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1. BEGINNING TO “THINK” ABOUT “RELIGION”
What does it mean to “think” about “religion”?
The title of this piece should not suggest that the reader has never "thought" at all about what people call "religion."
At issue is a particular kind of thinking about religion encountered in an "Introduction to Religious Studies."
The French name for this complex and varied form of academic study, Sciences Religieuses, says more than the
English term "Religious Studies." We are talking about a formal, organized, controlled kind of thinking, thinking
that goes beyond the more ordinary forms of "common sense" thinking that we all do.
Common sense thinking refers to our participation in the common knowledge and understanding we receive from
our particular settings where we live day to day. Common sense is a necessary and inevitable form of knowing. It is
the learning we acquire by living in a particular place, with particular people at a particular time. It is not abstract
and theoretical but experiential. It lets us get along in our families, our work, our neighborhoods, our day-to-day
lives. When compared with "scientific" knowledge, common sense is true enough, but it is limited to particular
places, times, circumstances.
If my circumstances or situation change significantly, I must acquire new common sense. If I enter an unfamiliar
social group or status, go away to college, take up a new job, start to play a new sport, move to a foreign place, I
may find that much of my old common sense can get me in trouble. Time and experience will get me new and
appropriate common sense to help me get the hang of the new situation, but I might fumble around at first.
Scientific thinking does not simply replace common sense. If it could, we would never have a child psychologist
who could not raise his or her own kids. But if things change, and I cannot get beyond my common sense when
change happens, I may find my situation quite unworkable and frustrating. Scientific thinking builds on common
sense.
Common sense arises to meet practical concerns. Thus, common sense is more interested in what works than in
why it works. Generally common sense is not interested in how it knows something as long as it knows what works
and that it works. Typically common sense comes to us in proverbs, aphorisms, slogans, mottoes, stories and other
common judgments which a person of common sense knows how to select and how to apply. Still, common sense is
limited by the fund of common judgments at its disposal, and no individual possesses the entire fund.
We usually encounter scientific knowledge most directly in an academic setting, in school. One can get science
elsewhere, but schools prepackage knowledge and set up learning in ways usually more efficient than individual trial
and error. Science seeks to enlarge common sense by asking not just about the immediate practical relevance
suggested by problems at hand but about the relationships among things themselves. As such it calls for a more
formal, orderly, schematic approach to both questions and answers. Liberal education in a liberal arts and sciences
school setting seeks to free our knowing and our living by helping us grow beyond the limits of common sense and
by enlarging not only what we know but the way we know.
What does this have to do with studying “religion”? We all have some common sense knowledge about religion.
This common sense comes from the experience we have gained from living. It comes from our families and friends,
our neighbors and our society at large. It comes from our own experiences and those mediated to us by books,
newspapers, movies and television. How thorough-going is that knowledge? How reliable is it? Where and when
does it apply? To what extent is it shaped by prejudice and misinformation--ours, our associates', our society's? How
does the common sense I have from my family heritage, my economic status, my occupation, my level of education
mesh with the common sense of people from very different experience worlds?
What exactly do we mean by "religion," anyway? What purpose does "religion" serve? How does it relate to
human existence generally? What does it have to do with other aspects of human existence such as personal identity
and destiny, social processes and structures, different cultures and histories? What counts as evidence in this
discussion? Where do we get our information? How do we validate, organize, and evaluate the data? What
conclusions can we legitimately draw? Can we only know what we do personally? Soon we will begin to attempt
to answer such questions as these.
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What kind of method will be used in this study?
Since the middle of the 19th century, the focus of the study of "religion" among scholars has varied and shifted. At
first, it was a search for the origins of religion in "primitive" societies. Then it focused on the psychological and
social functions of religion and on various comparative approaches to both ancient and modern situations. These
approaches have their assets and liabilities for dealing with what turns out to be a very subtle and complicated
business.
One contemporary approach is called "phenomenological method." Generally speaking phenomenology is a
procedure or approach based on careful description of the way things appear, the way they manifest themselves
to us. The term comes from the Greek verbs phainein (= to show) and phainesthai (= to appear). A "phenomenon" is
something that "shows itself, something that appears," catches our attention. Phenomenology is "talk about" (from
Greek logos, logein = something spoken, said; to speak) things that manifest or show themselves to us; it is talk
about the ways things appear. It is a method that pays close attention to human experience.
What's the big deal? A philosophical argument about method has been going on for many centuries. It concerns how
the "objective" and "subjective" dimensions of human knowing are related. Phenomenological method says that
quite complex and subtle things which touch human beings deeply or appear deeply affecting human
existence can be understood best by very careful description. The describing has to be precisely controlled so it
can be as free of bias (or at least as aware of its biases) as possible. It strives, as it were, to let the things "describe
themselves," to reveal through human words the ways things must (and do) appear to us humans. Without careful
description, we do not know whether what we are talking about is only an expression of some particular common
sense. Soon we will try to do this with “religion.” It is important to realize that it will be done in relation to the
human quest, that is, within the realm of human experience.
“Religion” shows itself, manifests itself, as a great complex of things, particularly if one looks at it throughout
human history and around the planet. Where do we start? We might start by looking at how the word "religion" is
used.
Frederick Streng (2) suggests that religion "is a means to ultimate transformation." The ultimate is the final, the
end or basis beyond which there is no other, where the buck stops, as it were. One might arrive at, achieve, be
carried over into the final, deepest, most authentic, fullest state possible for human beings. This state would be one
which is beyond all the troubles and problems that beset us in our present situation. This would be an ultimate
transformation.
Presumably persons who experience such transformation acquire as well a common sense that befits such
experience, but there is such apparent ubiquity, variety and power in these phenomena that we cannot help but try to
understand them philosophically especially since the issue of ultimacy, of the ultimate source and outcome of human
existence, is one which affects us all.
A central goal of studying “religion” academically is understanding "religious phenomena." There is a problem: if
we have not yet achieved such a transformed state, how can we even know it let alone carefully describe it?
Religious traditions have devised ways to capture some of these experiences. In Streng's words, "Religious life
involves personal subjective elements, takes specific cultural forms (for example, in ideas, art, and institutions) and
expresses an ultimate, supreme, or comprehensive reality” (9). If we investigate the expressions religion takes
carefully and thoughtfully, we can achieve much of what religious studies aims at. We can certainly enlarge our
understanding beyond our own local common sense, and perhaps we can understand better what we have in
common with others on this planet now as well as those who came before us.
In this course, we will approach religious life as a life in process. It is a process that moves from the experience of
the limits of human life to a solution (or resolution) in the absolute or ultimate, or at least to a state in which the
fundamental problem is solved. Religious traditions have shaped themselves by accumulating and organizing
religious experience into a variety of practical forms and means.. By studying these traditional forms and means
carefully, we can come to understand and appreciate what characterizes religious life under diverse circumstances
and how that life is lived.
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Religious traditions have to accommodate great human diversity and variety. Small traditions have to
accommodate the demands of very specific environments. Big traditions have to accommodate the needs and
abilities of the least and the greatest in their midst as well as quite varied circumstances in time and space. They
have to adapt to widely differing cultural systems and historical situations. Here we begin to investigate what that
means and how it works. To begin with, we will examine the word "religion" and its use.