Throughout Smith, van Voorst, and Masuzawa’s works, the theme of how the west, particularly Christians, have categorized the world’s religious traditions is blatant. In particular, both Smith and Masuzawa demonstrate how historically the pursuit of categorizing “world religions” has typically been a Christian endeavor. Moreover, it was not until relatively modern times (the twenties and thirties) that the term “world religions” was used in the way that it is used contemporarily (Masuzawa 37). I found these particular readings highly thought-provoking and also rather disconcerting. This was particularly the case when several key concerns came to mind while reading these pieces; specifically, “what is a world religion?” I contend that our contemporary understanding is rather fluid, which, therefore, complicates scholarly religious studies discussion.
In earlier days, if someone had asked me what ‘religion’ was, I would have said something along the lines of “a belief in God” and listed off Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (the only three traditions I would have known by name at the time) as examples. Clearly, my personal categorization of religion at this time would have been fairly similar to the pre-nineteenth century notion of the three “Abrahamic religions” and “other” or “idolatry” (Smith 276). Of course, my understanding of what to include in my list of “world religions” has expanded since I was in elementary school and now includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, and all of the other religious traditions that are typically discussed in a post-secondary religious studies setting.
However, you will note that several of these other religious traditions (such as the Vaisnavas) do not fit my earlier definition of religion (a belief in God). Hence, over time, I also revised my definition of religion. My revised definition of religion came to be “a belief in (a) higher-power(s)”. Yet this definition still seemed to fall short of encompassing several “religious” traditions; thus, I made a further amendment to my understanding and came to define religion as “a system of beliefs in something beyond the perceptible in this world”. However, consider an atheist who still attends synagogue, for cultural or traditional purposes. Might a devoted (yet atheistic) member of a synagogue (or church, etc) still be considered “religious”? To further complicate this, imagine that this same person also partook in his or her religious community’s rituals, partook in their festivals, upheld their ethical codes, and that the only thing separating that person from being a stereotypical member of their religious community was their absence of faith or belief in their tradition. Certainly, from an outsider’s perspective, without actually dialoguing with the person or their community, one would assume that this person was “religious”. Moreover, in terms of the Jewish community, most practicing Jews would still consider a fellow Jew, though perhaps a staunch atheist, a Jew and an inheritor of Abraham’s covenant.
Thus, belief does not, necessarily, seem to be the defining aspect of religion, which was often thought to be the case in the seventeenth century; rather, this understanding of what constitutes religion seems to be rooted in the Protestant Reformation traditions (Smith 271). There appears to be some form of ritualistic, ethical, and, possibly, a communal component to what we would, contemporarily, classify as “religion”. My concern in this blog is not simply to trace my understanding of “religion” and to appropriate it with the evolving European understanding of religion. However, I wanted to point out that my own personal understanding of the numerous and diverse traditions that I have now appropriated under the term “religion” has been, largely, dictated by what other people have told me fit into that category. Furthermore, this understanding of the traditions that fall under the rubric “religion” have come from the Religious Studies discipline, and the religious traditions that have commonly come to be discussed in these settings have come to be recognized as religious traditions due to the process of European “categorization” that Smith and Masuzawa discuss.
Since my earlier definitions of “religion” have all come to be amended to encompass the various religious traditions I have encountered, I can’t help but wonder what my definition of “religion” would have been at this point had I not been studying religious traditions in an academic setting for the past four years. Thus when a pair of people discuss “religion” with one another, are they even talking about the same thing? This especially becomes the case if they come from divergent religious backgrounds themselves. How about scholars? Do we as religious scholars even discuss the same thing when we talk about religion? My suspicion is that we often do not. Of course, this sort of thinking can be taken further when we apply this to particular religious traditions. For example, if one were to approach a Hindu man and ask him if he is a “Hindu”, he is likely explain that, in fact, the term Hindu is a European label for a wide variety of Indian religious traditions and then proceed to explain that he is a Vaisnava or a Shaivite, etc.
Masuzawa explains that was not until the nineteenth century that authors began to move away from looking at different traditions religions rather than sects or denominations in some sort of relation with a particular author’s brand of Christianity (58; cf. Van Voorst 15). Hence, one must wonder how the western understanding of the broad, and rather ambiguous, term “religion” will continue to evolve in the years to come, especially one when considers that even today the study of religion is still heavily influenced by outside concerns, although, today’s influences are the economic concerns of the institution (Masuzawa 9). Will we continue to hold onto our rigid categorical approach to the various anthropological traditions of the world? Can we even presume to be discussing the same concept with one another when we speak about “religion” since the term itself appears to be used so fluidly?
Andrew
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4 comments:
Hi Andrew,
In reading your blog I was reminded of an interesting argument put forth by Partha Chatterjee in his book The Nation and its Fragments in an attempt to shed some light upon the sentiments of the elite echelons of Indian society during the nationalist movement. Chatterjee argues that educated members of the nationalist movement reacted to the colonialist assertion that Indian society is synonymous with irrational, superstitious, mystical religious practices by claiming to possess an inherent spiritual nature as opposed to the colonizers/Westerners who were materialistic by nature. This position of the Indian elite is reactionary and derivative: they have merely accepted the categories of East vs. West and spiritual vs. material but assigned new values to the terms. Spiritual is now virtuous and material is now bad, the result of being spiritually devoid.
You mention in your blog that if we were to ask an Indian man if he were a Hindu he might just reply that he is a Shaivite and that the term “Hindu” is merely a Western concept, originally meant to describe any peoples living to the east of Indus river. But what if he doesn’t say that? What if he says he is a Hindu and a card carrying member of the RSS (a paramilitary organization notorious for its anti-Muslim stance) to boot? Chatterjee’s argument makes me think that these categories and constructs have become deeply embedded in our minds and have now come to inform the way we define ourselves. Communalism in India is a prime example. The colonial constructs of “Hindu” and “Muslim” have played an enormous role in politics in India since the start of the 20th century. Our ethical responsibility then goes beyond expanding and altering our definition of religion to reflect the variety of traditions and practices present in the world. We should also be cognizant of how these definitions will eventually come to affect the way in which we define our own traditions and practices.
Hey Andrew,
Let me first apologize about the length of my comment, but your post made me think about an issue I've long pondered!
I appreciate how you problematize the concept ‘religion’ in and of itself. I believe to some extent you do a meta-analysis and further reveal the underlying lack of objectivity and simplicity in the concept we have developed. Can we communicate, can be establish community, given this constraint, this limitation in coming together? I know you’re concerned with establishing a community, a dialogue between scholars – in a sense this is essential, between intellectuals, more broadly conceived, and even more so among all human beings.
On another point, in discussing the question of the atheist’ inclusion in ‘religion’, you say: “Moreover, in terms of the Jewish community, most practicing Jews would still consider a fellow Jew, though perhaps a staunch atheist, a Jew and an inheritor of Abraham’s covenant.” I wonder if this peculiarity and uniqueness of ‘the Jewish’ and ‘the Jew’, about which I’ve myself thought for a while now, arises from the connection made in Judaism between religion or faith and the historico-geographical. The Jews are the chosen people with a chosen land. In the Hebrew Bible faith, God, religion and all otherworldly realities are connected fundamentally with a finite and distinct historical group of people and historical land, that is, the atemporal is brought into union with the distinct and exclusive temporal and spatial. Sure, all religions or faiths have certain holy places, a spatial element, and moments of revelation, a temporal element, but rarely are they conjoined in such a radical and fundamental way. So at least in the case of the other Abrahamic religions, in the New Testament and Qur’an, human kind, dispersed across the entirety of the world, is the recipient of the revelation of faith. Sure, there are naturally linguistic and of course spatio-temporal limitations to the ‘original’ revelation, but the revelation is not limited to this finite ‘area’ or ‘people’. This is perhaps what makes Judaism more cultural and exclusive than the other Abrahamic religions. Perhaps this distinctiveness of Judaism within the Abrahamic religions makes it more like some ‘non-Western’ faiths, which have developed within a more limited cultural sphere. I have had many intelligent Jewish friends tell me that they are not “religious”, that “they are not practicing Jews, but simply cultural Jews.”
I wonder to what extent this can help explain the immensely more limited ‘numbers’ of the Jewish faith. I wonder what you think about this reading of ‘the Jewish Phenomena’ within the Abrahamic religions.
babak
Hi Andrew,
I really liked the issue you brought up when u said: “Thus when a pair of people discuss “religion” with one another, are they even talking about the same thing?” This is something that has also puzzled me. It reminds me of a philosophy of language class, in which we discussed frames of reference, differences in the use of a shared language, etc. I have always been interested in the question of whether people with very different understandings of reality and different uses of language, depending on their own understanding and points of view, could effectively communicate with each other. For example, how could two individuals talk about the nature of “God”, if both have drastically different conceptions of divinity? How can two people discuss religion, as you mentioned, if their understanding of this term differs? As you mentioned with your example of Judaism, religion can be seen by many as a system of culture, community, ritual or practice, just as it may be seen by others as constituting a belief system. Even more specifically, people may differ on which particular beliefs or practices are actually “religious.” Most of the time, we take all of these differences for granted and basically assume that others share the same definitions as we do. Even speaking of someone who is “atheist” is a difficult situation, since we have generalized the meaning of the term. Does it refer to a person who does not accept or believe in any and all conceptions of divinity? Or simply someone who refuses to adopt the “Western”/ “Abrahamic” / Judeo-Christian-Islamic conception of God? Because of this difficulty, one thing that has always troubled me is reading books (many of which are academic), in which the author states that Buddhism or Buddhist traditions are atheistic. How can we speak of a tradition’s rejection of concepts which may not even apply or exist within that tradition, due to drastically different metaphysical and cosmological views? Just some thoughts.
- Adam
Adam,
Thanks for your considerations about the notion of God and Buddhism. I was actually thinking about the Buddhist tradition and the idea of atheism while I was originally writing my blog this week. I think what you have raised is another excellent example of how western thinkers impose their conceptions of “religion” on the east. Also, it is a superb example about how we as scholars often speak past each other. In all honesty, I often get so concerned with the notion of talking past one another that when I write I tend to define more “complex” terms just so both myself and my reader will know that we are on the same page. It would be interesting to note as a sort of study how much more frequently scholars might be in stronger agreement if these sorts of terms were more often defined in articles, etc. Of course I’m not assuming that we would all be in agreement all of the time; simply, it would be interesting to see how much more scholars might agree with one another.
Andrew
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