Definitions: Religion

Dale Hathaway

Fall 2020

Created: 2020-07-24 Fri 13:13

Guide to app usage
Studying Religion (review)
Seeking definitions for clarity and understanding.
Some historical definitions for "religion"
Searching for clarity
Elements of Religion
What kind of stuff? : Substance or Function?
A Proposed Definition

Guide to app usage

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Studying Religion (review)

Tools Used in the Study Religion

Religious studies is the attempt to study these things, taking homo religiosus seriously

Textual: study sacred texts
Historical: describe origin and development of specific religions
Comparative: compare specific types of religious behaviors, beliefs
Philosophical: philosophical analysis of religious language and arguments
Intellectual & Social History: trace development of religious ideas and institutions over time

Seeking definitions for clarity and understanding.

Definitions help by e.g.:

clarifying the ambiguity of words
bringing precision in communication
providing accuracy & consistency in data gathering and finding patterns
Definitions help us with basic questions like: How do we know? How do we accumulate knowledge?
- consider that in the simplest communication there is a great sophistication.
- Take the Michael Jackson song "Bad" – some of you may at least be familiar with it. In that song the word "bad" does not mean what we might usually mean by the word. Rather, even, the opposite.
- In another example, say you perceive a "blink" from someone. What does it mean? Is it a result of a piece of dust floating into their eye and has nothing to do with you? Or is it an attractive person giving you a "wink" that might have great significance to you? (Wittgenstein)
- In order to accumulate knowledge about religion, in order to have reliability in discussing it with others, we need to develop some clarity.
- Over the centuries, however, there has been great diversity of approaches.

Some historical definitions for "religion"

1

(James Martineau)	Religion is the belief in an ever living God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind.
(Friedrich Schleiermacher)	Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence or the consciousness that the whole of our spontaneous activity comes from a source outside of us .

Note: 21 April 1805 – 11 January 1900) was an English religious philosopher influential in the history of Unitarianism.

For 45 years he was Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in Manchester New College, the principal training college for British Unitarianism.

Note: November 21, 1768 – February 12, 1834) was a German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional Protestant Christianity. He also became influential in the evolution of Higher Criticism, and his work forms part of the foundation of the modern field of hermeneutics. Because of his profound effect on subsequent Christian thought, he is often called the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology" and is considered an early leader in liberal Christianity. The Neo-Orthodoxy movement of the twentieth century, typically (though not without challenge) seen to be spearheaded by Karl Barth, was in many ways an attempt to challenge his influence.

2

(Karl Marx)	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.
(Anthony Wallace)	Religion is a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man or nature .

3

(Emile Durkheim)

Religion is only sentiment inspired by the group in its members, but projected outside of the consciousness that experiences them, and objectified .

(Signmund Freud)

Freud refers to religion as an illusion which is "perhaps the most important item in the psychical inventory of a civilization". In his estimation, religion provides for defense against "the crushingly superior force of nature" and "the urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt". He concludes that all religious beliefs are "illusions and insusceptible of proof."

4

(James G. Frazer)	Religion is a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of Nature and of human life .
(William James)	The very fact that there are so many (definitions of religion) … is enough to prove that the word “religion” cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name …

Searching for clarity

Humility of the seeker

cautious, recognizing that we cannot escape our own perspective …
is this an essential western / rationalistic effort to define religion?
it may also be a result of influence of Judeo-Christian tradition
it may be result of dualistic thinking – (either/or)

The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the "religious" from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, intellectualistic, and scientific disposition. It is also the product of the dominant Western religious mode, what is called the Judeo-Christian climate or, more accurately, the theistic inheritance from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The theistic form of belief in this tradition, even when downgraded culturally, is formative of the dichotomous Western view of religion. That is, the basic structure of theism is essentially a distinction between a transcendent deity and all else, between the creator and his creation, between God and man. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#Definitions)

Elements of Religion

Human thought
Feeling
Action
Social interconnectedness
Values

Religion and Human Thought

Religion is intimately connected with human thought.

Even those who focus on practice have beliefs, develop doctrines, and emphasize the importance of certain teachings in the religious life essential to their way of life.

Religion and Feeling

To some extent, all religious experience is an emotional experience.

Friedrich Schleiermacher characterized religion as a feeling of absolute dependence.

Rudolf Otto, characterized religion as the experience of the holy. And this experience is one that inspires feelings of fear, awe, terror, and love.

Religion and Action

Clearly action is an essential component of any religion. Examples of include:

Islam = the duty of prayer and salat
Shinto = approach the shrine of kami by washing, ringing a bell, and clapping their hands
Roman Catholicism = attend mass
Judaism = "following the commandments"
Methodism = outer holiness, inner holiness, spreading holiness

Individual and Social Existence

In religion there is an essential tension between the individual and the community

One of the most elementary components of religion is some emphasis on the idea of society.
Thus, the essence of religion is the ways in which it enables individual persons to identify with the values associated with a particular group.

Values and Religion

In most times and places, religion and morality are intertwined

religion may confirm moral law
religion may give one power to perform one's duty
religion may express society's values

What kind of stuff? : Substance or Function?

Substantive Definition of Religion

Perhaps a more familiar concept. List of criteria in different religions to distinguish them.

Attempts to limit the phenomena that may be characterized as religious.
Seeks to identify what it is that makes certain responses to death and suffering religious and others not.
“Substantive” recognizes that religion to be contrasted with the many other … isms or ways of thought etc. that function to make life bearable, ordered, etc. (cf. Martineau's definition above)

Functionalist Definition of Religion

Focuses on the role religion plays in the lives of persons and groups.
Might focus on the ways religion enables people to sustain hope in the face of difficult circumstances.
“Functionalist” understands religion to have a role to play in ordering, making sense, of human existence

Definition must be both

Considerations of function are necessary but not sufficient to the task of defining religion.
But an adequate definition of religion must include a substantive component.
Thus, any adequate definition of religion must account for both the function and substance of religion. for example:
1. Religion and politics overlap but are not the same
2. Religion and morality overlap but are not the same
3. religion and science overlap but are not the same
4. historical aspect of many religions is taken for granted but the religion is more than that

A Proposed Definition

Religion signifies those ways of viewing the world that refer to:

a notion of sacred reality
made manifest in human experience
in such a way as to produce long-lasting ways of thinking, feeling, and acting
with respect to problems of ordering and understanding existence

** A Notion of Sacred Reality

A notion of sacred reality establishes a boundary between religion and non-religion.
Sacred indicates a reality that is somehow distinct, set apart, other than ordinary.
Sacred reality includes the God of the Bible, the Qur'anic Allah, the Brahman of Hinduism, Buddhism's Nirvana, the kami of Shinto.

** Manifest in Human Experience

Although the sacred is set apart from the ordinary, it nevertheless may be experienced, thought about, and acted upon.
Thus, all religion has to do with the element of the sacred manifesting itself in various ways: in rituals, persons, and natural phenomena.
1. Muslims = the sacred reality (Allah) is made manifest through prophecy
2. Buddhists = the goal of Nirvana comes to life in the life and teaching of the Buddha
3. Navaho = the story of the Navaho people makes wisdom available for those who seek harmony between all things.

** Long-Lasting Ways of Thinking and Feeling

Religious ways develop over time. And they come to constitute traditions that may be identified with the history of particular communities.
- For example, the prophecy of Muhammad is the beginning of the tradition of Islam.
- Islam's message and the story of its revelation in seventh-century Arabia have produced characteristic modes of thought, feeling, and action among a large percentage of the world's population.

** Ordering and Understanding Existence

Stresses the way in which notions of sacred reality are related to problems of suffering and death.
Also stresses the way in which notions of sacred reality are related to other problems; such as the ordering of political or economic life.