JOURNAL: Dimensions of religion: How do
you think it happened?
 Ancient
theories: Herodotus (5th C BCE)
Cicero (3rd C BCE)
 Judaism and Christianity: so different?
 Explorers and Missionaries
 Reformation
 Enlightenment
 Deism (Natural Religion)
 Romanticism
 Max Muller 1823-1900
A
scientific endeavor:
 It was possible to find the root impulse or
cause of religion everywhere
 Inquiry,
search far back in time to discover
the earliest religious ideas and practices of
the human race, trace it onward and
upward to the present.
 Model of the Natural Sciences
 Archaeology, history, language, mythology
and ethnology (Tylor) and anthropology
 Myths/stories
 Rituals
 Doctrines
 Ethics
 Community
 Emotion/Experience
(The Sacred)
 Primitive
Culture 1871
 British, self educated,
agnostic religious skeptic
 Born Quaker
 Parents died when he
was a young man.
 Tuberculosis
 Traveled to Central
America
 Became a reader and
professor at Oxford.
 Intellectual
Individualism
 Similarities
are not coincidental but a result of
the uniformity of the human mind Give me
your reaction to this.
 Social
evolution (The Ascent of Man)
 Variations
are evidence of a difference in
degree or a change in the level of
development
 Doctrine
of Survivals
 Ideas
no longer credible that linger from an
earlier more primitive time in society
 Association
 Myths
of Ideas: Magic, Religion
originate from the process of logically
associating ideas.
 Ethnography:
scientific analysis of an
individual society, culture or racial group
in all of its many component parts.
 Animism: Belief in living personal powers
behind all things
 Pantheism: God is synonymous with the
universe
 Panentheism: God contains the universe
 Religion: Belief in Spiritual Beings
 Are
religion and culture originally rooted
in myth or in ritual? Belief or in practice?
Society or the Individual?
 Max Muller (1823-1900)
 Myth
was poetic statements about the world
 Later cultures misunderstood them as
meaningful and symbolic language
 Myths
are: Philosophical attempts to
explain and understand the world
 Studied as an interesting product of the
human mind
 Religion (and myth) originated in the
experience of seeing the dead in dreams.
 Then: explained in beliefs and myths of
spirits and souls.
 Emphasized an evolutionary view of
human social development (survivals)
Offer explanations for the world around us.
Experience followed by belief, myth and
ritual.
 Chicken
or the egg?
 Myth is a remnant (survival) of ritual
activity
 Ritual is the original source of most of the
expressive forms of cultural life
 Ritual is unlikely to change
Builds on Tylor, but sees Ritual as the
building block of religion
 Rooted
in the myth and ritual school
 Unconscious forces shaping social
behavior including ritual. (Smith)
 “real” purposes of ritual were different at
times even from what the participants
thought.
 Austria,
Jewish but a
natural atheist
 Lived in Vienna
 Studied ideas like
ambivalence,
repression, neurosis,
unconscious.
 Developed the field
of psychoanalysis.
 Totem and Taboo
1913, Future of an
Illusion 1927 and
Moses and
Monotheism, 1938
 Totem
and Taboo
 Intellectual
Evolution
 Psychic Ambivalence
 Future
of an Illusion
 Belief
 Illusion
vs. delusion
 Religion is…..
 Reductionist:
Reducing a complex system
to a single idea
 Psychoanalysis: Science of the mind
 Illusion: belief in something we want to be
true
 Delusion: belief in something we know to
be false
 Neurosis: illness of the mind related to the
subconscious
 Buried
levels of meaning: repression, the
unconscious and psychoanalysis
 Religious observances (rituals) are the
acting out of obsessive neurotic impulses
 Taboos bring about ritual since it
attempts to appease repressed desires.
 Religion is individualistic
Religion serves to provide humans with
emotional coddling
 France
 Jewish
Father
 Agnostic
 Father of
“Sociology”
 The Elementary
Forms of the
Religious Life”
(1912)
 The
nature of society is the most suitable
and promising subject of systematic
investigation
 All social facts should be investigated by
purely objective scientific methods
 Belief is a form of social practice
 Sacred as a living, social reality
 Elementary Forms:
 Animism:
the belief in a supernatural
power that organizes and animates the
material universe OR the attribute of soul
given to inanimate objects
 Naturalism: doctrine that all religious truth
is derived from a study of natural
processes and not from revelation.
 Totemism: a system of belief in which
each human is thought to have a spiritual
connection or a kinship with another
physical being or object
 Priority
to the social dimension
 A way of organizing groups of individuals.
 Distinction between sacred & profane is at the
root of all religion
 Belief: expresses the nature of sacred things
 Ritual: rules of conduct governing how people
should act in the presence of the sacred
 Religion arose in activities that cemented the
bonds of community
Serves the function of ensuring the priority of
communal identification and provide social
bonding.
 German
philosopher
 Founded Communism.
 Class struggle is the
primary mover of history,
 Religion is a social
construct developed to
keep the masses in
check
 Opium of the People,
the heart of a heartless
world
 Materialism
: Social institution dependent
upon the material and economic realties
 All religions operate this way, beliefs are
irrelevant
 Suffering: Economic Freedom
 Religious
suffering is, at one and the same
time, the expression of real suffering and a
protest against real suffering
 Liberation
Theology
 Advocated the abolition of religion
 Religion
is irrational and a delusion
 Religion negates all that is dignified in a human
being by rendering them servile and more
amenable to accepting the status quo.
 Religion is hypocritical. Although it might profess
valuable principles, it sides with the oppressors.
 Religion does give hope, but it is a false hope
Religion is the opiate of the masses, providing an
escape to the suffering of reailty. It is meant to create
illusory fantasies for the poor.
 German,
 Humanist
 Well
educated, a
cerebral
childhood.
 Asexual marriage,
prone to anxiety
attacks after
death of fathem
 The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism
 Non-reductionist
 Interweaving
of economics and society
 Prosperity Gospel:
 Wealth
and success are a sign of election
 Inner-worldly
 Practice
asceticism
frugality in the world
 Religious
Leaders
 Variable ethics
 Theodicy
and Soteriology
 Generates variety
 Ideal
Types: Opposite of generalization.
Includes purposeful exaggeration
 Theodicy: Defense of God (Why he
allows bad things to occur)
 Soteriology: Study of teachings on
salvation
 Strong
anti-reductionist approach. Religion isn’t
“just..”
 Religion developed through an influence of social
institutions on the ordering of society, especially
economics
 Ethics is a variable to be confronted at all times and
in all places when studying religion, especially in its
two problematic circumstances, Theodicy and
Soteriology.
 Religious trends are more an indication of cultural
and historical changes than evolutionary progression
Religion is a patterning of social relationships around
a belief in supernatural powers, creating ethical
considerations .
 Places
myth before ritual
 Rejects Myth and Ritual school as reductionist
 Religious experience is real and irreducible
 Exploration of the components of religion as
“sacred” or “holy”
 Origins weren’t as important
 The
history of a religion (or ritual or myth) doesn’t
tell us what a religious experience ultimately is
 Didn’t
use an evolutionary framework
 Must look at underlying patterns
 Comparative in nature
Romania
 Studied and taught in
Western Europe,
 Ended in the University of
Chicago
 History of Religions.
 Humanistic approach:
Religion must always be
explained on its own
terms.
 The Sacred and the
Profane, 1907-1986,

 Autonomy
of religion.
 Combination of History and
Phenomenology
 Axis Mundi: Religion is a total response of
orientation towards Ultimate Reality
 Religion is that which is wholly other
 Patterns in Comparative Religion:
 Symbols,
 Myth
myths, modalities
of the Eternal return
 Nostalgia
and the terror of history
 Hierophany:
The appearance of the
Sacred in the Profane
 Phenomenology: study and analysis of
things through observation
 Axis Mundi: a sacred center
 Imago Mundi: representation of the
cosmos on earth
 Theophany: Appearance of God in a
symbol
 Minimize
importance of ritual
 Myth is the language of the sacred…
where we can experience hierophany
 Bring back myth and symbol
More stable and unlikely to change
 Tells a sacred story about the actions of gods
 Explains how things came about
 Rituals are reenactments of this. Allows participant to
identify the present with the past
 Ritual is dependent on myth
 Acknowledges that often you cannot separate one from
the other

Religion helps people make sense of the world
through symbols and myths; to provide contact
with the sacred, reenactment, history.
 Is
the function of religion to:
to offer “scientific” explanations or
 bind a community together or
 to provide humans with emotional stability
(coddling?) or
 to connect to the Other (The Sacred/Holy)?

 After
having completed the course, reflect
back on the essentialist, functionalist and
contemporary theories of the origin of religion,
Which theory(ies) best explain and support
your understanding and interpretation of the
purpose and function of religious experience
and sacred traditions? Give evidence
(examples) to support your argument.
 Argument paper that defends a theory and
definition of religion using sacred traditions to
support your claims
 4 page essay
 Unit
1: Theories
 Essentialist
 Unit
2: Appearance of the Sacred: Hierophany
 Persons,
 Unit
stories, scripture, visual, music
4: Sacred Time/Traditions
 Rites
 Unit
objects, space
3: Language of the Sacred
 Myths,
 Unit
and Functionalist
of passage, holidays
5: Sacred Journey
 Pilgrimage