Download Approaches to the study of religion lecture

Approaches to the Study of Religion
Abrahamic:
 Judaism, Christianity, Islam, (& offshoots)
 Indian
 “Hinduism”, Buddhism, Jainism (+Sikhism)
 Iranian
 Zoroastrianism (+Parsees)
 Folk religions
 Everything else?
 Chinese religions
 Confucianism? Taoism? (neither is clearly a
religion)
 New Religious Movements (they have differing
origins)
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Frank Whaling (in Connolly)
 1) Five major traditions:
Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam
 2) Minor living traditions:
Jains, Sikhs, Taoists etc
 3) Dead traditions: Gnosticism, Greek and Roman
gods
 4) “Primal religions”, oral rather than written
 5) New Religious Movements
 6) (?) “Secular” religions: nationalism, Marxism
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Christianity:
Oriental
Eastern Orthodox
Roman Catholic
Protestantism:
Anglican
Lutheran
Calvinist
Many smaller groups
(=“denomination”)
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Islam:
Sunni/Shia
Sunni Islam is also divided
into schools of law
(=madhhabs)
It can also be divided into
interpretative traditions
E.g. Sufism/Salafism
Shia
Twelver/Sevener
Buddhism
Theravada
Vajrayana
Mahayana
Mahayana further divided
into sub-branches (e.g Zen
Buddhism)
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Definitions that don’t really work
Theistic
“The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling
power, esp. a personal God or gods.” (Google)
Polemic
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of
our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason
and science as our guidelines."
~ Bertrand Russell (?)
“Religion is unbelief. Religion is a concern […] of the
godless human being.” Karl Barth
Idiosyncratic
"Religion is what the individual does with his own
solitariness."
~ A.N. Whitehead
Academic
 Human beings' relation to that which they regard
as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."
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~ Encyclopædia Britannica (online, 2006)
Any beliefs which involve the acceptance of a sacred,
trans-empirical realm and any behaviours designed to
affect a person’s relationship with that realm (Connolly
page 6)
(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish
powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of
a general order of existence and (4) clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5)
the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic
(Clifford Geertz 1993)
Academic
 Human beings' relation to that which they regard
as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."
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~ Encyclopædia Britannica (online, 2006)
Any beliefs which involve the acceptance of a sacred,
trans-empirical realm and any behaviours designed to
affect a person’s relationship with that realm (Connolly
page 6)
(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish
powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of
a general order of existence and (4) clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5)
the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic
(Clifford Geertz 1993)
 There
are no
exactly equivalent
ideas in other
cultures
 Do we give a
definition and see
what fits (top-down)
or think of a list of
“religions” to see
what they have in
common (bottomup)?
 Not
always clear
what is a religion:
 Buddhism
 Chinese religions –
Taoism and
Confucianism
 Marxism
 “Scientism”
 Atheism
 Religion
has
generally been a
major part of
human societies
 It has been a major
theme in Western
art, especially
before 1800
 Academically, we
can approach it in a
variety of ways
 Psychology
 Biology
 Anthropology
 Sociology
 Feminism
 Phenomenology
 Theology
(or
equivalent)
 Philosophy (has its
own lecture)
 Aim:
to describe and account for religious
feelings and states
 Founder: William James
 The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
 Religious experience is a special type of
experience
 The primary study of religion is individual
religious experience
 He tried to explain the importance of
religious experience to human beings
 He was not concerned with whether it was
true
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Freud assumes religion
is not true
"Religion is an illusion
and it derives its
strength from the fact
that it falls in with our
instinctual desires."
~ Sigmund Freud, New
Introductory Lectures
on Psychoanalysis
(1933)
Religious belief is a
neurosis
SIGMUND FREUD
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More positive view of
religion
There is a “collective
unconscious”
It contains “archetypes”
that are the basis of
religious symbolism
But Jung seems to imply
that religious ideas
refer to structures
within the psyche
CARL JUNG
 How
rigorous are the theories of Freud and
Jung?
 Is there a “religious personality”? How would
that impact on religious claims?
 Are different psychological types attracted
to specific forms of religion (e.g.
fundamentalism)?
 What role does religion play in mental
health?
 Can psychology describe religious states of
experience?
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An attempt to compare religious institutions with other
cultural institutions and compares religious ideas across
cultures
James George Frazer
The Golden Bough (1890-1915)
Influenced T.S. Eliot’s The Waste-Land
Magic – religion – science
An evolutionist understanding:
Societies improve as they get more modern
(This is rejected by modern anthropologists – and me!)
Claude Levi-Strauss
Analysed all cultural phenomena
As coming out of the structure of the human mind
Myths are similar – reflecting an order that is present in
the human mind
 Aims
to understand what the religion
means for those who practise it
 “thick description” (Clifford Geertz)
 Who is he?
 What does he think he is doing?
 How does it fit into his world-view?
 This implies cultural relativism
 Anthropologists no longer ever say:
“Witches, as the Azande conceive
them, cannot exist” (Evans-Pritchard)
http://www.africanceremonies.com/licensing/
Is there a spiritual sphere which all people have
contact with?
 Do all peoples see a distinction between an
empirical realm and a sacred realm? If not, how
does this impact on definitions of religion?
 Should we interpret all religions the same way?
 Should anthropologists try to make religions
seem rational?
 How relevant are scriptures/creeds? Do we
study the beliefs of the “experts” or of the
normal believers?
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 Any
attempt to understand the role that
religion plays in society
 Or to use sociological tools to understand
religion
 Difference between sociology and
anthropology?
 Generally sociology describes modern
(post)industrial cultures
 Anthropology describes pre-industrial
cultures
 “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.”
 Often interpreted as hostile
 However, it interprets religion as the
(natural?) reaction to political oppression
“The ruling ideas are nothing more than the
ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the
relationships which make the one class the ruling
one, therefore the ideas of its dominance.”
 “Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of
ideology and their corresponding forms of
consciousness, thus no longer retain the
semblance of independence. They have no
history, no development”
 (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology)
 More characteristic of Marxism
 Religious ideas are only an expression of material
(=economic) relationships
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 “All
modern religions and churches, all and
of every kind of religious organizations are
always considered by Marxism as the organs
of bourgeois reaction, used for the
protection of the exploitation and the
stupefaction of the working class” (Lenin)
 Religion is a reactionary force
 Religious ideas have “no history, no
development”
 Marx’s evolutionism predicts a time when
there will be no religion
 What is the point in studying it?
The connections between religion and
society/economics
 The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of
Capitalism
 One strand of Christianity (Calvinism)
 Double-predestination
 No way of knowing who is damned and who is
saved
 You must live your life as if you are saved
 Protestant work ethic
 This ethic was one of the conditions for the
development of capitalism
 Weber’s evolutionism: polytheism, pantheism,
monotheism, ethical monotheism
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(Also part of the anthropology of religion)
 Durkheim gives a functional account of religion
 Religion is
 A social fact
 A unifying force in society
 The product of human activity
 Part of the human condition
 “society worshipping itself”
 “a means of making symbolic statements about
society”
 These imply that religion is untrue, meaning
 …religion is both untrue and necessary
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 The
“fathers of sociology”
 All three are evolutionists (like Fraser)
 They imply …
 Religion will inevitably decline
 This thesis is called secularisation:
 As societies modernise, religious belief
declines
 It is clearly seen in all European countries
 It has been an implicit factor in much
sociological thought
 (see lecture 8)
 Peter
Berger
 Not actual atheism
 A working assumption that we cannot use any
ultimate (religious) reality
 To explain religious phenomena
 If we wish to explain a schism in a religion
 How else are we to do it?
 Perhaps methodological agnosticism is
preferable (Porpora)
 We cannot use what we perceive as
”religious truth” in the study of religion
What features of
belief or ritual help
to sustain people?
 What is the
relationship between
social contexts and
religious beliefs?
 Why does religion
decline/increase in
influence?
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QUESTIONS
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The stance of
“methodological
atheism” denies the
significance/reality of
transcendence, which is
the point of religion
Like all the previous
approaches, it is often
reductionist:
It describes religion in
terms of something else
CRITICISMS
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The above approaches are not
really interested in the truth
behind religion
What about people who believe in
the religion?
Theology
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“Queen of the Sciences”
Normally studied in a Christian
context
A branch of study that allows
believers to study their religion
It is used for clergy to study at
university or at seminaries/training
colleges for clergy
Students of theology are allowed to
(but need not?) assume:
The existence of God
The Christian trinity
The centrality of the Bible
Other basic Christian (or
denominational) doctrines
None (LSE, UCL)
 Theology (Divinity in
Scotland)
 Religion/Religious
Studies
 Theology and Religion
 Religion, Philosophy
and Ethics (KCL)
 Religion, Politics and
Society (KCL)
 Modules in Sociology
or Anthropology
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What are “religious
studies”?
 A combination of all
the previous
approaches
 However,
 A central conflict
 Between theological
and secular
approaches
 An example is needed
…
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 “religion,
any
religion, is the
enemy of liberal
democracy as long
as it has not been
defanged and
privatised” BeitHallahmi 2003:32
 Proof?
 Didn’t liberal
democracy emerge
out of religious
states?
 Aren’t
there many
religious people who
sincerely believe in
democracy?
 Does that mean
they belong to a
“defanged and
privatised” religion?
 NB attention in this
area has been
focused on one
religion
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Some would answer ‘no’
1) A Some Muslims:
“Islamic law is absolutely incompatible with democracy.”
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/021-democracy.htm
2) A view mirrored by many popular commentators –
The statistical link between Islamic states and autocracy
Lack of separation between religion and state in Islamic theory
3) Some academic writers:
“the Islamic world is not ready to absorb the basic values of
modernism and democracy. Leadership remains the prerogative
of the ruling elite. Arab and Islamic leadership are patrimonial,
coercive, and authoritarian. (Bukay 2007)
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Others would answer ‘Yes’
1) Many Muslims:
‘Is Islam compatible with democracy?
The short answer is "yes.“’
http://www.islamawareness.net/Politics/incompatibl
e.html
2) Some commentators – evidence:
There are democratic Islamic states; any link
between Islam and autocracy may be based on nonreligious factors
3) Some academics
“The Muslim heritage . . .contains concepts that
provide a foundation for contemporary Muslims to
develop authentically Muslim programs of
democracy“ (Voll & Esposito 1994)
Scepticism about the terms of the argument
 To be drawn into an argument about any
necessary incompatibility, or for that matter
compatibility, between Islam and democracy, is
to accept precisely the false premise that there
is one true, traditionally established ‘Islamic’
answer to the question, and that this timeless
‘Islam’ rules social and political practice. There
is no such answer and no such ‘Islam’ (Halliday
1996:16)
 ‘religious belief is socially and politically
contingent, it cannot and does not determine or
prescribe a certain type of politics” Bromley
(1997)
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A religion can be interpreted to mean a number
of different things
 To argue that any interpretation is “correct” or
“a distortion” is to miss the point:
 There is no essence or true meaning of any
religion:
 “religion can be used to legitimize anything” Fox
page 73
 “one of the most common misunderstandings
about Islam is that it contains some kind of
essential ‘core’ which dictates the fundamental
nature of political movements adopting its
banner” Teti & Mura in Haynes (2009) pp 92-110
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 This
is not a viewpoint that believers in a
religion would or could endorse:
 The two (internet) quotations from Muslims
disagree …
 But agree that “Is Islam compatible with
democracy?” is a meaningful question
 From the viewpoint of a believer
 If religion can be used to say anything
 Then what is the point of it?
 Connolly,
P (ed.) (1999) Approaches to the
Study of Religion
 Geertz, C (1993) Religion as a Cultural
System
 Porpora, D (2006) “Methodological Atheism,
Methodological Agnosticism and religious
Experience” in Journal for the Theory of
Social Behaviour Volume 36, Issue 1, pages
57–75, March 2006