Havoc (Special Edition): A marriage-of-convenience small town, hot cop romance. (The Moonshine Task Force: Special Edition Series Book 3) Laramie Briscoe
1.3. Geographical layout of two hypothetical cultures
1.4. Decay of religions
1.5. The complexities of contextualization
2.1. Outline of the first temple
2.2. Composition of the Talmud
2.3. A page out of the Talmud
2.4. Orthodox appearance
2.5. Tzitzit
3.1. Ismailite developments
3.2. Six beliefs and five pillars
3.3. One rakat of prayer
4.1. Osama bin Laden
4.2. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab
4.3. Sayyid Qutb
4.4. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
4.5. Yasser
5.1. Early Baha’i leadership
5.2. Nine great manifestations
5.3. Covenant breakers in Baha’ullah’s family
6.1. Components of the Avesta
6.2. Fravashi spirit
6.3. Zoroastrian time
6.4.
7.1.
7.2.
8.1. Tlingit matrilinealism
9.1.
9.2. Hindu temple
10.1.
11.1. Jain
11.2.
12.1. Ekankar
12.2. Marks of a Singh
13.1. Some trigrams
13.2. Development of Daoism
14.1. Shrine complex
14.2. Shinto shrine layout
14.3 Shrine of Isé
Maps
2.1. Areas of Jewish flourishing
3.1. The Arabian Peninsula
3.2. Distribution of Shiite Islam
3.3. Expansion of Islam
4.1. Kuwait
5.1. Baha’i origins
6.1. Two Aryan migrations
6.2. Areas of high Parsi concentration
7.1. Four African tribes
9.1. Indus Valley civilization
10.1. Theravada countries
10.2. Expansion of Buddhism
11.1. Jain origins
China
Japan
1.1. Four Variations on a Simple Story
A Rough Chronology of the Hebrew People
2.2.
2.3. Elements of a Passover Seder
5.1.
7.1.
7.2. God in the Four Tribes
7.3. Sequence of Rites of Passage in Four African Tribes
8.1. Brief Summary of Native American Regional Traits
8.2. Tlingit Moieties and Some Representative Phratries
9.1. The Three Ways of Hinduism.
9.2. Some Vedic Deities
9.3. The Four Basic Castes
10.1. The Five, Eight and Ten Precepts
10.2. Mahayana Schools
10.3. Typical Visual Arrangements of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
10.4. Recently Established Mahayana Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan
11.1. Jain Vows
11.2. Ages of Jainism
11.3. Twenty-Four Tirthankaras of Jainism
11.4. Relationships Among Entities in the World
12.1. Sikh Gurus and the Contemporary Mughal Emperors
12.2. Distinction Between Kabir and Nanak
12.3. Possible Sikh Antecedents
13.1. Major Dynasties of China
13.2. Yin and Yang
13.3. Four Chinese Schools of Thought
13.4. The Eight Immortals
13.5. The Five Relationships
13.6. Years in the Chinese Zodiac
14.1. Some Japanese New Religions
p refa C e to the s e C ond e dition
a n updated edition of this book has been overdue for a long time. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, it has been slow in coming. If there is a positive side to this delay it is this: If I had provided an update ten years ago, a new one would be needed by now as well. Religions are historically unlikely to change. However, we are seeing in our time that, as the world is changing rapidly, religions are picking up the pace of change as well, and the need for us to keep up with their developments continues to grow.
One obvious development in the world of religions is the impact of Islam on the Western world. The events of September 11, 2001, have caused us in the United States to realize how much our lives are intertwined with global developments. In reality, we have been affected by developments around our planet for a long time, but perhaps we are now more aware of this fact than ever before. Specifically there has been an increased curiosity concerning Islam. Unfortunately there has also been a simultaneous increase in the dissemination of misinformation on Islam, both positive and negative. I found that in order to do a fairly adequate job of explaining what lay behind the radical face of Islam, I needed to devote another entire
chapter to it. Thus this new edition has two chapters of Islam, one that covers the basic information on this religion, and one that is particularly devoted to recent events.
The previous edition brought three religions together under the somewhat patronizing title of “off-shoot religions.” Doing so had been my decision, but it was a decision that I felt needed to be reversed. This edition has three separate chapters for Jainism, Sikhism and Baha’i. After all, each of these religions makes a special point of the fact that they are the result of unique revelations or insights.
Many of the changes in this new edition are aimed at correcting mistakes, clarifying ambiguities and adding greater precision where needed. I need to thank everyone who, over the years, has pointed out various concerns, real or perceived. I am also grateful for the questions I received from both students and instructors. It was a pleasure to answer them, and I hope that in this edition I have anticipated some of them. It has also been my privilege to share without cost some of my resources, such as my computer slide presentations, with various teachers who have used the book, and I hope to be able to continue to do so. As I’ve said, it is more
urgent than ever that Christians today will become accurately informed on the subject of world religions.
Accuracy is a goal both for its own sake and for the sake of clarifying the distinctiveness and truth of Christianity. However, this book is not an apologetics text per se. It is a survey of world religions, undertaken from a Christian point of view, and it embeds Christian responses. Classroom teachers in world religions know how fast a semester can go by, and it is imperative that we learn the facts of other religions lest we continue building apologetics against other religions based on inaccurate depictions. The Christian who is truly committed to evangelism and apologetics will consider the time it takes to study this subject matter well spent. A Christian apologetic response may not be as glib once one knows what a religion truly teaches, but it will have the advantage of being focused on a reality rather than a straw effigy. Please allow me to mention a few of the widespread misconceptions I hope we can liberate ourselves from:
• Contemporary Judaism is identical to the religion of the Old Testament, except for missing the sacrifices.
• Muslims worship Muhammad.
• The Jews picked up various aspects of their religion from the Persians during the Babylonian exile.
• Baha’i is a school of Islam.
• All of Hinduism is basically pantheism.
• Buddhism is a form of pantheism. I could go on, but this line of thought is more negative than I would like it to be. Instead, I hope that these misconceptions will be replaced by more accurate versions,
and I trust that this book will make a difference in attaining this goal.
In the time since the first edition, I have continued to enjoy numerous opportunities for further study at home and abroad. Taylor University made possible several further trips; particular thanks need to go to Taylor for a grant to study the culture and religion of the Tlingit tribe. In that connection I need to express my indebtedness to my brother Wolfgang and his wife, Yvonne, who opened numerous doors for me. I can only say that it was the Lord’s doing that brought me into connection with two people, Dan Muppidi and Paul Reid, with whom I have had the privilege to take other trips and engage in evangelistic projects. There have been further practical learning experiences in this country as well. Some of them occurred in the form of field trips with students, and others are due to the patience of good friends who indulge my notion that a day visiting two temples is a day well spent.
Please allow me to add a few words concerning translations and transliterations. For anyone writing for a general public on world religions, it is a constant question of how to write out technical terms, particularly names. There are three issues. First, there is a question concerning which name to use. There are numerous cases where several names are equally appropriate for a divine figure. Sometimes he is important in different cultures with different languages, such as the Buddha Amitabha , who is called Amida in Japan. My rule of thumb here was to use whatever name is appropriate to the context. In other cases, a deity simply may not have a single standardized name, such as Kartikeya, Skandar, Subrahmanyan or Murukhan, all of which are regional names used of the
Hindu god of war, among which none is so prominent as to be considered standard. In such a case as this, I listed all applicable names and arbitrarily selected one to mention first; I would suggest that this one would be the name to learn and memorize. A second question is whether to translate a term or not. In some cases— the Hindu karma comes to mind—to attempt a translation would be more confusing than helpful. In others, for example, using the Hebrew word pesah rather than the common English term “Passover,” would be excessively pedantic. Then there are cases where one may commonly encounter a term either in its original language, for example, Jodo-shin-shu , or its English translation, “Pure Land Buddhism,” and so I used both terms throughout so that the reader will come to recognize either one of them.
The third issue is how to transliterate terms, or to be more specific, how to “Romanize” them, which means how to transmit words not only from another language but also from another form of writing into our “Latin” alphabet. In many cases, scholars have developed very careful, highly nuanced methods. For example, in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, there are three variations on the letter S, which have different pronunciations, though they may be hard for the newcomer to hear, let alone imitate. Among the several official ways of Romanizing these letters, a common one is to distinguish between Ś, Ş and S. But how does that help anyone who is not familiar with the Devanagari alphabet on which this distinction is based? In such cases, I have reduced the use of diacritical marks to a minimum (usually none), and have simply provided a sensible uncomplicated transliteration that comes as close as one needs to,
based on how it is said in the region where it seems to be most important. As a result, in some cases, I did not follow a completely consistent system of transliteration for the sake of clarity in communication.
These remarks are just scratching the surface of this matter. In a number of chapters, I have explained at greater length which type of transliteration I have used and the reasons for it.
Due to health issues beyond my control, I have had to retire from Taylor University. The retirement gift from my department was a set of Wilhelm Schmidt’s Der Ursprung der Gottesidee. My further work, God permitting, will be to revive Schmidt’s contribution and to show that his conclusions are as strong today as they were a century ago. In this edition I have attempted to strengthen my presentation of Schmidt’s method to a certain extent, but, again, I tried not to keep this survey book from becoming too technical on a corollary issue, no matter how important the topic is.
As always—a phrase that does not mean that I am taking anything for granted—I am thankful for all the support of June, my wife. Since the writing of the first edition, she has been able to accompany me on many trips, and she has encouraged me to follow my calling during some hard years, when it would have been easy to stop learning.
I have broadened the dedication of this book, including one further team of students who traveled to Singapore with me. I also want to acknowledge the privilege it has been over the decades to have students on numerous field trips. All these teaching occasions were also learning occasions for me. What a delight it was to have people tell me, “Your group is nicer and more re-
spectful than the visitors we usually get.”
In a sense, I’m reluctant to send off this edition; there is so much more that I could add to every chapter. However, there is a limit as to what belongs into a usable introductory text, and, as I said at the beginning of this preface, this edition is overdue.
A big word of thanks needs to go to each of the editors at InterVarsity Press,
some of whom are well known to me; some work hard to make my work look good without my ever knowing their names. I would like to especially thank Andy Le Peau and Jim Hoover for encouraging me to undertake this second edition. The biggest amount of gratitude needs to go to Al Hsu, who has always been patient and positive. Thank you all.
a C know L edg M ents in the f irst e dition
i t wou L d be i M possib L e for M e to thank everyone who had some part in this book. Many people, perhaps a priest who explained a particular ritual to me or a layperson who shared some of her most cherished possessions with me—her religious beliefs—never told me their names. A list of all the people who have been my hosts and my teachers, both formally and informally, at home and abroad, would run into the thousands.
Yet I must name specifically all my friends at Singapore Youth for Christ (Albert Lee, Christopher Tan, Loh Tze Khoong, Michael and Soo Li Yong, Albert Ang, and many others) for their self-giving friendship. I need to thank Wandering Wheels and my old friends and new acquaintances at Rift Valley Academy in Kijabe, Kenya, for making the adventures of a lifetime possible. Taylor University has enabled me to travel and pursue learning experiences over the years. Mere words can never express my thanks to June, Nick and Seth for letting me go off for weeks at a time, year after year, to live in the world of Karl May.
I need to thank Jim Hoover of InterVarsity Press for being so receptive to this project. Professors David Clark, Irving Hexham and Terry Muck provided invaluable criticism and encouragement. Dean Dwight Jessup made a sabbatical available in which to write most of this text. My departmental secretaries, Mrs. Joanne Giger and Mrs. Kari Manganello, participated cheerfully in the final preparation of the manuscript. My wife, June, this time together with sons Nick and Seth, did her usual thorough job of proofreading the manuscript as well as encouraging me to write it.
i ntrodu C tion to the f irst e dition
t he wor L d has not rea LLy shrunk—it just feels like it. International travel is more accessible to more people than ever before. Increasingly, people of different backgrounds and different cultures live side by side, sometimes adapting their ways to each other, many times trying to maintain their ancient heritages despite strong pressure to give them up. Over the last few decades the United States and Western Europe have experienced an unprecedented influx of people from remote reaches of the globe.
In contrast to earlier immigrants, these people are not ready to jettison their own cultures and jump into a melting pot. They want to eat their customary foods, wear their customary clothes and observe their own traditions and festivals. At the same time, Americans and Europeans are obliged more than ever to do business in parts of the world that are geographically and culturally remote from their homelands. Being successful depends on being able to make their way through cultures with different expectations.
C ross C u Ltura L r e L igious e n C ounters
The crosscultural encounters occurring at the turn of this millennium inevitably include religion. Of course, different religions have always met, competed with and shaped each other to some extent. Religions frequently migrate and make themselves at home in new places. Almost everyone living on this planet today must cope with the presence of differing beliefs and forms of worship right in their own backyards. Some of these encounters are adversarial, some even violent.
As Terry Muck has observed, there are new and different religions right in
our neighborhoods.1 Christians must learn to live in a world of religious plurality. Christians desiring contact with neighbors who belong to a different religion need information regarding their food preferences, holidays, religious customs and symbols, and—above all—beliefs about the central reason for human existence.
Many of these non-Christian folk appear to be happy with their religions and are not searching for a better way. They hold on to their beliefs and seem to find as much satisfaction in them as Christians do in theirs. Thus, for Christians, the encounter
with non-Christian believers more than ever appears to be a meeting between “neighboring faiths.”
Far from being the private religion of desert nomads, Islam is a strong political force in the world today. Many contemporary global conflicts wear religious labels. Businesspersons need to be conscious of
their clients’ religious boundaries. Schools in most metropolitan areas must figure out how to accommodate the religious needs of all pupils, including immigrants and long-time residents. Religion is at the heart of many people’s lives, and getting to know them means getting to know their religion.
t he C hristian and the s tudy of wor L d r e L igions
Consequently, Christians who seek to be relevant to the world they live in must understand the beliefs of the people with whom they share the globe. My own introduction to world religions came relatively late in my academic preparation. I had already begun graduate study at Rice University when my department chair, Niels C. Nielsen Jr., thrust a copy of John B. Noss’s Man’s Religions into my hand and said, “Corduan, get educated!” I must have said something embarrassingly ignorant about an Asian religion, although I do not remember what it was. I remain grateful to Professor Nielsen for this forthright exhortation.
As I prepared myself for a career in Christian philosophical theology, I continued my study of world religions. At Rice I took several seminars in the subject and taught some courses that included various non-Christian religious components. When I came to Taylor University, my job description included teaching a course in world religions as well as courses in philosophy and theology.
There is an old dictum that no one ever learns a subject as well as someone who is forced to teach it. While not neglecting my calling in the areas of philosophy and theology, I have availed myself of numerous opportunities to
build competence in world religions. Reading books was an important aspect of my study, but I also found occasion to learn a little Sanskrit and a little Arabic to make my credentials more credible. Most importantly, Taylor University has encouraged its faculty to pursue international travel, and I have been a beneficiary of this policy. I have been allowed to participate regularly in study/teaching trips with groups of students, and I have received grants to go to Asia and Africa simply to study. As I encountered people’s religious worlds in their home environments, I honed the theoretical and historical descriptions of those religions that I had learned previously.
The idea for this book was suggested to me in January 1992, while I was riding on the upper level of a bus making its way through the streets of Singapore. I was there with a group of students for a month-long study of world religions and to lend some assistance to Singapore Youth for Christ. At that time my students encouraged me to write down what I knew, and I began to think seriously about writing this book. It is only fitting that this book be dedicated to my Lighthouse to Singapore groups for all the support they have given me.
i nterre L igious e n C ounters as o pportunities for e vange L is M
The discussion in this book proceeds from an evangelical Christian perspective, which sees interreligious encounters as opportunities for sharing the gospel of redemption. 2 Consequently, this book goes beyond descriptions and summaries, and identifies points of contact and cultural opportunities for gaining a hearing for the Christian gospel. Such an evangelical purpose requires an understanding of how a religion is lived out in real life, not just the “official” version of the religion as presented in authorized books. History, scriptures and theology are all indispensable for gaining an understanding of a religion, but the actual practice of a religion may differ from what has been written about it. I once heard a long-time missionary to Islamic countries bemoan the fact that many missionaries arrived in the country wellschooled in the Five Pillars of Islam but woefully unaware of how Islam works in the everyday lives of its adherents. In this book I try to do justice not only to the theoretical-historical side of the religion but also to practical issues such as worship practices, festivals and home observances.
Each chapter concludes with a section that begins “So You Meet a . . .” In it I discuss what to expect from encounters with adherents of the religion and how to proceed with attempts at evangelism. I make no claims for comprehensiveness. My remarks should not be seen as recipes or simple methods for winning souls. They do explain how to avoid making blunders, some of them based on my own mistakes.
I have chosen not to include a chapter on Christianity. I do not wish to imply
that Christianity is not a religion or that it does not function as such. Of course, it is and it does. But this survey assumes a Christian starting point and a basically Christian audience. A chapter on Christianity would inevitably be patronizing—excessive for those who know it, insufficient for those who do not. So it seemed best to me to forgo the undertaking. Nevertheless, a few words need to be said about Christianity in order to clarify allusions that will occur repeatedly in this book.
As I have already indicated, my own theological orientation is unabashedly evangelical. This orientation carries some important implications. First, Christianity is based on a revelation from God—the Bible—which consequently must be treated as truthful and authoritative. Rightly understood, the Bible declares the will of God on matters of religion (as well as on any other matters concerning which it may make affirmations). Christian theology is an accurate representation of God’s will exactly insofar as it conforms to the biblical revelation.
Second, Jesus Christ is the Son of God. God entered history personally in Christ, who combines in himself a fully divine nature as well as a genuinely human nature. His life began with his birth to a virgin in Bethlehem, ended temporarily with his crucifixion and culminated with his bodily resurrection and ascension to heaven.
Third, human beings in their present nature are alienated from God and need redemption. God made provision for
this need in the atoning death of Christ. A human person needs to trust in Christ by personal faith in order to experience salvation. This faith is the only means of salvation that God has disclosed.
Fourth, Christians should relate to other religions on the basis of sacrificial love. Evangelical Christianity does not recognize any other world religion as a valid way to God. Presenting the gospel to the world is a part of Christians’ total
calling to lead overtly redeemed lives. Divine revelation forbids the use of political or physical coercion in promoting Christianity, but it demands that Christians love the world selflessly and sacrificially. This love expresses itself in an empathic understanding of other people, humanitarian projects and a consistent witness to God’s redemptive plan. All references to Christianity assume this viewpoint.
o rigina L M onotheis M
The discussion in this book is oriented toward original monotheism, the idea that all religion began with God—the Creator and the Revealer. I describe this theory further in chapter one. This orientation may seem natural for an evangelical Christian, but I believe that it is also a conclusion founded on solid evidence. It is worth noting that many books dismiss the best-known scholarly proponent of this theory, Wilhelm Schmidt, in an offhand manner for his religious convictions while dogmatically propagating developmental assumptions that have long been disproven. 3
This theoretical starting point has also influenced how the religions treated in this book have been selected and arranged. The clearly monotheistic traditions, Judaism and Islam, lead the way. Baha’i, originally an offshoot of Islam is monotheistic as well. Zoroastrianism also represents an attempt to recapture the monotheistic point of view, which took hold only after several false starts. I give broad coverage to two traditional religions, African and Native American. Of the two, the African religion has retained a more overt reference to God.
Both religions are immersed in a world of spirits and rituals. Focusing on the religions of Asia, we see that the precursor of Hinduism, the religion of the prehistoric Aryans, may have had some monotheistic roots. Hinduism provides an ongoing demonstration of how much variety a religion can accommodate. Even belief systems that are now considered religions in their own right, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, are direct outgrowths of the Hindu heritage. Finally, we look at the two major Asian syntheses, Chinese popular religion and Japanese religious culture, which combine elements of the Indic tradition (particularly schools of Buddhism) with local concepts. What we know of the Chinese heritage begins with the worship of a single god in the sky. There is virtually no memory of a monotheistic legacy in the Japanese synthesis, which we will conclude with.
Some features in this book come from my many years of teaching a course on world religions (which has now become a two-course sequence). Each chapter concludes with study questions that students can use to test their understanding of the
discussion. Years of suggesting termpaper topics have led me to add a list of such ideas to each chapter. Finally, I have provided a small “core bibliography” for each religion. This listing is obviously not intended to be comprehensive (how
could it be?) or necessarily up to date (but then, few libraries are); instead, these are some of the more useful sources a student might find in his or her library that provide an entryway into further study of the subject.
1 r e L igion
Study and Practice
what wou L d you say to someone who has no understanding whatsoever of the concept of religion? In the story The Master Key, science-fiction writer Poul Anderson made this matter a question of life and death. 3 A group of human traders on the distant planet Cain encountered an alien race, called Yildivans, with catlike features and attitudes. Like all felines, they were only willing to relate to people on their own terms. For them these terms included that humans must be as free as they were; otherwise they would be on the level of domestic animals, whose lives were expendable. Eventually the Yildivans realized that even the people with the highest level of authority paid homage to an “owner” called God, and the best efforts to try to explain religion to the Yildivans failed to correct the impression. Deeply offended, the Yildivans decided that the traders must be killed. What would you try to say under such circumstances?
Providing a definition for the term re-
World Population: 7 billion1
Professing Christians: 2.1 billion
Religious Non-Christians: 3.7 billion 2
ligion is challenging, even when you are not under duress from some fictional race of aliens. Let us start out by looking at a few diverse examples of religion. Frequently, religions involve gods and spirits, but not always.
There are many commonly used words in the English language that elude a single definition. Take the word ball. We can play soccer with one; we can see Cinderella dance at one; we can also have one in a more figurative sense: exchanging funny stories with a friend. We may say that in basketball the center of attention is a ball because it is round and can be played with. We may hear people refer to the sun as a great big ball, meaning that it is round, but we cannot play with it. Conversely, the object used in American football can be played with, but it is not round; nevertheless, we say that it is a ball. In short, the word does not have a single definition that covers all aspects of its use. However, we rarely have trouble identifying what people mean when they use the word ball
We can picture a Friday prayer service in a mosque—the house of worship of Islam. The men of the community have assembled and are sitting in loose rows on the rug-covered floor in front of a pulpit from which an imam preaches instructions on how to live a life that is pleasing to God. At the end of the sermon the believers stand up, forming exact rows that face the niche at the front of the hall that points in the direction of Mecca. In unison they go through the prescribed postures of standing, bowing and prostrating themselves as they recite their prayer of devotion. This picture confirms the common notion that religion focuses on the worship of God.
Now let us picture a Japanese Zen master addressing a group of American college students. “Look beyond words and ideas,” he tells them. “Lay aside what you think you know about God; it can only mislead you. Just accept life as it is. When it rains, I get wet. When I am hungry, I eat.” Is this religion?
Mary, an American college student, is not affiliated with any organized religion; in fact, she blames religion for much of what is wrong with the world today. But she is full of high ideals and has committed her life to the service of humanity. After graduation she plans to spend a few years in the Peace Corps and then reside in a poverty-stricken area of America where she can assist disadvantaged people in learning to lead a better life. In order to carry out this task to its fullest, Mary is already limiting her own personal belongings and is not planning to get married or raise a family. Could it be that, despite her assertion to the contrary, she is really practicing a religion?
The word religion functions in somewhat the same way. To a great extent it conjures up definite concepts when someone utters it. We may think about groups such as Buddhism, Christianity or Islam, or ideas such as worship, gods, rituals or ethics. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would associate religion with baseball, roast beef or the classification of insects. However, it is quite difficult to come up with a definition of religion that includes everything we normally associate with religion and excludes everything we do not consider religion.
For example, a definition focusing on gods, spirits and the supernatural may be too narrow. There are forms of Buddhism (for example, Zen) that consider any such beliefs to be a hindrance to enlightenment. Yet, are we prepared to deny that
Buddhism is a religion? I think not.
This difficulty may lead us to define religion more broadly because even where there is no direct worship of a god or gods, the religion still supplies values that give life meaning. This aspect is certainly true for Buddhism, which definitely supplies values for life. But is it legitimate to turn this assessment around and say that wherever someone is committed to a set of core values that give their life meaning, they are practicing a religion? If so, then Mary, the woman who is devoting her life to the service of others, could conceivably be considered as an example of someone practicing a humanistic religion. However, a member of an organized crime group may also follow some values, albeit very different ones: money, domination, power and so forth. Surely we don’t want
to call observing the standards of organized crime a “religion.” It does not follow from the fact that religion supplies core values that wherever there are core values, there must be a religion.
In order to qualify as religious the core values may not just be a part of everyday life, such as accumulating a lot of money, regardless of the means, even if they are an important part of someone’s life. I consider it to be important that I brush my teeth every day, but that fact does not make me an adherent of the tooth-brushing religion. Some guy may focus his entire life on the pursuit of wealth, but metaphors notwithstanding, that fact does not imply that earning money is his religion; in fact, other people may be more likely to point out that such a person is going counter to an accepted understanding of religion. Whatever the core values of everyday life may be, they cannot give meaning to life if they are just a part of life itself. In order to qualify as “religious,” the values must come from beyond the details of ordinary life.
The feature of religion that directs us beyond the mundane is called “transcendence.” Transcendence can come to us in many different ways, through supernatural agencies or through metaphysical principles (for example, the greatest good or the first cause), an ideal, a place or an awareness, to mention just some of the possibilities. Thus, we can start with a tentative definition for the moment: A religion is a system of beliefs and practices that directs a person toward transcendence and thus provides meaning and coherence to a person’s life.
And yet this definition may still need refining. Let us return to Mary, our idealistic person who is dedicating her life to the service of humanity. By her own statement she does not want to be classified as religious,
though, in the way that people talk today, she might be willing to accept the notion that even though she is not religious, she exhibits a certain amount of “spirituality.”
Not too long ago a person would have been hard pressed to try to make such a distinction plausible. Doesn’t one have to be religious in order to be spiritual? How can it be possible to have faith without belonging to one of the traditional faiths?
But those questions are no longer irrelevant, let alone meaningless. At least in a Western, English-speaking context, this distinction has become important. I remember not too long ago seeing an interview with a well-known actress on television, in which she declared that she was not religious but that she believed in a deep spirituality, which became apparent to her particularly as she gazed into the eyes of animals. (This book will not try to make sense out of such observations.)
So, to become a little bit more technical, what could be the difference between religion and “spirituality”? The answer is that religion also involves some external features, no matter how small, which have meaning only for the sake of the religious belief and would be unnecessary in other contexts. We are going to call this factor the cultus of the religion. For example, contemporary Protestant Christianity in the United States is associated with a specific cultus. In general, believers gather on Sunday morning in specially designated buildings, sit on chairs or benches (rather than kneel), sing special songs either out of hymnals or as projected on a screen, pray with their eyes closed, and listen to a professional minister speak about a passage in their holy book, the Bible. These items are not meant to be obligatory or an exhaustive description, but they are typical for the American Protestant
Christian cultus. The point is that religion comes with a cultus, whereas spirituality is a purely personal and private matter that need not show up in any external manner. So, let us make one more amendment to our definition of religion: A religion is a system of beliefs and practices that by means of
its cultus directs a person toward transcendence and, thus, provides meaning and coherence to a person’s life.
This definition surmounts the difficulties I pointed out earlier. Needless to say, it is still very vague, but that is the nature of religion.
Less than 1%, 1.38%
Religions with less than 1% of the population
1.1.
Religions with less than 10% of the population
Rastafarianism, 0.01% Neo-Unitarian, 0.01%
0.01%
Religions with less than 0.1% of the population Scientology, 0.01%
t he o rigin of r e L igion
Now let us return to one small remark that I have already mentioned in passing, but that carries a whole lot of weight for the sake of understanding religion, namely, that some of the features incorporated in the cultus of a religion have no purpose other than to be a part of the religion. This recognition implies that religion has a purpose all its own; it somehow stands out from ordinary life without religion. Presumably a religious person and a nonreligious person would paint a house in the same way. They would bake bread or hunt a deer with the same technique. Or, alternatively, if there is a difference between how the religious and the nonreli-
Figure
Religions and their percentages (based on data supplied by Adherents.com)
gious person carry out these tasks, most likely it is that the religious person is adding certain actions, such as praying, which do not actually contribute anything practical to the process of painting, baking or hunting. Consequently, it would appear that complying with religious practice is not something that is necessary for the survival of human beings, and thus it raises the question, How could something that does not add to the viability of human life become such an important part of human culture? Or, in short, how or why did religion originate?
A century ago this question was a popular topic of debate. Today it is not addressed directly very often, even though the positions that were debated so hotly in earlier times are nowadays simply assumed by many scholars as they study various religions. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many people spent a lot of effort trying to establish both the historical and psychological roots of religion.
Frequently they intermingled these two areas in order to uncover how religion originated. They combined the data derived from whatever evidence there might have been with their theoretical assumptions of what must have happened. The evidence, as we shall discuss, was ambivalent at best for most of the theories, but we can see with hindsight how the theories were allowed to shape the evidence so as to make them as convincing as possible. Let us take a look at the results of the work of many scholars. We can do so by differentiating between the subjective assumptions underlying these theories and the models that arose as a theory and evidence were combined. One of the features that these theories have in common is that they ultimately try to give a psychological or sociological interpretation of religion, which makes religion purely an attribute of human culture and thereby attempts to repudiate the reality of the supernatural.
a ssu M ptions u nder Lying t heories of r e L igion
Subjective theories. Here are some of the psychological theories that motivated scholars to look for a naturalistic explanation of the origin of religion. The idea is that by showing how religion fulfills a specific psychological need, any further ground to believe in the truth of religious beliefs has been eliminated. Note that such thinking represents rather fallacious reasoning. There are many subjective needs and feelings that a person may have that do not rule out the reality of the feelings or of the object that fulfills the needs. For example, feeling hungry is a subjective experience, but that fact neither repudiates the meaningfulness of the feeling nor the real-
ity of an object, namely, food, to fulfill that need. So, regardless of the truth or falsity of some of the theories I will mention, neither case would either invalidate the reality of religions or the need to discover a historical beginning of religion.
1. The nineteenth-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher contended that religion begins with a feeling, not a set of beliefs.4 Specifically, he pointed to a universal feeling of “absolute dependence.” All human beings have this feeling, and since a feeling of dependence demands that there is something to depend on, the feeling is expressed in terms of depending on an Absolute, which is God. Note that this sequence
proceeds from the feeling of dependence to the idea that there must be an object of dependence, not from the idea that there is a God to the idea that we depend on God.
2. Somewhat later, philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach promoted the theory that the concept of God is actually a combination of idealized human traits.5 Human beings have the characteristics of love, power and knowledge (among others). An idealized picture of the human species would turn these traits into unlimited characteristics, producing a being with unconditional love, unrestricted power and all-exhaustive knowledge. This contrivance of an idealized human being is then called “God.” Thus, in the final analysis, a person who worships God is really worshiping an idealized self-image.
3. The psychological dimension of the human-centered approach to religion was broached by Sigmund Freud.6 In his explorations of the human subconscious he thought that he had discovered the basic human need for a father image. Since human fathers are imperfect, even at their best, people substitute an idealized father image that they refer to as “God.” This notion is enhanced by the presence of an “oceanic feeling.” Just as we may be awestruck by the size, depth and impenetrability of the sea as we view it from the shore, so our contemplations of the ideal father image may leave us with a feeling of impenetrable vastness. Thus, at root, the religious vision is a symptom of psychological immaturity. (Freud also invoked a purely unsubstantiated notion of totemism in his attempt to make religion look infantile and regressive. We will return to this idea in chapter 6. )
4. In 1917 the religion scholar Rudolf Otto published an important study titled The Idea of the Holy. 7 In this work Otto
traced the basic religious impulse back to an encounter with the consciousness of holiness, which is deeper than rationally held religious beliefs. Picture yourself thinking about God as you are kneeling in a majestic cathedral or gazing at an imposing mountain vista. Suddenly you are overwhelmed by a sensation of God’s greatness and majesty; for a moment you have experienced a feeling of purity and holiness. You sense that you have touched the untouchable. This feeling, according to Otto, has two components. A consciousness of fear and awe leads you to an awareness of your own microscopic significance in light of God’s greatness, and you shrink away. But simultaneously you experience a feeling of attraction; you are mesmerized by and attracted to the holy. Otto referred to these two components as mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinosum respectively, that is “the mystery that invokes fear” and “the mystery that attracts.” For our purposes, the crucial point is that Otto placed this psychological experience of the holy at the heart of religion. He, as well as Freud, understood the core of religion as residing in our subconscious, nonrational faculties.
5. Other scholars have attempted to expand on Otto’s insights. Most prominent among them was the Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade.8 In numerous works Eliade explored subconscious symbolism as it cuts across many different religious traditions. Wherever such a symbol appears, Eliade called it a hierophany —a manifestation of the holy. Such hierophanies include water (as symbolizing spiritual purification), sacred buildings (as providing links to a spiritual dimension) and festivals (as representing reenactments of divine history).
6. A symbolic approach to religion was
also advanced by the analytical psychologist C. G. Jung.9 He correlated images that recur in human dreams with images expressed in religion and came to believe that the same manifestations of the human subconscious are present in both. His “symbolic archetypes” are pictures that seem to occur throughout human history and culture. Among the many archetypes Jung included images such as the dragon (powerful forces of nature that sometimes must be slain) and the white-haired old man (the source of wisdom, sometimes representing God). According to Jung these images have a life of their own, but they take on additional meaning in the particular context of a religion.
In summary, the contributions of these scholars differ in their specifics, but they all identify certain basic religious elements that constitute an important aspect of what it means to be human, such as feelings, thoughts or symbols. These elements reside primarily below the level of conscious awareness. When they are brought to consciousness, they are expressed in terms of religious beliefs. These scholars and their followers have used this conclusion to advocate subjectivity as an exhaustive explanation for all religion. They claim that since these subjective elements exist in our minds, and since religion can be explained on the basis of their existence, we have all that we need to understand religion. Thus they conclude that religion is rooted in subjectivity.
But even if some of what these thinkers are saying were true (for example, if Otto’s notion that the idea of “the Holy” was an integral part of religious experience), and even if they could be used to explain the nature of religion, it would not logically follow that these patterns
provide a complete explanation of all of religion. Even if human beings carry an abstract representation of God in their subconscious minds, we cannot conclude on that basis that there is no independently existing objective being that is God. God may have created us with such an innate idea so that we can relate to him. Having a natural feeling of absolute dependence does not justify my inferring that religion is nothing but a feeling; there may very well be an independently existing God who has instilled that feeling in me. Thus, if we are interested in finding the origin of religion, the subjective theories do not help since everything that they point to as cause (for example, feelings, subconscious symbols) may in fact be the effect of religious reality (for example, a god or an actual experience).
Subjective approaches to religion have only limited value. Insofar as they may be true, they can help us understand human nature and the human side of religion, but they do not help explain the origin of religion. Furthermore, by themselves they cannot even begin to answer the question of the historical origin of religion, and if one wants to stick to these theories one needs to sidestep the question. So, for example, Joseph M. Kitagawa assured us:
“One must remember that the origin of religion is not a historical question; ultimately it is a metaphysical one.”10
Do you find that statement to be confusing? In one sense it is, but in another sense it should not be. What Kitagawa is telling us is that a historical question— “How did religion originate?”—does not need a historical answer but a theoretical one. What he is saying is clear, but it is not helpful because we are asking a legitimate historical question, which deserves a his-
torical answer. “I don’t know” or “I don’t want to answer your question” seems to make more sense than “You think you are asking a historical question, but you are actually asking a metaphysical question.”
Consequently, we are more than ever confronted with the question, Did reli-
gion begin with humans or with God? Thus we will proceed to look at two further approaches to the origin of religion, one that seeks to place religion in the context of human cultural evolution, and one that places the origin with God, who created us and revealed himself to us.
t he e vo L utionary a pproaC h
Many scholarly investigators of religion over the last two hundred years have promoted an evolutionary approach to the origins of religion. Even though few today still defend this approach, many scholars assume that religions had a purely human origin, moving from a very simplistic religion to more sophisticated beliefs. There are three theoretical and methodological assumptions:
1. Religion is an aspect of human culture, which must be understandable without reference to actual supernatural powers. There is no question that the advocates of some of these views would protest vehemently that they were not out to undermine religious traditions but were only applying scientific methodology to their investigation. However, such a protest would be hollow because scientific methodology in their view implied excluding the reality of spiritual powers.
2. Religion began on a very primitive and childlike level from which it evolved to greater and greater levels of complexity. It cannot be overemphasized sufficiently that the intellectual world from the early nineteenth century on was philosophically committed to a belief in biological and cultural evolution. Charles Darwin’s contribution was significant insofar as he provided an appar-
ently factual basis for this intellectual belief. However, to mention a specific example, the sociologist Herbert Spencer coined the phrase survival of the fittest as a part of a theory of evolution that he invented prior to Darwin. The drawback to the theories of people like Spencer is that they lacked the biological instantiations, which Darwin was able to accumulate thanks to his travels. A dogmatic conviction that human beings and their culture were evolving was accepted already. The only question was what the sequence of evolutionary stages looked like and what the mechanism was that made it possible.
3. Religion as practiced among the least developed cultures in the world today must be closest to the religion of early human beings. This assumption appears to be rather tentative. Wouldn’t it be just as likely that particular human cultures have oscillated between highly developed and less-developed stages? But actually, despite its initially questionable appearance, the assumption has a fairly high degree of plausibility. There is little or no evidence for widespread regression of physical human cultures. For example, there don’t seem to be any cultures that went from having pottery to abandoning it, or that discarded flint arrowheads in favor of going back to sharpened sticks. Therefore,
