theologians, rabbis, muftis, pandits, and so on), often men, are by definition
participants and insiders.
‘Insider/Outsider Perspectives’, The Routledge
Companion to the Study of Religion (2005)
Bruce Lincoln
After obtaining his PhD in 1976 at the University of Chicago, studying the
history of religions under the direction of, among others, Mircea Eliade,
Bruce Lincoln held an appointment at the Center for Humanistic Studies at
the University of Minnesota before returning to the University of Chicago
where he is today the Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of
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Religions. As with many classically trained historians of religions trained
during the height of Chicago’s influence in the field, Lincoln’s work emphasizes the acquisition of ancient languages and a focus on texts to study myth
and ritual; his data is derived from broad historical and cultural areas: from
ancient Iran and India to Native American traditions, Norse mythology,
the colonial era in Africa, and the Spanish revolution of the late 1930s.
However, unlike many of his peers, he is interested in studying cultural
practices as elements of systems in which power and privilege are being contested (rather than studying symbols, myths, and rituals as the phenomena
that are merely public expressions of essential, deep meanings). As such,
the influence of Marxist social theory is apparent in his work, as is the role
played by discourse analysis (as associated with the field of semiotics).
Lincoln on religion
Unlike classical Marxist theorists of religion, Lincoln studies religious
discourse not so much as an opiate, dulling working-class sensibilities
and thereby oppressing them, but as the name given to one among many
rhetorical strategies upon which groups—whether dominant or marginal—
routinely draw to normalize their various claims to authority. This approach
has led him to focus his scholarship on how social boundaries are contested,
inverted, and legitimized, through narratives, behaviors, and the manipulation of symbols. This focus enables him to move well beyond the traditional
data examined by previous generations of scholars of religion—apparent in
his study of how authority is contested and reproduced at a variety of historical and social sites. Although much of his work continues to comprise a
close reading of texts in their context (in the tradition of his earlier work on
the ideology of the Hindu text known as the Veda), Lincoln is also widely
known for studying the social and political contexts of scholarly texts on
religion and myth, demonstrating the manner in which scholarship itself
is the product of national and class interests. Most recently, Lincoln has
entered the realm of public discourse by writing a series of op-ed pieces in US
daily newspapers, in which he examines the techniques and the geo-political
effects of contemporary political rhetoric.
The same destabilizing and irreverent questions one might ask of any
speech act ought be posed of religious discourse. The first of these is
‘Who speaks here?’, that is, what person, group, or institution is responsible for a text, whatever its putative or apparent author. Beyond that,
‘To what audience? In what immediate and broader context? Through
what system of mediations? With what interests?’ And further, ‘Of
what would the speaker(s) persuade the audience? What are the consequences if this project of persuasion should happen to succeed? Who
wins what, and how much? Who, conversely, loses?’ . . . When one
permits those whom one studies to define the terms in which they will
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be understood, suspends one’s interest in the temporal and contingent,
or fails to distinguish between ‘truths’, ‘truth-claims’, and ‘regimes
of truth’, one has ceased to function as historian or scholar. In that
moment, a variety of roles are available: some perfectly respectable
(amanuensis, collector, friend and advocate), and some less appealing
(cheerleader, voyeur, retailer of import goods). None, however, should
be confused with scholarship.
‘Theses on Method’, in Method & Theory in
the Study of Religion (1996)
It would be nice to begin with a clear and concise definition of ‘myth’,
but unfortunately that can’t be done. Indeed, it would be nice to begin
with any definition, but to do so would be misleading, it would undercut and distort the very project I intend to pursue. For in the pages that
follow I will not attempt to identify the thing myth ‘is’; rather, I hope
to elucidate some of the ways this word, concept, and category have
been used and to identify the most dramatic shifts that occurred in their
status and usage.
Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (2000)
Burton L. Mack
Now retired from the Claremont School of Theology, in California, Burton
Mack carried out his doctoral studies in Germany and has played a leading
role in helping the modern field of New Testament studies reinvent itself as
the historically grounded field of Christian origins. The texts of the earliest
Christians are therefore of relevance to Mack neither for the meaning they
convey nor for their accuracy in depicting the origins of the movement, but
because they are understood as artifacts (or better put, subsequent copies of
long lost originals) from a series of particular historical worlds out of which
a social movement began and grew. Although many contemporary scholars
of religion studying the New Testament continue to do so in a traditional
manner (engaging in hermeneutical studies), Mack helped to pave the way
for current studies which examine the texts as evidence of self-perceived
marginal groups contesting social boundaries and experimenting with alternative ways of building social identity in the turn-of-the-era Greco-Roman
world. As such, the texts are understood by Mack as myths—not in the
sense of lies or innocently fanciful tales but in the sense of narratives that
reflect and advance specific ways of representing the world and, along with
it, one’s place in it. For example, his study of the Gospel of Mark concludes
that one would be mistaken to read it as a historical narrative that can be
judged accurate or not; instead, the text comprises a myth of origins conducive to the interests and needs of its writer and his community. Mack’s work
therefore also closely examines non-canonical texts (texts from the same era
as those subsequently included in the Bible but which early Christian leaders
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excluded from their authoritative collections, or canon [from the Latin for
rule or measuring line]) as well as the ‘Q’ document. Such non-canonical
resources are useful for those attempting to gain information on the earliest
forms of the social movement rather than simply reading authoritative texts
which portray the origins of the movement as later generations understood
it to have taken place.
Mack on religion
For those who consider writing the history of a religion to require special
methods capable of communicating their essence and enduring meaning
and value, Mack’s work is likely controversial for it locates the beginnings
of early Christianity within a mundane, but no less interesting, Hellenistic
social world. Yet for those who understand Christianity to be a social movement like any other—with a variety of beginning points and a complex
history of efforts to unify group members’ perceived identities, interests,
and their representations of both—Mack’s work is welcomed as an attempt
to account for the rise of this movement in a way that does not take for
granted the historical accuracy of participants’ own attempts to represent its
origins (bringing to mind issues associated with the insider/outsider problem). Seeing the earliest texts as data in need of analysis, Mack brings a
number of social theoretical tools to his readings, concluding that the texts
provide evidence of their authors’ attempts to construct and legitimize particular social worlds in which their group’s interests could be accomplished.
When it comes to questions concerning the identity of the historical Jesus
(as opposed to what theologians might term the ‘Jesus of faith’), Mack concludes that we might be able to understand this historical actor better if we
use as our model the itinerant (that is, wandering) Cynic teacher easily found
in this era, in this part of the world (Cynicism names a loosely organized yet
influential turn-of-the-era Hellenistic philosophical movement characterized
by its critique of wealth, emphasis on living a modest and virtuous life,
as well as specific types of persuasive argumentation). This model, Mack
argues, is helpful in understanding Jesus and the early Jesus movements,
especially in light of his reading of Q as having originally contained a collection of wisdom sayings attributed to Jesus. It should therefore be clear that,
for Mack, religion is the name given to a collection of social and rhetorical
techniques and institutions that accomplish what he refers to as mythmaking and social formation—the intertwined means by which the conditions
favorable to collective life are made possible and reproduced over time and
place. As such, he draws on the work of a variety of theorists in his studies
of the New Testament, from Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim to Jonathan
Z. Smith and a number of current anthropological theorists. Mack’s own
influence among scholars both within and outside the field of Christian origins (an example of the former would be William Arnal), therefore, can be
linked to his willingness to suspend the common assumption that the texts
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we come to know as scriptures constitute a distinct domain or a special
case, requiring unique methods for their study; instead, his scholarship has
worked toward studying such texts as a social theorist would study any text.
Once upon a time, before there were gospels of the kind familiar to
readers of the New Testament, the first followers of Jesus wrote another
kind of book. Instead of telling a dramatic story about Jesus’ life, their
book contained only his teachings. They lived with these teachings ringing in their ears and thought of Jesus as the founder of their movement.
But their focus was not on the person of Jesus or his life and destiny.
They were engrossed with the social program that was called for by
his teachings. Thus their book was not a gospel of the Christian kind,
namely a narrative of the life of Jesus as the Christ. Rather it was a
gospel of Jesus’ sayings, a ‘sayings gospel’. His first followers arranged
these sayings in a way that offered instruction for living creatively in the
midst of a most confusing time, and their book served them well as a
handbook and guide for most of the first Christian century. The book
was lost . . . to history somewhere in the course of the late first century
when stories of Jesus’ life began to be written and became the more
popular form of charter document for early Christian circles.
The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (1983)
All peoples tell stories about their past that set the stage for their own
time and place in a larger world. This world expands the horizons of
memory and imagination beyond the borders of their contemporary
world and becomes populated with images, agents, and events that
account for the environment, set precedents for social relations and
practices, and intrude upon the daily round in odd and surprising ways.
These agents and images usually have some features that are recognizably human, but are frequently combinations of features that do not
normally appear in the real world and they can also be grotesque. Most
people have not found it necessary or even interesting to reflect on the
‘truth’ of their stories or grade them according to their degree of fantasy
as has been the case in modern Western societies. When asked about
such things by modern ethnographers, the answers have been a smile
and a frown. As a story-teller for the Hopi Indians of the southwestern
United States said, when asked how he knew their stories were true,
‘Because they are told’.
The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy (2002)
Martin Marty
Although now retired from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School,
where he taught in the area of American religious history since 1963, Martin
Marty continues to be active in the field. Quite apart from his role in training
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new generations of American religionists and his many publications, Marty
has a national US presence through his many media appearances as an
interpreter of issues that fall broadly within the area of contemporary US
religion and politics. He is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran
Church and is the past president of the American Academy of Religion, the
American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical
Association. He has served on US presidential commissions and has received
many honorary doctoral degrees—all indications of the influential role his
work has played in the late twentieth-century US academy. Along with
R. Scott Appleby, Marty co-directed the Fundamentalism Project—a multiyear, collaborative research project under the auspices of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences and funded by the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 the University of Chicago’s Institute
for the Advanced Study of Religion was renamed the Martin Marty Center
(currently under the directorship of Wendy Doniger)—to which Marty regularly writes a web column for its feature, ‘Sightings’.
Marty on religion
Although he has written a number of descriptive, historical works on such
Christian theological topics as baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as with
many recent scholars of US religious history, the perennial problem of ‘the
one’ and ‘the many’—how national uniformity is possible despite cultural
plurality—has been a recurring theme in much of Marty’s recent writings. For many such writers, the history of the United States of America
holds a special place in their efforts to investigate how to build a pluralistic
society, for the history of the US is easily understood as one of migration
and thus a blending of differing populations, each bringing with them a
host of competing values. Defining religion broadly as any belief system
that addresses issues of meaning and purpose—that is, any issue taken by
groups to involve what Paul Tillich termed an ‘ultimate concern’—Marty
argues that religions do not simply build group identity but make possible
a sense of well-being and thus a sense of community. Taking religion into
account—that is, taking religion seriously as an essential element of human
nature, engaging not in reductive explanation but, instead, in conversation
and inter-religious dialogue—is therefore key for anyone hoping to tackle
the problems faced by pluralistic societies. It is precisely this concern that
animates the multi-volumed publications of the Fundamentalism Project—
an effort to document the manner in which some religious groups have
responded to the twentieth century’s spread of modernity (that is, the rapid
success of specific forms of economic and political organization).
America . . . helped patent freedom for choice as well as freedom of
choice in religion. As such, it can be seen as the first and most modern
society. Today, as freedom and choice have both expanded and many
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citizens follow completely personal and private quests, we might even
speak of an ultramodern phase in American pilgrimage.
Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of
Religion in America (1984)
I do believe . . . that the way to sort out the trivial from the urgent
and the appropriate from the irrelevant is getting a variety of people
together and starting a conversation. That’s a technique suggested by
a civil rights leader in Chicago more than three decades ago: ‘We just
get a roomful of people’, he explained, ‘and tell them not to come out
until they have a solution’. ‘To what problem?’ ‘You’ll find out quickly
enough if you only start talking’. So start talking.
Politics, Religion, and the Common Good: Advancing
a Distinctly American Conversation about
Religion’s Role in Our Shared Life (2000)
Karl Marx (1818–83)
Although he was not primarily concerned with studying religion, as a
political theorist Marx was interested in the social function religion played
and how it made certain political and economic systems possible. Born in
Prussia and originally trained as a philosopher, the young Marx turned
from philosophy toward the study of economics and politics. In the early
1840s, he formed a life-long friendship with Friedrich Engels (1820–95),
with whom he co-wrote a number of his most famous works and who
often financially supported Marx and his family. Historical materialism—
the name given to Marx’s theory of history—is based on the idea that the
systems that organize and make possible human productive power (what
he termed the modes of production) create the conditions in which human
consciousness takes shape. As a materialist, Marx phrased it as follows: ‘it
is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the
contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness’. His
interest in political economy, therefore, had much to do with studying both
systems of social rank and privilege, on the one hand, and systems of value
and exchange, on the other, along with the types of thought and forms
of identity they made possible. Marx paid particular attention to what he
considered to be the harmful effects of the economic system known as capitalism; his critique was premised on his assumption that human labor ought
to provide an opportunity to meet our inherent need for creative, fulfilling
work. Inasmuch as capital (the profit that results from exchanging a product [what we could term a commodity] for more than it cost to produce)
remains in the hands of those who own the production process (that is,
those who own the means of production), and not necessarily in the hands
of the person whose labor actually made the product (the worker), Marx
concluded that workers in capitalist systems were exploited; he termed the
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working class ‘the proletariat’, from the Latin proles, meaning offspring; in
ancient Rome, the proletarius was the lowest class of citizens. The proletariat, or wage laborers, do not own their own means of production (that is,
they own no property and therefore have no access to accumulated wealth,
or capital) and therefore have nothing to exchange but their own labor
(that is, their bodies and their creativity) in order to make a living. The proletariat therefore live in a constant state of alienation—alienated from the
results of their labor (whose purchase price had little to do with the wages
they were paid to produce it) as well as from their own essentially creative
human nature which has itself become little more than a commodity.
Marx on religion
In his efforts to explain how oppressive political and economic conditions
were perpetuated, and how people lived within such systems, Marx turned
his attention to religion—understood by him as an ideological institution
premised on the belief in a god and in an afterlife. According to Marx,
religion—like all belief systems—is a product of material realities (that
is, who owns what) and thus a product of economic and political conditions. Thus, the problems of religion (such issues as salvation, suffering,
redemption, punishment, guilt, etc.) are ultimately expressions of practical
problems that exist within society; more explicitly, the problems of religion
are merely a projection of problems with how social relations are organized. Religion—the belief in a better life to come—is therefore a symptom
of oppressive social conditions. It is used by oppressors to distract people
from the economic conditions in which they are forced to live and it is used
by those who are exploited to cope with their lot in life—a form of coping
with exploitation and alienation that, ironically, prevents them from ever
changing the actual social conditions under which they live, for change is
always removed from today to tomorrow, from this life to the next. Hence,
for Marx, religion is famously identified as the ‘opium of the masses’—it
distracts and soothes people whose lives have been reduced to commodities.
But by distracting and soothing them, by allowing them to put up with their
lot in life, religion perpetuates the actual source of the problem—which lies
in the realm of politics and economics, not theology.
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed
man’s self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found
himself or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being
squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society.
This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is
the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic
in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral
sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation
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and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence
since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle
against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world
whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of
real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh
of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul
of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the
demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that
requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the
criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right (1844)
Tomoko Masuzawa
After earning her PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara
in 1985, Masuzawa began her career at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, where she was Associate Professor in the Department of
Religious Studies and member of the Program in Social Theory and CrossCultural Studies. She currently holds a joint appointment in the Department
of History and the Program of Comparative Literature, at the University
of Michigan, where her course topics include European intellectual history
and critical theory. Her research, which could be characterized as meta-theoretical, concentrates on the historical development of the nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century search for the origin of religion and the history and
politics of the categories ‘religion’ and ‘world religions’.
Masuzawa on religion
Unlike other scholars, Masuzawa is not concerned with studying religion
as something that exists sui generis and she is uninterested in accumulating a wealth of descriptive, phenomenological information about religious
beliefs, practices, and institutions. Instead, in her most recent book, The
Invention of World Religions (2005), she traces the practical implications
of the European category of ‘world religions’—as well as the category ‘religion’ itself—from its first appearance in the late eighteenth century to the
contemporary usage of the category by anyone who employs it to classify
and categorize certain sets of phenomena, as if these particular elements
of culture are essentially unique and distinct from other aspects of social
life. Masuzawa argues that the category—which is today employed as if
it names an obvious aspect of culture—was first employed in an effort to
move beyond conceptualizing religion in what has often been termed a
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Judeo-Christian sense (in which the world was once divided between the
chosen or saved and heathens); instead, ‘world religions’ signals an attempt
at a more pluralistic understanding (whose development coincided with
the rise of European colonial influence, a crucially important point when
tracing the history of this concept) that many other phenomena can be considered inherently religious. Accordingly, over time we see other groups
included under this conceptual umbrella: Islam (once known throughout
Europe as ‘Mohammedanism’), Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism,
Confucianism, Shinto, Native American religions, etc. Because not all cultures have produced social movements that easily fit the criteria of this
concept, throughout history we have also seen the development of such
sub-types as primitive religions, archaic religions, traditional religions, and
(because these previous categories are now considered unusable) the now
popular term, indigenous religions—all used to name groups that scholars, relying on the family resemblance approach, recognize as having some
religion-like characteristics but which do not meet the criteria established
for naming something as a world religion (e.g., geographic spread, influence, etc.). To illustrate the manner in which the assumptions that animate
these criteria are rendered self-evident, Masuzawa draws attention to the
standard map often located in a world religions textbook that illustrates
the demographics of the major world religions. For her, this map legitimizes
what is in reality a specific classification system of rather recent invention.
Her work is important because, in showing the development of the category ‘world religions’, she exposes the mutable nature of all classification
systems, rendering them accessible to historical analysis and critical study.
What may be expected from this rereading—with, admittedly, a potentially insurgent intent—is, at least, gaining some ground, from which
we may begin to challenge the position of the self-appointed ‘ascetic
priest’ (alias ‘modern scholar’), whose sanctimonious self-understanding
seems to dictate unilaterally the entire configuration of the field of
knowledge. What is sought here is a critique that departs fundamentally from the kind of vaguely narcissistic self-criticism within the confines of ‘ethics of science’—‘Are we fair in our representations of the
“primitives”?’—which ultimately refuses to question the positional
structure of the knowing and the known, and thus remains insistently
blind to the question of power. What is called for instead is a critical
inquiry about the practice of knowledge and power, about the politics
of writing, as it pertains to the study of religion.
In Search of Dreamtime: The Quest for the
Origin of Religion (1993)
In the social sciences and humanities alike, ‘religion’ as a category has
been left largely unhistoricized, essentialized, and tacitly presumed
immune or inherently resistant to critical analysis. The reasons for this
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failing on the part of the academy, this general lack of analytic interest,
and the obstinate opacity of the subject of religion, are no doubt many
and complex. But the complexity may begin to yield to critical pressure
if we are to subject this discursive formation as a whole to a different
kind of scrutiny, a sustained and somewhat sinuous historical analysis.
The Invention of World Religion, or How European
Universalism was Preserved in the Language
of Pluralism (2005)
F. Max Müller (1823–1900)
Friedrich Max Müller—a German-born scholar of the religions of ancient
India and an early historian of myth and language (what was then called
the field of philology [the love of words, from the Greek philos + logoi])
who, after 1846, spent his professional life in England (first teaching at
Oxford University and then working as the curator of its main research
library)—is generally considered, along with his contemporary, the Dutch
Egyptologist, Cornelius P. Tiele (1830–1902), as one of the nineteenthcentury founders of what was then known as either comparative religion
or the science of religion. Müller earned a PhD in philosophy, then moved
on to study in Berlin and eventually Paris, where he continued his study of
Sanskrit and comparative philology (the precursor to what we today know
as linguistics). Like many of his generation, Müller was interested in the
quest for origins, which, once determined, might account for what he saw
as resemblances between members of what was then termed the ‘Aryan’
language family (also known as the Indo-Europeans—although this theory is today contested by some, it refers to a group hypothesized by some
scholars to lie in the pre-history of many people in modern Europe and
India; an ancient group whose presence was once thought to be detectable
in the linguistic similarities among the ancient languages and in archeological evidence found throughout Greece, India, and Europe). Müller became
famous for his multi-volume translations of ancient Sanskrit texts (some
epics, others used in ritual ceremonies) that were previously unavailable
to an English-speaking audience (notably, the collection of ancient chants
or hymns known as the Rig Veda and, later in his career, overseeing the
massive project published as The Sacred Books of the East [eventually consisting of fifty volumes]). He was also a well-known opponent of Darwin’s
theory of evolution, although he had his own views on the gradual development of myth and, eventually, religion, throughout human history. His
interest in language and mythology—which led to work funded early on
by the East India Trading Company, one arm of British colonialism—
prompted him to argue for the comparative study of language and myth
(which he understood as an inevitable ‘disease of language’, indicative of
an early stage in human history), which, in turn, led to his interest in creating a new academic discipline: the scientific, cross-cultural study of religion
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as a basic aspect of human nature (much like language). In the mid- to late
nineteenth century Müller became widely known in Britain for his highly
successful public lectures and writings on the scientific and comparative
study of religion, notably his programmatic book, Introduction to the
Science of Religion (1873), and his collected essays, Chips from a German
Workshop (the first of what were eventually four volumes was published
in 1867).
Müller on religion
Although today almost any bookstore will regularly stock a number of collections of world mythologies, it is crucial to note that, as recently as the
mid-nineteenth century such collections were yet to come into existence.
Instead, the work of collecting, translating and comparing texts only then
being found and brought back to Europe by travelers, traders, missionaries,
colonial bureaucrats, and members of the military fell to scholars such as
Müller or James Frazer. Although such scholars were undoubtedly part of
a colonial world, making it relatively easy to detect in their work unexamined assumptions regarding the superiority of European social organization
and Christian forms of behavior and belief, it is to such scholars that we
owe a debt for their painstaking archival work and their willingness to
entertain that local and familiar practices are but one species of larger,
cross-cultural patterns, shared by all human beings (thus making it possible to study not only any number of individual religions but also the
collective human behavior common to them all, known as religion). So,
quite apart from acting as a collector, translator, and editor, Müller was
also an early theorist of religion. His work emphasized the role played by
myths (as with many, but not all, of his contemporaries, text and belief
were prioritized over studying forms of behavior and organization) as the
means whereby people were able to sense and communicate their sense of,
what he called, ‘the infinite’—a universal human intuition about the divine.
Therefore, despite his role in helping to establish a scientific study of religion, his work understandably also shared something in common with a
theological position which was in his day known as the study of natural
religion—that is, taking the fact of religion for granted, it was the study
of how humans gain knowledge of religion if they do not subscribe to a
belief system that assumes this knowledge is revealed to them from another
source, such as a god. At that time, ‘natural religion’ was therefore distinguished from ‘revealed religion’—a basic classification, also apparent in
David Hume’s earlier work, that was once used to distinguish among what
were considered two different types of religion.
When students of Comparative Philology boldly adopted Goethe’s
paradox, ‘He who knows one language knows none’, people were startled at first, but they soon began to feel the truth which was hidden
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beneath the paradox. Could Goethe have meant that Homer did not
know Greek, or that Shakespeare did not know English, because neither of them knew more than his own mother tongue? No! What was
meant was that neither Homer nor Shakespeare knew what that language really was which he handled with so much power and cunning.
Unfortunately the old verb ‘to can’, from which ‘canny’ and ‘cunning’, is
lost in English, otherwise we should be able in two words to express our
meaning, and to keep apart the two kinds of knowledge of which we
are speaking. As we say in German, können is not kennen, we might say
in English, to can, that is to be cunning, is not to ken, that is to know;
and it would then become clear at once, that the most eloquent speaker
and the most gifted poet, with all their command of words and skilful
mastery of expression, would have but little to say if asked what language really is! The same applies to religion. He who knows one, knows
none. There are thousands of people whose faith is such that it could
move mountains, and who yet, if they were asked what religion really
is, would remain silent, or would speak of outward tokens rather than
of the inward nature, of the faculty of faith.
First Lecture in Lectures on the Science of Religion (1893)
There is nothing more ancient in the world than language. The history
of man begins, not with rude flints, rock temples or pyramids, but
with language. The second stage is represented by myths as the first
attempts at translating the phenomena of nature into thought. The
third stage is that of religion or the recognition of moral powers, and in
the end of One Moral Power behind and above all nature. The fourth
and last is philosophy, or a critique of the powers of reason in their
legitimate working on the data of experience.
Contributions to the Science of Mythology (1897)
Rudolf Otto (1869–1937)
Born in Piene, Germany, Rudolf Otto was one of the foremost German systematic theologians of the late nineteenth century. He was educated at the
University of Erlangen and the University of Göttingen in liberal theology
and history of the Bible. Although originally having planned on entering the
ministry, Otto’s arrangements were forced to change due to staunch resistance from the conservative German Lutheran Church and their hesitance
to give him an appointment. Instead, Otto took a teaching position at the
University of Göttingen and began studying the work of Jakob Friedrich
Fries (1773–1843)—an influential German philosopher who worked to
rationalize Immanual Kant’s philosophy. Otto was so taken with Fries that
he helped to begin a neo-Friesian movement within his academic circle and
wrote one of his first books on the philosophy of Fries and Kant. Otto is
probably best known to scholars of religion for what is considered by most
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to be his best work, The Idea of the Holy. In this book, Otto contends that
religion—or better put, religious experiences and sentiments—is a phenomenon complete unto itself, or sui generis. For this reason religion cannot be
reduced and thereby broken up into its constituent units, according to Otto
(this supposition has come under scrutiny by modern scholars who disagree
with Otto and instead use the theory of reductionism to provide insight
into the nature of religion). Otto also thought that religion was knowable
a priori (or independent of, or prior to, experience) and therefore its study
comprises a completely different sphere of knowledge from other academic
disciplines. Assuming this religious sentiment to be universal among human
beings, Otto was also interested in the history of religions and traveled to
India in 1911–12 to study Sanskrit and Hinduism. It was through this journey that he began to struggle with the theological problems of the presumed
Christian superiority in the face of his growing knowledge of what we now
refer to as the ‘world religions’.
Otto on religion
Although not necessarily read today to the extent that his work once was,
Rudolf Otto’s contribution to the study of religion has been tremendous
and enduring; it can be attributed to his strongly argued thesis about the
internal, participant-only, spiritual, non-empirical nature of religion. Otto
argued that religion was sui generis and therefore a category completely
unto itself. Religion—much as argued by Friedrich Schleiermacher before
him, and Mircea Eliade after him—could therefore not adequately or wholly
be understood through other disciplines like psychology, philosophy, or
sociology. Instead, it was only the individual who has had a distinctly
‘religious’ experience who could express what it is that characterizes religion. It is for this hypothesis that Otto can be classified with scholars who
devote their time in the study of religion to the theory of essentialism. For
Otto, there are one or many attributes that are contained within the experience we call ‘religion’ and all religions contain these elements although in
varying degrees. Otto coined a term to name a category of feeling that he
believed corresponded to a purely religious sentiment—the numinous (from
the Latin numen, meaning a force or power often identified with natural
objects; sometimes understood as meaning holy). The numinous, for Otto,
was therefore a religious category of value that could be discussed, but could
not be strictly defined because it was irreducible in nature. The feeling that
an individual experiences, known as the experience of the numinous, is of
something he termed the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Otto defines
this feeling as one that contains elements of utter awe, might, power, energy,
and urgency. The mysterium tremendum et fascinans—the significant, compelling (and thereby attractive), and yet repelling mystery of it all—is what
religious participants experience while they are engrossed in religious ceremonies or in a particularly ‘religious’ state of mind. That each religious
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participant names the object of this experience differently, from religion to
religion and from place to place, does not lessen what for Otto is the essence
of these seemingly varied experiences.
The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments
in his experience, is requested to read no farther; for it is not easy to
discuss questions of religious psychology with one who can recollect
the emotions of his adolescence, the discomforts of indigestion, or, say,
social feelings, but cannot recall any intrinsically religious feeling. We
do not blame such an one, when he tries for himself to advance as far
as he can with the help of such principles of explanation as he knows,
interpreting ‘aesthetics’ in terms of sensuous pleasure, and ‘religion’ as a
function of the gregarious instinct and social standards, or as something
more primitive still. But, the artist, who for his part has an intimate personal knowledge of the distinctive element in the aesthetic experience,
will decline his theories with thanks, and the religious man will reject
them even more uncompromisingly.
The numinous . . . issues from the deepest foundation of cognitive
apprehension that the soul possesses, and, though it of course comes
into being in and amid the sensory data and empirical material of the
natural world and cannot anticipate or dispense with those, yet it does
not arise out of them, but only by their means.
The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational
Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its
Relation to Rationality (1917)
Hans Penner (1934-2012)
Longtime scholar of religion at Dartmouth University (retiring in 2001), a
Department Chair and also a former Dean of Arts and Science there, Hans
Penner earned his PhD in the history of religions at the University of Chicago
(1965), studying with Mircea Eliade—of whose work Penner became critical
later in life. His own work ranged widely, with contributions on religions in
India, the study of myth and ritual, as well as what has come to be known
as method and theory in the study of religion (work on the tools and techniques used by scholars in going about their work). Among his major works
are: Impasse and Resolution: A Critique of the Study of Religion (1989) and
Rediscovering the Buddha: The Legends and Their Interpretations (2009)
as well as his edited volume Teaching Lévi-Strauss (1999), and his co-edited
Language, Truth, and Religious Belief (1999), as well as his early contributions to the English edition of Gerardus van der Leeuw’s classic, Religion in
Essence and Manifestation (1963).
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Penner on religion
Eliade is right without doubt about the birth of the history of religions
coming out of the well-known traditions of ‘orientalism’ and the classical treatises on ‘primitive religions’. There is, however, a third tradition
that is curiously missing in Eliade’s analysis: the tradition of theology. It
may well be the case that the influence of this tradition on the history of
religions is so obvious that it need not be mentioned. If this is not true,
then it becomes all the more urgent to account for why it was repressed.
Why, for example, are we constantly perplexed about the influence of
a small book called The Idea of the Holy? The sign of what is wrong is
that theologians like Otto are relegated to footnotes in monographs on
the history of religions. It is almost as if we were in a state of amnesia in
our perplexity about Otto’s influence in the publications of historians of
religion . . . . The ghosts of Otto, van der Leeuw, Wach, and other theologians will simply not be put to rest by generous quotes from Freud,
Malinowski, Durkheim, Frazer, and Tylor.
‘Structure and Religion’, in History of Religions (1986)
The term ‘phenomenology’ is used in many ways. It is often used in
the title of a book to indicate that the work is a ‘pure’ description of a
particular subject. What the phenomenologist does is simply describe
the phenomena as it appeared in an experiment, fieldwork, or historical research. Of course it is not quite that simple. We must learn to
become suspicious of any work that is presented as a pure description
unencumbered by theory. Descriptions are always theory laden.
Impasse and Resolution: A Critique of
the Study of Religion (1989)
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834)
Born in Breslau (the Germanized name for what is today the city of Wrocław
in Poland; as of 1871, it was part of the German empire), Friedrich Daniel
Ernst Schleiermacher was the son of a Prussian army chaplain, and is
today remembered as a influential Protestant theologian who devised a
manner to defend belief in God from the criticisms leveled by the skeptics of his day. He was educated initially in schools administered by the
Moravian Church—a Reformation denomination that originated in the
mid-fifteenth century in ancient Bohemia and Moravia (what is today part
of the Czech Republic) that emphasized the role of piety (from the Latin,
pietas), an inner experience of the Gospel’s saving power, over dogma and
the so-called trappings of ritual and institution. Against his father’s wishes,
Schleiermacher left a Moravian seminary in 1787 and, instead, moved to
the University of Halle, in east central Germany. Founded in 1694, the
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University of Halle is considered to have been among the first so-called
modern universities in which religious orthodoxy and church control over
the curriculum gave way to free rational inquiry. There, Schleiermacher
was thoroughly schooled in, among other topics, philosophy, especially
the work of influential Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).
Kant is today among a very small group of deeply influential writers from
this period, remembered best for his attempts to bridge David Hume’s
arguments in favor of empiricism (the position that sensory experience is
the basis of knowledge) with those of rationalism (the position that the
innate ideas, or ‘categories’, of human reason, not experience, are the basis
of knowledge). In 1794 Schleiermacher was ordained, then served as a
hospital chaplain in Berlin, and went on to represent the Romantic movement (a philosophically idealist movement in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries) by writing a number of important works that sought
to defend religious faith against the attacks of Enlightenment skepticism
(prompted both by empiricism and rationalism).
Schleiermacher on religion
Although a Protestant theologian who made a significant contribution
to the study of systematic theology—and thus certainly warranting the
attention of those interested in the history of Protestant theology in Europe—
Schleiermacher is remembered by scholars of religion for the manner in
which he argued that faith (aside: he significantly employed the German
word Glaube, meaning faith or justified belief, in the title of his major work,
Der christliche Glaube [The Christian Faith]) operated not in the realm of
reason but, instead, was akin to an aesthetic sense or feeling that could neither be supported nor criticized by reason. True religion, he therefore argued
in his widely read On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (first
translated into English in 1893 and still in print) was a ‘sense and taste for
the Infinite’. His efforts to conceptualize religion as a private sentiment or
intuition—efforts that were well in step with the manner in which previous
generations of Protestant Reformers had successfully critiqued (and thereby
subverted and eventually replaced) the authority of the Roman Catholic
institution—continue to have influence today, most notably among writers
who presume that religious practices, narratives and institutions are mere
expressions of a presumably universal experience or faith. Because many
such writers are intent on doing cross-cultural work, they do not necessarily follow Schleiermacher’s lead in concluding that the object of this feeling
is one’s awareness of a complete and utter reliance (what he termed an
‘absolute dependence’) upon the Christian conception of God as revealed in
the life of Jesus Christ, as communicated in the Gospels; nonetheless, many
agree that the object of religious discourse is an affective (that is, emotional
or aesthetic) sense that cannot be adequately grasped or studied by means
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of observation and rational argumentation. It is therefore quite possible, it
would be argued, to be fully rational and religious at one and the same time.
The usual conception of God as one single being outside the world
and behind the world is not the beginning and the end of religion. It is
only one manner of expressing God, seldom entirely pure and always
inadequate. . . . [T]he true nature of religion is neither this idea nor
any other, but immediate consciousness of the Deity as He is found in
ourselves and in the world.
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799)
But if anyone should maintain that there might be Christian religious
experience in which the Being of God was not involved in such a manner, that is, experiences which contained absolutely no consciousness of
God, our proposition would certainly exclude him from the domain of
that Christian belief which we are going to describe. . . . [W]e assert that
in every religious affection . . . the God-consciousness must be present
and cannot be neutralized by anything else, so that there can be no relation to Christ which does not contain also a relation to God. . . . Just
as there is always present in Christian piety a relation to Christ in conjunction with the God-consciousness, so in Judaism there is always a
relation to the Lawgiver, and in Mohammedanism [that is, Islam] to the
revelation given through the Prophet.
The Christian Faith (1820–1)
Ninian Smart (1927–2001)
Born in Cambridge, UK, Ninian Smart was classically trained at Oxford
University in languages, history and philosophy, after first having served as
a young man in Ceylon (now named Sri Lanka) in the mid- to late 1940s
as a member of the British Army Intelligence Corps. But it was as a scholar
of religion that he made his lasting international mark, notably at (among
the many other universities at which he taught) the University of Lancaster,
in the UK, and the University of California at Santa Barbara, in the US.
Beginning in 1967 at Lancaster, and 1976 at UCSB, he played a pivotal
role at both institutions in helping to establish thriving programs in the academic study of religion—a role that had much to do with not only his many
writings on the proper method for conducting the public study of religion,
as well as his well-known cross-cultural research on many of the world’s
religions, but also the long list of graduate students he trained throughout
the years. To signify his tremendous impact on the international field, the
Ninian Smart Annual Memorial Lecture was established after his death, with
the location rotating each year between Lancaster and Santa Barbara. The
first such lecture, delivered in Lancaster, was presented by Mary Douglas
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in 2002, followed by Jonathan Z. Smith in 2003. In 2005 the lecture was
presented by Wendy Doniger.
Smart on religion
Smart is, perhaps, best known today as a phenomenologist of religion. Many
of his works—some of which are known to the contemporary student as
world religions textbooks—were descriptive in nature, chronicling the traits
that he argued constituted those things we commonly name as ‘religions’.
What he called his ‘dimension theory of religion’ named a collection of
aspects or family of traits that typified religions. These dimensions—which
include such traits as a narrative and behavioral component (that is, myths
and rituals), an institutional component, and an aesthetic component—
could, he argued, be found in many other human institutions; therefore,
Smart favored using the broader term ‘worldviews’—thereby admitting
nationalism, for example, to the group of phenomena studied—so as not to
arbitrarily limit the scholar’s work only to what we had traditionally known
as religions. His early advocacy for what was once called a ‘secular’ study of
religion, in contradistinction from a theological approach, placed him at the
forefront of those who developed the modern institution known as religious
studies, though he also retained an interest in such topics as inter-religious
dialogue, which animated his late-in-life support for what he termed a
‘World Academy of Religion’ in which scholars of religion would interact
with learned theologians from the world’s many religious traditions.
Many people, it is true, consider the very idea of looking at religion
scientifically to be absurd or even distasteful. Absurd, because a scientific approach is bound to miss or distort inner feelings and responses
to the unseen. Distasteful, because science brings a cold approach to
what should be warm and vibrant. These hesitations about the enterprise are fundamentally mistaken, though understandable. They are mistaken precisely because a science should correspond to its objects. That
is, the human sciences need to take account of inner feelings precisely
because human beings cannot be understood unless their sentiments and
attitudes are understood. . . . As yet, the way in which one may deal
with religion scientifically and, at the same time, warmly, is imprecisely
understood. . . . To return, however, to my opening paragraph, I am far
from claiming that the study of religion is the most important thing to be
undertaken in connection with religion. Being a saint is more important.
But I would contend that, in the intellectual firmament, the study of religions is important not only because religions have been a major feature
in the landscape of human life but also because a grasp of the meaning
and genesis of religions is crucial to a number of areas of inquiry.
The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge: Some
Methodological Questions (1973)
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In providing a kind of physiology of spirituality and of worldviews, I
hope to advance religious studies’ theoretical grasp of its subject matter, namely that aspect of human life, experience, and institutions in
which we as human beings interact thoughtfully with the cosmos and
express the exigencies of our own nature and existence. I do not here
take any faith to be true or false. Judgment on such matters can come
later. But I do take all views and practices seriously. . . . This implies
that, in describing the way people behave, we do not use, so far as we
can avoid them, alien categories to evoke the nature of their acts and to
understand those acts. . . . In this sense phenomenology is the attitude
of informed empathy. It tries to bring out what the religious acts mean
to the actors.
Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of
the World’s Beliefs (1996)
Huston Smith (1919–2016)
Even if one disagreed with the world religions model that Huston Smith
helped to put in place in this field (as many now do), it is difficult not to
acknowledge the fundamental influence his work exerted over the course
of the twentieth century’s second half; for his 1958 book, The Religions
of Man, which developed from his popular 1955 public television course
(for what was then called the National Education Network, in the early
days of public television in the US), has continuously stayed in print, to this
day, in a variety of (usually only slightly) updated editions (for some time
it has instead been known by the title, The World’s Religions). To date, it
has sold well over two million copies, possibly now nearer three—making
it still the preferred textbook in world religion courses not only in the US
but in many other countries as well. Smith himself was born in Suzhou, in
eastern China, to Christian missionary parents, and lived there until he was
a teenager; planning to become a missionary himself, he then attended a
United Methodist Church-affiliated college in Missouri and was eventually
ordained a Methodist minister, though his interest in studying religion led
him instead to enroll in graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where
he earned his PhD in 1945. Smith taught at a variety of universities in the
US, retiring in 1983 from Syracuse University, and published a number of
books addressed to scholarly readers; but his impact has most been felt as
a public intellectual, conveying research on world religions to the wider
reading public, such as his 1996 public television series of interviews, The
Wisdom of Faith (with well-known TV interviewer, Bill Moyers). As such,
his approach to studying the world’s religions—one rather sympathetic to
certain insider’s views of religion—has established the explicit or perhaps
implicit parameters of countless undergraduate students whose instructors
used his book.
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H. Smith on religion
Like others in the field, Smith was himself a theologically liberal religious
devotee and thus very interested in participating in inter-religious dialogue
(that is, he had no interest in developing a reductive theory of religion’s
origins or function); thus his approach to the study of religion emphasized
the identification of what he claimed were universal (and ahistorical) similarities among those social groups called religions, seeing all as traditions
organized around key insights into how reality actually works—insights
that made life meaningful to live. He also maintained one could pursue
such insights through what he termed spirituality and not simply through
what some characterized as organized religion (the former, he argued, is
free-floating while the latter is what he termed institutionalized spirituality). At their most basic, he understood all religions to affirm the existence
of a creator God, though different names were used by each, while also
commanding human beings to love one another, often citing Christianity’s
co-called golden rule, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’
(found in the New Testament’s Matthew 7:12), as being universal among
what he would often describe as the authentic world religions.
We are about to begin a voyage in space and time and eternity. The
places will often be distant, the times remote, the themes beyond space
and time altogether. We shall have to use words that are foreign—
Sanskrit, Chinese, and Arabic. We shall describe conditions of the soul
that words can only hint at. We shall have to use logic to try to corner
perspectives that laugh at our attempt. And ultimately we shall fail;
being ourselves of a different cast of mind, we shall never quite understand those of these religions that are not our own. But if we take those
religious seriously we need not fail badly. And to take them seriously
we need do only two things. One, we need to see their adherents as
men and women confronted with problems like ourselves. Second, we
must rid our minds of all preconceptions that will dull their sensitivity
or alertness to fresh insights. If we lay aside our preformed ideas about
these religions, see each as the work of men who are struggling to see
something that would give help and meaning to their lives,. And then
try ourselves, without prejudice, to see what they saw—if we do these
things the veil that separates us from them, while not removed, can be
reduced to gauze.
‘Point of Departure’, The Religions of Man (1958)
I do believe that the fundamental faith of all the authentic religions is:
it all makes sense. There is an analogy used frequently that . . . we’re
asked to visualize a wonderful tapestry hanging ceiling to floor in a
museum. Our problem, the human problem, is [that] we are looking
at the tapestry from the wrong side! And you know what that’s like.
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I mean, bits and snippets of yarn and so on, cut off; it makes no sense at
all. And then the point of religion is to take us by the hand and lead us
from looking at the back side to the front, where it’s a great work of art.
‘The Point of Religion’, interview with Phil
Cousineau, available online (2015)
Jonathan Z. Smith (1938-2017)
There is perhaps no more influential scholar of religion in the mid- to late
twentieth century than the late Jonathan Z. Smith—a widely published
essayist and respected senior scholar who is also known for his strong
commitment to undergraduate teaching and the place of the liberal arts curriculum in the modern university. Born in 1938 and raised in Manhattan,
New York, Smith earned his BA in the late 1950s from Haverford College
in Pennsylvania, and went on to earn his PhD from what was then Yale’s
newly established Department of Religion (which, in 1962, was instituted
separately from Yale’s Divinity School). Early in his career he worked briefly
at the newly established religious studies department at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, but soon joined the faculty of the University of
Chicago in 1968, where he has remained throughout his career. Although
the focus of his doctoral dissertation was James G. Frazer’s classic work on
myth and ritual, The Golden Bough, it is evident that even at this early stage
Smith was primarily concerned with the problem of method, that is, how
to go about doing comparative work (an issue that has occupied his attention throughout his career). Since that time, much of Smith’s data derived
from the religions of antiquity, including ancient Judaism and the earliest
forms of Christianity, though his academic interests took his work to any
number of different historical periods, languages, and cultures—evident in
his wide-ranging essays that often open by juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated pieces of data from human history, all in an effort to make evident
a common theoretical point. (See the Afterword to this volume for a brief
essay by Smith.)
J.Z. Smith on religion
His ability to work in diverse data domains more than likely led to J.Z. Smith’s
considerable influence among a wide number of scholars, many of whom
find themselves drawn to his attention to detail, his unwillingness simply
to assume that cultural difference is secondary to some presumed deep
similarity that awaits detection, as well as his efforts to put before his
colleagues the fact that scholarship (like culture itself) is always an act of
choice, rather than an exercise in passively recognizing and then interpreting timeless meanings that lurk within texts, actions, and symbols. This
attention to choice places Smith’s work at the heart of the field’s recent
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turn toward emphasizing theory and the study of scholarship’s motives and
implications—for attention to the issue of selection presupposes one examine the criteria that are in use, which in turn presupposes that one examines
the interests and goals that drive the selection process. Perhaps there is no
better example of how this is put to work in Smith’s writings than his wellknown 1974 essay (first published in 1980 and which appears as chapter 4
in his influential collection of essays, Imagining Religion) ‘The Bare Facts
of Ritual’. Concerned with developing a way to study reports of ancient
bear-hunting practices, Smith argues that rituals are parts of systems used
by human communities to, as he puts it there, exercise an economy of
signification or, as he writes in the closing lines of chapter 10 of his recent
book, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (2005), ritual
ought to be understood as a ‘characteristic strategy for achieving focus’.
This implies that those routinized practices that we know as rituals can
be understood as one of the means by which groups direct their members’
attention on things and priorities—which is another way of saying that
they are a means whereby groups distract their members’ attention from
yet other things and priorities. The effect of common social practices that
routinize focus is the reproduction of a specific sense of the group, as heading in a specific direction with specific goals, all premised on a shared sense
concerning who does and does not count as a member and what counts as
significant, memorable, understandable, and thus an item of knowledge.
It is therefore in this sense that Smith might be considered an example of
a modern-day intellectualist—if by this we no longer mean what we once
might have by the term (as in a nineteenth-century anthropological movement) and, instead, signify merely those scholars who are interested in how
human communities make sense of—make intelligible, meaningful, and
persuasive—the worlds that they inhabit.
If we had understood the archaeological and textual record correctly,
man has had his entire history in which to imagine deities and modes
of interaction within them. But man, more precisely western man, has
had only the last few centuries in which to imagine religion. That is to
say, while there is a staggering amount of data, phenomena, of human
experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture
or another, by one criterion or another, as religion—there is no data
for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is
created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of
comparison and generalization. Religion has no existence apart from the
academy. For this reason the student of religion, and most particularly
the historian of religion, must be relentlessly self-conscious. Indeed, this
self-consciousness constitutes his primary expertise, his foremost object
of study. For the self-conscious student of religion, no datum possesses
intrinsic interest. It is of value only insofar as it can serve as exempli
gratia [an e.g.] of some fundamental issue in the imagination of religion.
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The student of religion must be able to articulate clearly why ‘this’ rather
than ‘that’ was chosen as an exemplum. His primary skill is concentrated
in this choice. This effort at articulate choice is all the more difficult, and
hence all the more necessary, for the historian of religion who accepts
neither the boundaries of canon nor of community in constituting his
intellectual domain, in providing his range of exempla.
Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jamestown (1982)
From the point of view of the academy, I take it that it is by an act of
human will, through language and history, through words and memory,
that we are able to fabricate a meaningful world and give place to ourselves. Education comes to life at the moment of tension generated by
the double sense of ‘fabricate’, for it means both to build and to lie. For,
although we have no other means than language for treating with the
world, words are not after all the same as that which they name and
describe. Although we have no other recourse but to memory, to precedent, if the world is not forever to be perceived as novel and, hence,
remain forever unintelligible, the fit is never exact, nothing is quite the
same. What is required at this point of tension is the trained capacity
for judgment, for appreciating and criticizing, the relative adequacy and
insufficiency of any proposal or language and memory. What we seek
to train in college are individuals who know not only that the world is
more complex than it first appears, but also that, therefore, interpretative decisions must be made, decisions of judgment that entail real
consequences for which one must take responsibility, from which one
cannot flee by the dodge of disclaiming expertise.
‘The Introductory Course: Less is Better’, in Teaching
the Introductory Course in Religious Studies:
A Sourcebook (1991)
Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916–2000)
Born in Toronto, Wilfred Cantwell Smith graduated in 1938 with his
undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto, studying oriental languages. He carried out theological studies in England working with, among
others, the famous Islamicist, H.A.R. Gibb (1895–1971)—one of the editors of the famous multi-volume, Encyclopedia of Islam. During most of
the years of World War II (1940–5), Smith was in India working with the
Canadian Overseas Missions Council, teaching on such topics as the history of India and of Islam. (He was also ordained in 1944.) After the war
he returned to school, earning his PhD in 1948 at Princeton University.
Widely known for his early work on Islam, especially his commitment to
cross-cultural comparison and the role played by empathy in one’s studies,
Smith is also known for his work on methodology (that is, his studies on
how one ought to go about studying religions), his interest in developing a
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global theology of religious pluralism (premised on inter-religious dialogue),
as well as his administrative work in helping to establish centers for pursuing the academic study of religion in general, or Islam in particular (e.g., at
McGill University, in Montreal, at Harvard University, and at Dalhousie
University, in Halifax).
W.C. Smith on religion
Although his interests were clearly driven by theological assumptions, Smith
is remembered as being among the first to study the history of the category
‘religion’—a term that, he argued (in the tradition of Schleiermacher), was
inadequate because it is used to name what are, he argued, two utterly
different things that ought not to be conflated: the outer, ‘cumulative tradition’, on the one hand, and, on the other, the inner experience of what he
termed ‘faith in transcendence’. For Smith, it was the latter, this faith, that
prompted various outward expressions that eventually came to be institutionalized and, because they were easily observed, came to be mistaken
by scholars for the core of religion. In this regard his work could be characterized as an example of an essentialist approach to defining religion,
insomuch as Smith presumed that the observable, public elements that we
associate with such things as ritual and symbol were but derivatives of a
prior, inner experience that was distinct from all other sorts of experiences.
Moreover, assuming this faith to be the common core to all religion, Smith
understandably developed considerable interest in working toward what
he termed a global theology in which the differences among those public
elements that he considered secondary and derivative could be overcome
so as to bring about a cooperative pluralism among the world’s religions,
or, better put, the world’s religious traditions—a term that Smith preferred
because it focused attention on the traditions that built up around, but were
not to be confused with, the faith that inspired them. In fact, it is in large
part due to his influence that we today so commonly refer to religions as
religious traditions.
For I would proffer this as my second proposition: that no statement
about a religion is valid unless it can be acknowledged by that religion’s believers. I know that this is revolutionary, and I know that it
will not be readily conceded; but I believe it to be profoundly true and
important. It would take a good deal more space than is here available
to defend it at length; for I am conscious of many ways in which it can
be misunderstood and of many objections that can be brought against
it which can be answered only at some length. I will only recall that by
‘religion’ here I mean as previously indicated the faith in men’s hearts.
‘Comparative Religion: Whither and Why’, in
The History of Religions: Essays in
Methodology (1959)
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It is customary nowadays to hold that there is in human life and society
something distinctive called ‘religion’; and that this phenomenon is
found on earth at the present in a variety of minor forms, chiefly among
outlying or eccentric peoples, and in a half-dozen or so major forms.
Each of these major forms is also called ‘a religion’, and each one has a
name: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on.
I suggest that we might investigate our custom here, scrutinizing our
practice of giving religious names and indeed of calling them religions.
So firmly fixed in our minds has this habit become that it will seem
perhaps obstreperous or absurd to question it. Yet one may concede
that there is value in pausing occasionally and examining ideas that we
otherwise take for granted.
The Meaning and End of Religion (1962)
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
Born in Derby, England, Herbert Spencer was raised in an atmosphere of
religious dissent and staunch individualism. During his childhood and adolescence, Spencer was influenced largely by the Quakers and the Unitarians
of the Derby Philosophical Society. His father and uncle also held strong
anti-clerical and anti-establishment views. Spencer was formally trained as
a civil engineer but soon began to be interested in those intellectual pursuits
that we today might term the social sciences. It was Spencer who first published a theory of evolution and coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’—not
Charles Darwin as many people today assume. Spencer’s early works, such
as Social Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness, were
concerned with the notion of civil liberties and the progression of human
rights viewed through the lens of early evolutionary theory. Spencer’s work
was therefore largely influenced by his ideas on the evolution of human
beings’ physical body as well as their mind. In his largest work, A System
of Synthetic Philosophy, Spencer applies his evolutionary theory to account
for many aspects of human culture and its development over time. For
instance, human nature, according to Spencer, is not contained within a
group of essential characteristics; instead, it is based upon an ever changing
and evolving set of social circumstances. Several of his volumes are included
within A System of Synthetic Philosophy, which discusses such topics as
biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics—all of which, Spencer believed,
can be explained by appealing to one unifying theory (that of evolution)—a
prime example of nineteenth-century reductionism.
Spencer on religion
Much of Spencer’s scholarly work was based on nineteenth-century scientific tenets and the theory of evolution—a theory that Spencer applied to the
study of religion. Spencer was a firm believer in the necessity of empirical
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data; if a theory could not be supported or explained through the use of
what Spencer determined as empirical facts about the world, then the theory was unknowable and speculation about it was unfounded. In holding
this view, Spencer advocated a viewpoint commonly known as agnosticism.
He believed that, although it was impossible to prove that the fundamental foundations of religion were wrong, it was equally impossible to prove
that they were correct. Spencer therefore believed that it was of no use to
debate such topics as the existence of God because it was beyond our scope
of knowledge. Because of Spencer’s agnosticism he was uninterested in a
theological reading of religion. Instead, he chose to approach the study of
religion through such naturalistic fields as sociology, psychology, and biology. In one of the volumes of A System of Synthetic Philosophy (a volume
entitled The Principles of Sociology) Spencer builds a thesis on the evolution
of religious beliefs in humankind. He begins by postulating that primitive
human beings first formed a belief in the supernatural through a system
of magic, used to manipulate their natural environment. After apparently
seeing their long lost dead in dreams and visions, Spencer postulates that
primitive humans would have believed that these ghosts were ethereal manifestations of family members, which hence led to ancestor worship. This
ancestor worship was a predecessor to later ‘higher’ forms of organized
religion as demonstrated by the ‘higher races’. Although Spencer was once
considered to be one of the foremost authorities on the evolution of religious beliefs, in recent years his work came under much criticism due to his
views on ‘primitives’ and their cultures.
And now, we have prepared ourselves, so far as may be, for understanding primitive ideas. We have seen that a true interpretation of these must
be one which recognizes their naturalness under the conditions. The
mind of the savage, like the mind of the civilized, proceeds by classing
objects and relations with their likes in past experience. In the absence
of adequate mental power, there results simple and vague classings of
objects by conspicuous likenesses, and of actions by conspicuous likenesses; and hence come crude notions, too simple and too few in their
kinds, to represent the facts. Further, these crude notions are inevitably
inconsistent to an extreme degree.
It is said, however, that ancestor-worship is peculiar to the inferior
races. I have seen implied, I have heard in conversation, and I have now
before me in print, the statement that ‘no Indo-European or Semitic
nation, so far as we know, seems to have made a religion of worship of
the dead’. And the suggested conclusion is that these superior races, who
in their earliest recorded times had higher forms or worship, were not
even in their still earlier times, ancestor-worshippers. . . . But that adherents of the Evolution-doctrine should admit a distinction so profound
between the minds of different human races, is surprising. Those who
believe in creation by manufacture, may consistently hold that Aryans
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and Semites were supernaturally endowed with higher conceptions than
Turanians. . . . But to assert that the human type has been evolved from
the lower types, and then to deny that the superior human races have
been evolved, mentally as well as physically, from the inferior, and must
once have had those general conceptions which the inferior still have, is
a marvellous inconsistency.
The Principles of Sociology (1899)
Rodney Stark
Although recognized as one of the leading contemporary US sociologists
of religion, Rodney Stark initially studied journalism at the University of
Denver and began his career as a reporter for the Denver Post in 1956.
After a brief stint in the US Army, Stark enrolled at the University of
California, Berkeley, and completed his PhD in sociology in 1971. From
1971 to 2003, Stark was professor of sociology and comparative religion
at the University of Washington. Recently, he accepted an appointment
as University Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University. Stark’s
extensive writing in the field of Christianity, which he has used as a domain
to test his work in rational choice theory of religion, culminated in his
book, The Rise of Christianity, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
in 1996.
Stark on religion
Collaborating with William Sims Bainbridge, Rodney Stark proposed
a series of deductions in order to uncover the two key components that
both felt propelled religious participants: motives and exchanges. Using the
model of rational choice theory, Stark and Bainbridge published A Theory
of Religion (1987), in which they base the crux of their theory on seven
basic axioms:
(1) Human perception and action take place through time, from the past
into the future.
(2) Humans seek what they perceive to be rewards and avoid what they
perceive to be costs.
(3) Rewards vary in kind, value, and generality.
(4) Human action is directed by a complex but finite information-processing
system that functions to identify problems and attempt solutions to
them.
(5) Some desired rewards are limited in supply, including some that simply
do not exist.
(6) Most rewards sought by humans are destroyed when they are used.
(7) Individual and social attributes, which determine power, are unequally
distributed among persons and groups in any society.
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Employing the form of a deductive theory of religion, Stark and Bainbridge
attempted to create a theoretical framework for the social-scientific study of
religion. In his book, The Rise of Christianity (1996), Stark works within
this sociological framework to argue that historically significant events
(such as Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity) were secondary
to the benefits realized through people’s rational exchange of paganism,
with its limited benefits, for Christianity, which was understood to hold
greater promise of future benefits. For example, Stark demonstrates that the
poor treatment of women under Roman law and culture significantly contributed to many women becoming believers in Christianity. By positing the
Christian God as an ‘exchange partner’ capable of offering immense benefit
to those who believe—both in this life and the one believed to come after—
Rodney Stark further explicated the trajectory of polytheism to monotheism
from the ancient world to the modern era in his more recent work, One
True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism.
However, even if we use the best social science theories as our guide
for reconstructing history, we are betting that the theories are solid and
that the application is appropriate. When those conditions are met, then
there is no reason to suppose that we cannot reason from the general
rule to deduce the specific in precisely the same way that we can reason
from the principles of physics that coins dropped in a well will go to
the bottom.
The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist
Reconsiders History (1996)
The appropriate scientific assumption, and the one I have made every
effort to observe, is agnostic: scientifically speaking, we do not know
and cannot know whether, for example, the Qur’an was spoken to
Muhammad by an angel or merely by his own inner voices. And, scientifically speaking, it doesn’t matter! Our only access is to the human
side of religious phenomena, and we can examine this with the standard
tools of social science, without assuming either the real or the illusory
nature of religion.
One True God: Historical Consequences
of Monotheism (2001)
Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
The German-born Paul Tillich was an ordained minister who is known
today for his work in the US as one of the most influential Protestant systematic theologians of the early to mid-twentieth century. He studied at the
Universities of Berlin, Tübingen, Halle, and Breslau (where he was awarded
his PhD in 1910), and served as an army chaplain during Word War I.
Subsequent to that, Tillich held university appointments in Berlin, Marburg,
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Dresden, and Frankfurt, though his position was terminated by the Nazi
government in early 1933. By that fall, Tillich had been invited to travel
to the US to hold an appointment at Union Theological Seminary, in New
York. Eventually, he also held appointments at Harvard University as well
as the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. Tillich’s fame is the result of
his efforts to create a theological system that took into account a series of
early and mid-twentieth-century intellectual currents, including the influence of European existentialism, the growing awareness, and thus interest,
in cultures outside the Euro–North American world, as well as an interest
in reconsidering the long-assumed split between religion and contemporary
culture. Like many who have put their stamp on the field, he delivered the
Gifford Lectures (at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen), which resulted in
one of the works for which he is best known today: the three-volume
Systematic Theology (an effort to present a complete and coherent theological system). Tillich’s normative scholarship (his interest in articulating
the ‘truth’ and the ‘meaning’ of the Christian witness) distinguishes him
from the modern study of religion, as does his attempt to define religion,
which employs the common strategy of lodging religion within the individual by equating it with vague, subjective value judgments. Nonetheless,
given the historical development of the academic study of religion from
largely (Protestant) Christian theological concerns, Tillich can be seen as a
transitional figure whose interest in contemporary culture, whose willingness to work with historians of religions, and whose efforts to understand
religion ‘in a wider sense’, as he phrased it, prompted a generation of
humanistic scholars to expand their interests to include cross-cultural
analysis of religious symbols.
Tillich on religion
The modern popularity among theologically influenced scholars of religion
of discussing ‘religion and culture’ (as opposed to conceiving of religion as
but an item of or within human culture) owes much to Tillich’s influence,
as does the still widespread use of the category ‘ultimate concern’ when
attempting to define religion. Regarding the first, Tillich betrays the influence of existentialism—one of the most influential philosophical movements
of his time—by attempting to create a Christian theology that bridged the
gap between what he characterized as the unchanging infinite and the everchanging finite. He did this by means of his retooled notion of ‘Christ’,
which, for him, embodied the unification of enduring essence and historical existence (somewhat akin to early Christian attempts to articulate the
presumed divine and yet human nature of Christ), thereby trying to avoid
the contradiction between the two that was so apparent to existentialist philosophers of his time. For Tillich, then, the conjunction ‘and’ in ‘religion and
culture’ (a phrase that today names both entire departments as well as courses
within many religious studies curricula) could, in a way, be understood as
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functioning in the manner of what he called ‘Christ’—that which unites
otherwise distinct spheres. In this attempt to overcome the critique of existentialism, a sui generis understanding of religion is used, inasmuch as religion
is thought to interact with culture, in specific and limited ways; to rephrase,
in Tillich’s system culture (and its constituent parts, such as political systems,
economic practices, social structures, etc.) certainly does not cause religion;
rather, religion is that which makes culture meaningful. Regarding Tillich’s
second lasting influence on the field, his proposal of defining the essence
of religion as ‘a dimension of depth’, a ‘faith in an ultimate concern’, has
proved appealing to a number of scholars. Despite the obviously Christian
nature of Tillich’s work—evidenced in his use of ‘God’ for that which he
also called an ultimate concern—the popularity of this definition of religion
is linked to its apparent ability to be applied to a variety of social actors and
cultural settings—for, unlike other theological attempts at definition, it does
not merely emphasize faith in a particular sort of religious experience, symbol, or institution but, instead, emphasizes ‘God’ as the basis of all Being. It
is therefore thought by some to make it possible to hold the position that all
human beings are religious, whether in conventional terms or not (a position he shared in common with his Chicago colleague, Mircea Eliade), for
inasmuch as human beings are meaning-makers, they are presumed to have
a faith in an ultimate concern that grounds and motivates their behaviors
and commitments. Therefore, much as his notion of Christ expanded the
concept from some of its previous understandings, so too his notion of religion pressed well beyond more traditional understandings that employed it
to signify membership in specific sorts of institutions (e.g., shrines, mosques,
synagogues, etc.) or belief in supernatural beings.
Faith is a concept—and a reality—which is difficult to grasp and to
describe. Almost every word by which faith has been described . . . is
open to new misinterpretations. This cannot be otherwise, since faith
is not a phenomenon besides others, but the central phenomenon in
man’s personal life, manifest and hidden at the same time. Faith is an
essential possibility in man, and therefore its existence is necessary and
universal. . . . If faith is understood for what it centrally is, ultimate
concern, it cannot be undercut by modern science or any kind of philosophy. . . . Faith stands upon itself and justifies itself against those
who attack it, because they can attack it only in the name of another
faith. It is the triumph of the dynamics of faith that any denial of faith
is itself an expression of faith, of an ultimate concern.
Dynamics of Faith (1957)
Religious symbols are not stones falling from heaven. They have their
roots in the totality of human experience including local surroundings,
in all their ramifications, both political and economic. And these symbols can then be understood partly as a revolt against them. . . . But
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what does this mean for our relationship to the religion of which one is
a theologian? Such a theology remains rooted in its experiential basis.
Without this, no theology at all is possible. But it tries to formulate
the basic experiences which are universally valid in universally valid
statements. The universality of a religious statement does not lie in an
all-embracing abstraction which would destroy religion as such, but
it lies in the depths of every concrete religion. Above all it lies in the
openness to spiritual freedom both from one’s own foundation and for
one’s own foundation.
‘The Significance of the History of Religions for
the Systematic Theologian’, in The Future
of Religion (1966)
Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917)
Edward Burnett (E.B.) Tylor, one of the founders of the modern academic
discipline of anthropology, belongs to a generation of academics known as
the intellectualists which includes Müller, Spencer, and Frazer, all of whom
helped pave the way for the modern academic study of religion. Raised and
educated among Quakers (known also as the Society of Friends) and possessing no formal higher academic education, Tylor left his father’s business
in his early twenties and began his scholarly career doing fieldwork in the
mid-1850s in Mexico under the guidance of the amateur British ethnologist
(a scholar of cultural origins and functions) Henry Christy (1810–65). In
1875, Tylor received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University where
he was keeper of the Oxford University Museum (1883) and later became
Britain’s first (indeed, the first in the English-speaking world) Professor of
Anthropology (1896), until his retirement in 1909.
Tylor on religion
Tylor—who famously defined culture as ‘that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of society’—held an evolutionary view
concerning the development of culture and religion (sometimes also known
as social Darwinism), arguing that animism (belief in spiritual beings) was
the earliest stage of what we today know as religious behavior. Despite his
interest in what was then commonly known as ‘primitive religion’ (an interest motivated by the common nineteenth-century quest for the origins of
religion), unlike some of his European contemporaries, who understood
others as uncivilized savages, Tylor argued for a ‘psychic unity of mankind’,
assuming instead that, despite differences in the stages of their evolutionary
development, all humans (past and present) shared common cognitive functions (such as a curiosity to explain unexpected events in their environment).
The goal of anthropological study, for Tylor, was therefore to develop a
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cross-culturally useful framework in which the evolution of culture could be
explained and the nature of its origins understood.
Scientific progress is at times most furthered by working along a distinct
intellectual line, without being tempted to diverge from the main object
to what lies beyond, in however intimate connexion. . . . My task has
been here not to discuss Religion in all its bearings, but to portray in
outline the great doctrine of Animism, as found in what I conceive to
be its earliest stages among the lower races of mankind, and to show its
transmission along the lines of religious thought.
To the minds of the lower races it seems that all nature is possessed,
pervaded, crowded, with spiritual beings. In seeking a few types to give
an idea of this conception of pervading Spirits in its savage and barbaric
stage, it is not indeed possible to draw an absolute line of separation
between spirits occupied in affecting for good and ill the life of Man,
and spirits specially concerned in carrying on the operations of Nature.
In fact these two classes of spiritual beings blend into one another as
inextricably as do the original animistic doctrines they are based on.
Religion in Primitive Culture (1873)
Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890–1950)
Gerardus van der Leeuw is today one of the best examples of an early to
mid-twentieth-century scholar applying some of the methods of philosophical phenomenology to the study of religion, conceived as something distinct
from theology. As with many of his—and even subsequent—academic generation of religious studies specialists, he began with the study of theology,
earning a Doctor of Theology degree at the University of Leiden, in the
Netherlands, in 1916, with a dissertation on the gods of ancient Egypt. After
working briefly as an ordained minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, van
der Leeuw was appointed in 1918 to a newly created position in the history
of religions at the University of Groningen—a position that also entailed
teaching liturgy [Greek leitourgia, meaning public service to the gods; the
study of how to carry out the proper rituals of worship]. Arrested briefly by
the Germans in 1943, during their occupation of Holland, he later served
as the first post-World War II Dutch Minister of Education, and, shortly
before his death in 1950 was elected the first president of the International
Association for the History of Religions (IAHR)—which remains the primary international organization of scholars of religion. Although the
phenomenological method is still largely employed in the field—despite a
number of criticisms of (i) the presumption that someone’s experiences can
be understood by another and (ii) the presumption that it is sufficient to
study something merely ‘as it presents itself’, without inquiring into its natural causes—today, van der Leeuw’s work is likely read mostly as an example
of an early attempt to distinguish the study of religion as a cultural, historical
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practice from long-established theological studies that sought to assess the
adequacy of each religion and religious practice. Given his life-long interest in Christian theology and the phenomenology of religion, the success of
establishing this distinction has been questioned by commentators.
Van der Leeuw on religion
In his search for the essence or irreducible inner structure of all religion—
which he, like many of his contemporaries, thought was particularly well
represented in what was often called ‘the primitive mentality’, information
which was gained through ethnographies of others—van der Leeuw settled
on the term ‘power’, rather than Rudolf Otto’s more common term ‘the
holy’ or, after him, Mircea Eliade’s ‘the sacred’. For van der Leeuw, power
is the more fundamental and therefore cross-culturally useful term, capable of naming the subjective experience of both early and modern peoples,
to which they each then assign various names and qualities, along with
methods for recognizing, acquiring and exchanging it. The set of beliefs,
practices and institutions we name as religion (each of which requires its
own phenomenological classification, such as mysticism, sacrifice, worship,
soul, church) are, therefore, for van der Leeuw those aspects of culture that
operate together to assign the most basic and all-encompassing significance
to things by placing them in relation to what the participant sees as a
total system of the whole, or the universe—what he characterizes near the
end of his 1933 book, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (the original German edition was titled, Phänomenologie der Religion), as ‘the last
word’ that is neither uttered out loud nor ever fully understood. Although
this closing section of his book—entitled the ‘Epilegomena’ [Greek epi,
meaning at, on, upon, besides + legein, to speak, to declare: a saying
besides or a supplemental discourse]—provides one of the most systematic
and therefore useful statements of the phenomenological method, it also
contains a number of almost poetic, theological conclusions. Despite his
efforts to understand religion as a cross-cultural universal—efforts far different from many of his more traditional theological peers in the European
academy—in the end van der Leeuw’s phenomenological method is more
intent on developing a theology of world religions rather than engaging in
their historical study.
[W]hen we say that God is the Object of religious experience, we must
realize that ‘God’ is frequently an extremely indefinite concept which
does not completely coincide with what we ourselves understand by it.
Religious experience, in other terms, is concerned with a ‘Somewhat’.
But this assertion often means no more than that this ‘Somewhat’ is
merely a vague ‘something’; and in order that man may be able to
make more significant statements about this ‘Somewhat’, it must force
itself upon him, must oppose itself to him as being Something Other.
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Thus the first affirmation we can make about the Object of Religion is
that it is a highly exceptional and extremely impressive ‘Other’.
Phenomenology is the systematic discussion of what appears. Religion,
however, is an ultimate experience that evades our observation, a revelation which in its very essence is, and remains, concealed. But how shall
I deal with what is thus ever elusive and hidden? How can I refer to
‘phenomenology of religion’ at all? . . . [P]henomenology knows nothing
of any historical ‘development’ of religion, still less of an ‘origin’ of religion. Its perpetual task is to free itself from every non-phenomenological
standpoint and to retain its own liberty.
Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1933)
Max Weber (1864–1920)
Whereas the French sociologist Émile Durkheim has been influential on
reductionist social theorists, the German sociologist and economist, Max
Weber, has been just as influential on those scholars of religion who are
part of what we could term the Verstehen (German, to understand, as in
empathetically re-experiencing the feelings of another person) tradition
which studies religion as a system of meanings (represented in part by the
work of the US anthropologist, Clifford Geertz). Weber’s work is therefore part of a tradition intent on understanding the meaning-worlds of the
people scholars study. However, he has also been profoundly influential
on scholars who argue for the value-free, or objective, nature of science in
distinction to the subjective nature of value judgments. Having studied law,
history, and theology early on, Weber earned his PhD from the University
of Berlin in 1889 with a dissertation entitled ‘The Medieval Commercial
Associations’—a study of trading companies in medieval Italy and Spain. In
the early to mid-1890s, he was a law professor at the University of Berlin
and practiced law in Berlin as well. Taking a position at Freiburg University
in 1894, Weber taught political economy and, in 1897, taught political science at Heidelberg University. However, after an ongoing nervous illness
in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Weber left scholarship for a time, to
return, from 1904 until his death, as a private scholar and editor, but without a university appointment (though he held a visiting appointment at the
University of Vienna in the summer of 1917 and held an appointment in
1919 to the University of Munich). During the last fifteen years of his life,
Weber edited an encyclopedia (Foundations of Social Economics), founded
the German Sociological Society (1909), increasingly participated in public debates and journalism during the World War I years, participated in
efforts to reform the post-war German government (along with being a
member of the German Peace Delegation to Versailles, at the conclusion
of the war), all the while producing what are today considered some of his
most important cross-cultural and theoretical works on economics, ethics,
and religion.
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Weber on religion
Although he was certainly interested in studying the causes of people’s
behavior and not just describing their self-perceptions, Weber sought these
causes not in the material conditions of people’s lives—as did his predecessor Karl Marx—but instead, in their beliefs and ideas. Furthermore, to
study these beliefs adequately, thereby allowing him to explain the believer’s
behaviors and the social systems that resulted, Weber advocated a hermeneutical method, aimed at understanding the meaning of these beliefs. His
work therefore provides a complex blend of a number of positions in the
study of religion that are often seen today to be in conflict. Perhaps the best
example of Weber’s method is provided by his effort to use differences in
religious belief to account for the origins of the economic system that goes
by the name of capitalism. Premised on the accumulation, and therefore
concentration of capital (surplus money or wealth that can be reinvested)
by means of owning the ability to make products that are exchanged for
profit (that is, private ownership of the means of production, which leads
to laborers being paid a wage that is less than the value for which goods are
exchanged on the open market), the rise of capitalism struck Weber as being
the direct result of certain world-denying behaviors (what we could call
asceticism [from the Greek askesis, meaning practice or exercise]) specifically associated with the Protestant worldview. This view, he argued, was
comprised of an individualistic focus in which the religious participant was
thought to have a personal relationship with God mediated through their
subjective experience of the Word of God; furthermore, in this worldview
one was unaware of the eventual fate of one’s soul. The so-called Protestant
work ethic therefore resulted from a group’s continual, disciplined reinvestment of its social energies and creativity regardless of the apparent profits
that past investments had created, for it was believed that works (that is,
the results of good deeds) alone did not provide evidence of one’s salvation;
only the grace of God, which works mysteriously by means of a criterion
unknown to the devotee, can guarantee one’s salvation (which identifies a
key difference between traditional Protestant and Roman Catholic belief
systems). The result of the devotee’s unsure position in the world was a
continued production of merit—either in the form of a social value that
resulted from good behavior or monetary value that resulted from frugality.
Accordingly, for Weber, beliefs about God, souls, and the afterlife—what
constitutes a very traditional understanding of religion—was a key factor
in accounting for social behavior and the success of institutions. Neither
Protestantism nor capitalism were represented as morally superior; rather,
the former’s belief system simply provided the necessary conditions for
the development of the latter. Perhaps it is therefore understandable why
Weber’s work was (and remains) so controversial for those who wish to
hold religion to be sui generis; his linkage of religious belief to practical
economics can strike some as demeaning to religion, given that it is assumed
to be removed from (that is, above) the concerns of material life.
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A glance at the occupational statistics of any country of mixed religious
composition brings to light with remarkable frequency a situation which
has several times provoked discussion in the Catholic Press and literature, and in Catholic congresses in Germany, namely, the fact that business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled
labor, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained
personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly Protestant. . . . The
same thing is shown in the figures of religious affiliation almost wherever capitalism, at the time of its great expansion, has had a free hand
to alter the social distribution of the population in accordance with its
needs, and to determine its occupational structure. . . . [T]he principles
of explanation of this difference must be sought in the permanent intrinsic character of their religious beliefs, and not only in their temporary
external historico-political situations.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–5)
To define ‘religion’, to say what it is, is not possible at the start of a
presentation such as this. Definition can be attempted, if at all, only
at the conclusion of the study. The essence of religion is not even our
concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions and effects of
a particular type of social behavior. The external courses of religious
behaviors are so diverse that an understanding of this behavior can only
be achieved from the viewpoint of the subjective experiences, ideas, and
purposes of the individuals concerned—in short, from the viewpoint of
the religious behavior’s ‘meaning’.
The Sociology of Religion (1922)
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Born in Vienna, Austria, Ludwig Wittgenstein was the youngest of eight
children born into a wealthy family. He was trained as an engineer in
Berlin, but later became interested in philosophy through the works of the
acclaimed British philosopher, Bertrand Russell. Wittgenstein enrolled at
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1912 and studied there until he enlisted in
the Austrian army at the start of World War I. Although Wittgenstein’s
philosophical writings were heavily concerned with ethics, his place within
the academic study of religion comes from other aspects of his work. His
influence on the study of religion has mostly been due to his work on classification. He is responsible for questioning the ways in which human beings
order their worlds and, in so doing, casting doubt on monothetic systems
of classification. Wittgenstein argued that any essentialist notion of classification was fundamentally flawed. For him, the idea that collections of
objects are related through sharing a common trait (essence) was nonsensical. Instead, he advanced the thesis that there are infinite spectrums of
relations among like objects and that these varied relations are what cause
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objects to be grouped together. He concluded that it is precisely this ‘family
resemblance’ between objects that properly unifies systems of classification.
Wittgenstein on religion
Applied to the study of religion—a field in which essentialist notions of
religion’s enduring significance, timeless origin, and inner meaning are
widespread—Wittgenstein’s work on classification and definition has
had tremendous influence, resulting in a variety of family resemblance
approaches to defining the delimited series of traits shared in common, to
whatever degree, by those social movements we call religions. Like the cluster of partially overlapping circles known in mathematics as Venn diagrams,
many scholars now see the family of religions as sharing any number of partial, non-essential traits. Ninian Smart, for one, identified a series of what he
termed ‘dimensions’ which, as he phrased it, ‘help to characterize religions
as they exist in the world’. Among these traits are: the ritual dimension, the
experiential dimension, the narrative dimension, the doctrinal dimension,
the ethical dimension, the social dimension, and the material dimension (as
in architecture). Of course, such a family resemblance approach to definition raises the question of how one judges the borderline cases, such as
those who, along with Smart, wish to argue that communism is a religion
(or, better put, a worldview) or those who might wish to argue that sports
such as baseball or American football qualify as a religion because they fit
a sufficient number of the criteria by which other movements are judged to
be religions (heightened sense of awe, building group identity, zones of the
sacred distinguished from that of the profane, hallowed ancestors, etc.). If
definitions are only as useful as they are limited (that is, ‘pen’ has utility
because not everything gets to count as one), then how does one decide
where to draw the line?
Nothing we do can be defended absolutely and finally. But only by reference to something else that is not questioned. That is no reason can
be given why you should act (or should have acted) like this, except that
by doing so you bring about such and such a situation, which again has
to be an aim you accept.
Culture and Value (1980)
Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean
board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What
is common to them all? Don’t say: ‘There must be something common,
or they would not be called games’—but look and see whether there is
anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole
series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!
Philosophical Inquiries (1963)
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Linda Woodhead
Although holding an honorary doctoral degree (by Uppsala University, in
Sweden), Linda Woodhead is today among the most influential sociologists
of religion in the UK, having studied religion and theology at Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, graduating in 1985. She has worked at Lancaster
University since 1992, where she is a member of the Department of
Politics, Philosophy, and Religion. She was also a member of the Church
of England’s Doctrine Commission (1997–2003) and she is also the
President of the UK’s theologically liberal Modern Church (which traces
itself to the Churchmen’s Union for the Advancement of Liberal Religious
Thought [established in 1898]). Her interests, which some characterize as
an example of the so-called new sociology, include the study of secularism,
people who claim to have no religion (such as the Nones), as well as the
effect of a variety of modern factors (such as digital media) on changing religious identity and affiliation. She has served as the principal investigator in
major grant-funded research projects (such as the £12 million ‘Religion and
Society Programme’ [from 2007–12], which included 240 scholars, coming
from almost thirty different academic fields) and has also played key roles in
determining how governments allocate such funds to British scholars (such
as her prestigious appointment to the European Research Council’s grants
evaluation panel). In 2013 she was made a Member of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire (MBE)—established in 1917 and awarded by
the Queen, it recognizes contributions in the arts and sciences. Woodhead is
a widely published author and is also a well-known speaker/writer in public venues. Among her scholarly books (whether authored or co-authored)
are: An Introduction to Christianity (2004), The Spiritual Revolution: Why
Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality (2005), A Sociology of Religious
Experience (2012), and co-edited Religion and Change in Modern Britain
(2012) and Everyday Lived Islam in Europe (2013).
Woodhead on religion
Her interest in the change in religion over the past few decades is the main
topic of her work—the move from the dominance of self-identification as
Christian, as least in Britain, to the increasingly common self-identification
as non-religious or Nones (as evidenced by the surveys she has conducted).
She notes that though atheism is also on the rise, slightly, during this time
period, the people she’s interested in studying do not claim to be nonbelievers, hence her preference for the notion of spirituality, going so far as
to describe what we had previously just called religion as ‘a toxic brand’,
as she has phrased it, now coming to signal something that certain people
see as improperly authoritarian and intolerant. Hence the conflict between
individuality and religious identity are among her interests.
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The old sociology of religion thought either you’re religion or you’re
secular: it’s a kind of zero-sum game. We can see now, that’s just not
the case. If you look at Britain, it’s not a secular country in any sense:
its institutions, it’s got an established church, but even its population.
About two thirds of people in Britain will say they are religious, or
spiritual, or believe in God. About a third would say then they have no
religion or are secular. So, in no sense is it straightforwardly religious,
but not only is religious in the same way, or to same degree. I never ask
[in polls and surveys] ‘Do you believe in God? Yes/No?’ I always have
it as a scaled question: ‘certainly/probably/on Mondays but not . . .’ All
of these questions are more complex than we used to think.
‘Social Science Bites’ interview, available online, with
David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton (2014)
As recently as 1990, a non-religious funeral was still unusual. It would
usually be performed by a humanist celebrant and would be a clear
statement that the deceased was an atheist and wanted nothing to do
with religion. By 2015, it was the Christian funeral which had become a
bit strange. Fewer people knew when to stand up and when to sit down
and they didn’t know how to sing the hymns. So the safer option for a
bereaved family was to opt for a broadly non-religious funeral in which
there were a few religious elements for older relatives, perhaps a prayer.
By 2015, even humanist celebrants were facing stiff competition—they
were the only ones to retain a commitment to secular atheism, while a
plethora of other kinds of non-clerical celebrant were happy to allow
people to design whatever a sort of celebration they wanted. A Christian
funeral had become a religious statement, something which would
exclude as well as include, not just ‘what everyone does’, but explicitly
secular funerals had not taken its place. Something more intriguing was
happening, something which had blurred the traditional categories of
social-scientific reflection: the religious and the secular.
‘The Rise of “No Religion”: Towards an Explanation’
in Sociology of Religion (2017)
References
Only sources from which direct quotations are taken in the book’s main
chapters and examples are included in the following list.
Alston, William (1967). ‘Religion’. In Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, vol. 7: 140–5. New York: Macmillan.
Bell, Catherine (1997). Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Bloomer, Kristin C. (2018). Possessed by the Virgin: Hinduism, Roman Catholicism,
and Marian Possession in South India. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1998). On Television. New York. New Press.
Bowen, John R. (2007). Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State,
and Public Space. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Braun, Willi (2000). ‘Religion’. In Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.),
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Resources
The following is a brief list of general resources (books [including intro
books, anthologies, and reference works], websites, and scholarly societies)
for those wishing to learn more about the academic study of religion; not
all represent the same specific approach though all do fall within a broad
understanding of the academic study of religion.
General works on the academic study of religion
Gregory D. Alles, ‘Study of Religion: An Overview’. In The Encyclopedia of Religion,
2nd ed., vol. 13, pp. 8760–7. Macmillan Reference, 2005.
A general essay on the study of religion, the methods and theories used, which is
followed by a selection of essays on the study of religion as carried out in various
international settings (e.g., Australia, Eastern Europe, Japan, North Africa, North
America, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa).
Gregory D. Alles (ed.), Religious Studies: A Global View. Routledge, 2008.
An edited collection (upon which the above encyclopedia entry was based) with
work from scholars from around the world surveying the history and current shape
of the study of religion in: Western and Eastern Europe, North Africa, West Asia,
Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Continental East Asia, Japan, in the
region of Australia, North America, and Latin America.
Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz, and Randi Warne (eds.), New Approaches to the
Study of Religion. Vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches; vol. 2:
Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches. Walter de
Gruyter, 2004.
A multi-authored collection of essays on developments in the late twentiethcentury study of religion.
John Bowker (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Oxford University
Press, 1997.
A standard dictionary of key terms used in the study of world religions.
260 Resources
Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Guide to the Study of Religion.
Continuum, 2000.
A multi-authored collection of essays on a variety of topics (e.g., definition, classification, myth, origins, the sacred, romanticism, modernity, etc.), written by some of
today’s leading scholars.
Walter H. Capps, Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline. Fortress Press, 1995.
A resource by one of the US field’s most prominent scholars, comprised of commentaries on many of the field’s leading scholars, written in the ‘history of ideas’ genre.
George D. Chryssides and Ron Geaves, The Study of Religion: An Introduction to
Key Ideas and Methods, 2nd ed. Bloomsbury, 2014.
Another introductory book for students but one which also focuses on the role of
colonialism in the history of the field, religion, and gender, as well as how students
of religion might approach studying online content.
Peter Connolly, Approaches to the Study of Religion. Bloomsbury, 1999.
An introductory text organized around the various methods scholars use to study
religion, e.g., anthropological, philosophical, psychological, sociological, etc.
Christopher R. Cotter and David G. Robertson (eds.), After World Religions:
Reconstructing Religious Studies. Routledge, 2016.
A collection of 13 original essays, all exploring the future of the scholarly notion of
world religions. The essays, from an international collection of authors, are generally divisible into two groups: those who wish to retain but expand the category and
those who wish to do away with it altogether.
William Deal and Timothy Beal (eds.), Theory for Religious Studies. Routledge, 2004.
A brief introduction to many of the leading twentieth-century European theorists
of culture and social theory, with commentaries on their application to the study of
religion and select bibliographies of secondary scholarship on their work.
Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan, 1986 [2nd ed. 2005].
The field’s primary multi-volume reference resource, available in a second and
largely supplemented edition.
Eddie Glaude, African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford
University Press, 2014.
This is one of a wide number of titles in this ‘very short introduction’ book series; all are
succinct and readable little volumes focusing on a specific domain of relevance to the
modern study of religion, from the volume on atheism and those on each religion (or
even a volume on just their main scripture or subgroups within religions) to volumes on
such diverse topics as: the devil, humanism, miracles, ritual, spirituality, and witchcraft.
Bradley L. Herling, A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury,
2015.
Resources 261
A small and readable introduction to the field that places emphasis on the theories and
tools scholars use to study religion, as well as more recent trends in the field. The volume
is an outgrowth of the text the author wrote for the American Academy of Religion’s
website ‘Why Study Religion’, launched in 2004 (http://studyreligion.org/why/).
John Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion. Routledge,
2005.
A multi-authored collection of essays on a variety of topics (e.g., new religious movements, fundamentalism, religion and science), including essays on the disciplines that
constitute the field, written by some of today’s leading scholars.
Aaron W. Hughes and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Religion in 5 Minutes.
Equinox, 2017.
Answering over 80 different, commonly posed questions about religion, its history or its study, this little book involves a variety of scholars, many of whom are
early career, all of whom offer brief and easy-to-read responses, e.g., ‘Is everyone
religious?’, ‘Who wrote the Bible?’, ‘How many religions are there?’, ‘How did
Buddhism develop from Hinduism?’.
Darlene Juschka (ed.), Feminism in the Study of Religion: A Reader. Bloomsbury, 2001.
This collection of essays represents classic and recent pieces on the impact of feminist
theory on the study of religion, with 31 chapters arranged in five thematic sections
plus a detailed introductory essay by the editor.
Richard King (ed.), Religion, Theory, Critique: Classical and Contemporary
Approaches and Methodologies. Columbia University Press, 2017.
A collection of over 50 essays, written by some of the field’s current leading scholars,
on a variety of technical topics in the field (e.g., theories of religion, myth, structuralism) as well as essays on the contributions of specific figures in the history of the field
(e.g., Jung, Eliade, Freud, Hume, etc.).
Russell T. McCutcheon (ed.), The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion:
A Reader. Bloomsbury, 1999.
An edited anthology with substantive opening material and 27 essays, organized in
six different sections, in which the pros and cons of various options on addressing
the so-called insider/outsider problem are considered.
Craig Martin, A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion. Routledge, 2014.
Written for the introductory student, Martin’s book makes explicit use of discourse
theory and social theory (e.g., Marxist analysis of power in social situations) to
explore how to practice the critical study of religion.
Craig Martin and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Religious Experience: A Reader.
Routledge, 2012.
A collection of 13 essays that problematize the common claim that religion is based
on private experience that can only secondarily be expressed in public; uses a variety
262 Resources
of pieces examining the idea of experience as a social product, written in other fields,
to examine this common approach in the study of religion. The volume is one in a
larger series of anthologies entitled Critical Categories in the Study of Religion, with
each book examining key sites in the field, such as religion and cognition, defining
magic, defining Hinduism, defining Islam, defining myth, defining ritual, etc.
Brian Morris, Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text. Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Perhaps the best all-around supplementary resource in existence today, especially
useful for its discussions of nineteenth- and early to mid-twentieth-century scholars
and methods. A ‘must have’ for all students of the study of religion.
Malory Nye, Religion: The Basics. Routledge, 2003.
An introductory book that focuses on the recent contributions to the study of
religion from the field known as culture studies.
Carl Olson, Religious Studies: The Key Concepts. Routledge, 2010.
Well over one hundred technical terms in the field are briefly defined, such as community, heaven, incantation, monasticism, reductionism, along with a substantial
introduction to the volume that discusses the history and current state of the field,
with terms defined in the volume bolded, as in this volume itself, for cross-referencing.
Olson is also the editor of the anthology, Theory and Method in the Study of Religion:
A Selection of Critical Readings (2002).
Robert Orsi (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies. Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
As with other handbooks or workbooks in this list, a collection of 19 original essays
by current scholars in the field on such key topics as the editor’s own ‘The problem
of the holy’ along with chapters on such other topics as material religion, religion
and law, translation, specialness, and sexing religion.
Daniel Pals, Nine Theories of Religion, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2014.
In print since 1996 (when it included seven theorists), this book is a contemporary
classic for those looking for readable essays on the lives and works of some of
the major writers in the history of the field. The current edition includes chapters
on: the intellectualists (Tylor and Frazer), Freud, Durkheim, Marx, Weber, James,
Eliade, Evans-Pritchard, and Geertz. It can be paired with his other volume,
Introducing Religion: Readings from Contemporary Theorists (2008).
J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud.
Yale University Press, 1987.
A modern classic that examines the historical development of a coherent, naturalistic
approach to the study of religion, including chapters on David Hume and Sigmund
Freud.
Hillary Rodrigues and John S. Harding, Introduction to the Study of Religion.
Routledge, 2009.
Resources 263
A general introduction to the field for students, organized in terms of different
approaches, from theological and philosophical to historical, psychological, feminist,
and comparative. Contains a brief glossary of technical terms.
Robert A. Segal (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion. Blackwell,
2006.
A multi-authored collection of 24 essays arranged in terms of approaches and topics,
written by some of the field’s leading thinkers.
Robert A. Segal and Kocku von Stuckrad (eds.), Vocabulary for the Study of
Religion. Brill, 2015.
Although priced well beyond ownership by most individuals, this reference resource
has over 400 substantial entries on the key terms that make the study of religion
possible; it is also available in an online edition, more than likely through reference
library subscriptions.
Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History. Open Court, 1986.
Long considered the standard history of the field, this book is especially useful for
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century developments in the field, in Europe and
North America.
Jonathan Z. Smith (ed.), The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion. Harper­
SanFrancisco, 1995.
Perhaps the best single-volume reference resource available today; contains standard
dictionary entries along with detailed essays on each of the world’s religions as well
as on methods and theories.
Michael Stausberg (ed.), Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion.
Routledge, 2009.
A collection of 17 original essays, which are all commentaries on a variety of recent
theories of religion, such as Stewart Guthrie’s understanding of religion as a form
of anthropomorphism to E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley’s work on a
cognitive theory of ritual and religion.
Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Study of
Religion. Oxford University Press, 2016.
An updated version of some of the other handbooks/workbooks included in this list,
also involving well-known writers in the field today, including just over 50 pieces
with articles on such topics as religion and spirituality, hermeneutics, social theory,
narrative, as well as essays on gifts, tradition, history, and gods.
Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin (eds.), Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés.
Bloomsbury, 2017.
A collection of ten original essays, all aimed at newcomers to the study of religion,
that each address a common misconception when it comes to religion (viewpoints
that are often held by students when first arriving in the religious studies classroom),
264 Resources
such as chapters entitled ‘Religion is intrinsically violent’, ‘Religion is a private matter’, and ‘Everyone has a faith’.
Mark C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies. University of Chicago
Press, 1998.
A multi-authored collection of essays on a variety of topics (e.g., belief, body, God,
performance, relic), written by some of today’s leading scholars.
Jacques Waardenburg (ed.), Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Vol. 1:
Introduction and Anthology; vol. 2: Bibliography. Mouton, 1973 [Walter de
Gruyter, 1999; 2nd ed. of vol. 1, with a foreword by Russell T. McCutcheon,
published in 2017].
A classic two-volume work that provides biographies, lengthy excerpts, and extensive
bibliographies on the field’s nineteenth- and early to mid-twentieth-century figures.
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Rev. ed.
Oxford University Press, 1983.
Although not focused specifically on the study of religion, this affordable volume (in
any of its editions) is a classic and will be of use to anyone in the humanities or social
sciences who aims to fine-tune their use of categories.
Web resources
Blog of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion
http://bulletin.equinoxpub.com/
This blog, edited by scholars, is an extension of an academic journal published in
the UK (Bulletin for the Study of Religion); it posts lively, timely, and brief pieces on
current events that are written by scholars at a wide variety of career stages.
Culture on the Edge
https://edge.ua.edu/
With over 1,000 posts, this site represents the work of an international research
collaboration and is an ideal class resource for thinking about the wider application
of the skills covered throughout this volume; its authors, all scholars of religion,
comment on a wide variety of historical and contemporary issues and controversies,
demonstrating how to use social theory to understand not just religion but also the
wider social worlds we inhabit.
Practicum: Critical Theory, Religion, and Pedagogy
http://practicumreligionblog.blogspot.com/
A recently established blog to which scholars contribute, focusing mainly on teaching and classroom resources and strategies.
Religion Bites
https://medium.com/religion-bites
Resources 265
UK scholar, Malory Nye, has an active blog, devoted in recent years to, among other
topics, the ongoing colonial legacy of the academic study of religion and the field’s
lack of focus on issues related to race and power. His work is also available via
podcast (http://religionbites.xyz/podcast-2/).
The Religious Studies Project
https://religiousstudiesproject.com/
Based in the UK but with contributors from around the world, RSP has become a
standard resource in the field today. It regularly posts new podcast content (sometimes
weekly) while also posting follow-up written responses. Its podcasts are informal but
often detailed conversations with a wide array of contemporary scholars, representing
the breadth of the field, making it a very handy resource for newcomers to the field.
Studying Religion in Culture
https://religion.ua.edu/blog/
This is the blog of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama;
it consists of approximately 1,000 posts, by faculty, students, and graduates, all of
which exemplify a particular approach to the field—one that sees religion as a historical and thus human institution. The Department also hosts a ‘Study Religion’
podcast, available on iTunes and a variety of other podcasting platforms.
Why Study Religion?
http://studyreligion.org/why/.
Launched in 2004, this site was created at the direction of the American Academy
of Religion, the main scholar society for scholars of religion in the US. It nicely represents a traditional or humanistic approach to the field.
Professional associations in the study of religion
American Academy of Religion (AAR)
www.aarweb.org/
The North American field’s largest professional association, the AAR, was created
in 1963–64 from the formerly named National Association of Biblical Instructors
(NABI), and today represents the work of theological, humanistic, and socialscientific scholars. Its journal is the Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
and its annual scholarly conference is held each fall, with each of its various regions
holding annual meetings of their own each spring. Although it traditionally met
concurrently with the annual meeting of the SBL, that arrangement ended briefly
as of 2007 but resumed a few years after.
Canadian Corporation for the Study of Religion (CCSR)
www.ccsr.ca/
An umbrella organization, or consortium, comprised of seven Canadian scholarly
studies that touch upon the study of religion; one of its member associations—the
Canadian Society for the Study of Religion—is most relevantly aimed at the wider
field of the academic study of religion. The CCSR’s bilingual (English/French) journal, Studies in Religion, is the primary Canadian periodical in the field.
266 Resources
European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR)
www.easr.de/
An umbrella organization—which is itself affiliated with the International Association
for the History of Religions (IAHR)—comprised of 18 European professional associations in the academic study of religion, many of which hold their own annual meetings, and some of which publish their own journals. It is to be distinguished from the
European Academy of Religion (founded in 2016) which brings with it a theological
set of interests that fall well outside the academic study of religion.
International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion
www.iacsr.com/
A recently formed scholarly association that promotes the application of cognitive
science theories to the cross-cultural study of religion. It also sponsors the Journal
for the Cognitive Science of Religion.
International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR)
www.iahr.dk/
The only international umbrella organization in the academic study of religion, comprised of 53 member associations or affiliates, from throughout the world, many of
which hold their own annual meetings and publish their own journals (e.g., the British
Association for the Study of Religion [BASR], the Indian Association for the Study of
Religion [IASR], the Japanese Association for Religious Studies [JARS] or the Mexican
Society for the Study of Religions [MSSR])—each of its members’ own websites can be
accessed through the IAHR site. The IAHR, whose journal is entitled Numen, holds its
own Congress, hosted in a different part of the world, once every five years (most recently
in Tokyo, Japan, in 2005, in Toronto, Canada, in 2010, in Erfurt, Germany, 2015).
North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR)
www.naasr.com/
The North American affiliate of the IAHR, NAASR meets annually at meetings held
concurrently with the annual meeting of the AAR; NAASR, which emphasizes theoretical work, publishes Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, which is the
field’s primary journal devoted to theory in the study of religion.
Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)
www.sbl-site.org/
The North American field’s primary association devoted to historical/critical studies
of the Bible. The SBL publishes Journal of Biblical Studies. Although it has traditionally met each fall, concurrently with the annual meeting of the AAR, this
arrangement ended briefly as of 2007 but resumed soon after.
Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR)
www.sssrweb.org/
The North American field’s primary association devoted to social-scientific studies of religion (largely emphasizing sociological studies). The SSSR’s annual meeting is held early each fall and its journal is entitled Journal for the Scientific Study
of Religion.
Index
Bolded page numbers indicate major discussions of the concept or person, as they
appear in either the Glossary or Scholars section of the book.
Abington v. Schempp (US Supreme
Court Decision, 1963), 88–9,
95, 135
Abrahamic religions, 119, 121,
134, 157
agent, 3–4, 11, 103, 108, 115, 121,
126, 134, 136, 147, 151, 153, 155,
160, 179, 189, 190, 204–5, 219–20
agnosticism 41, 53, 63, 69, 101, 108,
134, 136, 161, 164, 166, 179, 242,
244; see also gnosis
ahistorical 56, 69, 116, 121, 134, 142,
165, 177, 236
Alabama Supreme Court 5; Ten
Commandments Monument 5
alienation 56, 223; see also Marx, Karl
Alston, William 74–6, 120
American Academy of Religion (AAR)
127, 185, 192, 209, 221
Amish 92, 95, 134
animism 39, 46–7, 53, 87, 95, 135,
159, 198, 247–8
anomaly 46, 67, 69, 135, 142, 194
anthropocentric 135, 192
anthropology 19, 24, 29, 30, 34,
38–40, 46, 48, 53, 61–2, 73–5, 81,
84–5, 90–1, 95, 98–101, 108, 120,
135, 144, 145, 146, 149, 160, 163,
169, 176, 177, 178, 179, 185–6,
188–90, 194, 196, 200, 203, 207–9,
216, 219, 238, 247, 250
anthropomorphism 4, 11, 135,
136, 212
anxiety x, 4, 11, 104, 131, 136
appropriation 101, 108, 136
Aristotle 160; Metaphysics 160;
Physics 160
Arnal, William E. 58, 70, 112, 122,
183–5
artifact 25, 41, 59, 73–4, 99, 114,
123, 125, 142, 152, 153, 160, 187,
192, 218
Asad, Talal 75, 81, 112, 122, 184,
185–7, 209
asceticism 225, 251
atheism 63, 69, 88, 95, 101, 108, 134,
136, 164, 179, 254–5
authenticity 66, 101, 148, 159, 175,
184, 208, 236
author x, 9, 27, 59, 64, 66, 69, 126,
136, 142, 155, 160, 217, 219
authority 5, 27, 39, 58, 72, 76–7, 93,
101, 138, 141, 148, 165, 168, 174,
180, 206, 217, 232; as symbolic
57–9, 63; as system 74–5, 119, 127,
159, 208, 219
Bainbridge, William Sims 243–4
Barth, Karl 172
bce 27, 40, 41, 53, 136–7, 141, 157,
160, 171; see also ce
belief 2, 11, 16, 20, 26, 28, 34, 38, 40,
42, 53, 56–7, 63–4, 69, 74–5, 81,
84, 88, 92, 98–9, 100–3, 108, 115,
121, 131, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140,
141, 146, 148, 151, 152, 155–6,
163, 165, 171, 175, 176, 177, 178,
184, 193, 194, 198, 201, 203–4,
207, 212, 214, 215–16, 227, 251;
as independent 40; lack thereof 88;
in spiritual beings 28, 38–9, 42, 46,
73–4, 102–4, 119, 179, 181, 189,
223, 231–2, 242, 246, 255
Bell, Catherine 55, 187–8
268 Index
binary pair 19, 24, 137, 169
biology 128, 171
Bloomer, Kristin 65–7
Bourdieu, Pierre xii
Bowen, John 91–3
Boyer, Pascal 58, 70, 140, 188–90
Braun, Willi 25, 29, 35, 58, 70, 112,
122, 190–2
Buddhism 5, 11, 73, 81, 102, 108, 118,
121, 137–8, 169, 182, 209, 225, 241
burial site 91–3; see also cemetery
Burnett, D.G. 22–3
Bush, George W. 88, 148
Canadian Corporation for the Study of
Religion (CCSR) 265
canon x, 103, 108, 138, 174, 191,
218–19, 239
capitalism 168, 222, 251–2; see also
Marx, Karl; Weber, Max
cartography/map-making 17–18, 20, 98
Catholicism 65, 139, 148, 157, 232
cause 6, 11, 40, 46, 53, 62, 67, 69, 100,
108, 134, 137, 148, 151, 153, 159,
163, 165, 176, 191, 197
ce 53, 136–7, 138, 141, 171;
see also bce
cemetery 91–3; see also burial site
charisma 40, 53, 58, 69, 138
Chidester, David 30–1, 74, 86
choice 19, 41, 58, 73, 88, 112, 141,
144, 221, 237–9
Christianity 9, 11, 31–2, 34, 58, 69,
73–4, 76–7, 80, 81, 86, 88–9, 95,
101, 108, 115, 118–19, 121, 134,
136–7, 139, 155, 157, 166, 169,
170, 183–4, 206, 210–11, 229,
232, 235, 241, 243–5, 245–6, 249;
early Christianity 150, 191–2,
218–20, 237
Christy, Henry 247
church 8–10, 11, 22, 28, 34, 38, 44, 53,
67, 78–80, 103, 108, 138, 139, 143,
158, 174, 211, 215; auxiliary of
8; as place of worship 8; as
undefined 8–10
church/state 5, 11, 26, 32, 34, 87–8,
95, 139, 158
Cicero 125, 171
Civil Rights Movement 86, 222
classification 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18–20,
21ff., 24, 26, 34, 43, 45, 53, 73, 84,
86, 93, 95, 99, 108, 111ff., 121, 124,
140, 146, 153, 160, 162, 163, 173,
186, 194–5, 196, 198, 227, 249,
252–3; cladistics vs. phenetics 113;
and power 185; system of 18, 73,
185, 194, 225, 253
Clifford, James 185
cognitive science 53, 104, 108, 121,
140, 163, 173, 188, 266
Cold War 86
colonialism 15, 18, 24, 26–7, 30–1, 34,
59, 65, 69, 74, 86–7, 92, 95, 115,
118, 121, 140, 154, 155, 159, 180,
186, 203, 217, 225–7, 260, 265;
post-colonial studies 140, 185
comparative religion 26, 30, 34,
88–9, 95, 140–1, 152, 172, 199,
200, 226, 243
comparison xii, 9, 26, 40, 57–8, 67, 69,
85, 90, 95, 98ff., 108, 111, 114–15,
121, 141, 144, 146, 148, 164, 193,
238, 239–40
Comte, August 167
Confucianism 50, 53, 141, 158,
182, 225
conscience 10, 11, 137, 141, 148, 175;
see also belief
contingent 40, 53, 75, 81, 134, 141,
191, 194, 218; see also necessary
Cook, Stanley 120
correspondence theory of meaning 16,
24, 28, 34, 113, 121, 141–2, 161,
177, 181
cosmogonies 59, 162, 165; see also
myth as creation narrative; origin
counter-intuitive 58, 69, 142, 189–90
creationism see intelligent design
creed 28, 38, 180
critical 8–10, 26, 42–3, 88, 105,
118–19, 123, 125, 131, 141, 142,
150, 152, 179, 184, 224–5, 228
cross-disciplinary 62, 143, 176
cult 42, 53, 67, 69, 120, 121, 143, 163
culture 1, 5–6, 11, 26, 29, 32, 34, 74,
87, 95, 98, 108, 114, 121, 136,
143–4, 147, 163, 165, 167, 177,
188, 189, 193, 199, 203–4, 206,
207–8, 217, 221, 224, 237, 242,
245, 247–8; definition of 246–7; in
opposition to religion 32, 114
cynics 219
Darwin, Charles 146, 241
deduction 116, 121, 144, 154, 243
definition, by example ix; as circular,
8; monothetic/polythetic, 39, 53, 81,
Index 269
161, 167, 252; utility of 20, 28, 40,
44, 76–7, 115–17, 253
description 5, 7, 11, 40, 53, 55, 62–3,
65, 69, 76, 85–6, 88–9, 91, 95, 99,
100, 104, 106, 108, 116, 121, 141,
144, 146, 149, 164, 165, 168, 171,
177, 192, 203, 231, 236; thick 208
dharma 27, 28, 34, 50, 77, 81, 144,
151, 174
dialectic 42–3, 53, 144, 180
dietary codes 194
difference see similarity
din 27–8, 34, 144, 146, 166
discourse 8–9, 11, 45, 53, 75–6, 81,
83ff., 95, 102–4, 108, 128, 145, 165,
184, 191, 217, 232
Doniger, Wendy 40, 54, 105–7, 109,
192–3, 221, 234
Douglas, Mary xiii, xv, 13, 19, 24,
43–4, 54, 112–13, 116, 122, 125,
194–5, 233
Dubuisson, Daniel 5, 12, 195–6
Durkheim, Emile xv, 38, 54, 57, 70,
102, 109, 131, 171, 180, 196–9,
219, 231, 250
Eck, Diana 40, 54, 199–200
Eliade, Mircea 40, 54, 64, 70, 115,
122, 152, 173, 192–3, 200–2, 216,
229, 230–1, 246, 249
emic/etic 40, 53, 81, 98–104, 108,
145, 154, 193, 208; see also insider/
outsider problem
empathy 166, 235, 239
empirical 40, 47–8, 53, 56–7, 61–4, 69,
84, 116, 138, 145, 147, 152, 163,
167, 172, 177, 179, 180, 229–30,
232, 241–2; empiricism 232
Engels, Friedrich 222
Enlightenment, the 173
epistemology 42, 166
essentialism 17, 22–3, 24, 37ff., 39, 53,
55–6, 58, 61, 63, 66, 69, 71, 72ff.,
79, 81, 84ff., 95, 103, 108, 112–16,
121, 137, 141, 145, 147, 149, 150,
152, 153, 155, 161, 166, 172, 173,
175, 177, 178, 186, 198, 200–2,
206, 212, 217, 219, 221, 225, 229,
240, 245, 249, 252; critique of 46ff.;
and national identity 84
Establishment Clause 34, 87–9, 95,
146, 150
ethnic 5, 11, 84, 118–19, 146, 156,
162, 182
ethnography 48, 61, 65, 146, 149, 160,
177, 185
ethnology 247
European Association for the Study of
Religion (EASR) 266
eusebia 27–8, 34, 41–5, 50, 53, 145,
146, 158, 166
Euthyphro 27, 41–5
evil, problem of see theodicy
evolution (social Darwinism or
biological) 31, 34, 46, 56, 69, 87, 95,
135, 146, 147, 155, 159, 163,
168, 174, 180, 189, 203–4, 226,
241–2, 247–9
existentialism 22, 24, 103, 108, 145,
147, 168, 245–6
experience x, 2, 11, 19, 24, 28, 34,
38ff., 53, 56–7, 65–7, 69, 76, 84, 95,
104–6, 108, 112, 114–15, 119, 121,
143, 147–8, 152–3, 162, 164, 166,
167, 172, 173–4, 176, 178, 182,
186–7, 190, 193, 196, 197, 199,
202, 212–13, 214–15, 216, 228,
229–30, 231–2, 235, 238, 240, 242,
246–7, 248–50, 252; experiencedistant and experience-near 98,
208–9; as non-empirical 56, 61–3
experiment 19, 47, 67, 125, 127–9,
154, 188, 190, 218
explanation 7, 11, 46, 53, 61, 67,
104, 148, 151, 153, 165, 180, 188,
190–2, 197, 202, 205, 221
expression 15, 17, 38, 61–4, 69, 93,
114, 119, 148, 153, 157, 162, 180,
193, 197, 201, 217, 223–4, 232,
238, 240, 246
faith 7, 11, 28, 34, 38–9, 53, 56, 69,
88, 95, 101, 105, 115, 121, 137,
146, 148, 161, 166, 172, 178,
180, 199, 208, 213, 216, 232, 236,
240, 246
Faith-Based Initiative 88, 95, 148
family resemblance 71ff., 81, 83ff., 95,
111–12, 121, 145, 149, 150, 152,
161, 170, 208, 225, 253; critique
of 76 ff.
Feynman, Richard 127–8
fieldwork 48, 53, 61, 65, 84, 95, 99,
101, 108, 146, 149, 188–9, 194,
203, 207–8, 231, 247
First Amendment to the US
Constitution 32, 34, 87–9, 94, 95,
132, 140, 146, 149
270 Index
Fitzgerald, Tim 76, 195
folk 10, 11, 29, 38, 51, 113, 149
folk knowledge xiv, 34, 77, 81, 113,
121, 149, 160
footnotes 125, 231
Foucault, Michel 145, 185
France 91ff., 153, 157
Frazer, James G. 39, 40, 54, 203–5,
227, 231, 237, 247
Free Exercise Clause 87, 95, 149
Freud, Sigmund 46, 57, 63, 70, 136,
193, 196, 205–7, 231
Fries, Jakob Friedrich 228
functionalism 4, 6, 11, 16, 45–6, 48,
55ff., 65–8, 69, 72, 74–6, 81, 83–6,
95, 103, 111–13, 121, 126, 145,
148, 149, 150, 161, 162, 175, 177,
184–5, 190, 193, 194, 222, 236,
243; critique of 61ff.
Fundamentalism Project, the 221
funeral 255
history 1–2, 9–10, 11, 20, 24, 25ff.,
39–41, 48, 53, 56, 90, 95, 115–20,
121, 123, 134, 138, 151, 160, 165,
186, 190, 193, 211, 214, 216, 220,
222, 233, 237–9, 245; reception 125;
revisionist 125; terrors of 201
history of religion(s) 1, 25ff., 53, 74,
81, 89, 141, 151–2, 172, 178, 184,
187, 200, 202, 216, 230–1, 248
holy 115, 121, 152, 174, 201, 229, 249
human nature (condition or spirit) 40,
53, 90, 114, 121, 152–3, 193, 211ff.,
221, 223, 227, 241
human sciences 56, 61, 66–7, 69, 84, 90,
95, 112, 121, 135, 142, 153, 155, 176
humanities 64, 69, 90, 95, 125–7, 147,
153, 155, 167, 176, 193, 199, 207,
225; new humanism 193, 201
Hume, David 48, 54, 62, 135–6,
211–13, 227, 232
Husserl, Edmund 165
Geertz, Clifford 98, 109, 182, 186,
193, 207–9, 250
generalization 77, 101, 111ff., 124,
127, 153, 167, 238
Gibb, Hamilton Alexander Rossken 239
Girard, René 58
Glaude, Eddie 6, 12, 209–1
gnosis 41–2, 134
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 227–8
Gould, Stephen Jay 112
Great Trigonometrical Survey of
India 14
Greek 27, 34, 40–3, 98, 108, 134–6,
138, 139, 145–6, 150, 157, 159–60,
161–2, 165, 166, 173, 178, 179,
185, 201, 209, 226, 248–9, 251
Guthrie, Stewart 135–6
idealism 38, 53, 153, 160, 162, 214, 232
identity x, 10, 11, 17, 19, 21–3, 24,
34, 44, 50, 75, 77, 79, 93, 113, 115,
121, 140, 148, 153, 157, 162, 171,
197, 218–19, 222, 253, 254; ethnic
identity 5, 84, 146; gendered 66;
group 20, 57; national 32, 66, 84–5,
88, 92, 156–7
ideology 150, 153–4, 182, 217, 223
immanent 134, 154; see also
transcendent
impiety 41, 43
India 6, 14–15, 17, 26–7, 50, 65–7,
98, 137, 151, 174, 192, 194, 199,
216–17, 226, 229, 230, 239
indigenous 59, 112, 119, 121, 151,
154, 156, 159, 162, 169, 180, 225
individual 10, 38, 43, 50–1, 57, 74,
128, 137, 147–8, 150, 160, 162,
169, 173, 184, 188, 197ff., 205–7,
214, 229, 241, 243–5, 251, 254
induction 40, 53, 62, 84, 95, 116, 121,
126, 144, 154, 167, 204
inference 2, 11, 138, 154, 163
initiation xi, 42, 51, 84, 97, 125ff.,
130, 139, 172, 214
insider/outsider problem 16, 24, 65,
69, 77, 81, 97ff., 108, 134, 142,
149, 154, 216, 219; see also emic/
etic; experience, experience-distant/
experience-near
Hastings, James 120
healing 65–6, 136, 152, 211ff.
heathen 31, 34, 113, 115, 150, 155,
181, 225
hegemony 30, 34, 150, 154
hermeneutics 144, 148, 150–1, 152,
155, 160, 166, 167, 171, 188,
193, 200, 202, 218, 251; see also
interpretation
hierophany 201–2
Hinduism 5, 11, 27, 34, 65, 69, 105,
108, 116, 119, 121, 144, 151, 168,
172, 182, 215–16, 225, 229, 241
Index 271
intellectualism 39, 46–8, 53, 149, 155,
159, 198, 203, 238, 247
intelligent design 47, 53, 89–90, 95,
142, 147, 155, 163
intention 2, 11, 64, 69, 103, 126, 134,
136, 151, 153, 155, 158, 160, 161,
167–8, 179
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 9, 22,
28, 44, 76–9, 85, 103, 139
International Association for the
Cognitive Science of Religion
(IACSR) 266
International Association for the
History of Religions (IAHR) 152,
248, 266
interpretation 57, 61, 69, 87–9, 95,
144, 148, 150, 153, 155, 156, 157,
176, 187, 188, 197, 208, 237; see
also hermeneutics
inter-religious dialogue 40, 53, 134,
155, 157, 182, 199, 215, 221, 234,
236, 240; and tolerance 32, 199
inter-subjectivity 84
introduction vs. survey 125ff., 131
Islam 9, 27, 28, 34, 74, 81, 91–2, 95,
101, 108, 119, 121, 134, 137, 144,
155, 162, 169, 174, 207, 211, 216,
225, 233
James, William 40, 54, 147, 174,
213–15
Jefferson, Thomas 140
Judaism 5, 11, 101, 108, 119, 121,
134, 139, 156–7, 174, 184, 216,
233, 237
Judeo-Christian 134, 157, 206, 225
Kant, Immanuel 228, 232
Khoikhoi 31, 74
Kitagawa, Joseph 200
Kloppenborg, John 184
Knott, Kim 58, 70, 100, 109, 215–16
Lactantius 171
laïcité x, 91ff., 95, 157, 158, 175
Lakoff, George 112–13
Lawson, E. Thomas 189
Lease, Gary 1
Leeuw, Gerardus van der 39, 54, 112,
122, 174, 230–1, 248–50
legerdemain 129
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 179
Lemon Test 89ff., 95, 158, 175
Lévi-Strauss, Claude xv, 127, 177, 230
li 27, 158
liberal arts education, goal of 123ff.,
130–1, 237
liberal democracies 137, 157, 173
lies, white 124ff.; disciplinary 127, 130ff.
liminality xiii, 158; see also initiation
Lincoln, Bruce 58–9, 70, 74–6, 81, 112,
122, 216–18
linguistics 26, 34, 98, 108, 121, 140,
145, 158, 177, 189, 194, 202, 226
lived religion 159, 160, 166
logical positivism see positivism
Lynch v. Donnelly (1984) 32
Mack, Burton L. 58, 70, 218–20
magic 4, 11, 31, 34, 159, 195–6,
203, 242
Malinowski, Bronsilaw 48, 231
mana 77, 81, 159, 178
manifestation 61, 63–4, 112, 148,
199, 201, 206, 242; see also
phenomenology
Martin, Craig 112, 122
Martin, Luther H. 41
Marty, Martin 40, 54, 221–2
Marx, Karl 56–7, 70, 114, 142, 154,
175, 179, 182, 183, 198, 205, 217,
219, 222–4, 251
Masuzawa, Tomoko 26, 35, 112,
118–20, 122, 181, 186, 195, 224–6
material religion 159, 160
materialism 56, 58, 69, 116, 121, 125,
153, 160, 173, 213, 222
Maurice v. Judd (1818) 22
McCauley, Robert N. 189
meaning 5, 16–20, 24, 26–7, 34,
61–2, 64, 67, 69, 90, 98–100, 104,
108, 113, 131, 136, 137, 141, 142,
147, 150, 152, 153, 155, 160, 161,
166–9, 173, 175, 177, 181, 183,
187–8, 193, 194, 199, 200–2, 207–9,
218–19, 228, 234, 236, 237–9,
245–6, 251
memory 188–90
metaphysics 160, 165, 167, 179
method (methodology) 63, 69, 134,
141, 161, 164, 166, 188, 239;
consequences of 127; cost-less 127
methodological agnosticism 63, 69,
134, 161, 164; see also agnosticism
modernity 30, 34, 51, 53, 56, 161, 167,
184–5, 221
272 Index
monotheism 178, 244
monothetic 39, 53, 81, 161, 167, 253;
see also definition
mosque 8–9, 11, 44, 91, 139,
161, 246
Mount Everest 15, 26–9, 51, 101
Müller, F. Max 26, 35, 98, 155,
226–8, 247
Muslim 91–3, 119, 155–6, 157, 161,
162, 199, 211; see also Islam
Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans
39, 53, 162, 229
myth 4, 11, 19, 24, 57, 59, 69, 92, 99,
102, 108, 126, 162, 173, 177, 187,
201, 219, 226, 227–8; as creation
narrative 59, 165, 191, 192, 193,
199; definition of 217–18; as disease
of language 226; functionalist
approach to 58, 150, 190, 193, 206
nationalism 6, 13, 38, 84, 88, 92,
118–19, 146, 156, 162, 176, 182,
197, 217, 221, 234
nation-state 27, 34, 92, 95, 140, 151,
161, 162, 168, 180, 185
native 14, 16–17, 31, 34, 98–9, 108,
154, 162, 169, 185, 225
naturalistic theories of religion 39, 135,
178, 212
necessary xiv, 4, 11, 39–40, 58, 62, 75,
103, 115–16, 124ff., 130ff., 134, 136,
141, 142, 153, 161, 163, 169, 251
New Religious Movements (NRM)
143, 163, 215
Nietzsche, Friedrich 126
Nix v. Hedden (1893) 21–2, 79, 87
Nones, the 40, 119, 121, 164, 177, 254
normative 134, 142, 163, 164,
168, 245
North American Association for the
Study of Religion (NAASR) 183,
191, 266
numinous 229–30
orientalism 164, 185, 231
origins 6, 17, 29, 39, 42, 46–8, 53,
55–6, 59, 61, 86–7, 91, 101–2, 106,
108, 118, 135, 138, 148, 149, 154,
159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 169, 176,
188, 198, 202, 203, 218–19, 224,
226, 236, 247, 251, 253; Christian,
29, 139, 183–4, 190–1
Otto, Rudolf 39, 54, 84, 96, 112, 122,
162, 174, 186, 228–30, 231, 249
Paley, William 163
parent/child 42, 49–50, 57–8
patriotism see nationalism
Penner, Hans 61–2, 70, 76, 81, 230–1
phenomenology 39, 53, 61, 63, 69, 72,
81, 112, 121, 148, 151, 152, 160,
165–6, 171, 207, 224, 231, 234,
235, 248–50; see also manifestation
philology 26, 158, 226–8
philosophy 42, 46–7, 62, 72, 74, 100,
112, 144, 147, 166, 173, 210,
211–12, 213–14, 232, 245, 248
phonemic/phonetic 98–102, 145, 158
pietas (piety) 27–8, 34, 42, 50, 145,
146, 158, 166, 231; as filial 49–51
Plato 27, 40–5; Apology 41; Euthyphro
27, 41ff.; Republic 125, 162;
Timaeus 125
Pluralism Project, the 199
political economy 56, 69, 166, 171,
222, 250
polythetic 53, 73, 75, 81, 149, 161,
167, 179; see also definition
Popper, Karl 167
positivism 47, 53, 142, 151, 161, 166,
167, 171, 209
possession 65–6, 94, 136
post-colonialism 140, 185
postmodernism 61, 69, 145, 161,
167–8
post-secular 168, 175, 216
pragmatism 213
praxis 114, 124ff., 130ff., 180
prescribe 145, 146, 168
primary source 30, 34, 168
primitive 38, 111, 121, 135, 147, 154,
159, 168, 196, 198, 201–2, 203–4,
225, 230, 231, 242, 247–8, 249
private 6, 11, 28, 34, 38, 42, 53, 84,
90ff., 95, 112, 137, 143, 160, 169,
170, 171, 186, 206, 232
profane 40, 53, 74, 76, 81, 114–15,
121, 169, 173, 177, 188, 202, 253
prosopopoeia 135
prototype 73–6, 81, 119, 121, 169–70
psychology 4, 11, 40, 54, 55–6, 57–8,
65, 85, 95, 163, 170, 171, 205,
209, 213, 229–30, 241; cognitive
psychology 58, 140, 189
public 6, 11, 38, 42, 57, 78, 84ff., 95,
102, 119, 137, 147–8, 157, 160,
166, 169, 170, 173, 180, 199, 205,
216–17
public intellectual 6, 11, 170, 210, 235
Index 273
Q 170, 183, 219
race 9, 91, 146, 159, 162, 210–12,
242–3, 248
rational choice theory 58, 69, 170, 243
rationalism 232
redescription 59, 99, 108, 144, 170–1, 191
reductionism 63–4, 69, 75, 81, 102,
108, 126, 129, 148, 151, 152, 166,
167, 170, 171, 178, 189, 193, 196,
197, 202, 211, 212, 221, 223, 229,
236, 241, 250; irreducibility 62, 90,
171, 178, 201–2, 229, 249
referential theory of meaning see
correspondence theory of meaning
religion, category of 39, 56, 171–2,
183–4, 185, 224–5, 240–1, 252;
comprised of faith and tradition 240;
creation of scholarship 238–9; and
culture 245–6; as ethnic 118–19;
healthy-minded vs. sick-souled 214;
history of the category 25ff.; history
of the study of 85–6; as illusion
206–7, 223–4, 244; as national 119,
146; natural 163, 184–5, 211–12,
227; as neurosis 205–6; noun vs.
adjective 63–4, 76; primitive 203,
225, 231, 247; as prophylactic 197;
revealed 227; seminary model for
its study 184; studied in US public
universities 83ff., 124ff., 130–1
religions 172
religionsgeschichtliche schule 152
religionswissenschaft 26, 34, 151–2, 172
religious education (RE) 32, 34, 88,
95, 172
rhetoric 7, 11, 60, 162, 165, 173, 174,
178, 190–1, 210, 217, 219
ritual 4, 11, 24, 27, 34, 38, 39, 51,
54, 57ff., 69, 74, 81, 102, 108, 136,
138, 139, 143, 146, 148, 158, 162,
164, 166, 172, 173, 177, 187, 197,
201–2, 210, 217, 237, 248, 253; and
obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
57–8, 205–6; and pollution 169,
194; and propriety 42, 158, 174;
purity 19, 194; social function of
150, 197, 238
romanticism 115, 121, 173
Russell, Bertrand 252
Ryle, Gilbert 208
sacred 38, 40, 54, 64, 69, 74, 76, 81,
114–15, 121, 137, 140, 152, 159,
168, 169, 173, 174, 177, 188,
201–2, 215, 249, 253; in opposition
to profane 115, 188, 253; in
opposition to secular 185–6; product
of the group 197
sacrifice 58–9, 69, 150, 156, 173, 174, 249
Said, Edward 164–5, 185; see also
orientalism
Saler, Benson 74, 76, 169
sanatana-dharma 27, 34, 144, 151, 174
Sanskrit 27, 34, 59, 70, 143, 151,
168, 174, 192, 216, 226,
229, 236
Sartre, Jean-Paul 147; see also
existentialism
Saussaye, P. D. Chantepie de la 165
Saussure, Ferdinand de 177
Schleiermacher, Friedrich 39, 54, 229,
231–3, 240
school prayer 89, 133
scripture 4, 11, 65, 103, 119, 139,
150, 151–2, 156, 157, 174,
187, 216, 220
secular 91–2, 95, 137, 157–8, 168,
174–5, 184–7, 201, 215–16, 234,
254–5
secularization thesis 168, 175
self-evidency 90, 98, 101, 124–30,
176, 225
semiotics 58, 70, 175, 177, 194, 217
Shakespeare, William 29, 125, 130, 228
Sharpe, Eric 263
Shaw, George Bernard 124
signification, economy of 238
similarity and difference 115, 140, 177
Simmons, K. Merinda xi, xiv, 123, 130
simplification 125–30
sincere 7, 41, 175
Smart, Ninian 63, 70, 72, 81, 83, 89,
90, 134, 171, 182, 223–5
Smith, Brian K. 116
Smith, Huston 86, 96, 235–7
Smith, Jonathan Z. xi, xiv, xv, 30, 35,
100, 109, 111, 114, 116–17, 122,
125ff., 130, 170, 171, 172, 181, 219,
234, 237–9, 263
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 38, 54, 114,
122, 148, 172, 180, 239–41
social functionalism 84
social sciences 126, 153, 176, 225,
241, 243
society x, 5, 11, 42, 54–5, 59, 101–2,
108, 162, 176, 180, 198, 206, 216,
223, 243
274 Index
Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) 266
Society for the Scientific Study of
Religion (SSSR) 266
sociology 38, 54, 57, 70, 85, 90, 92,
95, 143, 159, 163, 170, 171, 176,
178, 196–8, 200, 216, 229, 241,
243–4, 250, 254; of suicide 197–8
Socrates 27, 41–5, 76, 78, 144
soil/dirt xiii, 19, 44, 93, 106, 112–17
soul 31, 46–7, 54, 67, 90, 135, 151,
176, 236, 249
Spencer, Herbert 39, 54, 146, 155,
241–3, 247
Spiritual Outreach Society (SOS) 78, 87
Spiritual Outreach Society v.
Commissioner of Internal Revenue
(1991) 78ff.
Sperber, Dan 189
spiritual but not religious (SBNR) 39,
54, 164, 177
spirituality 38, 54, 164, 177,
235–6, 254
Stark, Rodney 58, 70, 170, 243–4
stipulate 21, 24, 144, 177
structuralism 175, 177
sui generis 61, 70, 84, 96, 144, 171,
177–8, 182, 196, 198, 200, 206,
224, 229, 246, 251
superstition 31, 34, 159, 178, 204, 215
syllogism 144
synagogue 8–9, 11, 44, 139, 157,
178, 246
taboo xiii, 23, 24, 43, 54, 77, 81, 178,
194–5
tautology 8, 11, 76, 81, 178
taxation 8–10, 21–3, 76, 78–80,
85–6, 89, 94, 172; 501(c)(3) Tax
Guide for Churches and Religious
Organizations (US) 8, 78
terrorism, definition of 112
theism 101, 108, 134, 136, 178, 179
theodicy (problem of evil) 102–4,
108, 179
theologian 39, 101–2, 118, 143, 162–3,
172, 208, 219, 228, 231–4, 244, 247
theology 54, 56, 61, 63–4, 65–7, 70,
83, 89–90, 94, 96, 98, 102, 108,
134–5, 137, 142, 143, 147, 152,
153, 155, 162, 163, 167, 179, 181,
184, 193, 197–8, 199, 201, 208,
212, 213–14, 216, 218–19, 221,
223, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 234,
236, 239–40, 242, 244–5, 246–7,
248–9, 250
theory 5, 11, 29, 35, 47, 98ff., 108,
124ff., 131, 135, 136, 144, 150, 153,
155, 158, 161, 171, 173, 174–6,
179, 180, 183–5, 188, 190, 195,
197, 203, 205, 213, 217, 222, 224,
227, 234, 242; meta-theory 161,
186, 224
threskia 28
Tiele, Cornelius P. 120, 226
Tillich, Paul 39, 54, 178, 221, 244–7
totem 178, 180
tradition 38–9, 47, 105, 114, 121, 126,
138, 139, 141, 148, 151–2, 156,
157, 166, 167, 172, 180, 182, 188,
199, 207, 211, 216–17, 231, 240
transcendent 75, 81, 134, 148, 154,
180, 196, 240
translation 27–8, 35, 39, 54, 65, 70,
91, 99, 108, 124, 130, 139, 144,
146, 149, 150–1, 152, 154, 157,
166, 171, 172, 178, 181, 192, 226–8
Troeltsch, Ernst 143
Tylor, Edward Burnett 38–40, 46–7,
54, 55, 61, 87, 96, 100, 109, 135,
155, 181, 198, 203, 231, 247–8
ultimate concern 178, 221, 245–6
understanding (verstehen) 250
United Nations 112
unmasking 128–9; see also initiation
utility 29, 35, 44, 54, 181, 207
Wach, Joachim 200, 231
Weber, Max 116, 122, 143, 179, 250–2
Whitehouse, Harvey 189
Williams, Raymond 147
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 71–4, 79–80, 81,
149, 252–3
Woodhead, Linda 6, 12, 58, 70, 254–5
world religions ix, 4, 11, 27, 35, 54,
71, 86, 106, 118–20, 121, 131, 141,
163, 172, 181–2, 184, 224–6, 229,
234, 235–6, 249
worldview 74, 81, 89, 96, 143, 154,
182, 206, 208, 216, 234–5, 251, 253